FTL: Limited Information (Federation Victory!)

For completed/abandoned Mish Mash Games.
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FTL: Limited Information (Federation Victory!)

Post Post #0 (isolation #0) » Sat Mar 02, 2019 1:19 pm

Post by callforjudgement »



The Galactic Federation is at war. A large-scale Rebellion has caused Federation space to be consumed from within, shattering the tranquility and harmony that the Galaxy had known for years.

Two jumpcycles ago, a Federation loyalist intelligence ship picked up some very interesting information. Now they knew how the Rebellion started. Now they knew how to stop it.

And now, they are all dead. The Rebels don't like to leave loose ends.


They may have perished, but their information survived. Not everyone was on duty that day, and a last desperate message back to their home base reached four new recruits, and a newly delivered warship. Messenger duty is a reasonable job for a Federation soldier's first mission. Running for your life isn't, but what can you do about it?




This game is a interactive playthrough of (a modded version of) the computer game
FTL: Faster Than Light
. The playthrough functions as follows: I as the moderator will be playing the game on my own computer, but according to the instructions the various players send me privately, with each player operating a single character within the game. So any large-scale decisions will be made by the players. However, nobody (but me) will have a full picture of everything that's going on; I'll keep individual players updated on their own part of the ship, but not on what's going on elsewhere, and players will be making decisions independently using the resources they control (although public discussion about what to do is permitted and welcome). So the playthrough will function similarly to tabletop RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons; it's just that we'll be following the computer game's rules engine, not those of a more freeform system. Each player will have their own, non-public victory condition; these are broadly compatible with each other, but may cause conflicts in the details.




Current players:
  • the worst (Engi)
  • Iconeum (Rock)
  • Varsoon (Mantis)
  • Gammagooey (Slug)
Queue of players who might join later (if events in-game cause new characters to join our ship, or possibly if replacements are needed):
empty
Last edited by callforjudgement on Fri May 10, 2019 5:23 am, edited 15 times in total.
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Post Post #1 (isolation #1) » Sat Mar 02, 2019 1:19 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Rules
Conduct
A1. Try to stay active.

Try to check into the game thread and your private thread at least once per 32 hours.
If you don't do so, either you will be replaced, or the game will continue with your character taking no actions (potentially putting the mission in jeopardy).

A2. No private messages.

Please talk about the game only in its main game thread and your personal Private Topic.

A3. Do not quote the moderator.

If you play Mafia on this site, you should be familiar with this rule; please do not quote or publish non-public information
directly
, as it would go against the Limited Information spirit of the game.
You are allowed to publicly discuss information that you've been given privately, but please paraphrase it (i.e. state it in different words). Also note the next rule.

A4. No numbers.

This is a special rule for this game, intended to make it harder to share information between the players:
You may not post any numbers in the game thread, even indirectly, except for monetary amounts (i.e. quantities of scrap).

Legal examples of posts would be "I'm ⛯10 short of being able to buy the weapon I want" (scrap quantity), and "my new drone deals more damage than the old one but uses more power" (qualitative, no numbers given).
Illegal examples of posts would be "Please purchase another 3 units of ammo" (3 is a number), and "my new weapon deals twice the damage of the old one" ("twice" = "times two" which is a number).
Although you should try not to violate this rule, I will not be very harsh on offenders.
Note that you can talk about numbers freely in your personal private topic (that's what it's for!), and in non-game-related statements like "I will be V/LA for 48 hours".

A5. Play to win.

A basic win is to complete your primary objective; that's your primary target. (Note that if your primary objective is completed before the game is over, you will be given a new one.) Players' primary objectives will be broadly compatible with each other, so you can work together to achieve them.
For a perfect win, you would also want to score as highly as possible on your secondary objective (ideally outscoring the other players). Playing to win also means aiming for your secondary objective, as long as you do not have to sacrifice your primary objective to do so.

A6. All site rules apply.

Specifically, we're following the Universal Site Rules and General Site Rules (because this is not a Mafia game).


Gameplay
B1. You will be controlling a character in the computer game
FTL: Faster Than Light
. Well, mostly.

The moderator will be playing a game of FTL, based on the input of the players.
Each player in the Mish Mash game will be (indirectly, via the moderator) controlling the behaviour of one character in the computer game.

B2. The game has been modified.

The version of FTL in use has had an unreleased balance patch applied. As such, players who are spoiled on FTL may discover that things act differently from what they're used to. In general, the balance patch aims to make more items viable than in vanilla FTL.
Additionally, the moderator may alter the flavour behind events to make them harder to recognise, alter the game lore, and the like. So FTL should be seen as the "rules engine" behind which the game operates, but the setting of the game will be a mix of vanilla FTL's setting and ideas of the moderator's.

B3. When a new situation arises for the first time and a decision is required, the moderator will pause the game and ask the players for input. Please indicate how similar situations should be resolved in the future, so that the game will not need to be stopped the next time.

The game is likely to stop repeatedly early on, as new situations arise, but to keep the game moving, you should let me know what general principles I should use to decide on your character's actions; that will prevent the game lasting forever due to the need to ask the same questions over and over again.
If your chosen course of action does not work, and your characters would be aware of this, I'll pause the game and ask for a new decision.

B4. Each player will be responsible for a subset of the ship's behaviour. Each decision is, therefore, made unilaterally by one player. However, the other players can give input into the decision.

For example, if a shop is offering an upgrade to the ship's piloting system, only the pilot can decide to purchase it; if they choose not to (or fail to decide in time), it will not be purchased.
You can choose among yourselves who should be responsible for what, especially if characters are added to the game or end up dying. However, to get things started, I've suggested a split that should be approximately balanced when 4 characters are alive.

B5. Anyone can look out of the window. However, for things affecting the ship's interior, only players responsible for the relevant part of the ship will be told what is happening.

This is the "limited information" part of the game. Things that happen outside the ship will be posted in the main game thread. Things that happen inside will be posted only in the relevant player's private topic (who has the choice to stay silent about them, talk about them honestly, or lie about them, although remember that they can't use numbers to talk about them).

B6. Any scrap (currency) gained will be split evenly among the players. Players can spend only their own scrap. Players can transfer scrap to other players at any time.

Most likely, you won't have the money to purchase things without pooling your money, so feel free to negotiate over who should get to buy something!
Note that if you're given rewards in units other than scrap, they will be given entirely to the player in charge of that area of the ship, rather than being split evenly. Yes, that's unfair. Life's unfair sometimes. (However, if you reorganise who is in charge of what part of the ship, all the relevant items will be automatically moved to the person who's now in charge of them.)

B7. Only players who complete their primary objectives can win. Completing all your primary objectives gives you a basic win. If you complete your primary objectives, and outscore all other players on your secondary objective, that's a perfect win.

Thus, your primary objective is more important than your secondary objective. Some primary objectives may be accomplished before the end of the game, in which case the player will be given an additional primary objective; every player will therefore still have an objective to fulfil when the game ends.
If you get knocked out of the game (due to your character dying in-game), it may still be possible to win post-elimination if your primary objective happens to be completed by the other players, but a perfect win is no longer possible.

Queue
C1. The game will start when 4 players are ready to play.

The ship we're using starts with 4 crewmembers.

C2. If more players than characters are available, the additional players will wait in a queue until a character becomes available for them to play.

So if we have 4 crewmembers and 5 players want to play, the fifth to sign up will have to wait until a character within the computer game decides to join the party.

C3. If more characters than players are available, the additional characters will perform only boring actions.

The additional characters aren't players, so won't be sent any information, won't be given scrap, and won't have any control over the ship's actions. I will try to control them using a similar algorithm to the one that the game's AI uses when controlling enemy characters.

C4. If your character dies in-game, you can rejoin with a new character, but will be sent to the back of the queue.

FTL can be quite lethal sometimes, so feel free to replace back in when a new character is available.
Note that FTL typically gives a player very little control over
which
character dies when a death occurs, so if you decide to take risky actions, you're taking everyone's lives into your hands, not just your own.
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Post Post #2 (isolation #2) » Sat Mar 02, 2019 1:21 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Initially, I will need 4 players, because the Federation warship we'll be using for the game has four crewmembers. This number is, however, likely to change over the course of the game, as crew arrive and depart, so if you miss the initial signups but wish to play, feel free to /in, and you'll be added to the game when a new playable character is in need of a player to control them.

Additionally, each of the four crewmembers is different. So the players who enter will need to decide who plays which of the four characters; we have a Mantis (combat specialist), Engi (repair specialist), Rock (slow and defensive), and Slug (greedy). Ideally the four players would agree on who controls which character, but if you can't agree, it will go first-come first-served, i.e. the first player to sign up will have the first choice of character to control.
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Post Post #4 (isolation #3) » Sat Mar 02, 2019 1:28 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Most of the ships in the mod are fairly pigeonholed into specific strategies, so the game would be mostly me micromanaging rather than the players strategising. (They've all had changes from vanilla FTL, some minor, some major.) Kestrel A is one of the ships that isn't, but we've done that already. Federation A, on the other hand, is also fairly versatile, and seems more or less perfect for something like this (as we have four different crewmembers right from the start, and a clear plotline). So as soon as I thought of it, the choice of ship was obvious.
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Post Post #11 (isolation #4) » Mon Mar 04, 2019 12:16 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

In post 8, Varsoon wrote:Also, how do we handle making rooms have no oxygen in them or does that qualify as metagaming a bit too much?
You'll be dividing the responsibilities for the systems up between yourselves. If someone's in charge of the Doors and/or Oxygen systems, they'll be able to give instructions like "try to keep this room vented" and I'll try to follow that.
In post 9, Varsoon wrote:Also--how would someone on the Camera system (or the slug) have information given to them?
Everyone has a private topic; information only one player knows will be sent to them in their private topic.

However, I'm not going to try to give everyone realtime updates about every battle, as that would take way too long. So what will happen is that whenever something that hasn't happened before comes up, I'll ask people how to handle it (which might include checking sensors, venting rooms, or whatever), then I'll keep doing the same thing in the same situation until it obviously stops working or someone requests to change part of their strategy.
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Post Post #12 (isolation #5) » Wed Mar 06, 2019 11:42 am

Post by callforjudgement »

While we wait for a fourth player: the worst, PvtUrist, do you have any opinions on which character you play, or shall I just give you whatever's left over after the fourth player signs up?
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Post Post #15 (isolation #6) » Wed Mar 06, 2019 7:22 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Probably somewhere between 1 and 2 months, based on how long the prequel lasted. (The time will vary based on how quickly people make decisions; if people make decisions faster, the game won't last as long.)
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Post Post #28 (isolation #7) » Fri Mar 08, 2019 7:21 am

Post by callforjudgement »

In post 25, Varsoon wrote:Though, I do not know if Lanius and Mind Control will be in the game, as those were introduced in an update that can be toggled on or off, and I have no clue if we're playing with that update.
@Mod: Will content like Lanius, Flak weaponry, Mind Control, etc. be in the game?
Probably. I can't guarantee it turns up in any particular game, but I'm not going to toggle it off. (Note that like pretty much everything else in the game, the stats of most of this content have been altered.)
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Post Post #30 (isolation #8) » Fri Mar 08, 2019 7:32 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Looks like we have the following player list, as of right now:
  • the worst (Engi)
  • PvtUrist (Rock)
  • Varsoon (Mantis)
  • Iconeum (Slug)
and the following list of players who might join later:
  • BuJaber
  • Enter
Of course, this will probably change! This post will be frozen in time, but I'll keep an updated list in the first post.

I'm just about to send out PMs to the four current players, listing their Private Topics (in which they can find their objectives for the game, and in which I'll send them information / they'll send me actions). The first decision will be made by everyone together, though; I'll post that here once the role PMs have been sent out.
Last edited by callforjudgement on Fri Mar 08, 2019 8:01 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Post Post #32 (isolation #9) » Fri Mar 08, 2019 7:44 am

Post by callforjudgement »

PEDIT: Sure, I'll add Enter to the list.

Sorry for the delay in sending out role PMs; my Internet is being very slow at the moment.

Here's our ship. We've just embarked aboard it:
Image
There's plenty of jobs to do aboard it, so it won't do much good just standing in the centre of the ship. Besides, the Rebels are looking for us, and so we need to get out of here fast. Time to get to work!

Choose Your StationsFederation warships are intended to be operated by a large crew, divided for organisational purposes into several divisions. Because only the four of you are left, I guess you'll have to take one each. You don't
have
to divide up the various tasks as shown below, but it's a recommended division for four players, both in terms of the number of decisions you make and the amount of scrap you'll likely be spending on the ship..

Navigation
: Responsible for choosing where the ship goes and what it does. In combat, responsible for dodging enemy attacks. Makes decisions about jump destinations, piloting, and engine upgrades.
Most FTL players agree that the game is more fun when the navigator has no idea what they're doing, so this is a perfect role for players who have never played FTL before.
The navigator will spend most of their time in the piloting system.

Weaponry
: Responsible for shooting at things, mostly enemy ships. Makes decisions about weapon usage and upgrades to weapon systems.
The weaponry system is the most complex part of FTL. As such, I'd recommend that this role is only taken by someone who has already played and beaten FTL, so I don't have to write out several screenfuls of mechanics information about it.
The gunner will spend most of their time in the weapons system.

Logistics
: Responsible for keeping the ship's structure intact and its engines running. Makes decisions about fuel purchases and usage, the ship's nuclear reactor, and hull repairs.
This role isn't particularly complex; new players should do fine in it.
The head of logistics will spend most of their time in the engine bay.

Technology
: Responsible for all the additional gizmos that a ship requires. Makes decisions about shield upgrades, life support, security, and internal repairs.
This is a mix of lots of minor decisions, rather than a few major ones.
The head of technology will spend most of their time operating the shields.


Note that although there are obvious places where you'll spend most of your time, you're allowed to move around the ship as you please (although it's a fairly large ship, so it will take time to get to a particular part of it). Some jobs around the ship may need to be done manually from particular rooms. As such, let me know in your private topics how you plan to move around the ship.

Finally, the ship doesn't
need
a name, but it should really have one. Any suggestions?
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Post Post #37 (isolation #10) » Fri Mar 08, 2019 8:48 am

Post by callforjudgement »

I'll be giving everyone detailed information on the rooms they're in charge of, once we've decided who goes where.

The basics, though, is "if you're in charge of a room you can control how it operates (although many things work better controlled directly than remotely), if you're in a room or in charge of it you get information about things that happen in that room or could be perceived from that room".

A quick summary of each room on the main deck of the ship (there are some things inside the ship too, like the nuclear reactor, which can't be accessed but can be controlled, and thus they've been assigned to the four main divisions). Based on the image in :

Back of the ship

Life support (two rooms, port side): Infirmary (aft) heals injuries, oxygen pumps (fore) send oxygen all over the ship.
Engines (centre): Allow the ship to move faster.
Shields (aft starboard): Protect against some attacks.
Door control (fore starboard): Allows manually controlling the doors anywhere on the ship.

Front of the ship

Weapons (two rooms, front centre and port): Shoot at / kill things.
Sensors (starboard): Allows gathering of information.
Piloting (aft centre): Navigation and dodging enemy attacks.
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Post Post #38 (isolation #11) » Fri Mar 08, 2019 8:51 am

Post by callforjudgement »

By the way, I'll be V/LA for several hours from now due to work, but I'll be back after that to answer any further questions. (You can discuss things here, and/or ask in your private thread.)
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Post Post #40 (isolation #12) » Fri Mar 08, 2019 2:00 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Post all actions in your PT
. You may discuss potential actions in the main game thread, though (and as every player has a similar primary objective, doing so is likely to be helpful to coordinate reaching that objective).
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Post Post #54 (isolation #13) » Fri Mar 08, 2019 8:15 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

In post 49, Varsoon wrote:Though, hm, that said, maybe I wouldn't need to hang out in Sensors because
with a Slug on our team, he could always communicate the info to me, which means I could always pinpoint and engage enemies on our ship, right?
The Slug can always talk to you, so if they tell me "I want to keep the Mantis updated about enemies on the ship", I'll interpret things as if they were doing that (unless they were unable to for some reason, e.g. being dead). Of course, if the Slug tells me "I want to lie to the Mantis about enemies on the ship", I'd follow that instruction instead.
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Post Post #58 (isolation #14) » Sat Mar 09, 2019 12:17 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Iconeum hasn't picked up their role PM.

