The Butterfly Effect

[RyuKazuha]

Profitsssssssssssssssssss.

Back to writing is a good idea. *goes for the next Entry*

[e1team]

I'm not sure I understood the 'Band of Brothers' thing

[Nixy23]

It's the best (mini-)series ever made, about the second world war. You should watch it

[e1team]

Oh, I see.

[xcal13]

what channel

[Olterin]

Dara began digging through the data on Frigate-class ships as soon as she got off-duty. Each race, it seems, had one missile frigate and at least one standard frigate.

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...Argon M7: Cerberus. Shields: 3GJ. Wea-

Dara skipped ahead. Apparently, Argon ships wouldn't be of any good for the purposes of her new-found Commander.

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...Teladi M7: Shrike. Shields: 4GJ. ... Pulling up ship schematics...

Gosh, that looks horrible!

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...Boron M7: Thresher. Shie-

Dara wasn't even considering Boron ships out of principle.

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...Split M7: Panther, Tiger. Shields: 4GJ. Panther: 32 fighter bays-

All nice and dandy, but without those Incendiary Bomb Launchers, those ships are worthless. We don't have enough pilots to fully crew the Panther's fighters, let alone the money to get the fighters in the first place!

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...Paranid M7: Deimos. Shields: 6GJ. ... Pulling up ship schematics...

The Deimos looked like a solid design with no major flaws but one - Dara didn't quite like the looks of it. Again.

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...Terran M7, USC: Yokohama. Shi-

Dara knew the Yokohama specifications all too well. The ship was suited for a defensive role, yes. It was good as a patrol ship, yes. It could hold out until reinforcements arrive, yes. It could not, however, deal with major threats on it's own.

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...Terran M7, ATF: Aegir. Shields: 5GJ..

ATF ships were out of the question. The ATF would never give a stranger one of their capital-class ships - even if this stranger was a Terran Commander from the future.

We're running out of options here... computer, are there any other frigate designs stored in the database?

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...Paranid M7, Agamemnon. Prototype. Shields: 6GJ. No hangar bay. ... Pulling up ship schematics...

It was love at first sight. The smooth lines, the sleek profile, the turret arrangement... turret arrangement? Dara checked again.

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Main battery: 8 fighter- or corvette-class bays
Front turret: 4 IBL, Flak, fighter- or corvette-class bays
Left/right turret: 4 IBL, Flak, fighter- or corvette-class bays
Rear turret: 2 fighter- or corvette-class bays

Hmm, there are two rather big blindspots directly above and below the ship... Still, it does have the stopping power we need. Too bad it's just a prototype - probably means we won't find any for sale. And I'm not too sure the Commander will like the idea of having to board our future flagship.

She went to sleep, with a firm resolve to present a strong case for boarding an Agamemnon and presenting the Teladi Shrike as an alternative flagship because of it's Gauss Cannon compatibility.

[xcal13]

i got the cerberus but only too late i found the deimos

[e1team]

What about Carrak?

[Nixy23]

What about Carrak?

Pirate ship. Hard to find even harder to board

[e1team]

I just like the design.

[Nixy23]

It does look very sexy, aye.
I'll keep an eye out for one ^^

[Olterin]

There's a reason I didn't include the Carrack in the review up there. It's way too undershielded. Like, imagine an M3+ that goes as fast as your average M3+ (150 m/s at most) but has at most 75mj shields. It's what a Pirate Centaur is to a normal Centaur (which is quite badly shielded already). It's just too easy to die when piloting a Carrack. And if you're up for boarding, then you may as well get the Aggy, which is better in just about every way I can think of (barring maybe blindspots).

Did I mention that the main battery of the Carrack can only mount 6 guns? In short, it's a deathtrap, though a good-looking one.

[e1team]

If it's to die then it's to die in a sexy ship!

[Nixy23]

At least we will go down stylish!

Anyhoos, regarding the Agamemnon. Lovely ship, it's just soooo wide, and no docking bays. Will be a hell to dock anywhere. Shrike does have 8 slots, which is pretty much 'win' however the Agamemnon is a great warship.
I do have another option to get an Agamemnon, I've sent you a PM Olterin ^^

Regardless,
I have been busy polishing the MS Word document the story is in. First 11 chapters are finished and are looking good ^^. I however cannot do any more of that work tonight! It's very tedious so I'll get back to writing up whatever I was busy with

[Nixy23]

Complex building - 22

Captain’s log;
Earth Stardate 2938 - 7th October
USC Narada

---
The second project of this week was getting along quite well. Seeing the natural stocks of Nividium in US19,10 we wouldn’t have to worry about transport. This would prevent a lot of unfortunate shipping accidents in the Maelstrom and save a lot of credits right from the start.

