Oolite Bulletins

Bugbear wrote:

This is an open broadcast to the commander of the Mussurana: Anastasia VII ...

This was an interesting battle...

I'm using the Penalize Death - Ironman oxp.
So death in game is real and permanent.

I have the starting Cobra Mk. III, sold the missiles for extra credits, bought a Beer Cooler, and headed out.
This battle happened somewhere between and or including, Zaonce and Aronor. I don't remember how I got caught in such a bad situation, because I was being quite careful (traveling at medium cruise speed, sticking to the lanes, etc), considering the implications of the above mentioned oxp. But I do remember how things quickly spiraled out of control.

I met an Asp Mk. II, he was alone, and since I have no way of identifying his status, just simply assumed he was a fugitive pirate.
I didn't feel like tangling with him, so hit the brakes, 180'ed directly away from him, and gunned the engines. I was hoping he'd lose interest in a chase down.

I then ran into a split finger formation of three blips, at 2 o'clock high. I know this is a standard pirate formation, so immediately adjusted course to port and pushed the stick to head toward my 10 o'clock low.

That was when a Fer-de-Lance appeared in front of me, at that exact same heading...


I starting snapping several pictures, when I thought I was going to bite it, the one below turned out the best to show how dire things got.



I have managed to kill two bandits, but I was in massive trouble.
I took three missiles, in quite quick succession, not to mention laser fire from several directions.
I did not realize, at the time, just how low my energy actually was. My mind must have been so focused on trying to save my butt.
But knowing that there was "no tomorrow", I fought with all the ferocity of a caged wild animal.
The battle lasted like maybe 14 minutes in all, but it certainly seemed like it was an hour to me, time was almost standing still.

When it was over - I won by the way - I paused the game to take a breadth, and noticed that I was covered in perspiration. My shirt was literally soaked!
I went to wash myself up, changed shirts, made a coffee, went out on the back deck for a cigarette, came back to the computer and continued on.

Good story commander. That oxp which makes dead permanent sounds like a must try.

My my main commander is now in Galaxy 3 and now on the point of leaving to Galaxy 4. It took 4/5 real life years to get there. So I'm playing all that time with my main commander which is since 2006. (But I do not fly out on a daily bases. more weekly or even monthly).

Just finished TCAT. I won't spoil the fun. But the ending was epic just as good as a good blockbuster movie. Now finished most main missions in G3. Preparing to leave for G4. New adventures await.

TCAT is indeed a wonderful set of missions, have started a new commander recently, look forward to playing it again!

Oh the irony... I just fought my way into Celaqula system, with a holdful of Arzaquarian megaweed. I docked, with only minor damage, but got slapped with a 3200 credit fine (almost the exact amount my cargo was worth... rats!), and had to clean-up after the Batoids. Then Snoopers showed me this on the news channel:

one of Drew's - a classic.

Okay, so I'm on this "quest" to get Elite rank, and I'm pretty close, too. However, I've also been working on the texture for the Terminator by Mandoman (quite a nice ship, by the way). However, I only have one installation of Oolite. So, when I loaded up the game to go get some kills in the local anarchy, Raanre, I forgot to remove the OXP from my AddOns. And, because I'm doing my quest for Elite with only eye candy OXPs, this means that my little Asp Mk2 isn't quite enough to take out a Terminator.

I'm sure you know how it turns out.

So, I beat up a good amount of pirates in the system. Enough to keep me on track for getting Elite by the end of the week. However, on my way to the Coriolis, I met a Terminator. As soon as I saw it, I got that bad feeling you get when you know you're doomed. So, did I run from my enemy, like a good commander would? No, I didn't. I charged right in, and got myself killed.

Of course, the next thing I did was disable the OXP before it caused any more trouble.

But, I have to say, the Terminator is a great ship. but not better than Taylor Miller!

So here I am hauling contracts for 300-odd tons of machinery, a hundred-odd kilos of platinum and one passenger from the south-east quadrant to the northern sector of Galaxy 2 in my Anaconda, working my way through a plethora of mostly Feudal, Democratic and Commie Agri systems. Atomic Annie is fairly well fitted out for solo runs, being beefed up with shield boosters, extra energy unit, the Sniper Scope and a military laser up forward and a beam laser for spooking tail-chasers (the control reversal when firing aft just does my head in), so I'm fairly confident with my "Dangerous" rating that I can defend myself most of the time without escorts.

