Conscious of the recent bleating I've been doing on another thread about how impossible FFE is to play, how combat always seems to end in immediate destruction and how the whole thing should be made a lot easier so I don't have to actually learn how to fly the damn thing properly...
*ahem*
I just wanted to say that everything I've said thus far on that topic is a load of utter balderdash and please disregard. This goes particularly to DraQ, who copped for a lot of my whining. I'm not going to go so far as to say I've mastered it, but I've been in a few engagements now and I'm forced to concede that it is, just occasionally, possible to win.
In fact, I feel a small boast is called for. (I apologise in advance for the fact that it turned into a vastly long, rambling boast.)
With my various trade earnings I'd managed to buy myself an Asp Explorer (FX-866, if you see it around, give me a wave.
), which I've kitted out with what I thought would be enough hardware to allow me to venture a little further out than the Barnard's Star<->Sol freight run I'd been doing for ever and a day. Eager to see a little more of the Galaxy, I'd decided, together with my new copilot, to take on a few simple courier flights for the Federal military. We'd managed a handful of these without incident - and then came the fateful day we found two contracts being offered out at once for a run out to Luyten 97-12. Together they'd net us about Cr1000 - not too much, but enough to cover fuel and still have a little left over to buy us lunch.
Like the conscientious pilot I am, I check the destination system's details. It's an independent corporate state with a relatively small population, and only two significant settlements, including an orbital trading station called Fort Schmidt. So far, so peachy. I seem to remember corporate states are reasonably well-ordered, as a rule. So I asked the military guy whether the consignments would attract any particular hostile attention. He assured me that they wouldn't (although I did notice the corners of his mouth twitched up a little there).
Hmm. We decided to take the jobs, and set out. The witchspace jump went swimmingly well, and before long we were blazing our way across the system towards Camp Hooper and the target station.
And then, with 4 AUs still to go, the proximity alarm sounded. Bad news, since they stopped funnelling all incoming traffic into systems via one single witch-point - back in those days you could expect to pass other traffic quite close since everyone was tracking back and forth along the same route. Now, though, something landing on top of you is something that wants to land on top of you. And it's probably not for a chat and a cup of tea.
Sure enough, some way ahead of us we saw the spark of the sun off metal. Bearing DraQ's earlier advice in mind, I'd been practising with full manual control of my engines, and the advice and practice had already helped considerably in one or two encounters. I shut off the computer assist and started boosting for a favourable position. The approach was such that at least one 'joust' pass was pretty inevitable - I just aimed to put myself off to one side and hope to avoid the worst of it.
As it happened, there was only one pass. The opposing vessel - a Harris - streaked past, there was a crackle of shields, a screech of metal and all sorts of alarms and sirens went off. Having started my turn onto the fighter's tail, I managed to pin him down quite quickly and melted off the front part of his ship, leaving the burning wreckage spinning off into the night.
The enemy decisively (if luckily) vanquished, we set about assessing the damage, and it was considerable. Quite what the guy had been packing weapon-wise I don't know, but had been significantly more potent than the wimpy little 1-megawatt beam we had. He'd raked us just once, for about a second, and taken down our shields, battered the hull to critical, and trashed several pieces of navigational equipment - including, I was upset to find, the autopilot.
I like my autopilot. It's like one of the family.
But that wasn't all.
Tentatively firing the thrusters - very tentatively, given the state of the hull - I found that both the main and the retro engines were both out. Sure enough, a quick visual inspection showed that that one blast of the Harris's laser had shredded the machinery, and there was no way we were going to be able to patch it up. We were falling towards the sun at about 4,000 km/s, so there was only one thing for it: I was going to have to drive all the way in on manual using only my X and Z-axis thrusters.
Ignoring the possibility of a fiery demise in the sun, it meant that the trip would probably take quite a bit longer than planned. We also avoided discussing the possibility of someone else coming along and having a pop at us on the way. Where there's one pirate, there're usually others; and in the state we were in I doubt we could have held off a determined attack by a mayfly.
I spun the ship so that the underside faced our destination and used the ventral thruster - set to low power - to slow us down gradually. I still didn't want to put too much stress on the beaten spaceframe. Every twenty minutes or so, I'd angle the ship forward and use the remaining engines for course corrections. By the time we got into the station aegis we were down to forty thousand kph, and a more reasonable ten by the time we started encountering ships at anchor. Another few minutes of messing around, rotating here and there and tiny, careful burns on the working engines put us in the station's tractor zone and they brought us in.
So. Quite a successful trip in one sense, although after all the necessary repairs I can't say this trip's done much for our profit margin. And the ship's STILL due a Cr14,000 service. That'll have to wait.
Oh, and the Federal military were 'displeased' with our late arrival. Two days out. After a flight like that, I don't think that's too bad at all. And we never did find out whether the Harris was after us for a particular reason.
