Sign me up for the rats.... Murishani.. I doubt I would be able to get to you in time, Sir. But if no one responds in the next 15 minutes or so, I WILL come get you out of your Jam.
Out of Fuel? - Explorer Rescue Service, The Fuel Rats
- Thread starter Surly_Badger
- Start date
I logged out like it says at the top of the thread, but im only 40-50 lightyears on the backside of the Pleiades. It was only two or three jumps in my 30 ly asp EDIT: past the nebula I mean. 12 or so jumps from populated space
Also the pirates are not part of the exercise, they are for real. Might want to keep that in mind.
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No worries Garonis, it's a training exercise, Im a rat, Ive got spare fuel, just doing a drill.
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Should we have an unofficial Rat Base as well? ;-)
My schedule is equally erratic, so a listserv sounds like a good idea to me. That said, is there not an option somewhere in forum settings to turn on email notifications for forum posts? Not sure if this can be done just for a specific thread or not.
Re standard directions, using Sol as reference, why not use the Standard coordinate system of degrees, with an up/down attached, i.e. "Cmdr, System, 90 degrees 5000 LY , 500 LY up" would put you somewhere out in the Perseus Arm (see quadrant map on the first page of the Community Mapping thread here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=116450 )
Folks could also use landmarks noted on those general and more detailed maps to provide further description if necessary as well.
I would be up for logging on for a group screenshot, even though I am technically not Rat-capable yet (signed up for the thread while out in the Black, likely won't be back for a couple of weeks yet to be able to get fuel limpets).
Ok. I am about 1600ly out from Pleiades sector EB-X C1-16. I'll get there as soon as I can. Send a friend request for Aitken. Heading toward you how.
No worries Garonis, it's a training exercise, Im a rat, Ive got spare fuel, just doing a drill.
Yessir, I know, but I was allowing other commanders already set up to help get on the road, so to speak. I have yet to purchase my DB Explorer I plan on using for rat missions.. I am afraid my python would take a long time to reach you!
The IRC channel works, just a window in the background or in my case I'd just keep my little tablet open on it. I know Frontier is against it but a global channel would be nice, maybe ships need a distress beacon.
Ships used to have a distress beacon I believe back in beta - they took it out as there was no way of helping anyone and it just attracted nasty types wanting to kill you supposedly (and because they decided to put off implementing fuel transfer for the launch of the game). They have not put it back, which sort of surprised me as presumably it would be a quick add, and would work well with services like the Rats.
And it would encourage rescuers to Wing up for such missions just in case those PvP/griefing/ganking types decided to show up. Which leads to an interesting question - I assume we have no bias against rescuing folks who may be in a private group (like Mobius or others)? In which case the rescuer may have to ask to join the group first if the rescuee does not want to risk playing in Open? That would be one way to ensure no risk from PvP during a rescue if desired on the part of either rescuer or rescuee.
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I was unaware of this. Thinking about it though I think it's better off that FD has nothing to do w/ fuel ratting, other than giving us the tools to do it.
If the beacon were fully implemented that'd become another "career" in the game and then exploited (as in, finding dead ducks and toasting them for the lulz).
It would be helpful to get a sticky up on the newcomers forum.... Just a thought...
I am not connecting to you thru chat. I am about 9 jumps from target system.
Well, actually learned something on this exercise then. I THINK that you will be disconnected when sitting on the main menu and an in game comm channel may not be established. Im not sure theres a good way around this except to stay in touch on the thread and via PM
Great suggestions so far, folks!!! We have some thinking to do... And let's keep thinking and talking. You're awesome rats, all of you.
The idea of us falling in a rat-race kind of concerns me because some of us may be less inclined to respond if we know that someone with an Anaconda with a 500ly jump range is going to service the same rescue. I actually think it would be nice if we had an informal mechanism whereby someone could "call" the rescue and everyone else would sit back and cheer them on; after all, if they screw up we can rescue them, too, or taunt them in their death agonies. Or something. Or Anuranium can rescue them.