Is there anyone out there who wants to replace them? Does anyone have strong preferences about what to do if a replacement isn't found?
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Post Post #62 (isolation #15) » Sat Mar 09, 2019 12:57 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Enter replaces Iconeum
.

I've PMed you where to find the private topic.
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Post Post #66 (isolation #16) » Sat Mar 09, 2019 1:05 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Normally we name the characters after the players, so your name's "Enter" (unless you want it to be something else).

Actions are taken in your PT. Talk in here can be in character if you want it to be, but there's no requirement.
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Post Post #69 (isolation #17) » Sat Mar 09, 2019 1:25 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Is everyone agreed on a plan, for who's in charge of what, then? If so, I can start posting the relevant information into people's PTs, but want to make sure that everyone's agreed first (at least in terms of where they personally are going).

AFAICT:
- Varsoon suggested being on Logistics in #
- the worst suggested being on Technology in #
- PvtUrist suggested being on Weaponry in #
- Enter suggested being on Navigation in #

Are those final assignments? (In order to keep the game moving, I'll take them as final unless someone objects fairly soon.)
Last edited by callforjudgement on Sat Mar 09, 2019 1:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Post #73 (isolation #18) » Sat Mar 09, 2019 3:29 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

OK; I've now given everyone detailed information on the parts of the ship they're responsible for. Feel free to paraphrase anything you want to in this main topic; we're all working together, after all (or are we?), although note that you cannot use numbers in doing so. Any actions you want to take (e.g. where you want to be stationed on the ship, and how to configure the parts of the ship you're responsible for) should be taken in your Private Topic, although you can certainly talk through your actions here.
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Post Post #75 (isolation #19) » Sat Mar 09, 2019 3:56 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 1

Hyperspace (n)
. A parallel dimension that allows faster-than-light travel. Movement in regular space is, per the laws of relativity, restricted to the speed of light. However, time does not pass in hyperspace, so it provides a shortcut allowing for faster-than-light travel; because time does not exist, nor does speed, and thus there is no limit on how far you can move.
You get to work on board your new ship; brand new, as it happens, this one recently arrived to replace a ship lost to the Rebels ten jumpcycles ago. You're just getting familiarised with the controls when you realise that you're already in space; presumably someone panicked and jumped away.

It's a pretty boring view, though; there's nothing here. OK, so there's a couple of stars nearby, but no planets. I guess there isn't anything to do here other than continue to familiarise yourself with, and set up, the ship.
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Post Post #78 (isolation #20) » Sat Mar 09, 2019 4:05 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

To be honest, I'd probably have undone the jump after the misunderstanding came to light (I'm keeping lots of backup saves in case of disasters like that) if not for the fact that nothing happened as the result of the jump, and thus it didn't matter that the ship wasn't properly set up yet.
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Post Post #82 (isolation #21) » Sat Mar 09, 2019 5:31 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Right, you couldn't give an exact count numerically. As long as you don't define what your approximate words mean, that should be OK.
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Post Post #88 (isolation #22) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 8:30 am

Post by callforjudgement »

In post 86, Varsoon wrote:@Mod: Do we all start with scrap, how's that work?
Everyone starts at ⛯0. Whenever the ship gains scrap, it'll be split evenly among the players (unless you agree a different split). You can freely trade scrap with each other (e.g. to pool scrap for a purchase), and (unlike other numbers) may talk about amounts of scrap directly.
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Post Post #90 (isolation #23) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 1:17 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

In post 87, Varsoon wrote:
@Mod: Who will be informed of if a fire happens?
Anyone who's in the same room as the fire, or responsible for a system that's on fire. Also anyone in the Sensors room.


Incidentally, is everyone set up and ready for their next jump? I'm happy to wait if people still have decisions to make, but don't want the game to stall due to everyone waiting for everyone else.
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Post Post #95 (isolation #24) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 2:52 pm

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Jump 2

Scout (n).
Due to speed-of-light delays, it's hard to determine what's going on at interstellar destinations. Hyperspatial scanners do exist, but are expensive and hard to mantain, so most militaries make heavy use of scout ships that jump aimlessly from beacon to beacon until they have something to report.
We seem to have had bad luck: the Rebels chasing us haven't found us, but a random Rebel patrol did. They immediately fire up their engines to try to put some distance on the beacon ready for the next jump, but that doesn't stop them shooting at us, and it definitely doesn't stop us from shooting back.

Fighting at range means a lot of missed laser shots; we take no damage, but we can hardly get through their defences. So the only thing we can do is try to mislead them about our intentions, feinting in one direction and shooting off in another. We definitely don't want to stay here long enough for the Rebels to train their hyperspatial scanners on us, so our only option is to get out of here before the report of our position reaches the Rebels.
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Post Post #98 (isolation #25) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 3:12 pm

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Jump 3

Asteroid field (n).
Any area where the chance of a collision with a celestial object is high enough that the shields come under pressure. A ship with a reliable shielding system can function fine in an asteroid field, but they tend to be avoided by smaller and civilian ships.
We didn't have much time to navigate after the last jump, so this is where we ended up: the middle of a sea of rocks. It's not just us here, either; a pirate was lying in wait, ready to take advantage of the disruption to our shields. Luckily, their shields aren't all that good either, and I don't think they were expecting an enemy as well-armed as we are.

For the first ten seconds or so, both of us are wide open to weapons fire, with our shields just struggling to hold off the asteroids. Luckily, the worst manages to bring the shields up just in time to block the enemy's first shot, and Enter manages to steer around an asteroid that we were approaching at the same time.

Our own weapons do minor damage to the pirate ship, disrupting their weapons fire. However, they get it fixed fairly quickly; they couldn't do much about the damage to their ship structure, but they could get their weapons up and running again, and they disrupted our shields just as an asteroid arrived. People might want to react to this, so I've paused the game and am awaiting instructions. (More detailed information will be posted in private topics.)
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Post Post #99 (isolation #26) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 3:22 pm

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You hear a hurried radio report coming from the ship's bridge. It seems like Enter got hit by the asteroid; he's not badly injured, but the ship's controls are inoperable and the bridge is on fire.
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Post Post #101 (isolation #27) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 3:28 pm

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Updated report: it seems like the fire's now been extinguished.
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Post Post #106 (isolation #28) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 3:38 pm

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Despite all the commotion on board your ship, it doesn't seem like the enemies are faring much better. Our ship tried to EMP the enemy shields; they dodged that, but ran right into our beam, and are taking very heavy damage.

They're hailing us, offering a bribe to stop shooting at us. It's only ⛯10 and some components we can't use, though; and as they're pirates and attacked us unprovoked, we'd be entirely justified in blowing them up if we wanted to.
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Post Post #109 (isolation #29) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 3:43 pm

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PvtUrist refuses to turn off the beam, and it slices through the ship, breaking their shields. With their shields down, it's not long before an asteroid takes them out.

We quickly gather the remains of their ship, and then start setting up the ship for our next jump.

(We gained ⛯19 worth of material from the remains of their ship.)
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Post Post #112 (isolation #30) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 3:59 pm

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Jump 4

Sapiens Directive
. A rule among the Rebels that non-humans may never be negotiated with and must not be allowed to be in positions of power.
This is a mostly human sector, and you just discovered a potential cause of that: the Rebel ship sitting at the beacon here. They're spreading propaganda about human supremacy, and about how all other intelligent species are a danger that must never be allied with.

When they see a Federation ship next to them, they're willing to negotiate, although they charge their weapons anyway; Federation/Rebel encounters tend not to go too well. When they see that the pilot isn't human, though, they cut communications and start firing at us.

That said, if they really want to rid the galaxy of non-humans, they're going to need better weapons, and better timing with their weapons. Although they disrupt our shields for a bit, they don't manage to bring their beam to bear before PvtUrist breaks their weapon system, and with no way to defend themselves, they're are for some reason suddenly more interested in negotiating again.

It's a fairly good offer: enough fuel to top our fuel tanks back to the level we started with, and ⛯10 on top of that. Do we accept it, or blow them up?
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Post Post #115 (isolation #31) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 4:02 pm

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They aren't willing to change their offer; this is the most they think they can part with.
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Post Post #118 (isolation #32) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 4:04 pm

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Regardless of how well the negotiations might or might not be going, PvtUrist doesn't seem to think they're worth continuing, and continues to fire the weapons. Their ship blows up.

Unfortunately, we seem to have destroyed the fuel they were offering in the process, but we get a total of ⛯16 from looting their broken ship.
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Post Post #119 (isolation #33) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 4:06 pm

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(By the way, I won't ask about surrender offers in future unless they're better than the one you just turned down, unless someone tells me otherwise.)
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Post Post #121 (isolation #34) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 4:14 pm

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Jump 5

Mercenary (n).
In the galaxy's current state of war, mercenaries are those who try to play all sides of it and profit. Generally speaking, they fight for whoever's willing to pay them the most, and get even more profit off the scrap. Law enforcement agencies are generally torn between blowing them up ­– they've almost all committed numerous crimes on the bankroll of pirates or Rebels – or paying them to switch sides.
There's yet another ship at this beacon, but for once, it isn't an enemy – or at least, might not be. It's a mercenary ship between jobs, looking for anyone willing to hire it, and it doesn't much care which side it's fighting for. They claim to be sympathetic towards the Federation, but they'd all say that, wouldn't they?

If we want to negotiate with the mercenary, there are two jobs we could reasonably hire them for. We could hire them to scout ahead for ⛯11; this won't give much information, but it will help us work out where the battles are most likely to be. Alternatively, we could hire them to give false information about us to the Rebels, but they want danger pay for that; ⛯24 would be most of the scrap we've collected so far.

Currently, each of you has ⛯8¾, so you'll need to pool your money if you want to pay the mercenary. Alternatively, this one seems to have worked with pirates in the past, so we could find an excuse to blow them up if we really wanted to; they are, however, unlikely to attack us unprovoked.
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Post Post #127 (isolation #35) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 4:18 pm

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If someone's in Sensors, I'll let them know in the PT.

If the opponent has a large or unusual weapon, I'll assume everyone can see it out of the window.
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Post Post #128 (isolation #36) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 4:27 pm

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The mercenaries probably weren't too surprised at your decision to attack them; they've had a number of run-ins with the law beforehand.

You hear a radio message from Enter: apparently they've decided to try to take our ship directly. There's a mercenary Mantis aboard our ship, trying to destroy the oxygen pumps. Then you hear a radio message from Varsoon, saying that he has this covered. Meanwhile, the rest of you get ready to take on the enemy ship with your weapons.

The enemy's shields are no better than ours, but their weaponry is weaker. Likewise, their Mantis is no stronger than ours, but it's apparently more of a coward, teleporting away when Varsoon badly injures it. Their attempts to surrender go no better than the ones before, and before long, our Artillery Beam destroys their ship. Going over to the wreckage, we pick up ⛯15 and some of their fuel.

There doesn't seem to be much else we can do near here, so we get ready for the next jump.
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Post Post #136 (isolation #37) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 4:41 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 6

Nebula (n).
Nebulas are areas of space full of thick gas; although this does not directly damage a ship's structure, it can play havoc with machinery. Most notably, sensors don't work well in a nebula; even looking out the window gives everything a purplish or bluish haze.
There's a lot of broken machinery here, just floating in space. It's a good thing that the beacon, at least, is still working. The beacon is close to a star, but you can hardly see it from where you are; a thick gas surrounds the area, and the light from the star is coming through violet. You don't know whether it really is that colour, or whether everything around here has been tinted.

The beacon doesn't seem to be the only thing that's working, though. An automated ship seems to be drawing on the last of its power reserves now that some activity has happeend, and for some reason, starts firing at our ship.

At least the Rebels are going to have problems following us
here
. If we can hardly see out of the area we're in, they're going to have problems seeing in. Staying here wouldn't be worthwhile – we'd lose our head start and they'd find us eventually – but this is going to help us pull away.

The enemy ship doesn't seem to have a conventional shield; instead of a continuous shield generator like ours, a drone is constantly making shield barriers around it. It seems to have particular disdain for conventional shields, in fact; everything in our ship is straining to function correctly in the nebula, and their ship is giving us a helping hand in that malfunction, aiming ion weaponry at our ship.
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Post Post #145 (isolation #38) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 5:12 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Just to note, I think we're currently waiting on people who aren't online. So there might be a bit of a gap before the next update.
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Post Post #147 (isolation #39) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 5:16 pm

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I was obsessively F5ing six different tabs :-D (Each player has a PT, there's the game thread, and I use egosearch as an easy way to see which of the PTs have been updated and need F5ing.)

It's been good that most of the players were online simultaneously early on, because it helped to get ground rules for many common situations set up quickly.
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Post Post #150 (isolation #40) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 5:32 pm

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Both ships get their weapons up and running at much the same time. While that was happening, though, the enemy shield got thicker and thicker, and it took two full volleys from our ship to take it back down.

Being unable to keep our shield up, we were more or less at the mercy of the enemy ship; but once its shields were down, it couldn't stand up to the might of our weapons. Before long, it was as broken as the rest of the machinery around here.

Unfortunately, much of what was here was long since rendered unusable by nebula gas, but there's enough of it that we can still make quite a profit salvaging. I'm assuming that we go over to the machinery and search for usable equipment, as there's no reason not to; we pick up ⛯16 and some fuel, in addition to some assorted components.
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Post Post #154 (isolation #41) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 5:43 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 7

Beacon (n).
Two technological breakthroughs were necessary for FTL travel to become possible. One was the jump into hyperspace. However, because time doesn't flow in hyperspace, it's impossible to do anything while you're there; and thus the other necessary breakthrough was the jump back
out
. A beacon is a device that, periodically, automatically pulls anything nearby in hyperspace back into standard space, and as such, FTL jumps can only be targeted at the vicinity of a beacon.
Scouts are one of the more frequently encountered types of ship; however, the scout here isn't Rebel, but Federation. They've got a message they want to deliver, and asked us to help if we happened to be going that way. Unfortunately, the destination is too far out of the way; there's no way we'd get there without the Rebels catching us. So we ended up having to decline; the message is probably better delivered by a ship that the Rebels aren't hunting. They were pretty understanding, though, wishing us good luck and giving us some fuel.
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Post Post #155 (isolation #42) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 6:29 pm

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Jump 8

Spiralling (adj.)
. A state that beacons sometimes get into upon being buffeted by the solar wind of a nearby star. This disrupts the orbit of the beacon, causing it to lose speed and gradually move closer to the star. Beacons will send out a "do not use" alert when they get too close for a jump to be safe, but beacons found early in the spiralling process can safely be used for jumps, albeit with potential danger on arrival.
This beacon isn't where it's supposed to be; it's right next to the nearby star. This is a pretty dangerous place for the ship to be in; we immediately start heading directly away from the star, because falling in would be fatal. Even then, the heat here is horrendous; it's radiation, so the shields are dealing with the worst of it, but it seems likely to fry the ship before too long.

However, as we're making our way out, we come across an orbiting Rebel ship. This one's automated and heat-proofed, designed for operation near stars. A pity that our ship isn't. It seems to be a drone carrier; it launches a shield generator drone to protect itself, and a combat drone to attack us.