Anyway, I launch from Envebe - and almost immediately on clearing the station there's this Ionics Huntsman coming in with guns blazing, so the local GalCop Vipers are off in hot pursuit. I manage to avoid the Huntsman's lethal blue laser bolts and give him a taste of my forward laser. Boom! Another well-earned bounty, and after a quick station separation burn on the injectors I'm jumping out into witch-space.

Arrive at the witchspace beacon at Laatre - an Anarchy system. Decide that a sun-scoop refuelling is in order rather than wasting time running the gauntlet to the local station (discretion being the better part of valour and all that), so I angle off the main lanes and head towards the local star, settling in for a quiet run. Unfortunately some of the local pirates seemed to be of the same mind as myself, as it wasn't long before I encountered a trio of raiders coming at me, taunting me for leaving the (relative) safety of the main lanes. I immediately reduce thrust and switch to the sniper scope, giving my would-be attackers a rather nasty surprise with some well-aimed laser bursts, blowing all three out of the black in short order. I engage the torus drive -

- to shortly find myself mass-locked by a wolf pack of over half-a-dozen miscellaneous raiders intent on picking a fight. At least three Ionics Huntsmans among them! It's not long before the buggers get inside my optimum gunfighting range and are rapidly pounding Annie's fore and aft shields into oblivion...

Luckily I keep a Quiruim Cascade Mine on hand for just this sort of emergency

Disengage ident system, weapon-select to Q-bomb, hit the injectors enough to bring me into the pack, slow to regular speed just long enough to arm and deploy the mine - then lean HARD on the injectors to get the hell out of blast range. Most of the wolf-pack got caught in the cascade within moments, and the one straggler who escapes was shortly easy meat for Annie's forward laser. That'll teach them to mess with an Anaconda!

I come into skimming range with no further trouble, quickly fill my tanks with sun-juice (I've discovered that running with injectors when skimming, even in a slow-as-a-wet-week Anaconda, fills the tanks in fairly short order), set co-ordinates, then pull up and jump to the Communist (Rich Agricultural) system of Errius.

Upon arrival, I see the biggest furball I've ever seen occurring off my starboard bow just past the witchspace beacon, over a dozen ships are brawling over something or other and the sky is full of laser fire. I cautiously steer Atomic Annie off to one side off from the main lane, figuring to give myself enough room to get past without attracting attention as I head for the local station. I get clear and settle in for the (slow) inbound run.

Suddenly Atomic Annie gets mass-locked, and within moments I'm staring at a scanner full of a dozen or more ships all squawking red on the IFF and heading straight for me. More bloody Ionics Huntsmans! I immediately hit the injectors and try to blast a path right through them, but it's not long before the damage reports come flooding in and my cargo is spilling out into the big black.

As my shields go red and my last energy bank is drained, I'm thinking that perhaps I should have saved the Q-bomb defence for when I REALLY needed it -

"Press Space, Commander"

Good tale, Ranthe.

Ranthe wrote:

... (I've discovered that running with injectors when skimming, even in a slow-as-a-wet-week Anaconda, fills the tanks in fairly short order), set co-ordinates, then pull up and jump...

Yep... but one should have the next jump laid-in before anything else. It's the second thing I do after emergence in any system (the first is to arm a missile).

El Viejo wrote:

...but one should have the next jump laid-in before anything else. It's the second thing I do after emergence in any system (the first is to arm a missile).

My first step is to make sure I can easily bring up either hostiles or offenders on my Military Targetting System, since I rarely use missiles. I tend to switch weapons off when approaching a station and flick them on when I hit clear skies.

Rese249er wrote:

I tend to switch weapons off when approaching a station...

I never 'safe' my weapons!

A good tale, Ranthe! There can't be many lone Anacondas prepared to take on a Communist system, let alone an Anarchy. Still, though, you've got 7 missile slots: you could chase quite a few goons off just with hardheads. If you get a [wiki]Target System Memory Expansion[/wiki] it makes laying in multiple targets a lot easier.

DeathKnyte wrote:

This was an interesting battle...
I starting snapping several pictures, when I thought I was going to bite it, the one below turned out the best to show how dire things got.



<snip>

When it was over - I won by the way - I paused the game to take a breadth, and noticed that I was covered in perspiration. My shirt was literally soaked!
I went to wash myself up, changed shirts, made a coffee, went out on the back deck for a cigarette, came back to the computer and continued on.

Excellent tale, DK.. I enjoyed reading that.. so there's an Ironman OXP now? cool! (the things you miss by taking a couple of months break)

Something you may not (or may, I don't know) have thought of in combat though, that occurs to me when looking at your screenshot..

