This is amazing. Can I link to this on my blog, please?
Which difficulty and scenario?
Great stuff! Wish I could be there! Full throttle crew! Save the galaxy!
And mission number two is off the ground! We’ve decided to choose a more interesting galaxy this time, and we end up surrounded by mines. So that’s what the Chinese were talking about.
Incidentally, between missions Mr. Denny discovered that coolant helps us stay more efficient! Science! The quest for antifreeze continues.
We find that DS2 seems to be in the most imminent danger, and head out at high speed. We appear to be up against different enemies now, because their ships are a different color. We screw up their paint jobs terribly with a torpedo - one is down!
But we’re taking fire from the other three. Mr. Atkin informs us our shields are in good shape, but we’re burning through energy. I don’t think this info is going to affect our generally kick-ass attitude toward galaxy exploration, and indeed we take out another two ships - and the last surrenders! Or tries to, we’re feeling particularly bloody-minded and shoot him down. Hey, I’m just an embedded journalist. What do you want from me?
But their friends don’t seem to take kindly to this, and another two ships head our way. We take out one - and Mr. Panda informs us that their shield strength is “tons of shields.” We decide to head in another direction at speed, just to get a better view of things. But, our hallways are in pretty good shape!
Mr. McCullough flies us dangerously close to some mines, and sudenly we’re caught between a bunch of mines and an enormous enemy ship. Captain Repo announces he is pissed at that ship, and orders two nukes fired. We close to firing range and that ship is dust. Radioactive dust, hold your breath.
We move on to dock at the space station and are caught with our figurative pants down when an enemy ship warps in and fires on our docked ship. We announce this dirty pool and unload on him - after which he promptly surrenders. Bunch of pansies, these aliens.
Mr. Au announces that DS3 is gone. Wonder where it went? It was here a minute ago. Anyway, we divert to DS1, because we can find it.
Our screen is flickering like an Atari 2600 game and Little Atkin loses it, wailing “We’re gonna die!” Captain Repo takes a moment of pity to reassure him that we’re probably not going to die. We are much heartened. Mr. Atkin informs us of a dangerously low energy level, so we dock at DS1. Things are looking up!
Mr. Tactu tells us that there’s an X27 ahead and we decide the best course of action is to blow it out of the sky - no sooner said than done, but another enemy swoops in. We go nose to nose, and exchange fire. Mr. Tactu informs us that we have a nuke ready, but before we can fire we are destroyed! The Failboat is starting to live up to its name.
MISSION 3. Posthumous crew rotation due to FAILURE. McCullough captaining, Au helm, DennyA weapons, Tactu engineering, Panda science, Pogue Mahone comms, RepoMan embedded.
The new captain, with Alan Au and Pogue Mahone:
“We’re receiving a communication from DS4, sir. They say…”
“Tell them to suck it!”
One hapless enemy gets a torpedo in the face:
“I can’t get a weapon lock!”
“Recommend running like hell, sir.”
“Run like hell!”
“Forget it, this is boring. Helm, lay in a course for that big pile of enemies.”
This getting too exciting now as enemy #1 in the Big Pile pretty much takes two nukes to the face without being fazed:
OUR LONG RANGE SENSORS ARE FLICKERING. We have CLOAKING enemies fading in and out around us. We just got hit by a stealthing unscannable enemy. Rather concerned AT THIS TIME.
Our front shields are destroyed apparently. But two enemies have terrible rear shields per Mr. Panda. Changing weapon frequency to rear enemy… oh shit, the cloaker is back! Panic! Fleeing. Rounding on lead ship, firing torp, and warping away again, hit-and-run. One ship destroyed.
Target B96! Cloaker vanished again, or is it warping? Reloading torpedo 2, rounding on two attackable ships. “Helm, please ride their ass.” Took one out!
“Helm, lay in a course for the nearest starbase.”
“We are on course for DS3.”
PHEW. Docking time. “Captain is logging it!”
“Request every starbase build nothing but nukes IMMEDIATELY.”
We got the trailing cloaker enemy to run straight through a minefield, thereby winning epically. Good approach on tracking that trailer, and BOOM there he goes. DS2 wants us to get their friggin’ data so they’ll double their production speed.
“Lae in a coarse for sector B-thrrrrree!” Our captain randomly acquires some kind of Scottish brogue-like thing.
Readying some torpedoes loosed towards us.
“What frequency do I need to be?”
“Sorry… there’s interference…”
We come back around towards him and he’s got no front shields, but neither do we. Loosing torpedo 1… BOOM!
And torpedo 2… BOOM! But he’s still alive!
But we get off a beam shot and BOOOOOOOM
And soon after that we take out two more and WIN WIN WIN. We have conquered level 3. Now debating level 4…
This needs it’s own thread, damn it, Spock!
Captain, excessive apostrophes detected.
OH GOD WE’RE HOPELESSLY TRAPPED IN THE META-LEVEL. THE MISSION IS PAUSED WHILE THE ENTIRE CREW READS THE Qt3 THREAD
Weapons officer DennyA and his trainee reading the thread:
“Space is aptly named.”
Mission engaged.
“You wanna target KR-02.”
“What’s the frequency?”
“C.”
“Roger that.”
We just had a moment of actual silence. Everyone was busy. ALERT: WE ARE LEARNING HOW TO DO THIS.
