I won't be naming and shaming individuals (not because of the rules, but because the list would be bonkers long) - however this is a public thank you to a vast number of people.
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On January 12th this year, inexplicably, the Hutton Truckers expanded into a little system called George Pantazis. We were expecting a little out of the way backwater like Luhman 16, but instead, moving from little systems with populations measured in the tens of thousands to a place with millions was worrying.
However, a bunch of truckers without a large landing pad? Nowhere? That was just silly, so we grasped the bull by the horns and started wrestling it. With advice from the Mercs of Mikunn, we set up daily monitoring of statistics for the system and began gently working on things.
Absolutely nothing happened. Couldn't make a dent in the owning faction. So we tried harder. Then harder again. Something was happening that kept the owning faction, no matter how hard we battered them, or traded against them rising 8% a day every day we did nothing. This was the effect of the rare at their station. Being near to Sol, it was a high traffic system for casual players on rares runs and general trading. Every ship that passed through would see those juicy missions for the leading faction, buy those Prayer sticks and in doing so, help the leading faction.
The thing is.... we wanted a landing pad. A large one.
We managed, through superhuman effort, to get to parity with the owning faction - the Crimson Bridge. Dastardly types. Utterly corrupt. An election started and with the effect of the 8% a day gain, no missions for us at ANY station and election blocking any combat options, we lost. By a slim margin, but we lost.
Despair had set in. We were sulking. We had never lost an election before. Alvin's beaming benevolence should be enough to entice anyone!
Over the next few weeks, turning into months, we rebuilt our influence and tried again. However - we discovered that as a result of the rare/location effect, the Crimson Bridge existed in countless other systems nearby, having expanded unfettered. Every time we reached parity with them, they started a blocking war, or an election in another system. Time and time again we tried, bringing allies, truckers and the full force of some scary combat types to help us.
We failed. Dismally.
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So - a new plan was hatched - take over another asset in the system. Crampton's - a nice little planetary base was in the hands of another faction. So we brought them up to our level and guess what - they went into an Election in another system. We helped them win that in double quick time and then...... yes.... accidentally expanded ourselves into LHS 340. It is a rubbish place. We ignored it but somehow went to war by accident. We ignored the war, but won it. By winning it, we went into conflict with the next faction. We ignored it. We won by accident. Yes, you can tell, can't you - we went into conflict a 3rd time without trying and... dum dum dummmmmm - won again. Each of these conflicts was nearly a week long. We did end up with the system.
Emboldened by our success, and buoyed up by the stats we had been gathering - we started another attempt on Cramptons. We got the parity with their faction, we got our election, we worked it HARD in the pending period and won by default. We were elated! But - something went wrong. Those corrupt officials owning the system gave us the wrong asset - they handed us a small military outpost up there in space - not the shiny planetary one. Apparently, the population of the military base was higher - with soldiers squeezed in there like sardines.
Following on from this, our mission giver - the very scary Progenitor Lael Wolf started up shop in Melvin Hangar. We had a way to get more missions! We had a safe haven! A crime wave struck one of our systems - some players on XBox, representing Mother Gaia decided to try and give us a kicking..... we had to go bounty hunting crazy - and luckily have our own Xbox win - team HotBox..... We beat them off with sticks.
Back to the main mission - we brought in outside help. We started a blockade. Each and every day, 120 authority ships and 120 traders were stopped from their normal run. Each and every day, we kept a lid on the leading faction. We did it - we reached parity with them again and.... were trumped by another war in another system nearby. We cried. We emailed the devs (it didn't work). We threw things. We nearly gave up. One glimmer of hope - a message came through from Dav Stott (he of godlike oversight on the Milky Way) - "You DO know that you're only 8.4 percent from a coup?"
A coup? as in a system take-over? We threw everything at it. We shot anything that moved. We did high influence mission after mission (one player was planetside and clocking 40 high influence missions a day). We brought exploration data to our little military base. Our influence grew from 51.6 to 60 to 65 to 70 and upward to 75.... peaking just below 80. We waited and waited and waited for blocking states to finish. We watched nearby systems to make sure it didn't happen again.
2.1 dropped. Copkilling became unbelievably hard..... we stayed firm.
Then. We saw it. War pending. Coup is real.
Yesterday, after 5 months and hundreds of commanders helping, we won. We have a large pad to land our trucks. Our own Truckers, plus many other player groups have been battling this the entire time. Our thanks go out to the Paladin Consortium, Dark Echo, the Diamond Frogs, Mercs of Mikunn and the Border Coalition, Canonn Interstellar, the Pixel Bandits, the Independent Dongkum Green party, Achenar Immortals, Guild of RSM, the Code (yes - even the code helped), Cerberus, the SDC, the EDC.
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True PwP gaming - a 5 month mission to work together to win something..... and the team did it.
It only remains for me to say - we're LIVE on Hutton Orbital Radio on Thursday night 20:30 BST for a celebration - www.huttonorbital.com and click "radio" - join in on the Lave Radio teamspeak channel teamspeak.laveradio.com (there is a Hutton channel in there) and, from Hugh Mann's studio - a great rendition of #forthemug - listen at: http://elitemeet.info/chm/
We are back to Hutton Trucking and WOW do we have some exciting new missions for everyone coming up!
