We visited Picker's Field on Hurston with Adjudicator, ysignal and Exiled on Saturday, in between Jumptown attempts. We did pretty badly at JT so this visit/break was the highlight of our session, as we were very successful plus it was a cool new location I was dying to check out. Though it has a QT marker, we took a mission to get there. It was a lawful mission to "evict" some "illegal occupants" I think it was, so basically Space Mexicans/Indians, which in the future will be called, appropriately enough, Dusters ("Picker's Field" was also a very appropriate name for the dump that spawns them, I thought, good job CIG). I think it was about 17 of them or so, certainly worth the trip to wipe them out. It was a pretty interesting engagement in a very open, massive location. ysignal got downed once and I revived him, but other than that there were no snags. Sometime after the engagement, as we were exploring the settlement, a Corsair showed up and a player got out, downed one of us I think but we got him. Tried to break into his Corsair from the back by shooting his ramp, but it didn't work.
I grabbed a gas mask from a dead Duster to try out with our outfits. I'll probably use it in the upcoming Pirate Spec, but I am also considering it for the Medic. It would be good if it had a specific function, but I doubt it.
The settlement has a Scrap Shop, a big pond in the middle, and some flaming fires (not sure if those are permanent or somehow connected to our arrival or actions). I loved going up that huge tower in the center and seeing the view from there, it felt like Assassin's Creed and I wanted to jump into the pond. The settlement spreadsheet I posted above notes a "tar pit" as a main feature of the location, but I am not sure if that was the same as the pond I saw. The pond's waters seemed clear, so maybe the pit is something else.
Didn't spend much time exploring as we wanted to get back to JT, but I plan to go back there and take my time, and see if there are any other missions to tackle. I wouldn't go alone if you're taking that eviction mission, as 1v17 is rough odds. Unless it scales with party size, which I doubt. I would say you'll be good with 2 players, the 4 we took was certainly overkill. Note that we first tried to complete the mission by carpet-bombing the settlement (we had 2 A1s with us), but we arrived at night and the settlement is so spread out with dotted infrastructure far away from the habitation area, that I think ysignal ended up just bombing empty ground, while Adjudicator didn't manage to operate his ship's bombs at all. It's certainly worth going back there during daytime and trying to complete the mission just by bombing. Could take an A2 to make it easier.
Because the infrastructure surrounding the settlement is so spread out, we landed a long way from the center, and it took us quite a while to drive in. Then we parked our STVs once again a long way from the center, and we took yet more time to RUN in, so by the time we arrived in the settlement proper it was daybreak, and the rest of our mission took place in daylight. This felt extremely different from the bunkers, where you park your vehicle right outside them. We just didn't know how close it was safe to get with our ships and STVs, and we couldn't even TELL where the center was until we were almost there. Very interesting experience, and very unique compared to everything else available at the moment.
