Oolite Darwin Awards

[Bugbear]

I'm cruising around chart 5 in my recently beefed up Boa Class Cruiser, and I've been doing some strictly legal cargo runs, so I've nothing to fear from Gal Navy or the cops.

I don't remember where exactly I was, but I was heading inbound to the station with a broken compass, so I had to target the station with visual cues instead.

I saw a large object in the distance between myself and the planet, so I headed towards it. Turned out to be a Behemoth carrier. Oh well, never mind, as I said, I had nothing to fear.

As I was flying through this mass of purple scanner blips, a yellow blip appeared on the scanner limits, and appeared to be making a beeline towards me...sure enough laser fire appeared and that yellow turned to red.

What I want to know, though, is what was that guy thinking, firing on a clean trader, in the presence of a Behemoth, 3 or 4 Navy Frigates, and a couple of dozen Navy Vipers?


https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-fnVQ ... te-002.png

Suffice to say, I didn't even get a chance to land a single shot on the guy before he was obliterated.

[SandJ]

What I want to know, though, is what was that guy thinking, firing on a clean trader, in the presence of a Behemoth, 3 or 4 Navy Frigates, and a couple of dozen Navy Vipers?

Oolite mimics life: the Darwin award page about the guy whose last good idea to a hold-up in a gun shop. (And the Snopes confirmation of truth.)

[RyanHoots]

I nominate the Cobra Mk1 pilot I just came across who hired six mamba escorts. With that kind of money, he could have bought a decent ship. He was killed in no time, although it wasn't as easy to shoot down all those mambas.

[hayden]

Mine is actually an Elite confession as opposed to an Oolite one, and takes me back 26 years to being an 8 year old playing Elite on a c64 with my Dad. We'd been Deadly for a considerable time and whilst the mechanics of how it happened are a bit blurred, the outcome isn't

My Dad was controlling the joystick and I was on ECM/Energy Bomb/Escape Pod detail on the keyboard. What I remember was an epic Thargoid invasion in between some otherwise epic battles and somehow we seemed to be surviving. We checked our status and unbelievably we were E - L - I - T - E. But still under fire. Things took a turn for the worse and I was standing by on Escape Pod/Energy Bomb. Now I can't remember how I fecked up, but either I pressed energy bomb instead of escape pod and not surviving, or the other way round and not being able to save. In any case we didn't manage to save it and never reached ELITE status again.

Gutted.

[Fatleaf]

Well Hayden, now is the time for you to rise to the plate and redeem yourself and regain your honour by attaining to the rank of Elite once more. So sally forth with conviction and zeal to vanquish all pirate scum and Thargoid alike to take your place by your Fathers side once more.

[drew]

And rule the galaxy together...

...or am I in the wrong universe?

Cheers,

Drew.

[Fatleaf]

And rule the galaxy together...

...or am I in the wrong universe?

Your far far away Drew. And a bit late

[DaddyHoggy]

And rule the galaxy together...

...or am I in the wrong universe?

Your far far away Drew. And a bit late

Drew's far far away what?

[Cody]

And rule the galaxy together...

...or am I in the wrong universe?

Your far far away Drew. And a bit late

Drew's far far away what?

<chuckles>

[Bugbear]

And now I'd like to nominate myself for an Oolite Darwin Award...

I'm doing cargo contracts across Chart 1, somewhere in the middle of the chart, travelling down that long multi system highway that seems to run in a straight line from Riredi to Inus.

It was just one of those things, I suffered a misjump into interstellar space. Now my Cobby III is not completely iron assed, but mil lasers fore and aft gives me some confidence in taking on some greater challenges.

One of the 'nice' things about an unplanned excursion to interstellar space are the presence of the large Thargoid motherships. Why nice? Because they're relatively easy to waste cause they don't shoot back, and if you can stay long enough to unload 4 military laser firings onto them while dodging the shots of the steadily increasing number of Thargoid warships, are worth about 2000Cr.

Suffice to say, in this instance I was fortunate enough to make short work of the mothership, collected my 2000Cr, then started hitting the injectors to get away from the now even angrier Thargoids while I waited for the countdown to get back to system space.

Jumping back into normal space found me staring at the side of a Black Monk gunship. Within seconds I heard the plaintive cry of one of their unfortunate debtors.

Now, I really don't like the Black Monks. I think their business model stinks and I have no problem with being a minor thorn in their side (provided there are no cops around of course). Sighing, and realising that the work of a vigilante is never done, I commenced opening fire on that corporate bully. Religion my arse, that bastard is going to be sucking vaccuum at short notice.

I only failed to take into consideration a trifling matter. My shields were still recovering from my Thargoid escape only moments earlier, and the Black Monk had tossed a couple of hardheads my way.

Did I mention that I was only a couple of hundred metres from the gunship?

Moral of the story - biting off more than you can chew can result in a 'Press Space' moment.

[Fatleaf]

One of the 'nice' things about an unplanned excursion to interstellar space are the presence of the large Thargoid motherships. Why nice? Because they're relatively easy to waste cause they don't shoot back, and if you can stay long enough to unload 4 military laser firings onto them while dodging the shots of the steadily increasing number of Thargoid warships, are worth about 2000Cr.

You should install Commander McLane's Thargoid Carrier update. That one fires back, big time!

[Commander McLane]

You should install Commander McLane's Thargoid Carrier update. That one fires back, big time!

I wanted to suggest the same. I by "mothership" you mean a Thargoid Carrier, you have an outdated release.

[marcusrg]

Those are really good cases for Darwin Awards... my story is old, everybody may have done this before... when I was speeding to reach coriolis station, I pressed A for mistake, and boom, lots of vipers towards me!

[Bugbear]

Those are really good cases for Darwin Awards... my story is old, everybody may have done this before... when I was speeding to reach coriolis station, I pressed A for mistake, and boom, lots of vipers towards me!

I have done exactly the same!!! Shift-_ is your friend in this case. Puts all your weapons offline. Some would think that disabling all your weapons prior to docking would just be an immersion thing, but it really does make sense to dock safely with your weapons cold just to avoid this scenario.

[Bugbear]

You should install Commander McLane's Thargoid Carrier update. That one fires back, big time!

I wanted to suggest the same. I by "mothership" you mean a Thargoid Carrier, you have an outdated release.

Update has been applied...you bastards!!!