NUKLEAR-SLUG wrote:Halfway across Ore Belt the potential foolhardiness of this exercise dawns on me given that there is potentially still a Heavy Centaur looking for me, but on the bright side my 02 levels are holding out nicely so at least I'm in no immediate danger of suffocation.
We all should restart as boring boron with his rules. Its quite fun
Took me 5 attempts before I started to "think" and stop attacking any Split/Paranid m3 i saw in an attempt to capture, all attempts ending with me getting BBQ'd by the PBG.
Al wrote:ROFL Thats certainly one way of doing it. In X3:R I think you had 2 hours worth of air in the suit so hopefully you can meet up with your other ships in that time
Also, one could dock your SS at a station and top off your air supply.
NUKLEAR-SLUG wrote:Halfway across Ore Belt the potential foolhardiness of this exercise dawns on me given that there is potentially still a Heavy Centaur looking for me, but on the bright side my 02 levels are holding out nicely so at least I'm in no immediate danger of suffocation.
You are using your strafe drive on the suit right? I think it goes roughly 6-8 times the speed of your normal thrusters .
Crossing Ore Belt doesn't take too long using strafe and judging from the distance counter ticking down it looks like I'm pulling about 100m/s which is pretty good going in a spacesuit. Safely hooking up with my SF on the west side of Ore Belt I head back the way I came to CBSE to pick up my jumpdrive, On the way there I pick up a couple more recoveries, one a Caiman Miner down in CBSW for an hour and a half and one for an Octopus over in Red Light with a 3 hour timer which is perfect for what I need. I skip down to CBSW west first to get the Miner, it's a bit busted up and slow and I'm not inclined to spend an hour repairing it so I decide to send it to the trading station first for some engine tunings. Doesn't matter if I spend 10k or so since it's a 48k mission so I'll still come out on top either way.
Once that one is on the move I jump up to Red Light north gate and immediately spot the Octopus off in the west corner so that was good fortune. A quick trek over and repair and I'm up and running just need some suitable weapons and shields and I'm back in business. I transfer over to the Octopus and head for the trading station to sort engines and rudder while I send my SF off to get some IRE's and a couple 1mj shields then head up to Argon Prime via Ringo Moon to meet up with it by the west gate a quick transfer of equipment and I'm all set. I let my SF go off and do some more e-cell trading and plot a course to Atreus Clouds. I've got two and a bit hours and I aim to misbehave.
Scooting across Argon Prime towards the east gate thru The Wall I'm just passing the centre of the sector when there's flashes around me (again), the gravidar blossoms red (again) and the proximity warning kicks off (again). Who's trying to kill me now? Everything is quiet for a second or so and then there's the sound of kyons. Not the little higher pitched small ones either but the big capital-ship rending gamma variety. Looks like another Khaak task force having a go at Argon Prime and I'm in the middle of it. Great! At least I assume they're after Argon Prime, tho the amount of trouble I've had with Khaak so far I'm starting to think they've got something against me personally.
Fortunately Argon one is in the vicinity and the Khaak seem more interested in that than the little Octopus running away crying so I manage to put enough distance between me and the nearest KM2 for safety then park up for a moment to see what's what. Two of the KM2 have engaged the Argon One, the third has wandered off with a second cluster and is busily shooting up the station to the south. By this time the clusters have all broken and the space around Argon One is filled with little purple triangles kyoning the bejeezus out of it while Argon One tries to swat them with what I guess is a flak cannon.
Now Argon One always used to have Invinci-armour(tm), does that still hold true? It's going to be an unfortunate day for the Argon home system if it isn't because there's currently no other capital ships in the system. With the amount of abuse it's taking it's not long before the shields go down and after a few percent of hull gets ripped off no further damage gets taken, Yep, still invulnerable. You know you'ld think that having an indestructible capital ship at his disposal Mr Danna could have come up with a better strategic move than park it in homespace orbit and chase the odd pirate. This is the guy that's going to win the war? Pfft..
Oddly enough the situation seems to be a bit of a stalemate. The KM2's can't destroy Argon One but it appears the Argon One isn't packing anywhere near the firepower it used to as it's barely denting the Khaak shields. This looks like it'll be a long fight tho I'ld probably give it to the Khaak on points as KM2 No.3 is busy vaporising the south stations while his two buddies run interference. Anyways, time is ticking so I decide to leave them to 'negotiate' and get moving.
A quick sprint thru The Wall and The Hole and I'm back in the familiar territory of Atreus Clouds. To be honest it's always familiar in Atreus, no matter which way you look it's always pea-soup. My goal is to capture an M4 or possibly an M3 if the RNG gods are feeling benevolent (fat chance!) so the danger involved is significantly greater than from a few fighter drones from a TS so I need to be very careful I choose the right target. Ideally I want a lightly shielded victim with no turret and with no tracking missiles on board. I don't want to have to be dealing with a lock-on and lose my position on his six. High-tech and Weapons dealers are almost invariably well armed and shielded or have escorts whereas the basic freighter types go solo and are often undershielded with minimal weaponry.
