Tales from the spacelanes...

[Yah-Ta-Hey]

It was March 27th 1964, Anchorage got a shaking like it never shook began before. Buildings began swaying, the ground began to break. Anchorage has never seen the likes of the Alaska Earthquake. At 5:35, Fireball XL5 was just taking off when it struck throwing me from the chair that I had just settled into.
That was the day when I learned what the people of Alaska were really made of.
My apologies to the author of the song: The Alaska earthquake.

[Diziet Sma]

It was March 27th 1964, Anchorage got a shaking like it never shook began before. Buildings began swaying, the ground began to break. Anchorage has never seen the likes of the Alaska Earthquake. At 5:35, Fireball XL5 was just taking off when it struck throwing me from the chair that I had just settled into.
That was the day when I learned what the people of Alaska were really made of.

From the comments at the youtube vid that Smivs linked to..

my Mother had always watched Fireball Xl5 because she liked the theme song. In1964 my Dad was in the hospital in Anchorage Alaska. Mother had been at the hospital all day. she said I'm going home and get cleaned up. He said ok. Just as she started out, the door Fireball came on. I want to hear my song. Well about a minute later the whole hospital was falling down around them. That's when they had the big earthquake. The elevator she would have been in fell 3 stories. Fireball saved her

[Ranthe]

I'm not sure that the station-master at Recelexa's "Torus" station is terribly impressed with me right at the moment - I just flew Atomic Annie through the gap between the spokes and the ring.

Boy Racers pulling stunts like that are one thing, but doing that with an Anaconda freighter?

[Diziet Sma]

Now go do it again.. and this time, we want pictures..

[superbatprime]

Here is why I love escort missions most of all and why I never take anything for granted in this game.
It's also the story of how I became Competent and the first (and only) time I engaged during a furball.

This may or may not be a common occurrence for veteran escort pilots, but for me it was an epic moment and another example of why this game always delivers a consistently awesome and varied experience... and usually one you failed to plan for.

The other thing I ought to mention is I have furballs set to almost never happen in most systems, even in anarchies they are relatively rare and they literally never happen in corporates, so for me the thought of a furball while escorting never even came up... I failed to plan for it.

My big rule for escort missions these days is never ever leave Mother when she says "oh we're in the Aegis, you can head off to the pub now, I'll catch up, mine's a lager."
You stick to her like glue right up to the bay (and never get clearance ahead of the Mother) and until you get paid, then and only then is the contract really complete.
This game can and will spring stuff that you never planned for, exactly at moments when you really don't need any surprises.

I became this paranoid after I was almost docked on an escort job and yep, you guessed it, a massive furball let loose (and I'm already at the buoy, with clearance... on autopilot).
...and naturally my paycheck decides to get a piece of the action, cue mad scramble to cancel docking and defend Mother from all comers while also keeping my own behind in one piece (and just hoping she, or indeed I, didn't hit a cop). Luckily she was a pretty chunky (both pretty and chunky) Python and no question she was doing better than me at some points (I had to limp off behind the station to recharge several times).

After it was over and the scanner was full of purples mopping up (funny how they always manage to arrive after the fact) I had to spend quite a bit of time actually finding the Mother (I was convinced she'd somehow been destroyed without my knowledge and the misssion was glitched), I finally found her at the edge of the aegis acting weird and on course to evidently nowhere, once she was finally back on track I formed up and stuck close until she was in the bay and done.

As I recall I had multiple equipment failures, no fuel, no missiles and my ships cat was dead, repairs took all of my fee and plenty more (plus 500cr for a new cat) but at that point I was just happy to have gotten through it.
No cops damaged (thank goodness for that! >.>) and enough kills to make me Competent and bulk out my trophy list considerably.
Worth every credit.

On retrospect if I had more experience I'd have smelled trouble with the sudden (yet somehow still subtle) upsurge in aegis traffic instead of gawking at all the suddenly outbound ships thinking "ooh busy day, that's nice."
I don't think there was really anything else I could have done in that situation other than fight tooth and claw, stick close to the Mother and pray it ended soon.