-----------------------------------
On January 12th this year, inexplicably, the Hutton Truckers expanded into a little system called George Pantazis. We were expecting a little out of the way backwater like Luhman 16, but instead, moving from little systems with populations measured in the tens of thousands to a place with millions was worrying.
However, a bunch of truckers without a large landing pad? Nowhere? That was just silly, so we grasped the bull by the horns and started wrestling it. With advice from the Mercs of Mikunn, we set up daily monitoring of statistics for the system and began gently working on things.
Absolutely nothing happened. Couldn't make a dent in the owning faction. So we tried harder. Then harder again. Something was happening that kept the owning faction, no matter how hard we battered them, or traded against them rising 8% a day every day we did nothing. This was the effect of the rare at their station. Being near to Sol, it was a high traffic system for casual players on rares runs and general trading. Every ship that passed through would see those juicy missions for the leading faction, buy those Prayer sticks and in doing so, help the leading faction.
The thing is.... we wanted a landing pad. A large one.
We managed, through superhuman effort, to get to parity with the owning faction - the Crimson Bridge. Dastardly types. Utterly corrupt. An election started and with the effect of the 8% a day gain, no missions for us at ANY station and election blocking any combat options, we lost. By a slim margin, but we lost.
Despair had set in. We were sulking. We had never lost an election before. Alvin's beaming benevolence should be enough to entice anyone!
Over the next few weeks, turning into months, we rebuilt our influence and tried again. However - we discovered that as a result of the rare/location effect, the Crimson Bridge existed in countless other systems nearby, having expanded unfettered. Every time we reached parity with them, they started a blocking war, or an election in another system. Time and time again we tried, bringing allies, truckers and the full force of some scary combat types to help us.
We failed. Dismally.
-----------------------------------
So - a new plan was hatched - take over another asset in the system. Crampton's - a nice little planetary base was in the hands of another faction. So we brought them up to our level and guess what - they went into an Election in another system. We helped them win that in double quick time and then...... yes.... accidentally expanded ourselves into LHS 340. It is a rubbish place. We ignored it but somehow went to war by accident. We ignored the war, but won it. By winning it, we went into conflict with the next faction. We ignored it. We won by accident. Yes, you can tell, can't you - we went into conflict a 3rd time without trying and... dum dum dummmmmm - won again. Each of these conflicts was nearly a week long. We did end up with the system.
Emboldened by our success, and buoyed up by the stats we had been gathering - we started another attempt on Cramptons. We got the parity with their faction, we got our election, we worked it HARD in the pending period and won by default. We were elated! But - something went wrong. Those corrupt officials owning the system gave us the wrong asset - they handed us a small military outpost up there in space - not the shiny planetary one. Apparently, the population of the military base was higher - with soldiers squeezed in there like sardines.
Following on from this, our mission giver - the very scary Progenitor Lael Wolf started up shop in Melvin Hangar. We had a way to get more missions! We had a safe haven! A crime wave struck one of our systems - some players on XBox, representing Mother Gaia decided to try and give us a kicking..... we had to go bounty hunting crazy - and luckily have our own Xbox win - team HotBox..... We beat them off with sticks.
Back to the main mission - we brought in outside help. We started a blockade. Each and every day, 120 authority ships and 120 traders were stopped from their normal run. Each and every day, we kept a lid on the leading faction. We did it - we reached parity with them again and.... were trumped by another war in another system nearby. We cried. We emailed the devs (it didn't work). We threw things. We nearly gave up. One glimmer of hope - a message came through from Dav Stott (he of godlike oversight on the Milky Way) - "You DO know that you're only 8.4 percent from a coup?"
A coup? as in a system take-over? We threw everything at it. We shot anything that moved. We did high influence mission after mission (one player was planetside and clocking 40 high influence missions a day). We brought exploration data to our little military base. Our influence grew from 51.6 to 60 to 65 to 70 and upward to 75.... peaking just below 80. We waited and waited and waited for blocking states to finish. We watched nearby systems to make sure it didn't happen again.
2.1 dropped. Copkilling became unbelievably hard..... we stayed firm.
Then. We saw it. War pending. Coup is real.
Yesterday, after 5 months and hundreds of commanders helping, we won. We have a large pad to land our trucks. Our own Truckers, plus many other player groups have been battling this the entire time. Our thanks go out to the Paladin Consortium, Dark Echo, the Diamond Frogs, Mercs of Mikunn and the Border Coalition, Canonn Interstellar, the Pixel Bandits, the Independent Dongkum Green party, Achenar Immortals, Guild of RSM, the Code (yes - even the code helped), Cerberus, the SDC, the EDC.
-----------------------------------
True PwP gaming - a 5 month mission to work together to win something..... and the team did it.
It only remains for me to say - we're LIVE on Hutton Orbital Radio on Thursday night 20:30 BST for a celebration - www.huttonorbital.com and click "radio" - join in on the Lave Radio teamspeak channel teamspeak.laveradio.com (there is a Hutton channel in there) and, from Hugh Mann's studio - a great rendition of #forthemug - listen at: http://elitemeet.info/chm/
We are back to Hutton Trucking and WOW do we have some exciting new missions for everyone coming up!
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