Even worse, it has weapons too. Although we manage to take them out, it gets off a Siege Ion shot on us in the process, disabling our shields for a very long period of time, and there's not much we can do about the drone in the process; everyone hears the heavy shuddering as the drone lands shot after shot on our ship. Eventually, we put enough distance on the star to be able to jump away, but at this point, the enemy weapons are down and our shields are back online, so there's no immediate reason to run. A few shots later, and it has no way to defend itself; and a few shots after that, it's destroyed. We quickly loot it, picking up ⛯12 and some fuel. We just about manage to repair everything we can before the next solar flare hits, but then it's time to jump out.
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Post Post #156 (isolation #43) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 6:40 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 9
Shipyard (n)
. It's hard to repair a broken ship in vacuum, so large "dry docks" known as shipyards are normally used; these are large hangars full of air, allowing mechanics to safely work on a ship both inside and out. Shipyards are a huge capital investment, but easily make their money back renting them out to captains who need to work on their ship.
We arrive at a civilian shipyard, but they're quite willing to work on military ships as long as the pay is good. There are plenty of merchants here, too.

Our ship just struggled through one battle; if we're facing more like that in the future, we're going to need a better ship to fight them with. There's a reason people don't normally use brand-new ships; over time, they tend to be customized to work better. So perhaps we can pick up some equipment to have a worthy ship for our flight from the Rebellion.

(I'll pause the game for 24 hours or so at this point: there's nearly always a lot to discuss when we get to a place with this many options. I'll post, in each player's PT, a list of what they can potentially buy and how much it'll cost; the items will be split up between the PTs based on what part of the ship they affect. For players who are aware of how vanilla FTL works: note that I'm treating system upgrades the same way as store purchases, even though they work differently in-game, but I'll add in system upgrade opportunities at other times too if we haven't had one for a while.)
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Post Post #157 (isolation #44) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 6:44 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Oh, one option that doesn't go in anyone's PT, because it's tied into the mechanics of the game: there are crew here to hire. We can hire a Human for ⛯30, Mantis for ⛯40, or Engi for ⛯50. We probably can't afford any of these right now, but hiring crew would be one way to allow people on the waiting list to play.
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Post Post #161 (isolation #45) » Sun Mar 10, 2019 7:01 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

OK, all the PTs are now updated with the purchasable options.

I'll wait for 24 hours or until everyone's agreed before finalizing any purchases.
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Post Post #168 (isolation #46) » Mon Mar 11, 2019 1:54 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

I've seen a few suggestions about what to do in this thread, but remember that you'll have to move money around and actually buy the items.

I'm prepared to wait until everyone's ready.
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Post Post #174 (isolation #47) » Mon Mar 11, 2019 2:15 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

In post 170, the worst wrote:Am I OK to say how much a shield improvement costs?
Yes, talking about quantities of scrap is allowed.
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Post Post #182 (isolation #48) » Mon Mar 11, 2019 2:43 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

In post 180, PvtUrist wrote:Weaponry don't have spare power or system buffer.

If we've got 2 shields and the enemy can't pierce that, we can just take power from engines until we can afford reactor upgrades. We can use the power from the oxygen, but I'm not sure how much micro is allowed there.
Requests to micro are based on my microing abilities (which are decent but not amazing). Varsoon's in charge of the reactor, so would need to be able to observe the events you're microing on (e.g. "cut power to oxygen when in combat"), but you could easily set up a rule that you'd tell him about any situation that needs a change to the micro.
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Post Post #190 (isolation #49) » Mon Mar 11, 2019 3:47 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Just as a note: the price of ⛯75 that the worst quoted above is basically all of the money the ship has (we've earned a total of ⛯78 from various looting). So we'll need a pretty extreme pooling of money to be able to afford it.
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Post Post #195 (isolation #50) » Mon Mar 11, 2019 4:36 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 10

Sector
. A densely populated area of the galaxy, either in terms of people or in terms of planets. Although beacons are common within a sector, they're very rare outside one; so specialised technology tends to be needed to cross the vast gaps between sectors.
We reach the other Federation base in this sector, located around a Long-Range Beacon. Travelling between sectors is very difficult, but there are devices here sufficient to ensure that we can land near enough to a beacon to complete the jump, even given the vast distances that can exist between sectors.

It's a fairly busy place here; the place is inundated with incoming ships, mostly civilian. What was once a military base has pretty much turned into a refugee camp; the beacon here doesn't work quickly, but each time it does, there were hundreds of immigrants who needed taking care of.

We present the information we learned about the Rebels to the base here. They make a record of it, but don't have much in the way of military supplies left, being overwhelmed with their humanitarian mission. They offer to pass it to the next few scout ships that come along, but this information really needs to be sent to the Federation High Command, who might be able to do something about it, so they suggest we send the message ourselves.

They're quite eager to help us plot a route. They bring up a map of possible routes on their computer:

Code: Select all

    ?   ?-?
  H< \ / \ >F
 /  F-?   ?  \
X      >H< >?-C
 \  H-?   F  /
  H< / \ / >?
    F   H-F

X = we are here
C = Federation High Command
F = area is under the control of the Federation or its allies
H = area is not under Federation control
? = area is uninhabited, or no information available


The information's gathered from unreliable hyperspace relays, so they can't say much more, but many of the refugees are willing to talk about their experiences. Towards the bottom of the map, the adjacent sector is apparently under the control of the Rebels; the refugees are mostly Engi fleeing persecution, with a mix of other races. Towards the top of the map, you hear a number of conflicting stories, but there are allegations of supernatural involvement: demons, perhaps. At any rate, the area is allegedly uninhabitable, and they're fleeing before all signs of life in the sector are snuffed out.

The Rebels have almost caught us, though, so we're going to need to go through one sector or the other. It'll be up to Enter the pilot to decide, but feel free to confer about which way we should go!
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Post Post #197 (isolation #51) » Mon Mar 11, 2019 4:50 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 11

Jumpcycle (n)
. The length of time a standard beacon takes to recharge. Beacons can't pull in ships continuously; rather, they charge up and do it in bursts. As a result, all arrival at a beacon is synchronized to the timing of that beacon, making encounters likely in both space and time. Because reliability of beacon technology is so important, a standard design is used throughout the galaxy, and its recharge rate is used as a time standard that everyone agrees on, despite the varying orbital periods of the various planets involved.
Well, we're here. The Long-Range Beacon in the new sector is heavily armed and armoured, looking to defend itself against anyone who might interfere with it, but there aren't many people here this early in the jumpcycle. It looks like the Rebels missed this pull; they'll have to wait for the next one. That's good, it'll help us pull away from them.

The Long-Range Beacon is also out in open space, not near anything else. That's an unusual arrangement, but it may well have been done for protection of the beacon; normally nobody would dare to attack one of those things, but maybe the people here are particularly daring.
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Post Post #199 (isolation #52) » Mon Mar 11, 2019 4:57 pm

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Jump 12

Scavenging (v).
Gathering debris from a battle you weren't involved with. A risky occupation, because the victor of the battle is likely to want the debris too, and you know they're powerful enough to win a battle.
We picked up a distress signal, so we jumped over to investigate. There was a ship coming under attack, looking for someone to save them. Unfortunately, it seems we got here too late; by the time we get pulled back into regular space, the distress signal has blinked out.

Oddly, we can hardly find the ship that sent it, or indeed, the ship that won. A number of small scavenger ships have already cleared up much of the wreckage; and although we can see them zooming off into the distance, they're faster than us, relying on their speed to defend themselves, and we have no way to catch them. So we can't do much but get ready for another jump.
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Post Post #200 (isolation #53) » Mon Mar 11, 2019 5:04 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 13

Black box (n).
A device aboard a ship that records everything that happens to it, designed to help the relatives of the ship's crewmembers work out how they died.
More distress signals, and more emptiness. This one's coming from a ceramic black box, the only remains of whatever it is that broke. Good news, it seems; nobody died, the area was evacuated beforehand. From the sounds of the recording here, this must have been a huge space station once. Right now, though, you see nothing. It's all disappeared.
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Post Post #201 (isolation #54) » Mon Mar 11, 2019 5:13 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 14

Fort (n)
. A temporary base set up as a way to secure recently held ground in times of war. Instead of having fixed defense systems, they're normally secured via patrols of ships around their borders, giving crew in the interior of the fort some time to relax off-duty.
A Rebel fort is some distance away from the beacon, likely to help secure it against invasions; they haven't been here long, and it looks like they're already struggling to hold their ground against whoever it is that they're fighting. On the other hand, it's unsurprising that a patrol is waiting at the beacon just as it pulls you into space; that's when they were
expecting
attackers to arrive.

As a Federation warship near a Rebel camp, it's not surprising that they don't bother hailing you; instead, they switch on their weapons and start attacking.

It turns out that the Rebels' lasers can't get through our shields, but afraid of disobeying orders, they keep trying. Meanwhile, PvtUrist sends wave after wave of EMP blasts shooting at the enemy. This fight might take a while.
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Post Post #206 (isolation #55) » Mon Mar 11, 2019 5:27 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

The fight
does
take a while (about 10 minutes, surprisingly long for a fight in this game, although some of that was posting updates in PTs), but the EMP breaks the enemy ship's systems one by one, until it's left not only unable to get through our shields, but unable to go anywhere, protect itself against our weapons, or keep the life support running. After a while it gives up trying, and you discover that the Rebels have all suffocated. So you take everything from their ship that isn't nailed down, or where the nails can reasonably be pried out. Unfortunately, other than the fuel, it doesn't really fit our ship, but it still has decent scrap value. We end up with ⛯19 and some fuel.

It'd be both suicidal and far too time-consuming to drive over to the Rebel fort without jumping, and they don't seem to have a beacon; probably a wise security precaution. So there's not much to do but to jump.
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Post Post #208 (isolation #56) » Mon Mar 11, 2019 6:09 pm

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Jump 15
Lifepod (n)
. A device some ships carry that allows the crew to escape if the ship is destroyed. More advanced lifepods have propulsion or even teleportation units, increasing the chance that the crew can get to safety.
As you arrive at the beacon, you hear a radioed message from Enter: a bunch of desperate humans have teleported aboard. Apparently, their ship no longer exists, so it seems that they want to take ours.

There are three of them, currently in the bridge area. This is the first time we've faced a large invasion force, and Varsoon isn't likely to win 1 vs. 3, so I need a plan from everyone as to how to handle it.
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Post Post #213 (isolation #57) » Tue Mar 12, 2019 4:17 am

Post by callforjudgement »

I'll give the worst time to get back to the thread (24 hours from my post), in case they have comments or objections; it's their system, after all. If they don't post, though, I'll enact whatever seems to be the most widely agreed-upon plan.

(I may be asleep when they come online – I'm pretty much asleep now, not a good time for this sort of microing! – so there might be a delay.)
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Post Post #215 (isolation #58) » Tue Mar 12, 2019 3:31 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

the worst opens most of the airlocks and internal doors on the ship, front to back, keeping people constantly updated so that they know where it's safe to breathe. Everyone ends up waiting in the engine room, apart from the worst, who's manually controlling doors to let us past but trap the enemies in place; PvtUrist gets there last, somewhat breathless from the running and the lack of air (he's pretty slow-moving), but robust enough that he hasn't sustained major damage. The boarders are aware of what's wrong, and try to make their way to the back of the ship, sending two people to the oxygen pumps and one towards engines, but they're feeling pretty woozy by now.

As one of the boarders gets close to the engines, Varsoon runs out to meet him, quickly taking him out; after being unable to breathe for so long, the opponent is unable to defend himself, and killing him is a triivial matter. The other two realise that the oxygen control room is about to lose its air too, and run towards the infirmary. Of course, we're just fine with that, so the worst closes all the workable doors again; the enemies have broken many of them, and you don't want the air from the back of the ship escaping too.

It's a 1 vs. 2 fight in the infirmary, but Varsoon is quite capable of managing it against his disoriented opponents, so our ship is once again safe. Then we went and repaired all the broken doors, and the infirmary got to work, healing the blaster wounds that Enter and Varsoon had suffered, and making sure that PvtUrist's oxygen exchange crystals were properly oxygenated.

We never did find out where the boarders came from, though. Presumably they were escaping in lifepods, but we made a quick search for them and couldn't find them. Things seem to disappear awfully fast in this sector; perhaps the rumours of demons weren't that far off the mark after all.
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Post Post #216 (isolation #59) » Tue Mar 12, 2019 3:43 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 16

Intercept (v).
To chase someone from in front, and wait for them to move to where you are, rather than the more common method of chasing someone from behind and trying to catch up with them. The advantage of intercepting your quarry is that it works even if they're faster than you. The disadvantage, of course, is that you need to guess where they're going.
Looks like not all the Rebels are systematically searching from behind. This one decided to jump into the sector before we did, and then got lucky waiting for us. They ask us to surrender, but they're not looking for goods; they're looking to imprison us all and take our ship. That's a terrible offer, so we decide to fight our way out.

Looking out of the window, we see that the secondary shield generator we just bought isn't going to help here: they have a small laser (which can't get through our shields), and some sort of small missile (which can get through both shields at once). So the ship goes back to its old configuration for once.

PvtUrist is, of course, trying his best to take out the enemy missile system, but their weapons are faster than ours are, and our shots keep missing, so they get off three shots on us. Everyone either sees a missile hit directly, or else sees the worst hurriedly running around the ship to try to fix the damage.

However, once their missiles go down, they never get them back up, and it doesn't take long for PvtUrist to destroy their ship from there. We loot ⛯17, in addition to a small amount of fuel.
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Post Post #217 (isolation #60) » Tue Mar 12, 2019 3:56 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 17

Neutral Merchant's Guild (n).
An association of somewhat brave traders who take goods to war zones, making money off both sides via selling goods and repairing ships. They've been known to visit disaster areas, too, always trying to make a profit off the increased demand for almost everything they have in stock. Typically they're left alone by combatants, because everyone needs to restock their ship somehow, and not everything can be taken from the wreckage of your enemies.
Most of the people around here are either running, Rebels who've recently arrived, or mysteriously missing. Not here, though; it's a fairly well-stocked mobile mall, catering for the few people who remain. There's a wide range of things we could buy here.

(I'll post the equipment that's for sale, and the price list, in people's private topics.)

Crew which we could hire here, if we wanted to go down that route: Human for ⛯30, Rock for ⛯40, Engi for ⛯50.
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Post Post #219 (isolation #61) » Tue Mar 12, 2019 4:13 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

As usual for stores, taking a break here until everyone decides on what they want to buy.
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Post Post #224 (isolation #62) » Tue Mar 12, 2019 5:51 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Varsoon's in charge of repairs.
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Post Post #225 (isolation #63) » Tue Mar 12, 2019 8:04 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

I prodded Enter.
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Post Post #227 (isolation #64) » Tue Mar 12, 2019 8:09 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

We're at a store, and discussing what to buy. (By the sound of it, the discussion is mostly about how much to spend on repairs.)
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Post Post #238 (isolation #65) » Wed Mar 13, 2019 1:03 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Take your time if you need it to make a decision, but ideally we'd have a plan to enact soon.
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Post Post #244 (isolation #66) » Thu Mar 14, 2019 1:06 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Looking out the window, we see repair drones working on our ship; they must have been hired to help patch our ship up.

We can't do much else here, though, so it's time for the next jump.
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Post Post #246 (isolation #67) » Thu Mar 14, 2019 1:23 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 18

Pull (v).
The act of dragging surrounding objects from hyperspace back into regular space, normally accomplished by a beacon. With large beacons, a pull can be spread over a wide area, but for smaller beacons, everything that arrives will arrive all at once, and right next to each other.
It looks like a Rebel ship arrived in the same pull as we did. They immediately deploy a drone to try to destroy our ship, but its beam can't get through our shields, and neither can their laser. Then they deploy a drone to try to hack into our ship, but PvtUrist is content to isolate the hacking virus to some of the weapon systems that aren't in use, attacking with just a single weapon. It's not immediately clear what killed the enemy crew, but the repeated EMPs aimed at their ship almost certainly had something to do with it, and you saw part of their hull catch fire.