I don't want to sound like a leader (because I'm not) but I think let's discuss this a bit more and I'll summarize a proposal for how to proceed going forward based on a general sense of what we seem to feel. Right now it seems like we've got a couple main idea-lines that seem promising:
- an IRC channel
- an email push channel
and we need to air fully the pros and cons of both. I believe that when we think this through competely our choice will be obvious, or either approach will work and then it's a cointoss.
Another issue I think is promising is to promote fuelrats.org to a full blown mini-website with links to Tshirts, videos, images, artwork, etc, and this thread, as well as either our mailing list or IRC info and a web front end that generates a RAT-SIGNAL on the IRC or mailing list.
I'm an IT consultant so paying for things like a simple web host or IRC server is a tax write-off for me, and I'm willing to underwrite whatever we need from that standpoint. I am, however, an absolutely horribly tasteless website designer so if any of you in the rat-pack are inclined to bash some HTML now would be a time to start thinking about that. I'm willing to do it but my idea of website design is as utilitarian as a Type-6 in need of a paint-job, and half as attractive. But for $100 a year we could host fuelrats.org on lunarpages or something and have the mailing list or IRC service and web hosting and file archives and the lot all thrown in and we can do whatever we want there. That's also something to think about (I'm happy to stand for a couple hundred bucks a year...)
I'm going to be in airports and on airplanes all day tomorrow so I won't be checking in here much. FYI. Let's aim to have all the ideas aired out by this weekend and decide how we're going to bounce and then we can get whatever we do done from there. As tempting as it is to charge in squealing, I think we don't need to hurry yet. We are not yet overwhelmed with rescues.
Also: (We need to figure out how to encourage more n00bs to run out of fuel for Anuranium!) Maybe we should have an exploration contest featuring a ship design that lacks a fuel scoop. That wouldn't be evil, would it?
Received Fuel from CMDR Aitken
Total Exercise time was approximately 2 hours from initial call. Aitken jumped a heroic 1600 light years to pull me out of my theoretical mess. Big thumbs up and +rep to him for dedication to the exercise.
Lessons learned:
1: In game comms do NOT reliably work, I think it has something to do with being logged out when sitting idle at the main screen, if the rat, or the client dont hear from eachother in game after a friend request is sent, send a message to the thread or relog. This is yet another reason to keep active comms with the client.
2: I encountered a strange thing, after powering back up after receiving the fuel limpets, my computer alerted me that my structural integrity had been compromised and I lost 2% of my hull. I have no explanation for this.
3: given the time it may take a rat to reach you (1600 LY and a couple hours), you really need to log off and stay logged off until the rat sends word either in game comms, or in the thread.
Total Exercise time was approximately 2 hours from initial call. Aitken jumped a heroic 1600 light years to pull me out of my theoretical mess. Big thumbs up and +rep to him for dedication to the exercise.
Lessons learned:
1: In game comms do NOT reliably work, I think it has something to do with being logged out when sitting idle at the main screen, if the rat, or the client dont hear from eachother in game after a friend request is sent, send a message to the thread or relog. This is yet another reason to keep active comms with the client.
2: I encountered a strange thing, after powering back up after receiving the fuel limpets, my computer alerted me that my structural integrity had been compromised and I lost 2% of my hull. I have no explanation for this.
3: given the time it may take a rat to reach you (1600 LY and a couple hours), you really need to log off and stay logged off until the rat sends word either in game comms, or in the thread.
It was interesting to say the least. Travel time surprised me and my estimate was way off. 800ly takes about an hour for a 30ly Asp. Might shave off a little time as I was scanning systems as I jumped but only 5 or so mins. Still great fun so thanks CMDR Murishani for hanging around.
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The system you set up seems pretty solid. But given the tools already developed for social media apps you may want to integrate that into your process. Most social media gives the ability for group notifications and even links to project tools that would allow you to tract the progress of a rescue with minimal effort. I run a tech helpdesk and we have been slowly integrating these tools into our process. Tools like mobile Skype and Yammer.
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