A number of F4 vets have found a lot to like in Elite. I have

Logged on yesterday to catch up with Ram on voice comms. I sent him a PM, telling him I was on comms if he wanted to chant. Haha! Surprised he didn't turn and run right there! Meant chat of course and we did so.

Those pirate threat activity instances are no joke, the ships in there are jacked to the nines. Arriving first, I bounced a Deadly Chieftain solo, and it was soon evident I had grabbed a tiger by the tail. I hadn't lost my shields to NPC fire in nearly three years, but in this single engagement, the Chieftain not only shot my fancy shields away, he chewed the hull down to 61%. I was at the point where I was thinking I might have to wake out. But even though my shields collapsed, they were stout enough to outlast his by quite a bit so I won the race to zero hull. Whew!! I had no idea what I was getting in to, but even though I got shot up I felt like all the engineering I've done to this ship really paid off. A lesser ship would have been lost.

While all this was going on Wingnuts and Ram were having a leisurely chat while I am hanging by my fingernails.

My previous best bounty was 390k. I added 200k to that in this instance. The ships were paying out very well, and hell yeah they should. But it would have been a much harder if I hadn't teamed up with Wingnuts after he arrived. Once were were in our Rotte, the combination of his frags and my beams and autoloaders made -- well not short work exactly -- but they died all the same. That was fun and the most challenging NPC opponents I have come across in Elite.

We killed enough for me to get in the top 50% of the CG for now.