Brace yourself for a lot of typing but this is the only end of DW2 post I’m going to make so bear with me!
It’s been a nearly a year and a half since I was first approached by the DW2 organisers to join the team and run the Fleet Mechanics side of things and more has happened since then than I can possibly imagine or put into words.
The basic infrastructure of who the mechanics were and how everything would run was setup well in advance of the DW2 departure, here I have my first thank-you to the Fuel Rats for the words of advice, guidance and all around general support. Specifically CrunchyBaton and Dystopia, without whom the whole thing would probably have been a pretty spectacular mess at the start! Crunchy also ran our statistics page throughout DW2 and dealt with the spreadsheets singlehandedly.
The organisational team were joined by some awesome leads for XB1 and PS4 by way of Adanmoth and RepairmanPatch. I have to say for better or worse I had little to no involvement with any of the console organisation and heard some good feedback from how each of the leads were managing the particular nuances and difficulties that their platforms threw up. This brings me into my second thank-you to those two, I don’t have very much experience in the way of Elite on consoles so having the support there was invaluable.
As the departure date got closer the roster signups picked up rapidly, at one point another one of the organisers informed me that the number of roster signups with the Fleet Mechanic Role was surpassing the 1000 mark! What started as a rather simple repair service exercise rapidly became rather stressful wondering if everything would work, if people would like/hate the system we had put together, if there would be enough cases for the number of signups etc. The total number of signups eventually totalled 1,909 which was a good 14% of the overall fleet composition! Yes I was rather tense and stressed in the early days of DW2 J
As the Discord server channels were opened the moment of truth arrived and you were all fantastic. Immediate discussion started on the risks, the route, should we carry decontamination limpets, running drills and all sorts of valuable planning. It was honestly a massive relief to me and I loved being able to just chat about the upcoming adventure and what could/would/should happen. As the chatter in the channel continued a few of the other mechanics were joking about having a nickname, various suggestions were thrown in and then someone mentioned “sealing hulls”, cue Cmdr Freyar who promptly suggested “Hull Seals”, with an arf it was decided and the name stuck. Concept art, logos, images, emotes and other amazing artworks appeared from the likes of Tromador, Valen Zendaris, Drebin Omega and West-Tek. Cmdr Freyar was also the one who put the Rev 1 Mechanic Process into the awesome looking flowchart that has been put onto many peoples walls throughout the expedition. The quality of the artwork gained a fair bit of attention in the Elite community got the Fleet Mechanics role the visibility it needed amongst both DW2 and the wider Elite community. West-Tek named our seal mascot “Halpy” and we were set!
Again I feel this was an element essential to our success so this is my third thank-you, to all of you in the early days for your enthusiasm, your epic artwork and ideas and all the effort that went into getting the ship off the ground. Additionally cmdr Arlo Mcconaughey coined the phrase “Seal Team Fix” which I have to say is simply spectacular
On the organisational front I have more thank-yous than I can possibly iterate. We received an insane amount of support from the Discord mod team, special mention to Fenrishi who sorted out the bot side of things with roles, commands, permissions and so much more. He was the mod hero the team needed! Also a mention to Valen Zendaris, Neotron, Orciencor and Sajime Chent-Shi who were with the mechanics all the way along the expedition, not always for the best of reasons, however, they were instrumental in keeping our channels a pleasant place to be and keeping the mechanics running.
From a direct mechanics organisational front I again have many people to thank Pool Noodle (Noodle-Impasta), Drebin Omega, Rixxan and Arctoduss joined the team at various stages. Towards the end of the expedition many of you know that I was hit with a deluge of IRL issues to the point where I am still at Explorers Anchorage and was unable to get online for days at a time. The names I’ve listed so far were the ones that seamlessly picked up the slack and everything I’d had to drop and between themselves ran things for the last 3ish weeks of the expedition.
Also to Danger-Dan and Polish Dan of the DW2 miners who became our Code Black experts and liaisons helping us in the most dire repair situations and tipping the balance very much towards getting successful cases.
I would also like to put a celebrity thank-you in to Keni Drunken Wolf who I think rather took to the Fleet Mechanics as a group and featured us several times on Distant Radio, it was a pleasure to have you along especially with some of our more interesting repair operations! Also a quick shout to Charlie Hall from Polygon who has been with the expedition flying along to get a first hand perspective and put together a great article on the Hull Seals!
Just two thank-yous left as this already puts most Oscar speeches to shame.
The first is to those of you that have gone beyond and are now in the process of turning the Hull Seals into a galaxy wide repair service, having been involved with some of the discussions and having started the Fleet Mechanics side of things I can honestly say I know the level of organisational and administrative work that is going into doing that and I honestly cannot think of anything more awesome. I’m sure some of the members of that group will have words soon on what will happen with all that.
My final thank-you is to all of you, the mechanics/seals/Miners who have participated and made this a real thing rather than a few concepts and empty discord channels. I knew from WP2 that we would have no problems, watching you guys handle the flood of repair requests at “The View” was sensational and I wish I could re-live that time watching as case after case got handled professionally and efficiently. Remember this was day 2 of the expedition and I have to say the response you all gave was not something I had expected, I also hadn’t anticipated anticipated 7 seals flying 26,000ly to a repair case within the first weeks, or the SRV lift of a streamer out a canyon. You guys and girls all made it a ton easier for me and that first week gave me so much confidence in you all going forwards.
In total we have completed 761 cases throughout DW2 totalling 32,026 percentage points of hull repaired, and those numbers have been going up since we reached Beagle Point. Many code Blacks were completed, again more than I anticipated. You all jumped in, optimised the processes and helped us build up our expertise. Due to the admin difficulties we got through 5 revisions of our operating procedures and as a result you have contributed to our success rate of 99.10%
Overall there are people that wouldn’t have made it without us and for that we can be very proud, I myself am very proud of all of you. I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to many of you over discord and meeting a bunch of you in game and I hope to see you in the future wherever or whenever that may be. I sincerely hope that you have got as much enjoyment out of participating in DW2 as I have and I hope you can head back to Sol with a few new friends, or new experiences and be glad that you joined the expedition. I know I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.
Thank you.
Stay tuned for the galaxy wide launch of the Hull Seals.
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But if not for you, we wouldn’t be trying to continue this group as a galaxy wide service. So thank you to all our clients! You made this possible!