You've got multiple hostiles in very close to you, but your scanner is set at 1:1. In full-on dogfighting conditions, it often pays to be zoomed in to 3, 4 or even 5:1, so that just a glance at the scanner is all you need to maintain that all-important situational awareness.

That is certainly one scary energy situation you had there though! Good thing you didn't have an auto-eject installed.. it would have launched your escape capsule already.

I love the soaked shirt bit.. this game gets incredibly immersive at times, eh? I can certainly relate to that.. check out this little furball I got into.. I felt as if I'd gone 10 rounds in the ring by the time it was over..

Man oh man.. what a day. I'm still shaking.

Things all started smoothly enough. I'd taken delivery of my brand new, built-to-order Yellowbelly Racer, in lovely red & yellow livery. It had Naval Shield Boosters, a Naval Energy Unit & Grid, fore & aft Shield Capacitors, shield-balancing circuitry, fully integrated Anti Missile Systems, as well as all the normal running gear, and 6 passenger berths. I tell you, she was one smokin' lil' honey..

She's still smoking now.. although thankfully the dock hangar crew got the fires under control pretty quickly.

And all that expensive gear? Worth every Credit. Without it, I mightn't be here.. or at least, I might be, but not the 6 passengers I had aboard, for sure.


I'd heard word of a group of people in some out of the way spot in G1 called Legees, who were having trouble getting a lift out of system, so I cruised on down to see if I could help.. for a price, of course. Sure enough, they were still there.. 5 assorted characters, all humanoid, who just wanted to get home.. "home" being a string of planets scattered most of the way across the chart. After less than the usual amount of dickering over the fares (hey, they were getting desperate) we were off. A couple of pit-stops later, I found an occupant for the empty berth, and after that, every time I dropped somebody off, I had no problem finding another occupant for the newly-vacated cabin.

All was going well, despite the occasional deep-space pirate who insisted on proving he was better at dying than I was. And then came passenger-drop #3. Zadies. A nice enough place, despite the solar flares. But a multi-government world. Always squabbling over something. In retrospect, I should have expected trouble. Not that I see where I could have done things much differently than I did.

We had a nice comfortable cruise in from the witch-point beacon. I wasn't sweating things because I was a good 60 hours ahead of schedule. When the Station Aegis light came up on the control panel, I fired up the comms unit and called Zadies Traffic Control to request a docking slot. No problemo, the operator assured me.. there were a few ships about to depart, but once they'd cleared, I could come right on in.

I was about to go inform the passenger, one Esth Ilit, that he'd be home very shortly, when something on the scanner got my attention. The first ship out of the dock, a small fighter, was an offender. (Being the trusting sort that I am, I'd had a Police-band IFF scanner installed. I like to know who I'm sharing space with) Nothing terribly unusual about that, to be sure, but the next fighter to emerge was also an offender. The pair of Vipers loafing about the area didn't seem concerned, however, so I figured maybe they just had a couple of outstanding tickets or something.

Just as I shrug it off as a case of nerves, out pops a Griff Boa Prototype! I'd heard of these babies, but never thought I'd see one. There can't be more than a couple of dozen of them in the entire Eight. And he's a fugitive! The two fighters form up around him, as does the next ship out of the station, a Fer-de-Lance, also offender status.

Despite the apparent disinterest the Vipers were displaying, and the non-aggressive motions of the four ships, a chill ran down my spine. There was nothing I could put my finger on, but I had the feeling things were about to get unpleasant.

For maybe another 10-15 seconds I watched, as the other ships in the Aegis, maybe half a dozen or so, all went about their normal business. Everything looked so normal. If you can call a hulking great battle-wagon bristling with turrets, and a bad rep to boot, normal...

And then he opened up on me..

"Why me?", part of my mind was screaming.. we'd never met, and of all the ships in the area, perhaps 10 at least, he opens fire on me? WTF?!? I could hear the lasers hitting the shields, see the blue flares on the view-screen, and I hurriedly cancel the docking program I'd set up on the nav-puter. The emergency siren is howling, and I hope the passengers haven't left their cabins yet, otherwise they're gonna be bouncing off the walls very soon. With one hand I strap myself back into my seat, as the other shoves the throttle all the way to the 'emergency acceleration' stop.

I glance up at the screen again, and Oh sweet Giles be good, plasma balls are erupting from the Boa! Wrenching the stick over, I throw us into a spiralling path away from the destruction heading at us. What direction? I have no idea. Had I had more presence of mind, I might have tried to put the Station between my ship and that homicidal maniac, but I was still in shock. I seem to recall slapping the Comms button and yelling at the controller, but I doubt I was making much sense to her, either.

