Tales from the spacelanes...

[phkb]

Nice stories! <applauds>

[mike1six]

Nice stories! <applauds>

Thanks. I know it's just a game, but it seriously peeved me all the same to see those slaves floating there boxed up. The very idea of slave trade disgusts me.

[Cody]

Aye, good tales! The game-in-the-head is where it's at!

[mike1six]

A round of drinks on me, it's a day worth celebrating and I can definitely afford it!

You might remember my trip to Isence, where I picked up a bunch of folks and freed them? Well, I heard from one of em today. Well, her sister. Remarkable lady, works for Amnesty InterGal. I didn't ask, but I think she joined to try and find her sister. So, that was a good start to the day.

She invited me to meet up in Teorge, a mid Ag near my home cluster. Nice little place. She was appreciative, to the tune of 750 creds. But that was just the first part of the surprise party.

I already mentioned the lady works for Amnesty, so we got a hatred of slavers in common. She's a little less, ah, hands-on than me though. Which is fine, y'know? But here's where the real party starts. Well, sorta. Technically I was crashing someone else's party after that.

This lady tells me there's a slaver hideout on the far side of the sun from Teorge Prime. She asks me if picking up the slaves and popping the rock sounds like a job for me.

Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life, or so an old saying goes. Well, today I made two thousand creds for a little hunting excursion. On top of the bounties for those dumb slavers without the good sense to run when they saw me.

Yep, today was a good day.

[cbr]

I have had this happen a few times now.
Leaving a station and circling the planet i notice some dense laserfire.
With intermitted Injectorspeed i try to get closer, But it takes several minutes to even get close,
the laserlights are intense before i even see one ship.
When getting closer i encounter a random trader fleeing from the fight, i am close enought so the laserfire fills my whole screen,
the pc slows down and i still cant see any ships ( nothing on 'radar' )

Two times i try to get close but the pc just locks down, not being able to move the mouse et al, need a hard reset.
other times i look at the memory/swap, the memory completely filled and the swap is also filling to fast to be comfortable as i come closer to this area.

So i cant get close to see whois who fighting or where they were coming from... aargh

[RockDoctor]

Hi cbr,
I know the feeling from multiple places. Once the screen gets really busy, the system slows to a crawl, and you don't know about the guy sneaking up behind you to put a 9TJ laser bolt through the back of your life support system. There was an addon which I had on my previous installation, I think, which would give you missions involving a debris field of many ships, alloy plates, and cargo canisters, and if a baddy was hiding in the debris field (or you were a bit too head-on in trying to gut a carcass and smacked into a Boa at full speed) ... Press Spacebar.
Dropping the detail level may help, but you're probably just stretching your system too far.

Pirate bases did it too. If you didn't get right up against the base before dropping your energy bomb then your Q-bomb ... you were going to die, fairly quickly.

Remember Doom? The machine gun in that was notorious for bringing previously effective 10-base-2 networks to their knees, because the gun would pump out network data packets for every bullet from the gun, at 25 FPS, with 32-bit X-, Y-, and Z- coordinates, broadcast to every address on the network segment. Cue network melt down, and a sysadmin adding Doom to the local list of malware to be removed from any machine on the network, on sight. Very much the same problem, I suspect.
Can you approach the firefight cautiously, get one ship from it onto your radar, and take out the firefight one ship at a time? Or do they all turn round and swarm you? In which case it's time to run away with the faster baddies keeping up with you. Take them out, one by one, then return for the slower ships. Lather, rinse, repeat. Your navigation better be up to scratch, to find your way back to the firefight after each hecatomb.

[cbr]

Well it happened again, this time I couldnt even get any closer...

This is a 1:1 crop from fullhd and 'very much enlightened'
But you can see the fighting in the center between the nebulas.


I found a large number of death messages from cylonraiders, so it is partly my on doing in creating cylon squads with hostile ai. ( I presume )

I remember the doom chaingun, used it as backup, as get away gun just like the oolite injector...

[LittleBear]

Owning a Boa Class Frigate is certainly an interesting experience for a Commander. Those Plasma Turrets come in handy in a pinch, but all the extra generators they require reduce the Boa’s Frigate's cargo bay down to a mere 35 tones compared to the 175 available on the Boa Class Cruiser. And the cost of servicing this high tech Bird comes in at 18,000 credits per service. I’d just completed a mission in Chart 2, that I’m afraid I can’t talk about for reasons of Galactic Security and found myself newly promoted to Dangerous but low on funds with a service over-due. I returned to my home system of Cerva in order to try to trade some Cervaian artificial intelligence units with one of the nearby low tech systems.

