Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 96 – March 26th.

I need to change the dynamic of the game to make continuing a meaningful endeavor. Right now, I have 200,000+ secs. and no deadlines or meaningful limitations. I love NPC characters, as evidenced by D&D supplemental Zero to Hero, so having a veritable army of them also means I fewer challenges.  Heck, I increased their pay to 1% of all sales and still have hundreds of thousands secs.

I need to put the lock back in place. We are going to purchase a ship via my rewritten e036 rules. We will trade the Antelopes for a new ship. When I rewrote e036, I did not anticipate having multiple ships. I made that detail up on a whim. To even things out, Duke will trade his ship in for 60,000 credit on the principal and Emily will sell hers for half of that or 30,000. Used car dealers…

Our choice of ships is the Buffalo Class Heavy Transport. It costs 300,000, which is reduced by 60,000 to 240,000. We pay a reduced interest rate of 600 per week because of the trade. We make that payment now and I do not have another payment until Day 106.

Here is a blank sheet which assumes that the player has two hoppers in the bay.

To soak up more cash, the used Buffalo Heavy Transport doesn’t come with boats, guns, boat guns and has a single hypercharge. We decide to purchase all of them at the dealership, which comes at a premium price. We pay 1,300 for each hopper, 900 for each starship guns, and 1,800 for boats guns (each) plus 3,500 for hypercharges. This planet is Tech Level 10, so all of our stuff is Tech Level 1.

That sets us back 11,500 which is subtracted from Emily’s trade in of 30,000. We made 18,500 today in the trade. Since this wasn’t a “sale” per se, the crew gets nothing off the deal except new digs. We spend the rest of the day transferring cargo from the old ships to the new. The new e036 rules specifically state that we cannot transfer hoppers, guns, or the stasis unit in pilotage. It's a shame, because those guns were sweet. We'll have to upgrade what we have later.

Here is our new "Buffalo as Character Sheet". I have moved all of the cargo to the ship except for the 4 vials of pheromones and crew equipment, which are on each individual's character sheet.

We have 222,360 in cash, have 8 hypercharges and a new ship.  We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 95 – March 25th.

We manage to roll well and sell the boats (5,400), the extra boat guns (150), the U-bots (300) and purchase hypercharges. Hypercharges set us back 1000. We also buy Ace a PS bot at 600.

We dish out 585 to the crew, pay the 1600 for the hypercharges and the PS-bot. We pocket 3,665 today.

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe nothing.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.

Cargo of note:
4 CU Status Unit (e103),
9 Side Arms TL-1
2 TL-4 heavy hand weapons with explosive effects,
5 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
4 Doses of pheromones (e009) in Duke’s pocket,
and the ship is fueled with 5 hypercharges.

1 Alicorn starship with TL-1 Guns. We owe nothing.
1 Hopper with TL-2 Boat guns,

Cargo of note:
5 Military U-suits (e044)
5 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
and the ship is fueled with 5 hypercharges.

We have 203,860 in cash and we are wanted on Palatek.

Morphing Styles - Emily Revisited

I've been rocking out so much work, my hands hurt. Better than being bored. I've been drawing a lot of inspiration from my wife, Kitty and my daughter, Cat. 

The first image I did over the weekend was actually sparked by a class I'm taking, Children's Lit. It's Prince Philip and Aurora under a tree. After I got my groove on, I started taking requests. That lead to Alice then Ariel. I've been working entirely in ink up to this point. Well, not "entirely", I sketched out the designs in pencil first and then diligently erased the lines.

The final request was from Kitty and was really outside of my comfort zone. It was Marie from Aristocats. I love the artwork in this movie, it's classic 1970's stuff. In many parts of the film you can still see guide and the sketch lines under the colorful animation.

I don't remotely work in this style but decided to give it a shot. I worked with only two pens and 4 colored pencils. I can't say that I am entirely comfortable with the colored pencils, as I am more of a charcoal or ink sort of guy, but I really enjoyed the process.

I don't even own a set of colored pencils, I raided Cat's school supplies for them. I worked until about 2 am last night to get it done and framed.

I have to say, framing up 3 of four pieces of art in as many days feels good. But now I am Disney'ed out. I want to get back to my own favorite subjects.

A few weeks ago, I accidentally closed an open pen in my sketchbook, marring a favorite drawing of a character named Emily. I did have a photo of the sketch which I thought would help recreate it. I was going to throw it on my lightboard and go at it. But I was still feeling adventurous and decided not to redo something that I felt was done. Instead, I set out to create a new pose of Emily, in the classic Rosie the Riveter style. To enhance the retro feel, I replaced her 1980's styled space suit with one from the Mercury missions.

I had thought that this would be another ink job, but as I worked with my daughter's colored pencils in reach, I decided to give them a try. It's missing something, so I know I be reworking her again. But the process was very enjoyable.  

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 93 to Day 94 – March 24st.

On Day 92 and 93, we take another two days of RRR for accelerated healing. Everyone is back to full health before we take off at a cost of 225 secs. My primary motive for doing this was resyncing the days to the real date.

I have never been clear on the mechanics of going from planet to planet. I think it takes one move out and one move in for a total of 2 hours. Maybe I’ll change that some day. We land at the spaceport with 8 hours or 8 rolls left.

We don’t manage to sell or buy anything useful today.

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe nothing.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.

Cargo of note:
1 Boat guns, TL-2,
4 CU Status Unit (e103),
9 Side Arms TL-1
2 TL-4 heavy hand weapons with explosive effects,
5 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
4 Doses of pheromones (e009) in Duke’s pocket,
3 U-bots,
and the ship is fueled with 5 hypercharges.

1 Alicorn starship with TL-1 Guns. We owe nothing.
1 Hopper with TL-2 Boat guns,

Cargo of note:
5 Military U-suits (e044)
5 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
and the ship is fueled with 5 hypercharges.

We have 200,195 in cash and we are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 92 – March 23rd.

We land at the colony and go for medical help. We pay 225 for 3 points of healing each and it takes all day. Healing is limited due to the tech level of the planet.

In the meantime, Emily sells the books we found for base price 12,000. We roll a 3 on the multiple table and this turns into 36,000. Nice. Each crewman receives 1% (360 secs.) of this leaving 32400 for Duke and Emily.

I’d like to unload these skimmers. It takes 2 hours to get skimmers from the list. We sell them for 90 each or 360 secs. total. Again, the crew gets a cut of 1%. We’ll round to four secs. each and we take in 320 secs.

Today is done.

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe nothing.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.

Cargo of note:
1 Boat guns, TL-2,
4 CU Status Unit (e103),
9 Side Arms TL-1
2 TL-4 heavy hand weapons with explosive effects,
5 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
4 Doses of pheromones (e009) in Duke’s pocket,
3 U-bots,
and the ship is fueled with 5 hypercharges.


1 Alicorn starship with TL-1 Guns. We owe nothing.
1 Hopper with TL-2 Boat guns,

Cargo of note:
5 Military U-suits (e044)
5 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
and the ship is fueled with 5 hypercharges.

We have 200,420 in cash and we are wanted on Palatek.