I spent about 40 minutes building up my money then finally made the plunge to buy a Centurion. I couldn’t quite kit it out with everything but its good enough to get back to the plot missions.

The view is better than the other ships although still pretty restricted in all honesty – I can only assume this was done for performance reasons to speed the game up.

I complete the drugs run to Hector and get a snippet more info from Tayla who then sends me on another run to New Constantinople.

I get attacked by confed along the way but just afterburn to the jump and get out of there asap.

I have to fight through a wave of pirates on my way back every time but Tayla sets me up with an identical mission flying back to New Constantinople again. This time I get a secret compartment to hide the contraband.

When I take off some guy called Riordian takes offense to me for taking his job from Tayla and ends up attacking me. With my new ship this fight is no trouble.

There and back again and Tayla still doesn’t have anything to tell me except to send me to a guy called Roman Lynch back on New Constantinople where I’ve just been…. twice.

Nothing comes for free in this game and I now have to fly missions for Mr Lynch. The first one involves flying back to Pentonville again where I’ve just come from. Theres a whole sector to explore and these missions are sending me backwards and forwards between the same two places. I have to deliver a message to a man called Seelig that Mr Lynch is disappointed in him

Predictably enough he attacks after I give the message. Since hes only flying a Talon and hes on his own he doesn’t stand a chance and I fly back to give Lynch the news.

Lynch is running into obstacles researching the artifact and requires another mission as payment. This time running a shipment but at least its to a new system.

An englishman who I’ve heard one of the bartenders talking about tries to talk me into ejecting my cargo on the way. Lynch warned me about him already and it comes as no surprise when he attacks. This is a pretty tough fight in an asteroid field but my dual missile launchers help a lot here.

Lynch has a little information for me although I pretty much knew the artifact was alien already. In the meanwhile he gives me a nicely paying mission to escort a relative of his who is supposed to be appearing in a murder trial off world.

 Now that I’ve got a decent ship I feel like I’m really racing through all these missions. I’ve completed each one first time and they haven’t been too difficult at least so far. I’m hoping to see a bit more variety in some of these missions later in the game. It would be nice to get some escort missions or maybe work with some wingmen.

I’m slightly disappointed with the Centurion. Its main asset seems to be the ability to outrun anything so I can afterburn away from pretty much all the random encounters. The 4 gun mounts at the front are pretty nice though. I guess I wouldn’t want it to be too easy.