I panicked no question, I owe more to luck than skill that day, I was taken utterly by surprise (by this point in the contract I was eating pastries and drinking coffee) but dammit Jim, I did it.

If it happens again I'll focus less on shooting everything that moves and more on tracking any hits to Mother and keeping her within the radius of my ECM. She didn't have one or was unwilling to use it and the missiles were the big threat I think.

I've never had a repeat (other mental things sure but not this level of raw mayhem), there were other smaller moments that occurred within the big picture of the battle like this outrageously smart Fer De Lance that I'm sure is the cause of my weird anxiety about facing them in combat (that thing has a profile so small it's like trying to hit a pencil) but that's the gist of my favorite... "incident of note", to date.

I took it pretty classy tbh, just sipped my coffee, had a smoke, didn't punch the air and say "YUS!" for at least 2 minutes.
Lol, even telling this story has my heart going 100 miles an hour again.

I really love this game, no other game does this kind of stuff in this way and that's due I think to oxps, escorts and furballs combined in a perfect way at that precise moment to deliver pure win.

[Smivs]

Sorry to hear about your cat

[superbatprime]

Sorry to hear about your cat

Yes it was a bit of a blow at the time, he was the first one and he'd been with me since very early in the game.

But it's all good, I go through about 3 a week nowadays.

[Cody]

We need a ship's cat OXP, that takes battle damage like the beer cooler... Smivs?

[Smivs]

We need a ship's cat OXP, that takes battle damage like the beer cooler... Smivs?

Funny you should say that...

[superbatprime]

I was being serious about the cat you know.


It is the beer cooler oxp basically, I originally wanted it to reduce the rate of trumble reproduction but that was too hard so now it just acts as cannon fodder.

I never released it because well... it doesn't do very much, I had grand plans of new agri world cargo (with livestock) and new kinds of alien rodents and "miaow" sound files at crucial moments etc but I never got very far.
But it's nice to have a moggy onboard just to take the odd hit.

[Smivs]

Ha, your comment did prompt me to think about this, but I haven't actually done anything about it. It's a great idea though, so why not develop it 'fur'-ther?

[Diziet Sma]

Great tale, superbatprime.. and well told.. I was killing myself laughing for most of it!

I guess I was lucky the one time something similar happened to me.. furball breaks out, and Mother says "F*** this!" and heads for the hills.. well, the sun, anyway.. I tagged along for a while, but it was pretty clear Trader Joe, or whatever his name was, had no intentions of turning back. Finally I said "F*** this" and turned back, mentally writing off my fee (and substantial bonus, it had been an eventful trip). I get back to the Aegis, where the festivities are continuing, but I'm in no mood for fighting now, being over 1000Cr poorer than expected, low on fuel and no missiles left. I grimly docked, ignoring the odd laser strafing across my shields, and pausing several times on the way in to allow Vipers to emerge from the Station.

I get inside.. and here's Trader Joe sitting at the bar, cash in hand!

"WTF? But I just left you, 200 klicks sunwards! And my Pitviper runs rings around your Python.. how in hell's blue blazes did you get here before me?" He pats the bar stool next to his, where a drink already awaits.. he winks at me. "Magic, son.. magic".


So don't be too sure you wouldn't have gotten paid.. I wouldn't put it past your Mother to have gotten himself killed, and still been waiting for you at the bar when you docked. Those traders are strange old coots.

(Concerning Ferdies.. be glad you weren't here back in the days of the legendary Kamikaze Injecting Ferdies, back around, oh.. 1.72 or so, I believe it was.. scary times, my friend, scary times..)

[Diziet Sma]

I SO want a ships cat! Please do continue to work on that, mate!

[superbatprime]

I'd like to but it has to be purrfect... ok I'm not going down the pun road today. No.

I want it to do a few varied small things (random rare chance of an annoyed miaow after a missile hit or similar is something I really intend to get done it seems like an easy start.)
But anyway talk is cheap, I have much oxp ninja skills to learn first but alright, I'll give it a proper shot and try to make it do something worthwhile.

[Cody]

I SO want a ships cat! Please do continue to work on that, mate!

Yep... me too! Make it easy for users to name their cats.