FTL: Limited Information (Federation Victory!)

[Gammagooey]

oh

well extra power's still fine i guess so the mod doesn't have to worry about juggling it as much

lettttt's go

[the worst]

wooo!

[callforjudgement]

Jump 81

Land world (n)

. A planet whose inhabitants prefer to keep to themselves and work on their own internal affairs, rather than participate in interstellar trade.

The beacon here seems to have been originally placed to allow this area to be populated, and although it's inhabited, it doesn't seem to have much to want to do with the galaxy as a whole; there are no space docks orbiting it, and we don't even spot any spaceports on the surface of the planet. So nowadays, this beacon seems to be used mostly as a way to get from one place to another. There's nothing obvious to do here, so we don't.

[callforjudgement]

Jump 82

Flak gun (n).

A gun that shoots a huge number of projectiles, inaccurately. Normally used for shredding enemy shields.

A pirate ship here tries to blackmail us into selling our crew into slavery. We're not willing to do that, so they attack us.

On the other hand, we're going to have to figure out how to deal with them. They have four shield barriers, a huge flak gun, and a heavy two-shot laser. They also have a teleporter, but mostly Engi crew (with one Rock, who's presumably their boarding party), so we're unlikely to have much trouble with that. They have a clone bay, so perhaps they just send the same Rock again and again?

Iconeum, the worst, I'm looking for strategies to deal with this fight in your PTs. (I'm assuming Gammagooey will focus on dodging enemy shots, and Varsoon will focus on repelling boarders, although you can give different instructions if you like.) Feel free to discuss strategy in the main thread, too. Plausible equipment for dealing with this fight include our weapons/ammo and our hacking drone (and I guess our repair drones in an emergency).

[Varsoon]

A ROCK THAT COMES BACK TO LIFE
TIME TO FIGHT FOREVER
VALHALLA

[Gammagooey]

I don't know what missles/bombs we have - if they're good enough to take down the shields semi-permanently and then start hitting the weapons after without us taking too much damage while we get the shields down that might be a decent plan, esp. if hacking the weapons gets rid of one of the flak gun/double lazer on their side

[Varsoon]

From a hull integrity/power perspective, we're good to have a fight here. If things go sour and we still win, we should still be fine if he have enough drones for repairs.

[callforjudgement]

Conveniently, our sensor screens mean that everyone can keep an eye on the action, which makes moderating this a bit easier; I can post a description of the fight here without having to split it up between PTs.

Our fight starts off by trying to keep down the enemy weapons; the worst aims a hacking drone at them, while Iconeum gets to work with Pulse Bombs. Both of them are trying to stop the enemy weapons short just before they fire, giving us time for the Artillery Beam to cut through the enemy ship.

Unfortunately, the hacking drone can only delay the enemy weapon charge by a few seconds – useful, but not enough to turn the tide of the battle – and the enemy ship is moving so fast that we don't manage to land any of the bombs we launch. Their laser is no match for our shields, and eventually gets taken out by our Artillery Beam. On the other hand, their flak gun is powerful enough to get a few shots through, despite our shields blocking many more. Nothing important gets hit other than the power relays for the hacking drone, though, and the worst manages to fix them before they're needed, so no harm other than a bit of damage to the structure of our ship.

Meanwhile, on board the ship, the enemies seem to be boarding a lot more aggressively than expected. First they board with a Rock and Engi; the worst takes manual control of the doors in an attempt to split them up, and although they both manage to break through into the engine room at the same time, Varsoon is waiting for them. Some messing around with airlocks forces the fight into the infirmary, where some combat stims are available to help ensure that Varsoon wins the 2 versus 1 battle; they quickly realise they're outmatched and retreat. Unexpectedly, they're using a platoon system, and immediately follow up by teleporting a couple of Engi next to the navigation controls. Gammagooey might have been able to hold them off by himself, but doesn't have to; Varsoon is soon there to help defend him, and despite their experience, Engi simply aren't very good at combat.

Realising they're outmatched, the enemy ship apologises, and offers us a free slave in the hope that we'll stop trying to kill them. They're a human with no special abilities. Should we take the offer, or should we keep on fighting and destroy their ship? (This is Gammagooey's decision, but as usual, anyone can weigh in on it.)

