I've amassed enough credits for my first new ship: an Adder! It cost 87,000 credits in its default configuration, and is still pretty flimsy in terms of armaments. The upside is a much more powerful Frame Shift Drive, allowing jumps of 9 LY in its default configuration, compared to the Sidewinder's 7.5 LY range. It's got more cargo space too.
I buy an FSD upgrade so that it can jump even further, and fit it with a discovery scanner. I hear that Universal Cartographics pays good money for scans of previously-unexplored systems. The basic discovery scanner won't get me as much information (nor as much money) as some of the more expensive models, but those upgrades are way out of my price range for now, so let's see what I can find!
My destination is Payayan, an Alliance system ~60 LY out from Altair. All the systems I've seen so far have either been aligned with the Federation, independent systems not aligned with anyone, or anarchies which respect no law at all. The Alliance interests me, as they're an upstart group who mostly seem to have their hearts in the right place.
Anyways, Payayan is one of the nearest Alliance systems, so that's where I'm going.
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Back at Altair, after a safe and relatively uneventful run to Payayan and back, scanning all the unexplored systems along the way and a few other systems in the Payayan area. Turns out the more "boring" systems -- those with just a sun, or a couple icy planets -- are only worth a measly few hundred credits. But the bigger systems with metal-rich or earth-like planets are potentially of interest for colonization or mining, and those pay pretty well -- closer to the 10,000 credit range.
Overall, I explored about a dozen systems, and the Adder's halfway paid for itself already. Also, the Pilot's Federation upgraded my exploration rating from "Aimless" to "Mostly Aimless", and then again to "Scout". Not bad!
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