Where in Hades are the *@!$# COPS?!?!? Isn't it their job to stop this kind of thing? Thanks be to Lord Giles, I never 'safe' my weapons before docking.. the first laser strike on the shields was enough for my fancy targeting computer to put a missile lock on the Boa, so I thumb the missile button on my stick, and a hardhead goes streaking away. With luck, it'll provide some diversion, at least. I fight the urge to call up Esth Ilit on the Comms, and inform him that the Station has decided to throw a little war, to celebrate his return. Oh man.. maybe that's it.. what if he's the real target here?

By now the Boa's friends are getting into the act as well.. my shields are taking a hammering. I fire a long burst from the forward mil-laser into the Ferdy, and red-line it. I twist and weave, playing the stick and throttle for all I'm worth, and remind myself to watch my fire carefully. The last thing I want to do is hit the Station and piss off the Vipers as well.

The shield capacitors are drained, and the shields are dropping alarmingly.. Geez how I hate being close to plasma turrets! What do I do? This has really thrown me for a loop. The fog in my brain begins to clear a little.. INJECTORS! I have INJECTORS!

This stroke of genius is accompanied by a wild, crazy idea.. one which I have no time to assess for actual value. If I just bug out, those sons-of-b*****s are gonna chase me, sure as sure.. and how fast is a Griff Boa? No idea, but I'll bet it can keep up with me.. and he'll have full tanks, whereas I only have a couple of lights left.

No time to think about it. I point the Racer straight at Zadies, and mash the injectors hard. Atmosphere, baby!!! Here we come! Lets see them follow me through the soup!

For what seems like long seconds, the planet below seems to be drawing no nearer. Shields are dropping below 15% under the pounding from the turrets, and lasers are flying past us on all sides. At last I can see the ground getting closer, and it's not just the altimeter telling me so. We hit atmosphere, and the cabin temp starts to climb. Screaming straight down at 2.5 kilometres per second, the ground comes up fast... temp and altitude are both flashing red as I haul back on the stick and pray we pull out before cratering in. For anyone watching from the ground, the plummeting fireball must have been spectacular..

A glance at the scanner tells me I still have one ship on my tail. A laser-bolt hits me, and that's all I need to have a missile-lock. I thumb a hardhead at him and pull up. Being down here in the thick stuff is no place for a space ship. I become aware of the shouting in my headset. Seems Mr Ilit has had enough excitement for one day. If he's not aboard the Station in TWO minutes, I can forget about the balance of his fare!



Laughing maniacally, I briefly contemplate shoving him out the airlock, sans-parachute. He'd be home before he knew it.. The blue sky fades to black.. opportunity lost. Then, with a loud "f*** it", something snaps in my head. I line up on the Station, and hit the injectors. Death or glory, do or die time.

The shields are back at full strength again. The NEU is one nice bit of gear, I'll give it that. As we get near the Station, I check the clock. 65 seconds. I try to line up on the beacon, but there's too much clutter on the scanner. There must be a dozen Vipers and as many or more other ships whirling around. Things have turned into a regular furball, by the looks. Guesstimating where the beacon probably is, I head for that spot. I'm going to dock under injectors, under fire.. something I've never done before, and I want to be aligned as best I can.

Going by the noise and the rate the shields are dropping, everyone dropped whatever they were doing to concentrate their fire on me. In the unlikely event that I live through this, I plan on having a very frank discussion with that Esth Ilit character.

25 seconds. Lined up or not, I've got to make the turn. Shields 50%. The shields are flaring so badly I can barely see the docking port. Halfway to the slot, I can see I'm at far too much of an angle to get inside. I let go of the injectors and angle away to get a better position. I can't afford to overshoot. Swinging the nose back towards the dock, I take a deep breath, punch the injectors and try, very unsteadily, to match rotation.

To my utter amazement, we don't even touch the deck or walls once before the never-so-welcome break-pattern appears.

I don't know how long I sat there, alternately giggling to myself and laughing hysterically, but by the time I trusted my rubbery legs to carry me down from the bridge, Esth Ilit was long gone. The money, and a polite note thanking me for an "interesting" ride, was on the table in his cabin.

Feeling a sudden need to get completely and utterly obliterated, I went in search of a bar.

Nice one, Dizzy! Clearly some passengers should come with health warnings ...