FTL: Limited Information (Federation Victory!)

[callforjudgement]

Jump 87

Auto-Surveyor (n)

. A model of Rebel automated ship designed to gather detailed information; such ships typically have only average defences, but not only do they often carry large amounts of weaponry, they can also weaponise their mental scanners to control the actions of enemy crew.

We jump into a pretty messy situation; an Auto-Surveyor is taking detailed scans of the area, presumably trying to work out why the beacon is falling into the nearby star. So we've got potential fires to deal with, as well as a wide range of weapons: two lasers, one which fires quickly and one which fires in bursts of three shots; a small beam, which also fires fairly quickly; and a bomb launcher that we can't immediately identify. Luckily, its defences may well be a bit weaker; it's not yet clear how good its navigation circuitry is at dodging our shots, but it has only three shield barriers.

Elizabeth's taken on the job of manually controlling the door systems, but right now she seems more intent on destroying them; it looks like we're trying to deal with mental attacks as well as physical attacks here. If she does break the door controls, it's going to be very hard to dump atmosphere to put out the inevitable fires.

Actions?

[Iconeum]

Fire EVERYTHING.


jk we can't actually do that

[Gammagooey]

The last maybe useful place in the sector is a store next to the exit (this is the last reachable enemy in the sector) so I'm going to set my action to jump us out of here if/when FTL is charged and our doors are busted (unless the enemy ship is near death and we're still doing fine aside from that), or if our shields are down and we're about to get hit with a solar flare or whatever they're called

we may want to send one of icon/the worst over to distract elizabeth just long enough for her to not destroy the doors too (i need to charge ftl and we don't want varsoon the mantis accidentally murdering her instead of distracting her)

[the worst]

I volunteer. I am weak

[Gammagooey]

also I guess we can pre-emptively vent any rooms that are all of

a)not useful to pass through to get to any other rooms
b)have an airlock and
c)don't have anyone in them

which probably isn't much but it might help a bit

[callforjudgement]

The ship layout's shown in #32. So that's not a whole lot of rooms based on your criteria.

[the worst]

I'd be down for all rooms to be vented except systems + the passages between oxygen/doors so that Lizzy and I can bolt to the medbay

[callforjudgement]

the worst runs into the doors room and vents some of the less essential rooms before Elizabeth can break the controls. Iconeum focuses on taking out the enemy mind control system – it takes three bombs, but only because one of them missed. Meanwhile, their ship hasn't gotten through our shields yet, but it did blow up the power relays to the Artillery Beam, so Iconeum aims to go and fix them.

the worst is badly injured, and Elizabeth mildly injured, but neither has any permanent damage and they head off to the infirmary to recover, while the fight continues.

[the worst]

yay

[callforjudgement]

The first solar flare didn't cause that large of an issue. One of the fires happened amidships and was quickly vented out into space; another broke out in the door control room, but the worst and Elizabeth happened to be walking that way anyway and almost instantly put it out between them.

The enemy lasers start to be something of a problem, though; they get a couple of shots through our shields. It doesn't help when an enemy bomb breaks the navigation controls; Gammagooey frantically tries to fix them, because the ship will be unable to dodge until they are.

[callforjudgement]

The second solar flare starts fires in the weapon and engine rooms. Varsoon isn't great at holding a fire extinguisher, so the worst runs over to help put that one out. Meanwhile, Iconeum has finished fixing the Artillery Beam – although it needs to restart its firing sequence, as it lost its weapon lock due to the damage – and just goes over to the weapon room fire and sits on it. It'll quickly go out without oxygen. Unfortunately, some components in the Burst Laser have burned out in the process, so we need to rely on bombs and beams for a while.

[callforjudgement]

Our Pulse Bombs quickly deal permanent damage to the enemy shield generators; we now only have two to deal with, rather than three. That'll be much easier for the Burst Laser to take down; hitting all three shots in a volley has been hard against this enemy, but we often hit two out of three. We continue to take minor damage from enemy lasers, but the third solar flare is hardly a problem, only starting a fire between the doors and the infirmary, which Elizabeth is on hand to put out. A moment later, and all our main weapons are repaired and ready to fire simultaneously; the Artillery Beam heavily damages the enemy ship, and with only two of its shield generators working, we actually manage to take an enemy out with a Burst Laser shot for the first time in several sectors.

[the worst]

NICE!

great write up cfj. I loved catching this in real time. Super exciting to follow.