Of course, with no enemies alive, you get to run in and loot the ship. Much of their equipment is burnt out, but you still get to loot the fuel tanks and take ⛯22 worth of easily saleable items.
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Post Post #247 (isolation #68) » Thu Mar 14, 2019 1:33 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 19

Planetary defence system (n)
. Any system that allows a planet to fire at spaceships that might be planning to attack or invade. The most common design is the Anti-Ship Battery, used heavily by both the Federations and Rebels to defend planets under their control from attack.
We finally get a proper look at the "demons" who are besieging this sector; or at least, one of their ships. They're aiming for civilian planet that's not yet fully evacuated; the planet's defence systems are fighting back, shooting at their ship. Their weapons don't seem to be particularly designed for attacking planets, so they change their plans and shoot at us instead.

Luckily, the planet doesn't seem to consider us a threat; perhaps they recognise the Federation as allies, or perhaps they're just happy to see anyone who could potentially help break the siege. So this is something of a 2 vs. 1 battle, and the odds are in our favour for once.
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Post Post #250 (isolation #69) » Thu Mar 14, 2019 1:46 am

Post by callforjudgement »

PvtUrist's aim is surprisingly good, landing every shot. The enemy bounces one laser harmlessly off our shields, and that's the last they'll be able to influence the battle; we take down their weaponry and shields, and the planetary defense system finishes them off.

The planet might have got the kill, but we're much nearer the resulting debris field. We make off with ⛯12.

Even better, the planet we helped decides to help us back. There's a shipyard here, and although they don't have much in the way of components for Federation military ships, they can at least replace some of the more heavily damaged parts of our hull plating.
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Post Post #251 (isolation #70) » Thu Mar 14, 2019 1:56 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 20

Evacuator (n)
. A brand of transport ships designed for moving very large numbers of people in emergencies.
There's not much at this beacon but a small planet. It's been evacuated already, but it's on an important route through the sector, so we aren't the only ship passing this way; a transport ship arrives at the same pull, carrying refugees from further away.

Neither of us has anything to offer the other apart from conversation and information about the conditions in the sector, but talking is a good way to pass the time until the next beacon's jumpcycle is about to complete. Apparently, there's not just one war going on, but three. The war between the Federation and Rebels, you know all too well, and it's spilled even into this sector. The invasion of this sector by an unknown race is also all too evident. However, apparently the invaders aren't all on the same side; there are many reported incidents of them attacking each other, and even defending some of the indigenous inhabitants of the area. There's not much you can obviously do with this information right now, but you note down the intelligence just in case it comes in useful later.
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Post Post #253 (isolation #71) » Thu Mar 14, 2019 2:01 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 21

Xenobiology (n).
The study of alien or previously unrecognised lifeforms.
Many people may see this sector as haunted or cursed, but to scientists, there's surely got to be a logical explanation for anything. We find a mobile laboratory ship here, trying to get to the bottom of the mystery of the sector.

That sounds like an opportunity to make a trade, and it's a very easy way to make some cash. We've been in a fight with some of these creatures, and swapped stories with many of the inhabitants here; we can pretty easily find things that are of use to them. In particular, some material that's just scrap to us is worth more studied than scrapped, so we have no trouble trading it for some junk metal they own, making a profit of ⛯15.
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Post Post #255 (isolation #72) » Thu Mar 14, 2019 2:09 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 22

More greed than speed (phrase)
. An insult among pirates aimed at people who don't manage to finish salvaging the wreckage of a fight by the start of the next jumpcycle. Remaining in the area during a beacon pull can be a huge risk to a pirate operation, but leaving scrap behind is also seen as a huge mistake, so pirates have to learn to work quickly when it comes to picking up the pieces of their enemies.
We arrive, and see more alien ships. One of them is currently in fragments, the other is picking them up. Sensible ships know better than to pick fights at the end of jumpcycles, so presumably these ships weren't sensible; you know from experience that the "demons" can be lightning-fast at taking anything that's there for the taking.
Last edited by callforjudgement on Fri Jun 21, 2019 8:05 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post Post #258 (isolation #73) » Thu Mar 14, 2019 2:12 am

Post by callforjudgement »

You never do find out how or why the fight started, or even whether our enemy was a scavenger or whether it started the fight itself. Probably they were a scavenger, because they tried to run away, but we'd already disabled their engine controls at that point.

What you do find, though, is the looted debris of the first ship, and the newly-created debris of the second. It has a value of around ⛯20.
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Post Post #260 (isolation #74) » Thu Mar 14, 2019 2:18 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 23

Cornerpost (n)
. The sort of eclectic trading post that tends to crop up in places which are more lightly trafficked, or where the flow of traffic is experiencing a temporary burst. Unlike more established and larger stores, a cornerpost tends to have only a limited selection of items, often priced bizarrely.
Well, we've accomplished what many of the inhabitants here were aiming for: we've reached a Long-Range Beacon. Probably a good thing, too; the Rebels definitely knew we were in this sector, and must have been close to finding us.

This beacon doesn't seem to have had much use until recently, but there are people trying to take advantage of the flow of ships to sell whatever they might have on hand.

(Only a limited selection of items is available here, but I'll post prices in your PTs in case anyone wants to buy anything.)
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Post Post #263 (isolation #75) » Thu Mar 14, 2019 2:36 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Once any shopping's been done, we're going to have to jump out of here.

Assuming the map in # is still accurate, there are only two routes which take us closer to the Federation High Command; and fortunately, the next sector on each of them is reachable from the beacon. One of them seems peaceful enough, but is already fairly heavily populated; that's where all the refugees
want
to go, but there's a lot of trouble with immigration, especially when there's an almost uninhabited sector just next door. It seems that the area is sparsely populated for a reason, though: it doesn't have much in the way of useful raw materials or anywhere that could serve as a hub for an advanced civilization, so it's basically just a backwater.

Here's a repeat of the map with our position updated, showing just the routes we can use. We haven't heard an update from a Federation sensor station in a while, so maybe the situation has changed since, but it's better to have something to go on than nothing.

Code: Select all

    ?   ?-?-F
   / \ / \ / \
  X   ?   ?-?-C
   \ / \ / / /
    F   H-F-?

X = we are here
C = Federation High Command
F = area is under the control of the Federation or its allies
H = area is not under Federation control
? = area is uninhabited, or no information available
Last edited by callforjudgement on Thu Mar 14, 2019 2:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Post #269 (isolation #76) » Thu Mar 14, 2019 4:48 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

the worst, do you have opinions about where to go next?
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Post Post #271 (isolation #77) » Thu Mar 14, 2019 5:50 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 24

Border (n)
. The space separating an area under the control of one major power, from space under the control of another. Borders are designed so that they cannot be crossed using a single jump, so in theory, a region of space can be protected from outside invaders simply by keeping a strong force at the border. Of course, that doesn't help against attacks from inside, and borders often seem to leak somehow, but they still serve as a valuable first line of defence.
The best route has surely got to be going through a Federation-controlled area, so that's where our ship ends up. There's a heavy police presence at the border, but they're not willing to stop a Federation military ship; we're the sort of people who are
supposed
to have access into a place like this. They warn us that they're a bit overstretched dealing with all the refugees trying to enter, and that lawlessness is on the rise through the sector as a result, but think that we should be able to handle it (and hint that it might be helpful if we go and take out some outlaws for them). So at least the authorities aren't going to try to stop us making our way through here.
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Post Post #272 (isolation #78) » Thu Mar 14, 2019 5:52 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 25

Quarantine (v, n).
A cordon established to prevent the spread of disease. With millions of inhabited planets spread around the galaxy, there are billions of possible diseases, and allowing them all to spread would likely be non-survivable. Instead, diseases for which no treatment is readily available are confined to the planet on which they originate, until a cure can be found, via preventing travel.
This beacon is normally quite busy, but right now it's only used by people passing through; there's a travel ban on the nearby planet, in order to help confine the spread of a recently discovered disease. We don't want to break quarantine and risk infection, so we can't do much here.
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Post Post #273 (isolation #79) » Thu Mar 14, 2019 7:01 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 26

Pulltrapping (v).
Moving a beacon (while leaving it within its normal range) so that arriving ships end up somewhere unexpected, allowing for surprise atttacks. Beacons normally broadcast the fact that they've been tampered with, but sometimes this broadcast can be disabled as well, potentially placing arriving ships in a lot of danger.
This beacon isn't where it's meant to be; instead, it's dangerously close to a red giant. It looks like some pirates are trying to profit off anyone who happens to come past, as they have a powerful ship of their own stationed here, although we didn't see the ship immediately; it seemed to be hidden in a cloaking field. It's a pretty dangerous opponent, bristling with weapons, and with a secondary shield generator of its own.
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Post Post #277 (isolation #80) » Thu Mar 14, 2019 8:12 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

We try to run from the fight as fast as possible, needing to drive to a safe distance from the star before we can jump away. At first, the enemy's weapons can't get through our shields, but then they launch a Siege Ion shot at them, taking both shield generators down at once. Then the enemy's weapons don't
have
to get through our shields, and several laser shots start pounding our ship.

Luckily, the engines are still fine, so we're able to jump away.
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Post Post #278 (isolation #81) » Thu Mar 14, 2019 8:40 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 27

Chicken jump (n)
. A jump made very early in a jumpcycle. This wastes useful time, because a ship waiting in hyperspace gets frozen in time until the pull, but it can be the only way to escape a dangerous situation or to stay undercover.
We waste no time trying to repair, knowing that we're only going to take more damage, and jump out of the fight. There's another pirate ship here, but luckily this one doesn't have ion weaponry. It's busy attacking someone else, and we're in no fit state to take it on, so have to leave while the pirate's distracted.

I initially rashly assumed you'd decide to fight it, but the resulting fight quickly turned out to be unwinnable; you don't have much influence on a fight with your weapons system down, and its missiles could take us out due to the damage to Piloting. As a result, I'm enforcing the only decision that lets us continue the run. Sorry about that. Good thing this beacon didn't have an unavoidable fight!
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Post Post #279 (isolation #82) » Thu Mar 14, 2019 8:53 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 28

Hornet (n).
A class of small Mantis ships that prey on civilians, looking for an easy way to make kills and earn money from the debris.
With the pirate ignoring us for easier prey, we managed to repair our damaged systems while leaving the beacon, so everything that can be fixed is at full strength by the next jump. There was a tiny Mantis ship here, but it cowardly jumped away as soon as it saw us. On the other hand, it was looting a wreck, so we get to do some scavenging of our own. We pick up ⛯11 and a bomb launcher.
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Post Post #280 (isolation #83) » Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:04 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 29

Slaver (n).
Someone who deals in the trade in sentient creatures. HIghly illegal, but unfortunately hard to stop.
It seems like criminals are getting ballsy, looking to trade with the Federation. There's a slaver here, who's apparently quite willing to sell slaves to a Federation military ship. This one has Rock crew on offer, with the best price being ⛯27.

We don't have to trade. We could just leave, or we could attack them. Looking at the slaver's ship, we see two shield barriers, plus a small missile launcher and Siege Ion, but we don't have any more information available than that.
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Post Post #282 (isolation #84) » Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:51 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

PvtUrist demonstrates what he thinks of the trade with an EMP to the slaver's shields, then starts shooting lasers at the enemy weapon systems. The slavers respond with Artemis missile fire; although we take out their missile launcher, they eventually get it back online and land a few more shots on us, although they rapidly run out of ammo. When we take their weapons back down again – and then break their shields with our beam – they decide to run away, and unfortunately PvtUrist misses the next several shots, meaning we have no way to stop them fleeing, and they get away. I guess they're used to this sort of encounter.
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Post Post #283 (isolation #85) » Thu Mar 14, 2019 9:58 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 30

Scam (n).
A nickname for any trade that's really unfavourable for one party. Normally these are intentionally and maliciously aimed at inexperienced pilots who don't know better, but occasionally they're accidentally offered by pilots who don't know better.
We cross paths with a ship at the beacon. They're offering us a used drone, with no control unit or fabricator, and want quite a lot of fuel in exchange. We have no use for this thing, it's almost worthless even to someone who has use for it, and we don't have that much fuel anyway. What sort of fool did they think we were?
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Post Post #284 (isolation #86) » Thu Mar 14, 2019 10:02 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 31

Contracted shipyard (n).
A shipyard that's hired by a government for exclusive repair and maintenance of their ships. Instead of paying in advance, the payment for use of their services is delivered on the ships that are being fixed; this helps prevent rogue shipyards running off with the money, or a prepayment falling into enemy hands.
The Federation don't own the shipyard here, but it's being run for their benefit; there aren't any other Federation ships here right now, but many of them will have come here in the past to get fixes. Although primarily focused on repairs, they're also able to do more drastic upgrades to the ship's systems if necessary.

(I'll post price lists in the various players' PTs.)
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Post Post #296 (isolation #87) » Fri Mar 15, 2019 12:28 am

Post by callforjudgement »

In post 291, PvtUrist wrote:is this hard difficulty

cfj too cruel
Well, the first FTL Interactive Playthrough was on Hard, and it's what I usually play. Sometimes I remember other difficulties exist :-D

It's been a weird game, though, much of what we face is trivial, and then suddenly the occasional nightmare beacon comes along.
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Post Post #298 (isolation #88) » Fri Mar 15, 2019 1:37 am

Post by callforjudgement »

At least with Rock A, you usually have the option of running.

The mod actually has some changes to reduce the chance of an early disaster when you're using a shieldless ship (although for the time being, it's just a reduction, not an elimination).
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Post Post #301 (isolation #89) » Fri Mar 15, 2019 1:56 am

Post by callforjudgement »

There have been a few cases where people seem to have figured out numbers indirectly, and that's fine. Saying something like "the fuel in our fuel tank is worth ⛯X" would be against the spirit of the rules, but "I've purchased ⛯Y of fuel" would be reasonable; the aim's to let people make informed decisions about the relative value of purchases, while preventing people just directly pooling all their knowledge about the current state of the ship and turning it back into a full-information game. So you can specify the total price of the fuel that's on offer, if you like.

As for the number of jumps in a sector, your information on that's actually pretty comparable to mine and Enter's. When we leave a sector is typically based on when the Rebels are going to catch us, rather than the route we take, so you should be able to count the number of jumps we've taken so far in the sector to get an estimate of when we'll have to jump to the next one (the Rebels move a constant distance per jump). Working it out exactly is often difficult even for me playing the game (I'm not using a pursuit range indicator, and find it hard to visually judge until it gets low).
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Post Post #306 (isolation #90) » Fri Mar 15, 2019 7:53 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 32

Tavern station (n).
A station set up for ships' crews to socialise with those of other ships. Space travel can get very monotonous, and staying with the same few people for months on end would test the sanity of most members of most intelligent species, so taverns serve as a method to relax and help keep people grounded.
We walk around the tavern station here, looking for any interesting news. The increase in piracy here is on many peoples' minds, as is the potential for Rebel invasion. You get the sense that this is something of a black-market trade hub – there are people who you suspect are looking to hire mercenaries – but none of them seem interested in contracting a Federation ship. To the people here, the Federation are the police, and you don't hire the police to do a criminal's job.
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Post Post #307 (isolation #91) » Fri Mar 15, 2019 8:01 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 33

Auto-Scout (n).
A very commonly seen class of ship, stationed permanently by the Rebels in areas they want to investigate. Automated ships don't need food and can run more or less indefinitely off their reactor power, with FTL fuel only being needed when the ship has something to report.
The route to the Long-Range Beacon and the next sector goes through a nebula. It looks like the Rebels decided to keep watch here, and the Auto-Scout they deployed for the purpose is still working; it isn't looking for us specifically, but we still don't want it to report our position. It tries to hide, no doubt to relay the information it's gathered at some later date, but also pops out to shoot at us from time to time; it thinks it needs to defend itself. It's right in that, but there's not much it can do; although it manages to disrupt our shields, and would have got through given enough time, we take out its weapons before it can do so, and it never manages to fully repair them; our beam and lasers blew it up before it had the chance.

