Glad you enjoyed it. This was my favourite chapter (alongside chapter two) so far actually, as I got to play around with the characters and the environment a bit more than earlier on when lots of stuff was happening. That's much more familiar territory for me, writing wise.
I have to say I found writing the space battle in Chapter Four & Five really hard work. To start with I was finding it a challenge to write any other than "turn, shoot, roll, shoot" It looked really boring to start with so I threw it away.
I figured out that one of the most 'interesting' parts of space combat isn't so much the battle itself, it's the tension that builds before the first shot is fired. All the maneouvring, identifying and jockeying for position, the whole 'will he/won't he?' aspect, so I concentrated more on that.
For the battle itself, I ended up playing Oolite with the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' soundtrack going at full blast, attacking all the Boa's with escorts I could find to get a feel for how they react when attacked. Dropping Q-bombs in Lave system space with the lave.oxp was quite interesting 'research' too!
I've pretty much finished chapter eight (The last one in this tale) already as it's all about the wrapping up, resolutions and so on. I had to figure out exactly how this all ends in detail so it makes sense.
Chapter Seven has another space battle in it, so I've got to grit my teeth and press on with that soon!
Any one care to make me a Lave_Blockade.oxp for inspiration?
Time to crank the CD player again!
Cheers,
Drew.