“I say we start with a nuke and then finish him off.”
“I like it!”
“That’s how we run Starfleet around here.”
“I changed energy so we won’t get blowed up.”
“Great job, engineering!”
“From Hell’s heart I stab at thee!” That was our captain, closing on a line of base-attackers.
“Communications, what’s their shield level.”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. I can tell them to suck it, though!”
ANd one nuke takes three of them down at ONCE?
“The space station was severely damaged to the nuke, but shields holding at 50%.”
“Great job, weapons! Communications, it is your unfortunate job to fill out the environmental impact report.”
“You can lower power to 25%.”
“No, never! Maximum drunken attack warp!”
“Fire! FIRE! FIRE!!!”
Our captain appears to have popped Wolverine claws out of pure rage.
“What’s the frequency?”
“Frequency C.”
BOOOOM!
“Wow! Frequency C ROCKS!”
“Let’s go to difficulty 11!!!1!!!”
“Wait, let’s just go back to regular before we go all crazy here.”
We got two more junior trainees (my kids, back from the Chipmunks movie).
We are playing a regular mission, difficulty 4.
“Helm, we haven’t had beets before, what’s going on?”
Mr. Au is warping across half the map towards the only cluster of three enemies on the map.
“Weapons, fire at will.”
“Wait!!! Which one’s Will???”
“I suggest in future we not fire a nuke so close.”
Being pursued by space ship, loading mines… got to unload torp first… putting energy into loading… mine away!
BOOM!
Firing second mine…
BOOM!
“Engineering: transfer power to engines!”
We are warping across half the map now towards DS3, in bad shape evidently for no reason we can see. Now getting intel off of a passing ship.
“DS3 is going to be destroyed in seconds.”
“Oh well, too late to help them now!”
“We’re gonna diiiiie! We’re gonna diiiiiiie!!!”
“Carter, wrong time for that. We’re not gonna die right now.”
“We’re gonna live! We’re gonna liiiiive!!!”
So much ass-kicking has happened while I was uploading those that I don’t even know what’s happening.
“We blew up some ships and then we ran away.”
“Then we had another bunch of ships closing on us and we got the hell out of Dodge!”
My senior corporal wife has just dispatched the junior trainees to the upper deck.
“Set a course for D79.”
“The starbase is where the candy is. Shields up! Red alert!”
“I don’t hear a red alert, comms.”
WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP!
“Nuke ready, sir!”
“Fire war crime!”
We get thrashed by close-range scrum, Mr. Au warps out and pulls back in.
“Collision! Collision!”
“You’ve killed the entire damage control team. My god! These guys… it’s so horrible.” Tactu is close to breaking down on the engineering station. More torpedos! BOOM!
“D38, D49, F49 have surrendered. I keep asking them all to surrender and they’re doin’ it!”
See all those yellow dots? They used to be red.
“Lay in a very slow course for D52.”
“We have no rear shields!”
“We don’t need them. We never run away.”
“Engineering, what’s taking so long?”
“Well, because… HA HA HA!”
“It’s got to go faster. WHy so passive-aggressive?”
Apparently not all the damage control team is dead. PHEW. And this is now our last mission.
We have no impulse or warp. How are we moving? Oh wait, our impulse got fixed, a bit. Yay! We are docked. Damage control team is back, poor bastards.
“Nukes are loaded. Having trouble targeting…”
“Fire at will! For maximal lulz!”
AND WE WIN!!!
Mr. Au: “In light of our recent victory, I recommend we overlook the collision incident?”
Mr. Tactu: “Dude, that took out the ENTIRE REAR OF THE SHIP! Nothing was working! The damage control crew in the front of the ship had to repair all the hallways just to get back there!”
The victorious crew: Panda, Alan Au, DennyA, Jason McCullough, Tactu, Pogue Mahone, RepoMan.
So apparently ramming is not a good strategy.
So jealous of you guys.
My iPhone doesn’t have time to auto-punctuate properly, damn it, there’s a war on!
great read!
Final mission stats:
16 enemies destroyed
6 enemies surrendered
5 enemies survived
1 base destroyed
3 bases survived
3 NPC ships destroyed
3 NPC ships survived
39 player beams fired
25 player torpedoes fired
129 hits on player by enemy weapons
3 successful dockings
0 anomalies collected
10 mine detonations
34 minute mission duration
At the end we were definitely all settling into our stations and starting to do coordinated maneuvers involving helm, engineering, and weapons – diving in quickly with power to warp, boosting shields and torp tubes while unloading, then boosting warp again to get out and come back in for a second pass. Hit-and-run wins BIGTIME, especially if your helmsman is as dexterous as Alan Au. Tactu, DennyA, and Alan became almost self-running near the end – Jason turned to me at one point and said, “I have almost nothing to do!”
Even being the embedded journalist involves a learning curve – I think I spent too much time on screenshots and not enough time writing down what was happening narratively (as opposed to just quoting people). Oh well, will work on that next time. Actually, next time I might try actually running a ship station… this time I was just captain or journalist, and didn’t actually learn shit about flying the ship!
I am sure this will change as we do this again and up the difficulty. Pretty much everyone was in favor of doing this again, which is extremely awesome. My wife requests that we do it earlier, though – 4 pm to 8 pm – so our four-year-old doesn’t get too excited to sleep! (We did get him down tonight, but it was quite a situation!)