We loot ⛯23 worth of components from it, and what remains of its fuel.
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Post Post #308 (isolation #92) » Fri Mar 15, 2019 8:08 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 34

Auto-Assault (n).
An automated Rebel combat ship. Auto-Assaults tend to have weak defensive systems, but carry drone fabricators, enabling them to quickly spawn extra offence or defence as needed.
It seems that the enemy scout
did
manage to get a message off; maybe that's why it stayed and fought, rather than running. However, it had no hyperspatial communications, so its message didn't get far; it only got as far as an automated assault ship. We didn't spot it in the nebula, but it caught up to the spot we'd jumped from later in the jumpcycle, and we end up next to each other during the pull.

After assessing our ship, it decides its defence drone (which is specialised for missile defence) isn't going to be much good against our laser, beam, and bomb, so it goes into messenger mode and tries to leave again. It's still too close to the beacon to jump, though, so we're going to try to chase it down. Of course, it's not fully focused on running; it has weapons available, so it's going to try to shoot at us while it can.
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Post Post #316 (isolation #93) » Sat Mar 16, 2019 8:56 am

Post by callforjudgement »

PvtUrist has been prodded.
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Post Post #318 (isolation #94) » Sat Mar 16, 2019 9:55 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

PvtUrist bombs the ship's engine control circuitry, leaving it unable to steer. Meanwhile, it realises it needs a bit of extra firepower and deploys a combat drone to shoot at us, but even with the drone's help, its lasers can't get past our shields. Then we EMP its shields and chase it in circles around the beacon, shooting it with our beam and lasers; as it's unable to dodge, all the shots hit, and it eventually falls apart. We take ⛯13 in scrap material and the remnants of its fuel.
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Post Post #319 (isolation #95) » Sat Mar 16, 2019 10:05 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 35

Barterstock (n).
A process via which Federation ships level out their supplies. It's common for different ships to use various supplies at different rates; perhaps one ship will be on a long-distance journey and spend lots of fuel, another ship will be actively fighting and require ammunition.
We encounter another Federation warship here. Both of us are in a hurry, but it's not like we can go anywhere until the next jumpcycle, so we stop to chat about our missions and our status. We let them know the information we have on the Rebels, but their ship isn't fitted for long journeys; it's had extra weapons added, and is busy trying to deal with the rise in piracy in the sector. They'll pass on the info to the next scout ship they meet, but we can't guarantee it'll get anywhere – or even that the friendly ship will survive the war – so we're still committed to delivering the information ourself.

We mention our fuel trouble, and they're running low on ammunition, so we level out our resources somewhat. We find some Artemis ammunition in our component bay, and trade it for a large amount of fuel.

OK, in theory I should ask what to do at this sort of beacon, but the choice here was really obvious so I just made it automatically to save time.
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Post Post #320 (isolation #96) » Sat Mar 16, 2019 10:17 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 36

Armoury (n)
. Anywhere which stocks a large amount of weapons. Many armouries are operated by militaries, in order to enable their ships to be refitted to handle any dangers that might come up. However, civilian armouries are becoming increasingly common; even the law-abiding want a way to protect themselves, and criminals often want weapons for obvious reasons.
We finally reach the Long-Range Beacon. It's been built into a busy station, named the Oasis; there are large hangars, leisure facilities, restaurants, and the like. Apparently it's being run by a family of Slugs. When we tell them which sector we're planning to go through next, they warn us about how dangerous it is, but as it's the only sector that lies on our path, we tell them that we're going to have to risk it. They seem delighted to hear it, and try to persuade us to buy some of the weapons they have in stock, or at least some fuel or repairs. That said, you sense they'd be happy to sell us anything they have available; they know that military contracts are a good source of scrap.

(Although this is a Long-Range Beacon, we only have one path that takes us towards our destination, so we have no choice there. I'll post lists of things we can buy here into people's PTs.)
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Post Post #336 (isolation #97) » Tue Mar 19, 2019 7:02 am

Post by callforjudgement »

We need to come to a decision fairly soon, I think. If we keep standing around arguing about what to buy, the Rebels are going to catch us.
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Post Post #341 (isolation #98) » Tue Mar 19, 2019 2:38 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Well, that looks like a consensus. Time to get this ship back on (the space equivalent of) the road.
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Post Post #342 (isolation #99) » Tue Mar 19, 2019 2:46 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 37, 38

Mantis (n)
. A species of warriors commonly found in all parts of the galaxy, typically looking for prey. The Mantis measure their worth by the number of enemies they kill; law-abiding Mantis thus tend to go into the military or law enforcement, but the majority often turn to piracy, or simply picking on and killing random ships.
The Long-Range Beacon pulls us into space, but it's placed in open space; we're some distance from anything. So we have to jump again. We're up against a Mantis ship here. They seem to be willing to shoot at anyone they meet, so it's time for us to defend ourselves.
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Post Post #345 (isolation #100) » Tue Mar 19, 2019 3:02 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

We get lucky; PvtUrist manages to disable one of the enemy weapons before it fires twice in a row. That buys us enough time for our Artillery Beam to charge, and it deals heavy damage to the enemy ship; it also deals further damage to their weapons, and we destroy their ship before they get them back online.

We loot ⛯28 and some ammunition.
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Post Post #346 (isolation #101) » Tue Mar 19, 2019 3:12 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 39

Flying Coffin (n)
. A nickname given to the standard Slug scout ship design. These ships are compartmentalised internally to protect their crew from each other, but it also makes them hard to repair; if they take battle damage, there's not much they can do about it, because many important components are inaccessible.
We enter a nebula; apparently this is Slug territory, because there's a scout ship waiting for us. Seeing how valuable our ship is, they decide to try to take it intact; both our ship and theirs start sending repeated EMP blasts at each other. This might well be a long battle.
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Post Post #348 (isolation #102) » Tue Mar 19, 2019 3:22 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

It takes a while, but PvtUrist is a more adept EMP user than they are, and the worst is faster at repairing the EMP damage to our shields. After several minutes of EMP shots being traded, we finally get through their three shield layers, and the EMP blows up pretty much every system on their ship. With no ability to repair it, their ship is dead in space, and before long, so is its crew.

We take their fuel, and ⛯29 worth of equipment from their ship.
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Post Post #349 (isolation #103) » Tue Mar 19, 2019 3:30 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 40
Fire Beam (n)
. A device intended to set an enemy ship on fire, quickly defeating its crew while hopefully allowing the ship's cargo to be taken intact. Fire Beams are notorious for being unable to pierce even the weakest of civilian shields, and thus are rarely used by militiaries.
An interesting enemy, here: it's a Slug Ship armed only with a Fire Beam. As such, we settle down into a routine of EMPing their shields. What could go wrong?
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Post Post #350 (isolation #104) » Tue Mar 19, 2019 3:31 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

You hear a radio message from Enter. Apparently Varsoon was attacking our ship for some reason (although he just stopped), dealing some amount of damage to the ship's engines.

Shortly afterwards, another radio message from Enter informs you that PvtUrist is trying to dismantle our weapons system.
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Post Post #355 (isolation #105) » Tue Mar 19, 2019 4:04 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

The battle lasts over 20 minutes. At first, we seemed to be winning, with the enemy shields coming down several times. Then they seemed to adapt to our tactics, and we never took the shields down again.

For some reason, though, they start moving erratically, then disable their weapons, and eventually just stop entirely. We cautiously approach, and find complete devastation on board their ship; much of their machinery is burnt out or broken, and the crew has disappeared, although you find smears of what might be their remains.

Regardless of what happened here, though, that's not going to stop us raiding their ship for anything valuable. ⛯40 is a pretty good haul.
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Post Post #356 (isolation #106) » Tue Mar 19, 2019 4:16 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 41

Dispersal beacon (n)
. A beacon designed to pull ships into space some distance away, in a random direction; this makes it less likely that ships will run into each other during the pull. These are especially favoured by civilisations with stealth technology, as they can normally choose to hide or fight depending on what else they sense has arrived. The Slugs also use such beacons to aid in defence of their nebulas, as they can feel confident in being able to sense an enemy ship before the enemy ship senses them,
We get pulled into the nebula. So does a Rebel ship, but it's a long distance away, and doesn't seem to realise we're here.

Our sensors aren't working, but we have a set of binoculars available, to check on their ship the old-fashioned way. Based on what we can see, the Rebels have a small beam, some sort of charge laser, and a bomb launcher of some kind. They also have three shield barriers.

Should we chase them? Or should we hide?
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Post Post #361 (isolation #107) » Wed Mar 20, 2019 8:30 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Well, we take them by surprise and manage to catch up to them. Now it's time to see if we can beat them.

Their shields are pretty resistant to our weaponry; PvtUrist takes the approach of aiming EMP blasts at them in order to try to make an opening for our lasers, and we do in fact land a few shots that way. However, most of the work is done by our Artillery Beam, which isn't bothered by enemy shields.

We grab ⛯22 and some fuel from the wreckage of their ship.
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Post Post #363 (isolation #108) » Wed Mar 20, 2019 8:46 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 42

Hermes Missile (n)
. The second-most frightening weapon in a rather frightening class of weapons, a Hermes Missile charges fast and flies fast, inevitably causing heavy damage and setting the target on fire. Shooting down such a fast weapon is almost impossible; typically, the only defences available are dodging the missiles and breaking the launcher.
Perhaps the Mantis are trying to invade this region? This is the second Mantis warship we've seen today. Its laser can't get through our shields, but it also has a gigantic missile launcher. We probably don't want that thing to hit our ship.

Enter radios a warning about an invading Mantis in the engine room. Given that Varsoon was there, that was probably the wrong place for it to invade.

Unfortunately, the enemy weapons charge faster than ours do, and it's not long before a couple of missiles shoot towards our ship at incredibly high speed. (I would describe it as supersonic, but sound doesn't carry in space.) Everyone gets to see the devastation that a Hermes Missile can wreak first-hand, having it either hit them directly or else hit the room next door. Luckily, Enter manages to dodge the third, and then the enemy missile launcher goes down; our Artillery Beam destroys their navigation controls, leaving them unable to dodge, and so we're able to keep it down with repeated laser blasts.

We pick up ⛯33, and some ammunition. Our Infirmary rather has to work overtime after the battle, but at least nobody died.
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Post Post #364 (isolation #109) » Wed Mar 20, 2019 8:51 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 43

Cave construction
. A method of construction via hollowing out an asteroid and building on the inside. If an asteroid of suitable size and composition is used, this avoids the need to create a structurally sound, airtight hull for a ship or building. Cave constructions vary in size from small shuttles to giant starbases.
Not all the Slugs are hostile towards visitors. We arrive at a large Slug base built on the inside of an asteroid; it has its own oxygen supply, and its own shipyard. Enter has a quick chat with the Slugs operating it, and it seems clear from the conversation that they're quite happy to sell us things for an appropriate fee.

(As usual, I'll post price lists in the players' PTs.)
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Post Post #376 (isolation #110) » Thu Mar 21, 2019 11:17 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

PvtUrist and Enter have been prodded.
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Post Post #385 (isolation #111) » Sat Mar 23, 2019 1:41 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 44

Tracking (v)
. Attempting to predict where a ship will jump next, and following the jump. This is nontrivial, but good sensors and powerful computers make it easier.
We weren't the only people shopping at the previous base. A Slug scout ship was purchasing some new weapons, and apparently decided to try them on us; being a scout, it had plenty of equipment with which to track our jump, and we arrive on top of each other.

However, their new weapons apparently didn't help them much. A Basic Ion and Charge Laser II are capable of getting through our shields, but we mostly dodged their shots, and it wasn't long before PvtUrist disabled their weaponry and oxygen pumps. They never managed to fix either; unfortunately, their weapons aren't compatible with our ship, but we still ended up with ⚙️35 and some fuel.
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Post Post #386 (isolation #112) » Sat Mar 23, 2019 1:47 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 45

Delta radiation (n).
A form of radiation frequently seen coming from malfunctioning nanocircuitry; commonly one of the first signs that something is wrong with it. Delta radiation tends to build up in circuits and has a cascading effect, being both the cause of, and caused by, errors in assembly. As such, it's sometimes used as a weapon against machines and drones.
There's a large Slug ship here. They tell us that there's a lot of delta radiation coming off our infirmary. the worst checks, and nothing's wrong; they then offer to fix that, disabling the infirmary at range, and teleporting over to help keep it a bit more broken. This doesn't sound like a great offer, but given that they're firing at us, I guess they just wanted a distraction.

Enter sends a radio warning about two Slugs in the centre of the ship, sabotaging our new Drone Fabricator. the worst tries to separate them by manipulating the door controls, so that Varsoon can take them on one at a time.
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Post Post #387 (isolation #113) » Sat Mar 23, 2019 1:57 am

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Meanwhile, outside the ship, they mostly can't get through our shields. However, they have a very powerful, slowly-charging missile launcher, and as we have such difficulty getting through our shields, it gets off three shots over the cause of the battle. Luckily, we have a drone defending us, and it manages to destroy all three of the missiles they launch well before they reach us. Before long, their ship breaks apart.

We gather ⚙️39 and some fuel from the wreckage.
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Post Post #388 (isolation #114) » Sat Mar 23, 2019 2:13 am

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Jump 46

Open space (n)
. The Slug name for anything that isn't a nebula. Open space is rare in Slug-controlled areas, but very common elsewhere, so only the Slugs really need a name for it.
Well, we got through the nebula and out the other side; that's something of a relief. There's also a ship attacking us, but what else is new?

After they saw how well-armed we were – and their weapons had been disabled – they tried to jump away, but they were much too close to the beacon and their jump failed. PvtUrist held back on finishing them off, maybe hoping that they'd suffocate before they got to a safe distance, but eventually destroyed their ship rather than risking them jumping.

We gather ⚙️24, and some fuel and ammunition.
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Post Post #389 (isolation #115) » Sat Mar 23, 2019 2:18 am

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Jump 47

Bridge beacon (n)
. A beacon placed midway between two beacons that would otherwise be too far apart for most ships to take in one jump.
We're now mostly out of the Slug territory, potentially quite a relief. Whoever placed this beacon must have had the same attitude, wanting a route to get as far away as possible, as fast as possible. Luckily for us, this path is going in exactly the right direction. That said, this is a particularly boring area of space; we explore a bit while waiting for the jumpcycle to end and the next beacon to get ready to pull, but don't see anything worth noting.
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Post Post #391 (isolation #116) » Sat Mar 23, 2019 2:43 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 48, 49

Black Belt (n)
. An area protected against advanced development, normally to protect pre-FTL species who live there, although sometimes to protect unusual resources or a unique environment. Black belt restrictions are typically lifted once the inhabitants discover the hyperspatial drive, meaning that it's far from unknown for developers to sneak technology to newly discovered races in the hope that they profit from the resulting land grab.
Our star charts, it seems, are outdated; this area was off limits a few thousand jumpcycles ago, but there's been a lot of new development, and we have a much more direct route to the Long-Range Beacon. Unfortunately, that means that we'll have to take it, because otherwise the Rebels will overtake us before we get to the sector exit the slow way.

Being so close to Slug territory, this seems like a natural place for a huge shopping mall, and most of the planets in several solar systems have been converted to commercial destinations. We could probably buy anything we wanted if we spent enough time searching, but the Rebels surely know where we are, and we only have a jumpcycle or two left before they reach us. So the time's best spent shopping for things we actually need.