Installing the needed equipment wasn’t nearly as hard as expected. Even though the technology was about a six centuries behind a lot of it could easily be reconfigured to do the job. This caused the technicians to finish their jobs about a day earlier than expected. The only part that caused more delays were the shields. As expected they were way to powerful and it was hard to divide them into very many small containment fields. In the end Saxton succeeded, but it took him a good four hours longer than expected.

After everything was installed a day of testing was ahead of us. May it speak for itself that we cannot afford any accidents or failures of containment fields when we are refining Nividium. Even a reaction between a milligram of Nividium reacting with it’s counterpart would blow up the station. The tests would consist of simulations of the computer systems and the actual testing of the equipment, aside of the chain not being ‘fed’ with Nividium.

While the equipment was being tested I could finally look forward to a good night rest again. It had been a while since I could sleep in my quarters aboard the ‘Narada’ again. Since we still didn’t find the time to adjust the quarters aboard the ‘Independence’ we still didn’t have any proper beds in there. Once we start seeing some profits from our endeavours we will see to the refitting of the corvette and any other ship we possibly pick up in the mean time.

Regarding the ‘Independence’. She was, as ordered, mapping the immediate surroundings of Midnight Star which included scanning the asteroids nearby. When I was about to hit the hay I received the full rapport of the sector Midnight Star telling me there was a particularly rich asteroid in the sector. The scanners estimated a yield of 103 units of Ore. If we could scrape together enough money to purchase a mine we would solve the need to go out of the system to produce the shields. That would considerably speed up the process and would be a significant cut in the upkeep costs of the shield factory.

I relayed a message back to Cpt. Gibson informing him of using the funds that were made available by the selling of the shields and Wheat to have the NNMC purchase us a large mine for that asteroid. Their refunds would have to wait. This opportunity was worth it without doubt.

8th October
---
The night was quiet for once. When I woke up I had received a message from the NNMC spokesman telling me that our mine was delivered and running. Mines only had to be supplied with E.Cells to be able to deliver us the needed ore. Gibson on the other hand had already reported that the mine was producing way too much ore for the single shield factory. The random traders were purchasing a moderate amount of ore however the stocks were still filling up too fast. The only option I could think of was purchasing another trader and give it orders to sell the ore to stations in need. It seemed like a good option, especially after seeing that the shield facility made even more credits with them getting ‘free’ supplies of ore. In fact, with the money we had we could already repay the NNMC for those ‘Vulture’ freighters they had given us. We didn’t just pay for the rent, we actually purchased both of them, alongside two others that were to serve the ore mine. If we kept this up for another day, we’d be able to afford to repay both the NNMC and purchase two more shield factories.

As expected, the three stations we had up and running were bringing in more than enough credits to repay the NNMC for their troubles, including a good tip. In return we were assured that they would continue to purchase stations for us in their name, so we’d have a little privacy and had access to all the stations we’d need. This had it’s advantages for sure. The only downside was the 10% free we’d have to pay those greedy Teladi to do the transactions for us. Not a really big issue but an extra money sink nevertheless.
9th October
---
During the night we had the NNMC ship in two more shield module factories. They were placed in between our current shield factory and the mine we had set up. The Teladi were kind enough to provide us with some basic information regarding complex constructing, which we were attempting right now. They key was to set up tubes between the factories through which goods can be transported to other stations in the chain. This would cut out the need for freighters to transport goods between two stations that are close together, such as transporting the ore to the shield factory and sharing the E.Cells that were delivered to either station. Now with three shield factories the advantage would be even bigger, since we’d save on having to purchase and use another six extra ships to transport ore, energy and food.

The only downside was that the tubes would make things look really, really ugly. It was always hard to connect them properly and they’d cost a good half a million credits each. Nothing we couldn’t handle though, financially. If it was going to prove lucrative in the end, why not? We’d at least know for sure that all the stations would be supplied with food, energy and ore, so the factories could all run at the same time. This meant less moments where the factories would be temporary without supplies and would be unable to produce goods, which in the end would prove to increase our earnings. Yes, I do think that this will be interesting to say the least.

Setting up those tubes was indeed a bit nasty. They are sticking out of the stations like huge antennas, all the way to the next station where they would disappear again. Ugly as predicted, but also as effective as predicted. Within two hours each of the three factories were producing at 140% of the capacity our first factory had. The shared resources were really helping out. Not to mention that the two extra production facilities were still not enough to use the full supply of ore that kept coming from the mines. This meant that one of the newly purchased freighters would be assigned to sell the excess units of ore in a three sector radius.

