At the time of writing (11:57 pm, Sunday 5 Feb) I had just come off of my computer from a session of Elite Dangerous with my friends.
Today, we jumped 407 light years to a new system (Outotz LS-K d8-3) on the fleet carrier, and collected the rare materials in this system.
My procedure for collecting these materials was:
My main strategy was to get very very close to the planet surface and fly upside down with night vision on, as it put a greenish outline over surfaces and makes it very easy to spot crystal spires, which is the structure that the crystals that I want grows from! I fly upside down because my vessel has a large overhead canopy, and I can get a good look at the surface.
Some of my friends went offline to have dinner, but I had already had mine before the fleet carrier jumped so I kept going. Early meal = more gaming, obviously.
I landed on the dark side of the planet and did my collecting in the dark, with the help of the headlights on the SRV. It can get a bit spooky at times because it’s just me, I’m the dark, and the radar that makes whiiish and whooosh and crackle sounds.
After my resource tank was full, my friends had come back from dinner and had begun their own harvest. They were smart enough to land on the not dark side, which put me on the other side of the planet to them.
I flew off to join them at their worksite. I had to exit the planet’s atmosphere and headed into hyperspace for me to move at a reasonable speed. I cruised around the planet and dropped out of hyperspace on their signals.
It still put me a ways away. I flew as fast as I can to meet them. There was a surreal feeling as I approached their parked ship.
There was something.... cozy about seeing another spaceship on the ground. I’ve never seen a parked ship besides my own. It was like... seeing my friend's car in a random parking lot? Is that a good analogy?
There were some shenanigans with my friend demonstrating the biiiig guns on their ship (big purple plasma blast!). And also me boarding their ship as a crew member to admire its cockpit, then they piloted the ship away with me inside!!! Kidnapped!
Once we’d all harvested our materials, we returned to the fleet carrier. On the way back, it was revealed that I had never flown a fighter before.
So it was decided that we were going to take some out for a spin. Fighters are basically remote-controlled tiny ships launched from the mothership, meant to be disposable, glass cannon sort of thing. I don't know much else about it, to be honest. I think you can also hire NPC pilots to fly fighters for you?
The friend who owned the fleet carrier (billionaire) piloted the mothership while me and another friend duelled in the fighters.
There were some great moments where we would come so very close to destroying each other, but the weapons overheated too quickly for us to do much permanent damage (shields regenerate over time). My fighter shot piss coloured plasma balls and the other one shot dark blue plasma balls.
It was very fun, very intense.
The duel ended in a tie when both our shields were down and we flew directly into each other, and we blew up. We didn’t die per se, because technically we were never in those fighters, our holograms were! Isn't the future amazing? So we 'respawned' back in the mothership.
My friends commented on how well I fought despite it being my first time; I told them I probably had an advantage as I was playing with a controller while they were on keyboard and mouse (100% true). I think they were lowkey praising me but #stayhumble.
In my attempt to #stayhumble, I told them that I was sweating and shaking a lot. I didn’t even think about it (being adrenaline) until our pilot asked if I wanted to go again after the rush was gone.
I thought I was just sweating and shaking like an idiot because I’m just umm, prone to being nervous? I was twitching around in my seat and sweating into my shirt, breathing hard too. Probably the most excitement I've had in a loooong time. Probably looked really weird though.
The other two went out to duel while I rode out my buzz. I couldn’t see shit because the fighters were so small and I could only guess at roughly where they are if one of them started shooting plasma balls, and maybe catch a small glimpse when the fighter overheats and it glows red for a moment. The black backdrop of deep space does not make for a very good viewing experience. I was looking around in the free-cam mode so that I could bring my perspective out of the cockpit. Eventually one of them blew up the other one and I returned to my normal cockpit view.
That’s when I’d noticed that the targeting blip for the fleet carrier on my radar was…red, meaning enemy, instead of its usual neutral orange or friendly blue. I raised this with my friends and they said it was probably because I had grazed the ship with a stray shot. And that was the end of that.
Until it wasn’t.
On the way back, the ship we were on was shredded by the fleet carrier defence system. It blew up. The ship was destroyed and we were dead. For real this time.
I lost 10,000,000 credits worth of data from collecting the crystal shards when I died, which was a lot to me, considering my net worth was about 20,000,000. But I wasn’t too concerned about that because there were ways to make more than that in less time. I didn’t lose any materials so that’s all good.
My friend lost their ship and had to rebuy it for almost 50,000,000 credits. Ouch. But they owned a fleet carrier, so it was not a big deal (they said it themselves ok, it was a big deal to me. still kinda is).
They insisted that it wasn’t my fault when I apologised for making the fleet carrier angry.
They said that my only part in this was agreeing to trying out ship combat. So I said that now that I knew I found it enjoyable, we can think of that incident as an investment. In my talents. (笑)
Was our moment of fun worth that much money? I got to share a funny, memorable moment with my friends. And I get to write a blog about it.
I did not take any photos during this because I was too engrossed in the moment, and also the screenshot key on my keyboard was too out of the way for me to hit while I was playing on controller.
Maybe I’ll bind one of the cursed grip buttons on my cursed Steam controller to be screenshot button.
Next time we jump the fleet carrier, I’ll find a good view and take a screenshot because, god, it’s beautiful and terrifying.
The rest of the evening was filled with more rides out in fancy, expensive ships. And weapons demos but NOT pointed at the fleet carrier!! We definitely learned our lesson there.
We also spent a lot of time hanging around on the fleet carrier, chatting away after we’ve sat our pilot avatars down in the seats in front of the big viewing window in the command deck.
Did you know that the developers added escape pods to fleet carriers because new players were getting kidnapped by fleet carriers and taken to systems that the starting ships can’t jump out of? They were often made to mine for resources and sell to the fleet carrier for dirt cheap. Yeah, that was slavery. The escape pod will take the player back to the last station they docked at.
Next time I report back, I'll probably be in another system. o7 <- this guy is saluting!
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2023