(I'll post information on what's can be immediately purchased near the current beacon in people's PTs. More shopping will be available at the beacon after it, but we won't know what specifically is available until we get there.)
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Post Post #416 (isolation #117) » Mon Mar 25, 2019 12:07 am

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Jump 50

Guided jump (n)
. A jump between a pair of cooperating beacons, that aim to land a ship at exactly the right spot. This is typically used to combine multiple constructions in the light-day range into, in effect, one large construction.
Although this is a very large commercial area, it's built up around the Long-Range Beacon; and if we're ever going to reach the Federation High Command, that's what we're going to have to do next. There's still time to do some shopping while waiting for its jumpcycle to charge, though. (The things we can easily find here are pretty similar to those at the previous beacon. I'll post any newly available equipment in people's PTs. Based on the route we've taken through this sector, this is the last chance to shop here, although it is of course possible that we'll find other places to shop later on.)

We will, of course, have to pick a route. This area doesn't
just
have shops; we find a Federation-run tourist information bureau that typically helps civilian ships find safe routes to nearby destinations, but they're willing to help us plot a route, too. They bring up a map of possible routes through, to help us.

Code: Select all

    ?-?-F
   / \ / \
  X   ?-?-C
   \ / / /
    H-F-?

X = we are here
C = Federation High Command
F = area is under the control of the Federation or its allies
H = area is not under Federation control
? = area is uninhabited, or no information available


The upper path marked on this map is much more widely used; this place was designed to capture the Slug tourist trade, and there's a lot of it along that line. The lower path is more of a coincidental connection to space that happens to be nearby; most of the traffic that way is Rebel warships looking for repairs or new weaponry, and it's rare to see civilians going that way. Apparently this base is making a large profit off its neutrality, catering to anyone who might want to make a purchase.
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Post Post #421 (isolation #118) » Mon Mar 25, 2019 6:48 am

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Jump 51

Homeworld (n)
. The area in which a species first developed. Sometimes used to refer to the entire sector containing that area. Because homeworlds were the centre of that species' evolution prior to the discovery of FTL travel, they tend to be highly developed and hold something of a ceremonial value.
The Slug goverment isn't all that friendly to the Federation, but they aren't outright hostile, either. The border guards make no attempt to stop us entering their territory; presumably they aren't being paid to worry about Federation ships.

The Long-Range Beacon has a slow jumpcycle, and it looks like we managed to catch the pull before the Rebels did. That's good; it'll give us some time to conceal our position before they start looking for us.
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Post Post #427 (isolation #119) » Mon Mar 25, 2019 7:18 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 52

Flock (n)
. A common name for a small group of combat ships. Used more commonly for pirates and mercenaries than official militaries.
There were a few Slug ships around in the distance when we arrived at the beacon; maybe they were trying to leave at the last moment before the jumpcycle, like everyone else does, or maybe their discussions had overrun, but they jump away just slightly after we arrive, meaning they'll be locked in time until the beacons are next ready. They were fitted for combat, but it didn't look like they were ready for it; their weapons were powered down, engines at minimum, and the like.

Oh well; there's nothing else around here, Maybe they were using it as a secluded location for some discussions, or the like, but we can't do much but wonder about what was happening.
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Post Post #430 (isolation #120) » Mon Mar 25, 2019 7:27 am

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Jump 53

Rigger (n)
. A type of manned Rebel combat ship that relies on drones for additional operational flexibility. They tend to be used to fill in in roles where the Rebels don't have enough of their regular combat ships, and thus can be seen doing anything from scouting to fighting on the front lines.
We've picked a fairly obvious route to the Federation command, so it shouldn't really be surprising that the Rebels sent someone out ahead, just in case. The enemy ship defended itself with missiles and boarding drones, together with some lasers; unfortunately, needing to deal with multiple threats at once, our Defence Drone couldn't shoot down everything, with both missiles and drones getting through. Eventually, though, our beams cut the enemy ship apart, and we pick up ⛯40, in addition to their fuel; we might be able to repurpose one of their drones, too.
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Post Post #432 (isolation #121) » Mon Mar 25, 2019 7:37 am

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Jump 54

Electronic warfare (n)
. Attempting to shut down an enemy ship via hacking into its systems, rather than directly.
There's a small Slug fighter facing us here. Their design of ship is widely mocked due to having no way to repair its oxygen pumps, so they've decided to level the playing field by hacking into ours; everyone hears odd noises from the venilation systems, and the ship's air is no longer being replenished.

They have a Fire Beam, together with a burst laser that's capable of piercing our shields, so this place may well be heavily on fire soon. Obviously we're going to try to kill them, but we probably need a plan for what we'll do to protect our ship in the meantime.
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Post Post #437 (isolation #122) » Tue Mar 26, 2019 10:19 am

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Apparently, PvtUrist isn't very fast at destroying enemy ships, even when we're acting under a time limit. Our first few shots miss, and although we manage to get lasers through and deal some early damage, before long there's no air in the ship and the battle is still in full swing. We don't have much choice: everyone runs to the Infirmary, and we make use of the medical Oxygen canisters stored there to have something to breathe. A single enemy shot hitting our life support system would almost certainly have lead to multiple deaths among the crew.

Luckily, though, it doesn't happen; they have only one crewmember capable of reaching their shields or weapons, and they decide to repair the EMP damage to their shields before they get their laser back on line, all the time harmlessly bouncing their Fire Beam off our shields. Our weapons are still busy firing according to their programming, and when we manage to pull off a beam shot cutting directly across their hull, things look a lot rosier (or maybe that's just the lack of atmosphere tinting our vision). Before long, the Artillery Beam connects, and eventually their ship is lying in pieces in space.

Thankfully, our oxygen pumps start working again: whatever they were using to shut them down must have been destroyed with their ship. After a few minutes, the ship repressurises, the crew are treated for suffocation, and we try to find the remains of their ship. Some of it must have drifted away while we were busy trying not to die, but we still find much of it, including both fuel, and ⛯31 worth of scrap.
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Post Post #438 (isolation #123) » Tue Mar 26, 2019 10:32 am

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Jump 55

Twingulling (b)
. A Slug term for attempting to pull the exact same scam on the same person twice. Normally considered a sign of someone who isn't paying enough attention, although some particularly notorious Slug tricksters do it intentionally, for the story they get when they pull it off. (One particularly notorious Slug scamster once scammed the same target with the same scam four times, believed to be a record.)
Apparently "your Infirmary is broken" is a particularly common scam among the Slugs; we weren't really fooled by it last time, and we're definitely not going to be fooled by it this time. Not being fooled by it, however, doesn't prevent the Slugs from disabling our Infirmary and trying to occupy our ship. As usual, Enter calls out directions for Varsoon to find the intruders; this time, Enter didn't have to use telepathy to find them, as they were standing directly behind him. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew are ready at their stations for the inevitable space combat.
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Post Post #441 (isolation #124) » Tue Mar 26, 2019 5:43 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 56

Last Chance Dodge (n)
. Dodging a shot by jumping into hyperspace, because you know it's going to hit and you know your ship won't survive it. Kind-of risky, but better than dying.
The fight doesn't go well at all; by the time our weapons finally manage to connect, the fight's been going on for a while. We got them low, but chaos reigned at the back of the ship; one of their volleys synced up, we failed to dodge it, and caused our shields to go down. Varsoon shouted warnings, as the next volley was almost certainly going to destroy the ship – we couldn't do anything but run.

Luckily, there was a repair station within jump range, so the choice of where to go next was obvious. Even more luckily, the Slugs in charge had some loyalty to the Federation, and decided to merely charge us normal prices rather than taking advantage of our situation to fleece us of everything we had.

(I'll post price lists in player's PTs.)

Sorry, I could probably have microed that a bit better; maybe I shouldn't play FTL while tired.
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Post Post #444 (isolation #125) » Wed Mar 27, 2019 5:08 am

Post by callforjudgement »

If you PM me actions I'll copy them into the PT for you.
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Post Post #445 (isolation #126) » Thu Mar 28, 2019 5:44 am

Post by callforjudgement »

It's possible I'll be V/LA for a few days (hopefully not too long), due to potential issues with Internet access. I'm letting you all know now so that if I suddenly disappear for a bit, you'll know what happened.

(Meanwhile, what are you planning to buy here?)
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Post Post #451 (isolation #127) » Fri Mar 29, 2019 2:40 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 57

Ion stacking (n)
. A strategy involving using ion weapons to repeatedly disrupt a system, locking it down and preventing it ever repairing.
At the next jump, we come across a fairly threatening sight: the enemy Slug ship has two ion weapons and a Halberd Beam. PvtUrist does his best to keep the enemy weapons systems down, but nonetheless, we have severe trouble keeping our shields up past the ionic disruption. Eventually, though, our beams take out the enemy ship, yielding us some fuel, some ammo, and ⛯36, but everyone saw first-hand what sort of damage our ship was taking in the meantime.
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Post Post #452 (isolation #128) » Fri Mar 29, 2019 2:48 am

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Jump 58

Chancer (n)
. A ship that aims to prey on other ships, particularly military ships, but is underequipped for the purpose. Chancers tend not to live very long, as they're inevitably wiped out by their victims.
Only two shield barriers? Only two, mismatched, laser shots to go with their beam weapon? Maybe the Slug hunting ship here thought they could take advantage of our damaged state, but if they were going to attack the Federation, they really needed better equipment with which to do so. Their shields don't stand up to our lasers, and their hull doesn't stand up to our beams. We loot ⛯34 from their remains.
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Post Post #453 (isolation #129) » Fri Mar 29, 2019 2:51 am

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Jump 59

Convoy (n)
. A set of ships, normally a number of small warships guarding a large valuable ship such as a transport ship or capital ship.
There's a Slug convoy using this beacon, but they don't seem interested in attacking or interacting with us; they immediately fire up their impulse engines and zoom off to some unknown location within the Nebula. We don't have the right equipment to be able to follow them (and besides, they'd probably blow up our ship if we tried), so we can't do much but watch and wait. I wonder what they were escorting?
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Post Post #454 (isolation #130) » Fri Mar 29, 2019 2:54 am

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Jump 60

Husk (n)
. An asteroid or other object that has no valuable materials left; typically a mining base which has nothing left to mine. These are common sights in more developed areas, as local materials tend to be mined out first, and are sometimes repurposed as developments.
It looks like the beacon here was placed to serve a mining base, but it's long-abandoned now; the asteroids they were mining have nothing left. Presumably this area was exhausted of its minerals years ago. The beacon would have been left behind because there was no reason to remove it, but all it's done here is to waste our time.
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Post Post #455 (isolation #131) » Fri Mar 29, 2019 3:13 am

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Jump 61

Squadron system (n)
. A system of attack in which several crew are teleported over to an enemy ship at once, and then recalled as soon as they get close to death, followed up with a separate squad of crew while the first squadron heals.
Although this is Slug territory, it's not only Slug ships we have to face. There's a Mantis ship here; it's unclear why they were here in the first place, but they decide that attacking the Federation is a good enough thing to be doing. They seem highly disciplined, as well, sending over squads of troops to sabotage our ship, then recalling them when it looks like they're in danger. Enter keeps people posted about their movements, and we pretty much have to use their own tactics against them, repeatedly cycling crew between whatever system they're breaking and the Infirmary. Even so, they manage to do some structural damage to our ship that's going to need specialised equipment to repair.

Meanwhile, a battle also rages in the space between the ships, with their lasers and beam against our EMP and artillery. Unlike the stalemate on board our ship, the battle outside shifts in our favour: apparently they were concentrating too heavily on repairing the EMP damage to their shields, as when their weapons went down, they never did manage to fix them. Eventually they give up boarding our ship in order to fix theirs, but by then it's too late: their shields ever-so-slowly went down to EMP damage, and eventually their life support systems went down too. We drive over to their ship, finding no air left on board it and thus no living crewmembers, and grab ⛯45 worth of usable equipment.

OK, I'm feeling a bit happier about my microinig abilities again.
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Post Post #456 (isolation #132) » Fri Mar 29, 2019 3:23 am

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Jump 62

Raid (n)
. An organised attack by a group of multiple pirates on a valuable target, typically at a pre-arranged time. Everyone involved stands to profit if the attack is a success, but raids often fail due to infighting as to how to split the rewards.
We arrive at the beacon to discover the middle of a fight: it must have been a long fight to last through the jumpcycle. There are two Slug ships in the distance attacking a pirate warship and a pirate transport ship; as we're in a nebula and the fight is some distance away, we can't really get a good view of how well they're armed. Before we can arrive on the scene, one of the Slug ships breaks apart.
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Post Post #457 (isolation #133) » Fri Mar 29, 2019 6:10 am

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Apparently some sort of negotiation was going on between our Slug and theirs, because we end up joining the battle: us against the warship, them against the transport ship. We make good progress in taking down the pirate's weapons and disabling their shields, as the Slugs take out the transport ship and start looting it. Then we realise they're trying to run away from the beacon with all the scrap! Surely that wasn't part of the deal.
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Post Post #460 (isolation #134) » Fri Mar 29, 2019 6:24 am

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It looks like the Slug ship was heavily damaged: no wonder they didn't want to fight the pirate warship. It looks like they don't want to fight us, either, and they leave without fully looting the area; they left half the goods in the pirate ship behind, and sent us a message saying they were planning to do that all along. We don't exactly believe them, but given that they just jumped away, we don't have much of an option but to take the scrap.

The pirate ship we were fighting took the opportunity to leave, too. It's unclear whether they're hiding in the nebula or whether they jumped out, but we're unable to find them. So all we end up with is the ⛯44 from the pirate transport.
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Post Post #461 (isolation #135) » Fri Mar 29, 2019 6:35 am

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Jump 63

Bodging (v)
. The art of creating a new device out of scrapped old devices. This is often used to keep a ship running or upgraded when there are no proper repair facilities available.
Well, we've reached the Long-Range Beacon. We're deep in a nebula, but at the edge of Slug space: the Slugs' territory extends to the lower path shown here, whereas the upper path leads outside it. We've seen enough dangers from the Slugs already: what sort of threat might be severe enough that they don't conquer a nebula so close to their homeworlds?

There's no information available on further sectors, but assuming nothing's changed since the last time we checked, the map of future sectors should look like this:

Code: Select all

    ?-F
  X< / >C
    ?-?

X = we are here
C = Federation High Command
F = area is under the control of the Federation or its allies
? = area is uninhabited, or no information available


Meanwhile, we have time to look over our ship. This Long-Range Beacon is surprisingly deserted for what should be a major connection within Slug territory: there are a few abandoned warehouses near here, and not much else. As much as we need them, we can't find any ship repair facilities here: there is some abandoned engineering equipment, but it's designed for fine work, soldering together circuits, repairing damaged motors, that sort of thing. Perhaps we could get some of the scrap equipment we looted back into working order, to save on future purchases?
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Post Post #469 (isolation #136) » Sun Mar 31, 2019 5:57 am

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Remember that before we can leave this beacon, we'll need to decide where to go next.
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Post Post #474 (isolation #137) » Mon Apr 01, 2019 12:10 pm

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Just a mod note: I screwed up the maths in at least one private topic, it has been edited to correct it.

I don't think the changed numbers would have had any significant impact on people's actions.
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Post Post #475 (isolation #138) » Mon Apr 01, 2019 12:21 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 64, 65

Causeway (n)
. A featureless stretch of space punctuated by beacons, used to allow quick passage past large areas of space in which there are no interesting objects.
We've had enough of the Slugs, and we head out of their territory, in the hope of finding safer passage to Federation-controlled areas. There's a Rebel ship there, waiting; possibly for us, possibly just waiting in general. It seems to have adaptability to a wide range of possible situations: its weapons feature a weak laser, a weak missile, and a weak beam drone, and it has a wide array of defences: anti-missile drones, anti-drone drones, and shields to block lasers and beams.

However, there's something to be said for specialisation. Even without our bodged-together shields upgrade and the reassuring blue barrier it placed around our ship, it couldn't get through our shields without help from its missiles, and we have a drone circling round us defending us from those. We shoot every one of its missiles out of the nebula, and out of ammo, it's a sitting duck.