[the worst]

i may or may not
TAKE THE SLAVE TAKE THE SLAVE
have a small
TAKE THE SLAVE TAKE THE SLAVE
opinion on how
TAKE THE SLAVE TAKE THE SLAVE
to proceed here

[Varsoon]

SLAVER SCUM

[Varsoon]

We're actually still doing fairly well when it comes to hull integrity.
We could win the fight but ah
I'm all shrugs on this matter.
Do we need another pair of hands or would ya'll like to blow them all up?

[Gammagooey]

Def. leaning towards taking the extra crew member

[Gammagooey]

@mod: If icon posts that he's fine with it go ahead and make my choice of taking the slave official then

[Iconeum]

More crew is fine for me.

Our bombs (which are supposed to bypass shields) were very ineffective. If this

game

mission lasts much longer, we

really

need to upgrade the one weapon that keeps saving our asses.

Nevertheless, good work everyone.

[callforjudgement]

We let the slavers go. They're still going to be terrorizing this sector, but at least we managed to save one person. Small victories, right?

Nobody on the replacements list was interested in starting a new character this late in the game (and I don't blame them; if most people have been playing from the start of sector 1, it's hard to balance that with someone joining during sector 7), so Elizabeth is basically just an extra pair of hands around the ship. What orders should we give her?

[Varsoon]

She could sit on doors and then be an extra hand in fights / for repairs?

[Gammagooey]

Probably just send her to the door system to improve that at the start of fights and have her help everyone fight off boarders/repair systems mid-battle?

aka what varsoon just said

[callforjudgement]

I'll be sending Elizabeth to operate the door controls by default (and as a standard person to move around to react to things happening on board) unless/until I hear otherwise, then.

[Varsoon]

More like Doorlizabeth

[callforjudgement]

Jump 83

Giant alien spider (n)

. These are no joke.

There was a distress signal here, coming from a civilian research station built into the moon of an uninhabited planet. However, we quickly discover that we were too late, and there's nobody left to save – the entire research station was overrun by an unrecognised creature with eight legs and many eyes, before we even got to the beacon. There's nothing we can do for it any more, so we have to move on.

[the worst]

Doorlizabeth can be my supervisor

[callforjudgement]

Jump 84

Hyperspatial scanner (n).

A device that can retrieve information about the surrounding space faster than the speed of light, typically by detecting ripples in the fabric of hyperspace. While not as accurate as direct observation, hyperspatial scans work over a much longer range, allowing real-time information to be gathered about distant solar systems. All FTL-enabled ships have very basic hyperspatial scanners to pick up beacons (which are intentionally designed to be as obtrusive on scans as possible), but more specialised models are used by military scouts.

The Rebels often seem to have a suspiciously good idea of where we are, and at this beacon, we find a clue as to why: a small automated Rebel space station is here, carefully recording everything that's going on in the nearby part of the sector using its hyperspatial scanners. Once discovered, it immediately moves to defend itself.

It looks like the Rebels placed it a long time ago, though, and didn't have the chance to restock it (this is, after all, Federation territory); it deployed several bomb and missile launchers against us and almost instantly ran out of ammo. Our defence drone shot down all the missiles, and some skilled piloting meant it failed to launch any bombs accurately, leaving it with nothing left to defend itself other than a laser that, despite repeatedly hammering our shields, couldn't disrupt them as fast as the worst could restore them (although it was pretty close!). That meant there was no reason to spend ammo of our own; holding off on the Pulse Bombs meant that our laser and beam had basically no chance of piercing its shields, but that hardly mattered, because the Artillery Beam was enough.

Unfortunately, we couldn't pick up any fuel from it (it wasn't FTL-capable), any drone parts (it didn't use them), or any ammo (it had run out). We could, of course, scrap it; ⚙️30 isn't too bad. We also take its data files on board; they're encrypted, but the worst produces a modified copy of our hacking drone firmware and uses it to decrypt them. The results need to be cross-referenced with our navigational computer to be useful (meaning that Gammagooey is the only person who can make sense of them), but might help us make decisions about where to go in the sector.

[Varsoon]

Alright guys remember how ya'll didn't want to take that fuel and then how when we fought those slavers you thought Doorlizabeth was more useful than fuel and then when we did all those other jumps we didn't get any fuel

We probably don't have enough fuel to escape this sector now.
We REALLY need some fuel.

[Gammagooey]

our next beacon is the endspot for the little server farm quest - if we're lucky part of the reward will be fuel (or it'll be one of those where there's a ship ambushing us that will hopefully drop one), if not the jump out of the system isn't too far away but there aren't any stores nearby.

[Varsoon]

Big oof.
Well we can make the next beacon at least.
Cross your fingers.