Cerva is normally a well patrolled system, but as I dropped out of witch space I received a hail from The God of Agony demanding I hand over my cargo of mind silks. Glancing at the scanner I could see he was leading a motley crew of 3, which my IFF identified as minor criminals. My Scanner was still green as they had not locked weapons on me yet. But as I had no intention of handing over any of my cargo, it would not be long before they did so. I let them eat static on the comms and target locked their Leader, Cobra Mk IV: God of Agony. Whilst they were still waiting for a response to their unpleasant hail, I had hit their leader with a full blast from my forward military laser. He survived, but his shields collapsed. Leaking plasma he hit the injectors and tried to bug out.

His wingmen opened up on me and I was struck by three sets of Beam Lasers. Now the Transfigured Night is a tough old bird with a lot of juice in her energy banks, but a wide target compared to a standard Cobra Mk III. I couldn't take that sort of energy barrage for very long and I wanted to finish off the God of Agony. I hit my own injectors and gave chase. His wingmen in Gekos and Cobra Mk Is couldn’t keep up with us and I was soon out of range of them. The scanner was just me and him. The Boa Cruiser Line have always been fast ships for their size, nearly as fast as a Mark III Cobra. If the brigand had been in a Mark III it would have saved his life that day as he would have escaped me. But the bigger cargo bay on the Mark IV meant I could catch him. Alone and with no help. Despite his pleading my front laser was as cold as my heart and I was 54 credits richer with a clear scanner.

But I wanted the other 3 as well. I reoriented to the witch point hoping they were trying the same trick with the next trader to enter the system. They were. A Python, The Starship Fantastic was fighting bravely, but venting plasma and calling for assistance. So intent were they on their new prey that they failed to notice the Transfigured Night, now with full shields and with a cool laser approaching their 6 at injector speed.

The two geckos, The Ruby Captive and Harbinger of Evil fell to my lasers and a full barrage from my front plasma cannon at point blank range before they knew what had hit them, just as the Python Commander finally got a bead on the Nefarious and ended his argument. The scanner flicked to green with just myself and the battered but still space worthy python standing.

The rest of our trip was uneventful, although a little lengthy as the Fantastic had lost her injectors so we formed a convoy with a passing Fer-de-Lance and escorted her to the station. I was glad to see the Penguin’s Point come into view. Once my mind silks were sold I had enough for that overdue service and enough for a few evil brews with the Python Commander from the bounties we'd shared. I know now why the Galactic database says that the inhabitants of Uleakab have unusual mating traditions, but thats another story...

[Norby]

Nice tale!

[Cody]

Nice tale!

Thanks Norby, I'd missed this. A very good tale indeed!

[LittleBear]

Thanks. Apart from the hinted at romantic encounter all of this did actually happen in game. I really liked the new AIs as the NPCs acted sensibley and tactically. The Boa Class Friggate is Grif's Prototype Boa, but I tweaked it slightly for my own use to make its stats similar to a Boa Class Cruiser but with the cargo capacity knocked down to justify the plasma cannons. Griff had also put a target decal on the side which I felt was asking for trouble. The game does take account of the fact that my ship is very long and pointy. So head on NPCs find me a more difficult target to hit than in a trusty Mk II cobra but I'm a bit of a sitting duck to an attack from the sides.

I took the target decal off and gave it a blood-red paint job with the Ship Respray OXP. I also knocked the base price up to 900,000C. Making ships more expensive doesn't really balance them in terms of the buy-price as you normally reach a point in the game where money is irrelevant. However, the game does now factor in the buy price and the equipment installed so with a full Iron Ass I do have an 18,000C bill to pay every when a service is due. It's making for an interesting play through as I do still have to trade and I need to do missions paying out decent credits just to run my ship.

The turrets are nicely blanced as although they will fire on their own at a hostile target their maximum range is 7km and as the plasma is very slow moving and they can't hit a barn door at less than about 2km. I still make almost all my kills with my laser. I'm also role playing a Lawful Good commander (although that might change when certain missions become available to me), so I always help out ships under attack by pirates or thargoids. The plasma turrets are a mixed blessing as I was in a fire fight with the police and traders giving a thargoid a good blast with my laser when a police ship crossed my path. I couldn't stop the front turret fireing at the targeted enemy in time and the viper was hit with a stray bolt giving me an offender tag. I had to bug out on injectors and lose the hostile police ship before my plasma turrets knocked me all the way up to fugitive.

If you are looking for a powerful ship which also has nicely blanaced and interesting down sides a slightly tweaked Griff Protype is a really nice ship to play in.

[another_commander]

I had to bug out on injectors and lose the hostile police ship before my plasma turrets knocked me all the way up to fugitive.

Could have simply switched weapons off?

[Cody]

... all of this did actually happen in game.

That's what this thread is all about - out there in the Big Black, things happen!

Could have simply switched weapons off?

<sniggers>

[LittleBear]

Getting old. My reflexes aren't what they were in 1984.

[Cody]

Reflexes? Ah yes, I remember them well!