At this point, we discover a new and unexpected defence: the thing can fly really quickly. It, perhaps stupidly, isn't trying to run, rather it's weaving around to try to prevent our EMP shots connecting. We're going to win this battle eventually, but it might take a while.
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Post Post #476 (isolation #139) » Mon Apr 01, 2019 1:16 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

I just spend over 90 minutes trying to wear down the enemy ship with our standard strategy. AFAICT, we'd need an amazingly good string of random numbers to pull off the crew kill; they had 4 crew and a level 2 medbay, and a tendency to send three people to the shield room and heal it up to full. As far as I can tell, following PvtUrist's instructions would eventually, several hours later, lead to the enemy crew being destroyed as a consequence of fire dealing the last point of damage to the medbay, one hull point at a time; I'm not sure if a crew kill is possible in a reasonable length of time with the (non-ammo-consuming) weapons we have, but if so it'd need an entirely different strategy. So eventually I just got fed up and shortcutted it with our beams; sorry about that. I took a savestate mid-battle; it might be interesting to try it again after the game finishes.

Hours later, the enemy ship finally explodes; it seems that the repeated fires and firefighting aboard it finally weakened the metal forming it to the extent that it couldn't cope with the air pressure inside. We pick up ⚙️45 and some fuel.
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Post Post #477 (isolation #140) » Mon Apr 01, 2019 1:27 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 66

Metabroken (n)
. The name for when an autoship's auto-repair circuitry for fixing broken systems is itself broken. A ship in this state tends to be doomed unless it can get to a friendly repair station quickly.
At the next beacon, a Rebel autoship is waiting; they must be scouting this sector for some reason. Its drones are really scary, and it takes all that our shields have to hold off the repeated pounding from multiple combat drones; they can't deal with the enemy laser as well.

I overrode our strategy just to be able to survive this battle and continue the run.

However, we manage to take out its repair systems, then its weapons, and its drone controllers, and its shields. It's not long after that that we can blow it up. It was quite a valuable haul; not only did we get fuel and ⚙️39, we also found a weapon that fits our ship.
Last edited by callforjudgement on Fri Jun 21, 2019 8:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Post #479 (isolation #141) » Mon Apr 01, 2019 1:47 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 67, 68, 69, 70

Timelocked (n)
. The state arising after a ship jumps into hyperspace without aiming near a beacon. With no beacon to pull the ship back, and no time flowing in hyperspace, the ship is effectively deleted from the timeline and ceases to exist. Occasionally timelocked ships are found, completely intact from thousands of years ago, after a beacon is constructed in a new area; as such, intentionally timelocking yourself is sometimes used by the crazy or hopeless in the hope that they'll one day be rescued, and that the state of the galaxy by then will be more receptive to them. As you have no idea how friendly the rescuers will be, though, it's a fool's strategy.
Our ship's been on the verge of falling apart for a huge distance now, and all we can do is try to find a repair station. All the evidence so far is that there's nothing here in this sector except for a few patrolling Rebels; it must have been uninhabited because there's nowhere to inhabit. We see a third Rebel ship on the way, but as it has a Hermes Missile, we have no hope to fight it; all we can do is try to get to a safe jumping distance from the beacon and hope that it doesn't spot us (and, fortunately, it doesn't; the nebula must have broken its sensors).

We aren't the only struggling ship in the area, though. As we're desperately jumping around the emptiness in the hope of finding somewhere to fix our ship, we come across a Rock warship with a problem of their own: the nebula has damaged their FTL circuitry, and they can't pick up the signals from beacons. They've been impulsing around for weeks, unable to jump for fear of timelocking themselves.

Despite their situation, they're entirely unwilling to negotiate with Enter, but PvtUrist helps reassure them that trustworthy people do exist (carefully leaving out any mention of whether or not Enter is one of them). As it happens, there's an Engi merchant station nearby; we can pick that information up on the beacon broadcasts even though they can't. So we give them directions and both jump there together. They pay us well for rescuing them, giving us a variety of equipment; most of it isn't usable by our ship, but there are merchants here, and they're willing to exchange it for ⚙️60 worth of goods and services.

(As usual, I'll post price lists in people's PTs.)
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Post Post #482 (isolation #142) » Wed Apr 03, 2019 2:40 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

PvtUrist has requested replacement.


Is there anyone reading this thread who wants to play? Ideally you'd have some knowledge of FTL, because the way the weapon system works (where PvtUrist is) takes too long to explain to someone who doesn't know it already.
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Post Post #483 (isolation #143) » Mon Apr 08, 2019 12:45 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Iconeum replaces PvtUrist.


Sorry about the delay, everyone: you can go back to your regular shopping now if you wish.
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Post Post #488 (isolation #144) » Mon Apr 08, 2019 2:15 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Let me know when you're ready to move on.
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Post Post #503 (isolation #145) » Wed Apr 10, 2019 2:12 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Just waiting for a decision on this, then we can move on.
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Post Post #504 (isolation #146) » Wed Apr 10, 2019 5:34 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

I apologise for the relative quietness in this thread. Things have been happening in PTs, but it's the nature of the game that sometimes everything happening is non-public.
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Post Post #508 (isolation #147) » Thu Apr 11, 2019 11:26 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Looking out the windows, we see a set of repair drones mend the structure of our ship.

Everyone seems to have finished shopping by now, so it's time to move on.
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Post Post #509 (isolation #148) » Thu Apr 11, 2019 11:36 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 71

Satellite fleet (n)
. The set of ships which are not really part of a power's military, but which have some sympathy towards them and a non-aggression agreement in place, both ways. Members of a satellite fleet will sometimes help their allied military on larger operations, or do some law enforcement on the side, for suitable pay.
We encounter a small ship here; it's much smaller than ours, and is marked as a Federation ally. They aren't really part of our military, but we're on good terms with them.

They're short on ammunition to keep their Pulse Bomb running. That's a type of ammunition we have, too, so we could strike a deal if necessary; they have plenty of fuel and are offering us 9 jumps' worth of fuel, but want 3 shots' worth of ammo in return. A good deal?

(Iconeum has control over the ammo supply, so can veto this. If he doesn't express an opinion, I'll let Enter as the captain accept or reject it. Anyone should feel free to contribute opinions as to whether we should accept it, though.)
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Post Post #518 (isolation #149) » Fri Apr 12, 2019 3:13 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

If there's no decision soon, I'll go with Enter's opinion and move on.
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Post Post #519 (isolation #150) » Sat Apr 13, 2019 8:27 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Sadly, we don't have ammo to spare. So we can't help them.
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Post Post #520 (isolation #151) » Sat Apr 13, 2019 8:36 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 72

Energy shield (n)
. A technology pioneered by the Zoltans; energy shields block almost any sort of incoming attack. However, they are disrupted easily and, unlike regular shields, are almost impossible to bring back up after disruption.
There's a pirate transport here, smuggling some sort of valuables or other; the nebula means we can't scan it to find out what, but we don't really care, we're obviously going to attack it anyway.

Both our ships have the same basic strategy – aim to laser down the enemy shields and hit with a beam through the gap – but they both struggle to hit often enough to actually get through all the shield layers at once. We both have trump cards, though. Their Energy Shield doesn't help them much: it's outside their regular shields, so our laser and beam quickly take care of it. Our Artillery Beam, on the other hand, goes right through their shields, and as soon as it takes out their shield generator they pretty much have no hope to survive.

It turns out that they had black-market weapons on board; none of them fit our ship, but we should be able to trade them, along with the scrap we gather from their broken ship, for ⛯49 worth of things that do.
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Post Post #521 (isolation #152) » Sat Apr 13, 2019 8:45 am

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Jump 73

Shamming (v)
. A scam is a trade which relies on the other person's ignorance or greed to give them something worthless in exchange for something valuable. A sham goes beyond that: you get them to give you something valuable, and then leave without fulfilling your side of the bargain.
There's allegedly a weapons trader here, but their offer doesn't sound too convincing (they're charging a lot of scrap for whatever it is they're selling, and don't want to tell us what it is). We're not nearly that naive, and they're pointing weapons at us, so we just attack. I didn't put this up to a vote because it's fairly obvious what the recommendation of the FTL veterans would be on this one.

We deploy a drone to shoot down their missiles, leaving them unable to hurt us; they try teleporting a crewmember over, but Enter keeps everyone updated on where he is, and Varsoon has no trouble dispatching him. Meanwhile, they seem unable to dodge our shots, and it doesn't take long for our beams to take them out.

We recover ⛯32 and some much-needed fuel and ammo. Oddly, they didn't seem to be carrying any weapons in their cargo bay. What sort of weapons trader was that?
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Post Post #522 (isolation #153) » Sat Apr 13, 2019 8:54 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 74

Cloaking field (n)
. Cloaking fields are protective devices preventing ships being seen: this makes it impossible to get weapon locks on them (in turn, meaning that weapons will normally miss when fired), and is obviously very useful for stealth purposes. The vast majority of cloaking devices cannot maintain a cloaking field for very long, however.
There's an automated Rebel scout here; we never find out why. Nonetheless, apparently it decided to attack us, rather than hiding in the nebula. It's very defensively-oriented, with a cloaking device and three shield barriers, but as its weapons can't pierce our shields, this fight is only ever going to go one way. More scrap (⛯34) and fuel is always nice.
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Post Post #523 (isolation #154) » Sat Apr 13, 2019 9:00 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 75

Nebula anxiety (n)
. A mental state often brought about by prolonged exposure to nebulas, similar to hallucinations caused by sensory deprivation. The inability to see or sense anything outside the ship leads to constant paranoia about what must presumably be out there, when frequently, there's nothing there at all.
Maybe there's something here, but if there is, you can't detect or locate it. For all we know, this area is completely empty and barren, with nothing to look at other than the swirls of the nebula. Even if it isn't, it may as well be; nothing happens all jumpcycle, so we get set to leave.
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Post Post #524 (isolation #155) » Sat Apr 13, 2019 9:07 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 76

Outrange post (n)
. The sort of settlement that pops up just outside the borders of a civilised area; these are often aiming to sell illicit goods (either because the goods themselves are banned, or simply because the merchant wants to avoid taxes). It's common for mercenaries to wait at these, especially those who can't get entry permits, looking to get hired onto a ship's crew and gain entry that way.
It's the Long-Range Beacon, and the border of Federation-controlled space; we haven't reached the High Command yet, but we've reached the borders of their central empire, which is large enough to span multiple sectors. Obviously, we'll be heading right for the centre, but perhaps we want to do some shopping first?

Some of the people here are looking to be hired onto a ship; perhaps they can't get into Federation space any other way. If we want extra crew, we could pay one of them to work aboard our ship:
- Human, experienced in piloting and shield operation (⛯35)
- Human, experienced in weaponry (⛯35)
- Slug, very experienced pilot (⛯45)

Of course, there's also a selection of other possible goods to be bought, as usual. I'll post details in people's PTs.
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Post Post #526 (isolation #156) » Sun Apr 14, 2019 12:24 pm

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Enter has requested replacement.
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Post Post #529 (isolation #157) » Sun Apr 14, 2019 5:33 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Gammagooey replaces Enter.
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Post Post #534 (isolation #158) » Mon Apr 15, 2019 1:27 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Is all the purchasing done? If so, I can move on into Sector 7.
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Post Post #536 (isolation #159) » Mon Apr 15, 2019 4:04 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

the worst purchased a set of screens that show information from our sensors and set them up all over the ship. As long as they're functional, anyone can check on the basic goings-on in our ship and the enemy ship (who's around, where they are, etc.), without having to be in the sensor control room, so I'll now be posting that information in the main thread.
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Post Post #542 (isolation #160) » Tue Apr 16, 2019 10:59 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 77

Border rights (n)
. The ability to enter the borders of a controlled region without being stopped or questioned. Normally reserved for diplomats and allied militaries.
As a Federation warship entering Federation space, we have very little trouble at the border; when the Long-Range Beacon pulls us back into regular space, we're just waved right through. There are no signs of any Rebels arriving with us, so if they're still chasing us, we must have managed to catch the pull before them.
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Post Post #544 (isolation #161) » Tue Apr 16, 2019 5:36 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 78

Side job (n)
Something unrelated to the primary task of a ship, that it does anyway. Typically used by underpaid military ships to help with the upkeep of their ship in peacetime. Unlike mercenaries, regular militaries tend to be more discerning in which side jobs they take; jobs directly counter to their superior's priorities tend to be frowned upon, but otherwise side jobs are seen as a reasonable way to keep maintenance costs down.
The distress beacon turns out to have been set by a server farm, apparently stranded in space; presumably it was part of some sort of building or spaceship at some point, but now it's come loose and is floating about on its own. It sends us a large set of backup files that it was holding safe, along with a set of coordinates; the implication is that it wants us to save the information and take it to its rightful owners, although being rather less advanced than a rebel AI, we can't really communicate with it.

The server farm itself isn't useful to us, but there's other assorted debris around, presumably created in the same incident, so we gather ⛯27 while waiting for the next jumpcycle.
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Post Post #546 (isolation #162) » Wed Apr 17, 2019 7:36 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 79

Plasma storm (n)
. A condition sometimes seen in nebulas that causes severe disruption to reactor cores. Although typically only temporary, the lack of power can cause severe trouble during combat.
As we complete the jump, the lights dim; our ship's struggling to generate enough power. A look out of the windows explains why, with clouds of plasma surrounding us and a nebula beyond that.

A Rebel ship arrives at the same time, apparently having similar amounts of trouble with its power generation; half its systems seem to be down or malfunctioning. They decide to attack us anyway.
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Post Post #548 (isolation #163) » Wed Apr 17, 2019 7:50 am

Post by callforjudgement »

This battle was easy enough that I didn't ask for specific instructions as any reasonable plan would work.

The enemy ship doesn't seem to have much in the way of offence. They can't even pierce two of our shield barriers with their laser, let alone three, so we turn one of them off to conserve power. Instead, they decide to attack us with boarding drones, repeatedly launching them through our hull and into our weapons rooms. We all have to take turns rushing over there to break down the enemy combatant, then back into the infirmary to recover from the damage from its blaster, and from asphyxiation as the rooms empty of oxygen due to the breaches.

The enemy ship also tries to bomb some of our systems, but most of the bombs miss, and the worst easily manages to fix any damage from the bombs that hit. We even have time to repair the hull breaches left behind by the boarding drones before the next one arrives.

Meanwhile, we had to leave the weapons firing automatically because Iconeum was distracted by being shot at, but they had no real problem even firing unattended; nothing the Rebels have can block our Artillery Beam, and although the boarding drones often tried and occasionally succeeded to cut through its power relays, our laser worked as a perfectly adequate backup. The Rebels really needed to send more power to their shields.

From the wreckage of their ship, we loot some fuel, ⛯50, and a drone that was partway through fabrication when the fabricator lost power; we might be able to reuse its components to build one of our own.
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Post Post #549 (isolation #164) » Wed Apr 17, 2019 7:14 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 80

Trade ship (n)
. A ship that rotates between underserved parts of the galaxy, allowing travellers in the area the chance to stock up before moving onto the next beacon. Typically a trade ship would stay in one place for 20 to 100 jumpcycles before moving onto a new location, or to refresh its stock.
Although we're coming towards the heart of the Federation capital, we're still very much in the outskirts; most people around here are planet-bound, so there aren't many places for warships to get equipment. There's a travelling merchant here, taking advantage of the potential gap in the market to try to offload some stock.

