Community Event / Creation Castor and Pollux Day Five: an army marches on its stomach

[Andrew Sayers]

Hey all,

This week we're playing through an event based on Elite: Dangerous' publicly archived designs. You can start from chapter one or jump straight in to day five...

Stuart Town is suddenly a bustling space port.​

Having pooled their resources, yesterday the Castor and Pollux systems went out to raise an army against the factions invading their territory. They petitioned every independent system for ten light years, promising lucrative contracts to anyone willing to do the right thing. The war had decimated sales and cut severely into their reserves, forcing most contracts to promise nebulous future earnings from the dark system that had recently been discovered. But many systems - including long-term enemies - volunteered to send ships even so.

Imperial representatives sent to the region initially reported lightly armed trading vessels dropping off cargo, and heavily armed fighters coming in for repairs. But as they day progressed they were replaced by craft packed with sensors and armour. Realising the independents would soon have an overwhelming force, they hailed commanders for a return trip and prepared their reports.

Without enough ships in the dark system to resist a full-scale attack, Patron Olcanze took his last option to protect the glory of the Empire: he ordered his cruiser to jump via Pollux into the dark system before the independents could organise their forces. Apart from a few sharp-eyed interdiction ships, the first anyone heard of this bold maneuver was when newsfeeds reported the dark system formerly known as "Helen" was now the Imperial Protectorate of Attica.

Castor and Pollux immediately declared it illegal to transport goods to the dark system, and the Alliance warned anyone caught breaking local laws would void their contracts. A capital ship's one great weakness is its supply line, so laying siege to the cruiser that way starves its fighters of ammo and its turrets of gunners. But interrogating your map shows the key to Olcanze's plan: the most profitable trade route in the sector involves taking robots to Castor, food to the dark system, and Tantalum back to Liaveen. It could make you an outlaw to every faction in the region, but the Alliance did say you'd only suffer if you were caught...

 

[Philip Coutts]

As much as I love to support the Empire, this time it's for me! Profit talks, make a quick buck and then hightail it out of there before anyone gets too suspicous!

 

[Perseus]

Enough of chasing ghosts.
I'd take what supplies I could on board but I'd mainly serve as convoy escort for other Imperial ships.

 

[Minti2]

Enough of chasing ghosts.
I'd take what supplies I could on board but I'd mainly serve as convoy escort for other Imperial ships.

Agree, help where can with supplies, but mainly protecting Imperial assets and hunting down those wanting to disrupt the supply line.

and i want to do it in this!

 

[Slawkenbergius]

I'm going after that ammo. My rep with the imps may take a hit if I'm caught, but not as much as Olcanze's will if his plan fails. Maybe I'll make the rep back down the line with an assassination job...

 

[Andrew Sayers]

By the way, it's not an accident today's poll is multiple choice

 

[Rollo]

Down with that usurper Olcanze! Banzai! Tally ho! etc etc

 

[insanephoton]

Well what's a Fed gonna do. I can't really support the Alliance and certainly won't help the Imps. I'm so glad you pointed out it was multi choice and so multi vote. So a mix of roles, interdictor, pirate and profiteer

 

[RobFisher]

I'm sticking with the Alliance trade route. The robots seem the most profitable, especially as long as the discount lasts. And I have no time for Feds or Imperials, but neither do I particularly want to antagonise them: I'll pick my battles and stay out of their way.

 

[Andrew Sayers]

Time's up!

With the week nearly over, day six brings a climactic battle!

As ever, I'll post some background reading in this thread shortly.

 

[Andrew Sayers]

If you were affected by any of the issues in this program...

Once again, here's a breakdown of some sources for today's chapter. I've tried not to repeat myself, so you may want to look at previous chapters for issues that cropped up again today.

For those that don't know, Frontier have produced a lot of artwork for this game. I'm not aware of a single source with every bit of artwork neatly presented, but unless you want to dive through the the entier Elite: Dangerous feed on Tumblr, your best bet is probably the Elite Wallpapers section on Frontier's website.

Castor and Pollux petitioned every independent system for ten light years. The Galaxy Map proposal say a sector is a 10 x 10 x 10 light year region of space, so that feels like a natural definition of "nearby" in 3300.

Stealth is expected to be a big part of the game. For example, bounty hunters will be need good stealth and scanners to do their job. But equipping your ship is likely to be a trade-off, so it's reasonable to assume ships equipped for a cat-and-mouse game will be configured differently to those that want to be found so they can fight. Although nothing's been said explicitly, the artwork has always suggested we'll be able to see ships coming and going in a station, so it's likely we'll be able to read the situation in a system by the ships passing through it.

The Contacts Proposal says players will be able to gain contacts who give them missions, and talk of mission chains has been bandied about, so it's reasonable to speculate an Imperial representative might hail the commander that transported them.

The Empire and Federation are the only factions that have been shown to have a unified military structure, and this chapter speculates that would let them react more quickly than their opponents. Whereas it would take all day for NPCs to congregate in one system, an Imperial Cruiser might hop straight past them.

According to Fiction Diary #5, the ability to jump between systems in minutes instead of hours is a recent development in the Elite universe, but the new technology relies on lots of small jumps instead of a few big ones. This chapter speculates that cruisers would need supply convoys, in order to discuss how military ships might be able to hop in to a system, but find themselves at risk of interdiction.

Finally, triangular trade is likely to be an emergent feature in the game, like how one of the best trade routes in FFE went from Sol to van Maanens to Barnards Star. These are often trickier to spot than simple back-and-forth routes, but as in today's chapter can be very lucrative.