[callforjudgement]

Normally we could take our time healing the burns we sustained during the battle (both from fires and from enemy laser shots), and salvaging the enemy ship. With the nearby sun threatening to melt us, though, we have to be a bit faster about it, scooping up the remains of the Auto-Surveyor as quickly as we can; luckily, we're already at safe jumping distance from the beacon. Lots of people are out of position, but we could jump right now if we wanted to.

Counting the spoils right now can wait, but next time we have a chance to breathe, we'll discover that we salvaged ⛯50 and a few useful components.

[Iconeum]

pew pew

[callforjudgement]

Jump 88

Central business systems (n)

. The area in the centre of a civilization's control, that's become almost entirely given over to shoppers, officing, and administration. Perhaps it once featured residential planets and industrial planets, but being near the capital puts a huge premium on prices; anything that isn't making use of the huge concentration of people there is going to be quickly priced out of the market for the highly valuable real estate in the area.

We're getting very close to the heart of the Federation's control; the main route into the capital sector is pretty much right next to us, and it sees a lot of traffic as a result. Many of the beacons we've visited have been off the beaten path, but not this one; there are normally huge numbers of ships going in both directions. Oddly, most of them seem to be going in the other direction from us this jumpcycle; hopefully nothing's gone too badly wrong.

Anyway, there's no real danger here that we can see; although there are no other Federation military ships around at the moment, it's well-known that they'd be able to intervene here quickly if there were a problem – quite possibly they'd be stationed in impulse range to avoid having to wait for the beacon pull. So we have all jumpcycle to heal up in the Infirmary and do some shopping.

There are a couple of unemployed people here looking for jobs. We could give them one aboard our ship, if we wanted; there's a Rock looking for ⛯40 in pay (and whose experience is with electronics and computer systems – likely a good choice for repairing wiring and handling navigation controls), and an Engi, recently redundant from a job operating industrial shields, who wants ⛯50.

There are plenty of other stores around too. (I'll post price lists in players' PTs, as usual. It might take a while though, as there's a lot that can be bought here. Note that it's entirely possible (not guaranteed) that this will be the last

store

we'll have access to, but that doesn't mean that our scrap is useless – we should at least be able to find a shipyard or two to build components we need via repairing the broken ship systems that form much of our scrap.)

[Iconeum]

I've got all kinds of fancy stuff here, guys.

Depending on how many more fights we encounter, there are a few very usefull one's here.

I believe our current weapons are doing a good job, so upgrading them seems the best way to go.
I've got the funds for the small upgrade that I want, but need ⛯63 more if I wanna buy the big upgrade. This one basicly doubles our best weapon in efficiency. This will put a strain on energy, however.

Missiles, chain-lasers, anti-drone shielding, etc are all available too.

Thoughts?

[callforjudgement]

Wow, did it really take me 45 minutes to write up all the things available for shopping? Admittedly, this is partly because we have a lot of scrap compared to usual – I don't normally offer upgrades we can't afford, but when we can afford them, and it's possible we might want them, I need to look up the exact price and write flavour for them. Normally I just copy-paste but a lot of things have just become available for the first time…

[the worst]

The Big Boom is indeed snazzy so could be talked into that
I guess we don't have much scrap.

I have a second defence drone available for 50; this would need an upgrade to our drone control system as well, though. We should also consider purchasing a commercial licence for our hacking software.

bare minimum, I'm very likely going to be buying more drone parts because we need them. We don't have a whole lot and there's not many up for sale.

[Gammagooey]

I can get a copilot station for pretty cheap (20 scrap) so in case my station gets knocked out temporarily elizabeth could pilot and keep dodging until I repair it, or just an engine upgrade

I am a very big fan of weapon upgrades tho so I'd prioritize that personally if ya'll are ok with that

[Varsoon]

We still don't have the best shields but whacha gonna do?

I can buy generators ⛯35 each; one of them is running at a special offer, available for ⛯28¾.

I'm also cool with weapon upgrades. The best way to take less shots is to shoot down your opponent.

[the worst]

All my scrap en route to ico!

[Gammagooey]

sent ico a bit too, if you need more I can send more but I won't grab the copilot station - I would rather have your upgrade than it though so it's fine

[Iconeum]

⛯19 more and I buy the bigger upgrade.

Edited out numbers — callforjudgement

[Gammagooey]

sent