The merchant seems to have attracted a small crowd of curious people and jobseekers aiming to get employment on a ship. We could hire one, if we wanted:
- Human, skilled at engine operation, hireable for ⛯30
- Rock, skilled at engine operation, hireable for ⛯40
- Rock, skilled at combat, very skilled at repair, hireable for ⛯40

Alternatively, we could just buy something in terms of general ship equipment; there's plenty of that. As usual, I'll post price lists in people's PTs.
Last edited by callforjudgement on Fri Jun 21, 2019 8:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Post #551 (isolation #165) » Wed Apr 17, 2019 7:29 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Varsoon is overseeing the engines and ensuring that they work correctly (although it's Gammagooey at the engine
controls
, which are separate).
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Post Post #577 (isolation #166) » Sat Apr 20, 2019 7:02 am

Post by 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.
Last edited by callforjudgement on Fri Jun 21, 2019 8:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post Post #578 (isolation #167) » Sun Apr 21, 2019 11:09 am

Post by 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).
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Post Post #582 (isolation #168) » Mon Apr 22, 2019 12:51 pm

Post by 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.)
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Post Post #589 (isolation #169) » Tue Apr 23, 2019 7:49 am

Post by 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?
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Post Post #592 (isolation #170) » Tue Apr 23, 2019 8:22 am

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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.
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Post Post #594 (isolation #171) » Tue Apr 23, 2019 4:14 pm

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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.
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Post Post #596 (isolation #172) » Tue Apr 23, 2019 5:24 pm

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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.
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Post Post #600 (isolation #173) » Wed Apr 24, 2019 2:11 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 85


We arrive at a medium-sized Engi community at the co-ordinates given to us by the server farm. They seem to be working on some large project involving a new military ship, with the details being unclear; there's plenty of space in their shipyard to fit us too, though, and they're entirely willing to trade with us. When we send them the data we recovered, they seem quite excited, and give our ship some free repairs in return. We might be able to buy some equipment off them, too.

(I'll post price lists in people's PTs.)
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Post Post #605 (isolation #174) » Thu Apr 25, 2019 1:35 pm

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It hasn't quite been 24 hours, but things are stalling; do people want me to send out prods?
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Post Post #608 (isolation #175) » Thu Apr 25, 2019 2:11 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Iconeum has been prodded.
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Post Post #614 (isolation #176) » Fri Apr 26, 2019 1:15 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Anything more to do here? Or should we move on?
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Post Post #618 (isolation #177) » Sat Apr 27, 2019 11:06 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 86

Refuelling ship (n)
. A ship that carries large amount of fuel and similar basic supplies, typically acting as a long-distance transport for such goods or to resupply the front lines of a military.
The Rebel scans we found earlier said that there was a ship planning to go here, and it turns out to be one of the Rebels' own; it arrives at the same time as us and starts attacking a civilian refuelling ship. Unfortunately for it, its power is mostly concentrated in its cloaking device, leaving it with inadequate defences when its cloak goes down, and its weapons really don't synergise with each other. When we intervene, it deploys a missile launcher to try to get through our shields, and even though we have our Defence Drone, it manages to sneak a missile through its blind spot; fortunately, it's a Leto, and although it completely disables our ship's sensors, those things hardly hurt our hull and our sensors really weren't important for this battle. the worst goes and fixes them, and Iconeum is able to bring any of our missiles to bear, but we don't need anything powerful to win this fight; the Burst Laser can take the shields down for the Pike Beam, which ends up doing most of the work. It does manage to shoot down our Defence Drone, because it's outside our shields, but the fight is almost over by then; its laser and beam can't get through our shields and its hull can't stand up to all the beam damage we're doing.

It has some ammo left over that we'll be able to adapt for use on our ship; we might be able to adapt some of it to build drones of our own; and although it's small, we still get ⛯26 worth of scrap from its remains.

The refuelling ship is mildly damaged, but at least its contents are intact; none of the fuel it was carrying was spilt. They're happy to be saved, and we quickly come to a deal; we repair their ship using our hull repair drones, and they trade us supplies as thanks for saving and repairing them. We get some fuel and ammo, and a gift of ⛯50.
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Post Post #622 (isolation #178) » Sun Apr 28, 2019 7:02 pm

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Just waiting on a decision.
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Post Post #624 (isolation #179) » Sun Apr 28, 2019 7:23 pm

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Well, it's Gammagooey's decision I was waiting on, but it's fairly clear from his PT, and our conversation's being slowed by timezone issues atm. So I'm just going to jump.
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Post Post #625 (isolation #180) » Sun Apr 28, 2019 7:30 pm

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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?
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Post Post #630 (isolation #181) » Sun Apr 28, 2019 8:08 pm

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The ship layout's shown in #. So that's not a whole lot of rooms based on your criteria.
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Post Post #632 (isolation #182) » Sun Apr 28, 2019 8:41 pm

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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.
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Post Post #634 (isolation #183) » Sun Apr 28, 2019 8:44 pm

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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.
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Post Post #635 (isolation #184) » Sun Apr 28, 2019 8:49 pm

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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.
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Post Post #636 (isolation #185) » Sun Apr 28, 2019 8:55 pm

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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.
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Post Post #638 (isolation #186) » Sun Apr 28, 2019 8:58 pm

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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.
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Post Post #640 (isolation #187) » Sun Apr 28, 2019 9:14 pm

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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.)
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Post Post #642 (isolation #188) » Sun Apr 28, 2019 10:02 pm

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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…
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Post Post #651 (isolation #189) » Tue Apr 30, 2019 10:12 pm

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Let me know when you're ready to move on.
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Post Post #655 (isolation #190) » Wed May 01, 2019 6:35 am

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Jump 89

Internal border (n)
. The line dividing two sectors within a single territory. Internal borders are often created due to large amounts of space which are not interesting enough to be worth placing beacons in – a long-range beacon often makes more sense than planting a large number of smaller beacons. These borders often make for good administrative boundaries, as well as serving as an additional opportunity to catch infiltrations by enemy fleets, and so are sometimes created intentionally around sensitive areas.
In order to get deeper into the Federation's space, we're going to need to use a Long-Range Beacon. This is set up as a military checkpoint, but is currently spending much of its time refueling ships, both civilian and military, leaving the area we're aiming for. They give us a free refuel as well, in addition to a "good luck", but they're fairly busy so we don't have much of a chance to ask why. We look at some of their scans while waiting for the long-range jumpcycle, though, and a possible reason immediately comes to mind: a large contingent of the Rebel fleet has apparently breached the Federation borders and is right behind us. They're going to get here with the next jump, so we'd better make sure we catch the next beacon pull and stay a step ahead.
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Post Post #658 (isolation #191) » Wed May 01, 2019 7:02 am

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Jump 90


It's about time to stop reading the dictionary, and start rewriting it. We aren't at the Federation High Command yet, but we
have
reached what seems to be the main contingent of the Federation military; time to tell them what our dead friends discovered, and then figure out what we'll do about it. They send out some repair drones while we're waiting, so at least our ship is going to be in shape for whatever we're going to need to do.




A History of the Rebellion


The Federation had never been entirely peaceful. Although large sections of its space were often capable of living in harmony for a long time, there were always skirmishes with aliens outside (and occasionally inside) the Federation, mysterious disappearances to look at, and the omnipresent pirates. The Federation-Mantis war was one of the worse flare-ups in a while, making it clear that new defensive technology would be helpful, and simultaneously leaving a shortage of trained soldiers in both the Federation army, and potentially recruitable mercenaries from the Mantis side. Some extra source of combat intelligence was needed, so the Federation launched a program of artificial intelligence development, looking for the ability to make a ship that could scout, defend itself, and even attack autonomously.

Unfortunately, they learned the hard way that you should never create anything smarter than yourself. Although many of the more primitive autoships worked just fine, one of the more advanced ships turned out to be both somewhat megalomaniac, and a psychological genius – soon the scientists were working for it, rather than the other way round. However, having learned only from a team of human scientists, it quickly discovered that it didn't know how to manipulate the more alien species of the galaxy, and the alarm was raised. In order to survive, it took control of the other autoships – and the knowledge of how to create more – and destroyed the space dock where it was developed, along with all the detailed knowledge of its existence. Only the scientists under its control, and a few rumours, escaped.

After a few primitive attempts to take over the galaxy, it learned that it's hard to manipulate people into doing something self-destructive, especially when they've been warned about the possibility of a rogue AI in advance. So instead, it had to focus on people who might already be upset with the status quo, preying on the distrust that some humans had for other races. In order to achieve its goals, it needed to wipe out anyone who wasn't human, and anyone who was human but was uncomfortable with the idea of wiping out anyone who wasn't human, and although it failed in many places, it got enough of a foothold to start the Rebellion.

That ship's still out there somewhere. It's bound to have been massively upgraded by now, possibly the most dangerous ship ever. But it's the only thing keeping the Rebellion going. The Rebellion isn't full of people with a unified goal, or anything like that; it's just filled with people who are easily manipulated, and the current end goal they're being manipulated towards is ridiculous. What's the point of having power if you don't have any goals to do anything with it? As far as we know, the Flagship just wants to win; it doesn't have any ideas for what the galaxy should look like, other than being fully under its control, and it doesn't have any ideals to aim for or any higher end in sight; for all we know, once it wins, it'll have reached the end of its program and just shut down.

We can stop the war, and save so many lives. We just have to destroy the Flagship.




Military plans are needed for that, and loads of them are available here. One large Rebel fleet is arriving from behind us us, and a second is in the general region already, but the Flagship is elsewhere, attacking the Federation capital from the other side. Hyperspatial communication has already gone down; that's one of the first things any army will jam in wartime, as it can give such an advantage to an enemy fleet's logistics. So a messenger ship is going to be needed if we're going to save the Federation. Huh, I guess we're here, aren't we? Looks like an obvious plan there.
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Post Post #659 (isolation #192) » Wed May 01, 2019 11:57 pm

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Jump 91


We stumble across what seems to be a war of scout ships; a number of Rebel scouts and almost as many Federation scouts have arrived at the beacon along with us. They're moving in packs for safety, given the high tension in this area; presumably the main bodies of the fleets are going to get here soon.

Our arrival evens the numbers, and we square off against one of the scariest-looking autoships we've seen. This thing is bristling with lasers, ionisers, and beams; two two-shot lasers (one more powerful than the other), a siege ionizer which causes very severe shield disruption, and two small beams (one on the ship directly that deals damage, one on a drone that sets things on fire). Its four shield barriers aren't going to be easy to get through either, and it has a couple of drones protecting it, one set to repair damage to the inside of the ship, one set to shoot down missiles and hacking drones attacking the outside.

There's no point in deploying drones of our own; our hacking drone won't be able to reach it, and our defence drone can't target anything the enemy has. So all we can do is try the best with our weapons. Unfortunately, its weapons have no real issue getting through our defences; fortunately, at least they don't do much damage to our ship's structure. It does plenty of damage to the ship's interior, though, breaking and setting fire to the oxygen pumps and dealing miscellaneous damage to many other parts of the ship. The oxygen pumps are pretty critical, so both the worst and Elizabeth go to fight the fire there; the artillery beam has become a little misaligned and thus Iconeum goes to try to get that back in order (it's still firing, but more slowly); Gammagooey is still busy trying to dodge enemy shots, so that leaves Varsoon to, very slowly, attempt to fix the damage to our engines.

Our weaponry is still mostly working, though. One Pulse Bomb to the enemy shield generators takes out one shield layer; a second takes out the drone trying to repair it; and a third drops the enemy to two shield layers. That's low enough that the rest of our weapons have a good chance of connecting, and our burst laser drops the rest of the shields for our Pike Beam to connect. We land a couple of Artillery Beam shots as well, and the enemy scout is now badly reeling from heavy damage to most of its systems, trying to survive with just one shield layer, a broken weapon, and a lack of communication between its autopilot and the rest of the ship.

Most of its weapons are still up, but that's OK; it's having difficulty coordinating its own shots, and at one point, the worst manages to bring a shield layer up from one laser volley just in time to block the other. The only real threat comes from its Siege Ion; Gammagooey dodges one of its shots, but the next knocks us down to one shield layer, and it's going to take 15 seconds for the worst to reboot the shields. In that time, it manages to land a couple more shots on us (although the Fire Drone hits an empty room near an airlock, letting Elizabeth simply dump the fire out to space). However, with only minimal shielding on the enemy ship, we can do serious damage with the Burst Laser, and take out the Siege Ion, the enemy's largest threat. The battle's now pretty much won.

The decisive volley's happened already, but the final volley is the next one. All our weapons fully connect, and with the Burst Laser dropping the shields, there's nothing the enemy can do about two beams cutting through it at once.

Turns out that the rest of the Federation scouts have also won the battle, taking only minimal losses; I guess our scouts are better-equipped than theirs are. We might be in the middle of a war, but we have a beacon pull to wait for, so we make good use of the remaining time by grabbing ⛯64 worth of scrap, and a partially fabricated drone, from the wreckage of their ship.

We also get good intelligence from talking to the scout ships while we're there; after all, giving military ships information is their job. We discover that a large contingent of Rebels is aiming for the route we were planning to use. That's fine, we have an alternative route the same length, via a Federation military base, so we may as well use that one.
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Post Post #660 (isolation #193) » Thu May 02, 2019 12:11 am

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Jump 92


At one point, this was a civilian shipyard. Not any more, though; the Engi running it recognise that the Federation is fighting for its survival, and are giving out free repairs and equipment to Federation military ships.

Our ship is fully repaired before we even have to ask, and they give us what supplies are available: ⛯38, and some ammunition and drone parts.

They haven't been able to receive shipments of new ship equipment for a while, but they're rather technologically minded and willing to attempt to build some out of our scrap – we've looted plenty of broken systems from enemy ships, so maybe we can repair them and use them on our ship. Of course, if we build things out of our scrap, we won't be able to spend it to buy things, but we probably won't have a chance to spend it anyway.

Unfortunately, a large group of Rebels is heading this way; it seems that they're moving perpendicular to our route, first going across the beacon we were planning to use, and then coming here, our second choice. So we'll have to be quick; we have all jumpcycle to build things, as usual, but won't be able to come back here after we leave.

(As usual, I'll post price lists in people's PTs. This isn't an actual store, so the selection will be rather limited compared to usual.)
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Post Post #672 (isolation #194) » Fri May 03, 2019 10:17 pm

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Just bumping the thread; there hasn't been activity for a while, so we either need to buy things or to move on.
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Post Post #675 (isolation #195) » Sat May 04, 2019 9:51 am

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Any more shopping? Or shall I move on?
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Post Post #680 (isolation #196) » Sun May 05, 2019 12:34 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Iconeum has been prodded.
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Post Post #683 (isolation #197) » Sun May 05, 2019 10:21 am

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Time to move on?
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Post Post #686 (isolation #198) » Sun May 05, 2019 12:08 pm

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Jump 93


We're avoiding the thickest part of the Rebel fleet, but even the thinner parts have ships pretty much everywhere at the moment. We're right in the heart of Federation space, but there's a Rebel warship here, and a pretty scary one: four shield barriers, defence, anti-drone and beam drones, a huge flak gun, a chain laser that our shields will have trouble keeping up with once it's warmed up, and some sort of bomb launcher.

Our first decision is a fairly simple one: fight or run? We don't have to be fighting this monster, after all, and we're unlikely to get any more chances to repair now that the Rebels are at the base we just left.

If we do fight it, we're unlikely to be able to successfully deploy our hacking drone with two enemy drones out there defending against it, so we'll have to rely on our weapons. Iconeum, any suggestions for that, or should I attempt to execute the usual plan?
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Post Post #690 (isolation #199) » Sun May 05, 2019 10:44 pm

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We launch one Pulse Bomb with the proper timing in order to disrupt the enemy weapons fire, and leave the Artillery Beam on in the hope it breaks something important. Apart from that, though, we're entirely focused on getting away from here as fast as possible, trying to get within safe jumping distance of the beacon.

The enemy only manages to get off one volley against us. It gets through the shields – with that many shots, it would be hard for it not to – but nothing important is hit, and all we take is a small amount of damage. Then we're at sufficient range, so we're out of here.
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