I'm confident patience will be rewarded (preferably within two hours) so meantime I settle down next to the gate, in my Octopus, with an uncomfortable sense of deja vu, and start eyeing up likely candidates.
Total Assets:
1x Octopus
2x 1 Mj shield
4x IRE
1x Maxed Caiman SF 'Tax Deductible'
1x Caiman SF (85%)
300,000cr
I suspect that, given the 2 hour time limit before some other fish start to come looking for him, he'll take whatever comes along first and then use that to get himself something better once he's given the Octopus back...
I think if he survives this he'll be stuck in an M3 for a long time. Is it even possible to get an M6 without buying it? After that he can just board anything, but how to cap an M6?
He's not allowed to _buy_ ships, but what about picking up ships he finds?
Somewhere out in the dark reaches of space there are some reasonable "keepers" - a Mako Raider or an Advanced Perseus for instance - along with god knows how many more, I must have found about twenty ships just floating abandoned in space.
I think Egosoft must have changed their minds about how the Eclipse was going to be kitted out somewhere during development of TC though as the Eclipse you can buy is somewhat better than the one you can find - it's better than the "Advanced Eclipse" (you can find) as well... but any port in a storm as Mr McSquid can't buy ships.
So I'm initially just sat there using the freight scanner to run passive scans of the weapon loadouts of passing M4/M3's. This is fine as only a deep scan incurs a rep loss or chance to aggravate the target. Ideally I'm looking for a Split ship since I'm in Boron space and don't want the hassle with the authorities, but needs must and if the opportunity presents itself I'll take whatever I can and worry later, so I'm checking everything.
Most of what passes by I rule out on passive scan either because they're too heavily shielded or have weapons/turrets I don't want to mess with. Of those that look worth a deep scan, again I rule out most if they have too many fighter drones or they have tracking missiles on board. That does leave a few tho and I make a few attempts. Most are Scorpions which I can try in sector, a couple are other races which I tail and allow to fly into other sectors before engaging so as not to annoy the Atreus border control. No luck so far tho as either they refuse to bail and I have to destroy them or they fire missiles at me while under IRE fire and the resulting explosion destroys their own ship outright.
I'm coming up for about halfway thru my time now and no joy when my AdvSat to the east picks up a couple pirate Buzzards exiting the Pirate base there. Now a Buzzard is a fairly good M4, shielding is pretty respectable and it has a nice turn of speed so one of those would be a nice capture. Heading over from where I've been laying doggo I catch up to them as they're passing the Military outpost and pull in behind. A quick scan reveals that one's packing fragbomb launchers and Firefly/Hurricane missiles and the other PAC and Wasp/Wildfire.
Weighing up the odds the more dangerous one is going to be the one with the swarm missile. The second Buzzard has just the single Hurricane so if he did fire it at me and it detonated that's not enough damage to kill the Buzzard in one go. The first has that Wasp tho which means he needs to be taken out quickly both so he doesn't get the chance to launch and so I can be on the tail of the second one to stop him launching either. Time to break out my secret weapon..
Dragonfly. Under 1000cr apiece, does 250m/s and dishes out 5k of damage a pop with an 18km reach. Available from all good weapon shops, all good weapon shops apparently being limited to the solitary Dumbfire missile production complex in Cloudbase North west. Quite why these little dudes are in such limited demand I've no idea because they are utterly fantastic. Contrary to the fact that they're built by a Dumbfire complex they are in fact seeker missiles and they have a truly excellent tracking ability. They cost less than the equivalent firepower in Silkworm and are both faster and have the added advantage of being more warheads in the air so are that much harder to shoot down plus they're available in large quantities. I strongly suspect a lot of X3:R vets remember Dragonfly being a worthless missile and don't realise just how great they are now. Try them out for yourselves.
Anyways, pulling back to 800m or so behind I target the more dangerous of the two and empty an appropriate amount of Dragonflies at him, ie. all of them. Where it comes to missile doctrine I come from the 'Nuke the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure..' school of thought. Besdies I've got a SF parked by the East gate with anther 500 or so on board so it's not like I don't have spares.
While they track in I drop behind my main target and as my first Dragonfly makes contact open up full bore. A few short seconds later and there's a dead in the water Buzzard in front of me, only 50%ish hull left but it's blue and that's what counts. The shields are even ticking up slowly so there's at least some equipment still on board. Bonus!
Pulling up a few metres away from it I jump ship and start patching up the holes in my new acquisition.
Total Assets:
1x Octopus
1x Pirate Buzzard (51%)
2x 1 Mj shield
4x IRE
1x Maxed Caiman SF 'Tax Deductible'
1x Caiman SF (85%)
300,000cr
.
Squiddy's had some pretty close encounters...
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