BROS! I am BACK! At last. And man you know I am looking at the notes I wrote for this update and I seriously have no idea what the fuck I was doing, so this is going to be extra awesome.
Anyway I do have some bad news. If you thought that last hiatus was long and retarded well fuck me boys but you're in for a rude shock. I will explain with a list of the things I needed to do before I packed all my shit up and sent it overseas:
- 1) Shit I can't remember
2) Something else
3) Oh yeah, sell my whiteware and bed
4) Copy my StarComm savegames over from my big desktop computer to my laptop so I could take them with me
Anyway I didn't do one of those things, can you guess which one? Answer in very small text:
Actually it was a trick question! I didn't do two of those things since the guy who was supposed to buy my bed changed his mind at the last minute, the stupid bastard. So I gave it away.
Anyway I also forgot to do number four.
So yeah, this will be the last update for awhile until I get all my things back. No I don't know when that will be. I'm hoping soon since I want my porn and Dirty Harry DVDs, but fucking customs man.
Now for some good news - while I was slacking around not writing this I was thinking of a different game to LP. It was a tough choice since I needed something short (or at least easily put aside for a while), interesting, and not widely played, but I finally cracked it last week, so I'll get to 'work' (ie. my own definition of the term) on that later this week when I'm finished being incredibly drunk (as I said, it's my birthday soon). I'll give you guys some clues although I'm not too good at drumming up hype:
- Not a doujin shooter or a girly jarpug, remarkably
Puzzle/action gameplay
First person perspective
It's a mod and you've all played the game it's based on
Do you know what it is yet? Gosh how exciting.
Well enough of my Pete Hinesery. Or is it the other one who does the hype? I can't remember his name. Chris Avellone? No that's just me being a piss poor troll. Anyway, let's talk about Star Command for a bit, eh?
So if I recall correctly, and I admit I probably don't, we just had a fairly successful expedition into pirate territory coreward (more Traveller terminology) from the Triangle. Flushed with success I figure one more trip out won't kill us, so we refuel the ship (remind me to tell you guys about my DARK SECRET sometime) and we're off.
Anyway here we are at subsector (25,27). According to my notes this is within StarComm space but I can't really verify this owing to the fact I didn't bother to take a galaxy shot. We'll assume I was smart enough to write down the right thing, though.
Anyway this is a pretty boring litle system. We check out some of the planets and shit, and a couple of them are pretty cool guys:
As you can see that second planet there offered us some fuel, but we weren't really interested (as you can see we still have plenty left), but while we were there we were able to steal one item on the inevitable Espionage Mission - without a fight and everything, which was pretty cool. That fourth world also offered us some Uranium, which given the penchant the people of the galaxy seem to have for radioactive shit, we immediately buy. We also get a bunch of useless Scientific Investigation shit from everywhere, as you do.
We also met a couple freighters, probably. I mean I wrote that shit down but I didn't take shots* so it's anybody's guess really. As per the LARPing guidelines laid out in an earlier update, we avoid the fight even though the dickwads refused the totally awesome truce we offered them.
* Actually I did get this one but it's hardly worth sharing. I hope you all enjoy it anyway:
Yeah.
Well that's that subsector. Now I just want to say, I'm sure I had my reasons for staying within Triangle space, at the time I mean, but at this remove I reckon that it was a boring, cowardly decision. To make up for it I risked an incursion into Insectoid space which is a little more exciting.
Specifically we poke our big ridiculous primate noses into subsector (24,26).
Which looks a bit like that if you were wondering. We visit this moon looking planet first of all:
Turns out it's a pretty awesome place to visit. Aside from the usual SciInt dross (NB it is fair to assume that I do this on every planet we visit, rather than me writing it out every time). Anyway the thing with these guys is they want Neptunium - that's one of those unstable elements I think - and that they have a metric fucton of stuff pretty much just lying around. Specifically, 4 full items and we didn't even have to fight for them.
Although this is just one isolated incident I'm going to draw a conclusion from it and it's that Insectoid space is much richer pickings for we thieving bastards since Insect tech is not, you know, human tech, it's of much greater interest to SComm. Pretty good way to differentiate human/bug tech without long boring 'codices' or whatever if you ask me, but I guess we'll find out whether my theory holds up.
ALSO another quick observation before I carry on. You know how the Thargoids out of Elite were described as insectoids in the manual (actually if you're really sad and read The Dark Wheel, or whatever the novella was called, you may remember one incident where the protagonist nearly gets his arms torn off after he mistakes another insectoid-type alien for a Thargoid. Not that this really has anything to do with anything, I guess I just wanted to mention I've read computer game fiction before)? Given the number of Traveller and by extension Elite-isms in this game, who reckons that this was just a coincidence? Not that it makes a difference or anything, but I think it'd be cool if there was a link there.
OK let's move on. The mood in the ship is jubilant, probably, and so we move on to the next world, which looks like this:
Boss, another high tech world. We get down to the nitty-gritty right away because we're decisive people on this ship who never, ever procrastinate. These guys want Plutonium - LARPing time: I would be reluctant to sell the bugs Plutonoium even if I had some - and protect their belongings much better than the last lot.
Well, their fucking kids do at any rate. Anyway I've made a bunch of snarky comparisons between this and a bunch of newer games already (well mostly just Mass Effect), so here's one more, for FO3 this time: killing the kiddies. I love it.