Meanwhile the Wheat factory was also producing more wheat than three L sized factories needed. I’d often see that the trader went all the way to Black Hole Sun to get rid of the stuff. This on it’s own was very dangerous because of Xenon activity in that specific sector. I was therefore forced to restrict the trader to only trade within a two sector radius. Maybe it was a good idea to invest in some factory that would require the wheat as a resource as well. Perhaps we could even look into the ‘Space Fuel’ business to get rid of the excess wheat. For now it would involve some nasty political problems and a lot of effort to get the papers for such a factory signed, so that would have to wait for now. At least the credits were slowly coming in, which meant we had just opened up a lot of options regarding future purchases.

[TTD]

Data - Burst
Message for Lysander Ryker
Sender Dermot O'Brien ,UTI
Currently stationed at Ore Belt

You may not have heard of us before ,but we have heard rumors of your arrival near Grand Exchange.
You have been dealing with the NNMC with whom we have also had to comply with.
They have informed us that they are currently supplying you a number of stations,but are worried the shear size of the resulting complex may compromise mutual interests,and so have asked us if we were willing to share some of our technology with you,as we have started to share with corporations.
If you are interested ,we have young enthusiastic graduate,Terry Conard,who is fully conversant with our "New-Tech Complexes".
Our employer,Norman Fiesty has given him leave to seek new opportunities and will make Terry available to you ,if and when required.

In Good Faith,
Dermot O'Brein
UTI

[Nixy23]

Transmission
To Terry Conard

Sent by Lysander Ryker
Nividium Research Centre - Unknown Location



Dear Terry,
I have recently received a request from a Dermont O'Brien to contact you regarding certain information about 'New-Tech Complexes'. It would seem that my stations have gotten a bit of attention due to those silly pipes running in between them.

Regardless of things I'm very interested in hearing what information you might have to share with us.

Kind regards,
Lysander Ryker



_______
Well, I've been playing the game for a while now. Not much to rapport. I've expanded my trading empire a bit. There's 6 shield factories that are being fed with resources in the same sector. The shields are being purchased by NPC traders for 1 credit below average.

Total credits as it stands: 76.974.461

Assets:
6x Argon 1MJ shield factory
1x Argon L Ore Mine
1x Wheat Farm L

2x Vulture to buy E.Cells and sell the Wheat from/for the Wheat Farm.
1x Vulture that buys E.Cells for the shield production complex
1x Vulture that buys Meatstake Cahoona's for the shield complex
1x Vulture that sells excess Ore (because I'm still producing too much ore)

Then there's the 'other' ships
Vidar - USC Independence
1x Nova Raider (bought second hand for 381.976 credits, beat that! )
2x Discoverer
5x Rapier
1x Cutlass
2x Scabbard


Really wondering what to do with the money. Invest in more (possibly different) factories. Maybe go and buy that Shrike?

Questions...questions..

[TTD]

Data Burst

To
Lysander Ryker
Nividium Research Centre

Have just received your transmission . We seem to have slight decoding problems. Data Burst security logarithms are some what out of align.
However,we cracked the code and can now decode.

I have been informed that my employer wishes me to align with you and the NNMC. One of my spare time researches has been the connection between Nividium and point-to-point jumps of both Kha'ak and Xenon.
I would welcome the use of any research facilities,if you wish me to assist you there too.
My work here is complete.I am just filling time.
So when you are ready,I will gladly meet up with you to discuss our respective researches.
I am sure you will be impressed with the "New-Tech" complexes .

Yours in anticipation,

Terry Conard
UTI r/d Dept
Ore Belt

[e1team]

"You sure we can trust him, sir?"
"He's unpredictable, always been. But once you have him on your side, he's as loyal as can be... Until you cross his path. That's what makes him the best candidate for an insider. We have offered him his life back. If he accepts, we'll get a powerful ally inside the serpents' den. If not..."
"He could have warned them, after receiving the message, of such attempts will be made."
"Of course. But what can they do about it? As far as we know they have purchase a vast number of stations through the PTNI dealers. These stations need large crews to operate. One of them could be an insider as well. They know it without Ryuk telling them. We should see what comes out of this meeting. Then we'll know what's our next step..."

[Nixy23]

I need some help here now ^^

Bank account: 167 million

What should I spend it on? I don't want to get an M2, would ruin the fun way too quick I guess

I can outfit two or three M7's with that money and still have enough to buy more factories. Not sure though how I want to proceed with this all.

I could go for a Panther filled with 32 fighters. I'd probably have enough cash for that too ^^

Make some suggestions, please