All of which really amounts to 'thank you' to DraQ and others who've given me their advice. (Speaking more out-of-character, it's only a day or so since I would have just given up and reset the game.)
*ahem*
I just wanted to say that everything I've said thus far on that topic is a load of utter balderdash and please disregard. This goes particularly to DraQ, who copped for a lot of my whining. I'm not going to go so far as to say I've mastered it, but I've been in a few engagements now and I'm forced to concede that it is, just occasionally, possible to win.
In fact, I feel a small boast is called for. (I apologise in advance for the fact that it turned into a vastly long, rambling boast.)
With my various trade earnings I'd managed to buy myself an Asp Explorer (FX-866, if you see it around, give me a wave.
), which I've kitted out with what I thought would be enough hardware to allow me to venture a little further out than the Barnard's Star<->Sol freight run I'd been doing for ever and a day. Eager to see a little more of the Galaxy, I'd decided, together with my new copilot, to take on a few simple courier flights for the Federal military. We'd managed a handful of these without incident - and then came the fateful day we found two contracts being offered out at once for a run out to Luyten 97-12. Together they'd net us about Cr1000 - not too much, but enough to cover fuel and still have a little left over to buy us lunch.Like the conscientious pilot I am, I check the destination system's details. It's an independent corporate state with a relatively small population, and only two significant settlements, including an orbital trading station called Fort Schmidt. So far, so peachy. I seem to remember corporate states are reasonably well-ordered, as a rule. So I asked the military guy whether the consignments would attract any particular hostile attention. He assured me that they wouldn't (although I did notice the corners of his mouth twitched up a little there).
Hmm. We decided to take the jobs, and set out. The witchspace jump went swimmingly well, and before long we were blazing our way across the system towards Camp Hooper and the target station.
And then, with 4 AUs still to go, the proximity alarm sounded. Bad news, since they stopped funnelling all incoming traffic into systems via one single witch-point - back in those days you could expect to pass other traffic quite close since everyone was tracking back and forth along the same route. Now, though, something landing on top of you is something that wants to land on top of you. And it's probably not for a chat and a cup of tea.
Sure enough, some way ahead of us we saw the spark of the sun off metal. Bearing DraQ's earlier advice in mind, I'd been practising with full manual control of my engines, and the advice and practice had already helped considerably in one or two encounters. I shut off the computer assist and started boosting for a favourable position. The approach was such that at least one 'joust' pass was pretty inevitable - I just aimed to put myself off to one side and hope to avoid the worst of it.
As it happened, there was only one pass. The opposing vessel - a Harris - streaked past, there was a crackle of shields, a screech of metal and all sorts of alarms and sirens went off. Having started my turn onto the fighter's tail, I managed to pin him down quite quickly and melted off the front part of his ship, leaving the burning wreckage spinning off into the night.
The enemy decisively (if luckily) vanquished, we set about assessing the damage, and it was considerable. Quite what the guy had been packing weapon-wise I don't know, but had been significantly more potent than the wimpy little 1-megawatt beam we had. He'd raked us just once, for about a second, and taken down our shields, battered the hull to critical, and trashed several pieces of navigational equipment - including, I was upset to find, the autopilot.
I like my autopilot. It's like one of the family.
But that wasn't all.
Tentatively firing the thrusters - very tentatively, given the state of the hull - I found that both the main and the retro engines were both out. Sure enough, a quick visual inspection showed that that one blast of the Harris's laser had shredded the machinery, and there was no way we were going to be able to patch it up. We were falling towards the sun at about 4,000 km/s, so there was only one thing for it: I was going to have to drive all the way in on manual using only my X and Z-axis thrusters.
Ignoring the possibility of a fiery demise in the sun, it meant that the trip would probably take quite a bit longer than planned. We also avoided discussing the possibility of someone else coming along and having a pop at us on the way. Where there's one pirate, there're usually others; and in the state we were in I doubt we could have held off a determined attack by a mayfly.
I spun the ship so that the underside faced our destination and used the ventral thruster - set to low power - to slow us down gradually. I still didn't want to put too much stress on the beaten spaceframe. Every twenty minutes or so, I'd angle the ship forward and use the remaining engines for course corrections. By the time we got into the station aegis we were down to forty thousand kph, and a more reasonable ten by the time we started encountering ships at anchor. Another few minutes of messing around, rotating here and there and tiny, careful burns on the working engines put us in the station's tractor zone and they brought us in.
So. Quite a successful trip in one sense, although after all the necessary repairs I can't say this trip's done much for our profit margin. And the ship's STILL due a Cr14,000 service. That'll have to wait.
Oh, and the Federal military were 'displeased' with our late arrival. Two days out. After a flight like that, I don't think that's too bad at all. And we never did find out whether the Harris was after us for a particular reason.
All of which really amounts to 'thank you' to DraQ and others who've given me their advice. (Speaking more out-of-character, it's only a day or so since I would have just given up and reset the game.)