Anyway naturally we are confident that we can scythe down the hordes before they do us too much injury (OK classical quote time: 'the thicker the hay, the easier the mowing.' I would have credited that to someone but I seriously can't remember who said it. I'm pretty sure it was Alaric or whoever that Goth who sacked Rome was called - after he did that he went on a bit of a working holiday, smashing up various provincial towns. One of the town leaders tried to threaten ol 'Ric by telling him 'beware - there are lots of us and we're desperate' but Alaric simply responded as quoted above, making that a pretty boss one liner when it's not explained in a long winded manner. Or something like that anyway).
Asides aside, we're totally going to kill these motherfuckers. Here's the basic plan: we can see that these guys are melee enemies - well, when I post the next screenie we'll be able to see - so basically we're going to move away from them and blast them. They'll probably be fast little motherfuckers but being hatchlings they'll drop like flies.
OK, here we go. Round one. Come get some motherfuckers. Torsten is able to speak their clicky bullshit language but as if we're going to offer them any terms, right guys?
Well, actually, we do - demand, tribute. They refuse, which is their loss really, and battle is joined.
Now I think we're in a pretty good position here - the hatchlings are all pretty much to our north, leaving the southern half of the battlefield open for us to maneuvre around. As per the plan we're going to find an offensive area to snipe from. Hence:
Well, shit. Those little twerps are good and quick, aren't they? Now, I dunno if I've mentioned this, but swapping weapons takes a round - you can do it at anytime during the movement phase without wasting a tic but you won't be able to attack until the next round. I think I described changing weapons as 'free' at some point in the distant past but that was perhaps a bit misleading, especially if you've encountered 'free actions' in your P&P RPGs before, so I should probably point that out.
A QUICK NOTE ON ROUND STRUCTURE
As long as I'm clearing things up, I believe I've also said before that the combat rounds in this game are divided into two phases, which isn't quite true - it'd be more accurate to call it 2.5 phases, really. First of all you've got your movement phase, which I'm pretty sure I bothered to describe correctly, and then your attack phase. That works but subdividing the phase into orders and execution subphases. The orders phase proceeds in party order and in it you tell your guys what to do, counterintuitive I know. Equally confusingly, in the execution subphase it proceeds in initiative order - as best as I can tell, this is non-random and based on raw SPD - and your guys do what you told them to do, without the opportunity to change any of their actions. That's why you can waste ammo on corpses and shit like that if you're not careful.
OK back to the task at hand. The reason why I bought up the whole weapons changing thing was that I was facing a bit of a dilemma at this point - ie. do I swap Maggot's gun for something a little more personal? It was obvious that they'd catch up to us next round so this was a fairly important decision.
Actually Orgasm has an axe too, now I think of it, but given Maggot's specialty the decision was more important for him. Anyway the choice was between potentially killing something this round or probably killing something next round - and I opted for killing now.
I think now this was the wrong decision. Here's Destroid kicking arse:
And here's some screenshots of every else kicking arse:
Oh right, there aren't any. The Light Weapons specialists in particular absolutely stink the place out, inflicting brutal wounds like this one:
Now to be fair, it's not entirely their fault. The manual doesn't mention this but the 'Damage Type' as listed in the equipment list (which I kindly pastebinned in the first post, if you forgot. Not that any of you have looked at it yet grumble grumble) does make a difference, not just the raw damage output/ROF. And the unfortunate fact is, D(amage)T(ype)1 - ie. bullet - weapons simply do not pull their weight. I forgot about this myself, even though I encountered it in my first attempt at playing the game. One incident sticks in my mind, now that I have been forced to think about it, where I bought a character an expensive Freq. Agile laser only to have their effectiveness drop considerably. Very frustrating.
Now we move on to round two. In my notes I wrote, and I quote, HOLY SHIT FUCK THIS. We attempted to move to that very southernmost mushroom - to the southeast of our current position - in order to keep the bugs from swarming us. This plan is more or less successful, thanks in part to the fact group B decided they'd had enough.
We end up just next to the mushroom as group A both blocks our access and place themselves in a good position to attack us. Fortunately the other two groups haven't quite caught up with us yet.
Given how fast they move, we don't change Maggot's weapon this round either. In real terms there's no room for someone with no damage output, however temporarily, at this point.
Anyway here we are:
The hatchlings are, shock horror, a lot quicker than we are, so they get stuck in before we do. Which naturally means Yeesh isn't going to get a chance to repay in kind (does anyone reading this like Grand Magus? I do!). Nor, for that matter, is Torsten:
Bee and Destroid fare a
little better:
Now, I can't remember exactly when I decided to HOLY SHIT FUCK THIS, but it could have been at this point. Or it could have been this one:
Now really, if we'd been able to drop group A (or at least thinned out the hay a little) I might have made a fight of it but we now have two dead weight characters and the rest of them aren't much better as well as triple the enemies ripping us to pieces.
In any case, though, we're out of here:
And with that we melted away like chocolate in your mouth. Dust on the wind. Or whatever else you prefer. Back to the station for us, anyway,
Alright I admit it - there'll be one more update. This was a relatively short expedition and I intended to make a big, long update featuring both this and the next attempt, which was also quite short, but I want to watch TV so we'll break here. Also I kind of want to post something on my birthday and write, 'IT'S MY BIRTHDAY BUT YOU GET THE PRESENTS!!!' or something equally stupid and cuntish.
Next time: more of the same. See you lot then.
