Perhaps the best title for this story is,
I Survived.
The story begins as I jumped my exploration ship into orbit of the moon to check up on an old but relatively tame enemy. This is when I see [redacted]'s beacon on my old enemy's base. Now [redacted] is the scourge of the seven planets, the Harry Potter of the Space Engineers CA2 server. He's looted, pillaged, and even destroyed bases and ships of both new and veteran players. He's a force to be reckoned with, or in the case of simple explorers like myself, a force to avoid.
But being the mischievous beehive-poker that I am, I just had to stir up trouble. His beacon warned everyone that the moon belongs to him - leave or burn! So I turned on my beacon and set it to broadcast, "The moon belongs to Elpolossa!" Elp is a friend of mine who has erected a permanent safe zone around his base on the moon, something that drives Harry nuts (safe zones are impenetrable shields). My thinking was that Harry was down on the moon, and if I kept on the move and only broadcasted for short bursts, he would not be able to track me down. Unfortunately I did not know that he was in his battleship just kilometers away..
Normally I fly in the first person mode, as its way more immersive, but sometimes I switch to 3rd person to get a better look at my surroundings. When I did this, something caught my eye. There was movement at the rear of my ship as seen from the external "drone" camera view. Something small but very real. Another player!! Alarm bells went off as I saw what he was doing - he was cutting through my hull! My reflect action was to fire up the jump drive. When a ship opens a wormhole, anyone not strapped in is left behind. I planned on leaving this invader (who instinctively I knew was Harry) drifting in the vacuum of space. That's when the terrible truth sunk in - I no longer had a jump drive!!! Harry had cut through the hull and destroyed it.
I started to panic and performed erratic, high-speed maneuvers to try to shake my hitchhiker. I could see Harry getting tossed around, but he hung on. I aimed for a NPC station close by, knowing its safe zone projector would disable all hand tools and weapons. I made it to the safe zone, but I was going to fast and flew out the other side. Having slowed down to try to stop in the safe zone, I then punched the throttle. My ship has terrible brakes but excellent acceleration, and I could see Harry fall out of the back and tumble of into space. Finally I was free of this terrible leech!
Of course now I'm many hours away from my space outpost without FTL capability. I take a moment to ponder my situation and learn from my mistakes. How did Harry sneak up on me? My big mistake was turning off my defense turrets. I have multiple small-caliber point defense turrets on the hull, but I turned them off because I was in the proximity of NPC pirate station. Turrets will automatically fire on enemies, even if it's a station inside a safe zone, which is a waste of bullets. Had my turrets been active, Harry would have had a much more difficult if not impossible time getting close to my ship. What is the lesson learned? Do NOT turn off defense turrets in hazardous space, EVER, but instead dial back the firing arc. Had I set the turret autofire to 100 meters, my turrets would still protect my ship from any close-range attack while ignoring farther targets like that station.
Speaking of turrets, I had switched them back on as soon as I ditched Harry, and reprogrammed them to shoot at ANYTHING, even neutral targets, because Harry is so sneaky. It wasn't long before I hear my turrets spin up and open a barrage of bullets to my aft. I assumed they had locked onto Harry in his EVA suit and was shredding him to bits. That put a smile on my face, until I saw the explosions... Missiles!!! The turrets were shooting incoming missiles! My heart leaping once again, I performed a full burn and quickly hit maximum velocity (yes, like ED, SE has a speed cap). What was shooting at me?
I took manual control of one of my turrets and used the telescopic camera to see what was behind me. This is what I saw:
This is Harry's battleship, a dreadnought really. He has been bragging about how he's taken down some veteran players with impressive ships using this behemoth, and I don't doubt it. My only option was to keep on running. All ships in SE have the same maximum speed, but each ship has a different acceleration curve, and that's what saved me - I can accelerate faster than most ships, being a light explorer, and that allowed me to get out of weapon's range before he could match my speed. But he was
just outside weapon's range, and he was following me. In fact there were moments when my defense turrets fired, meaning he was right there on the edge, but thankfully his weapons were not locking on me for whatever reason.
So now we were in a stalemate of sorts. I didn't know how long he would follow me, and I actually had IRL things to do, so I used my most powerful tool - my witty dialog, to negotiate a truce. My backup plan was to head straight to earth in hopes that I could lose him in the gravity well, but that would have taken a good hour at sublight speeds, so thankfully he eventually backed off and let me go. Once I felt comfortable that he was well out of range, I called a friend via private comms.
Remember my buddy Elpoloosa, the true ruler of the moon? Thankfully he was on and is always very willing to help a friend in need. I had to get back to my outpost so I could replace my jump drive, and flying there in normal space would have taken DAYS. So Elp jumped to my location, we linked together, and he opened a wormhole for both of us, delivering me to my station.
Thankfully that recent clang explosion made me stock up on parts and a robust welding system, so once back at my station, it didn't take long to repair the damage and replace my trashed jump drive.
I've definitely learned a variety of lessons and have modified my ship to better deal with situations like these. The biggest lesson is that it's time for a new ship, not to replace my current ship, but to serve a different role and to ensure I always have a backup ship "stashed away" somewhere. When I told Harry this was my one and only ship, I think he felt some pity and decided to let me go. Not all pirates will do that, and this isn't the first time I've come close to losing the ship. Thankfully my
writer's designer's block is finally broken and I've begun designing a new a pretty ship for adventures like these.
*
I decided not to mention my nemesis by actual name because he's a boastful "look at me" kind-of-guy, and I could just see him Googling his SE name to see if people are talking about him. I don't want to give him all my secrets! And just in case he does find this thread, I will likely keep some of my designs and counter-measures top secret. I'll PM my loyal thread followers these secret designs (or just show you in person in the game).
