Badgerius

Welcome, Cmdr, to Gamma Wing. 3-4 posts up are the instructions I gave to the last new recruit. Your instructions are the same. Welcome aboard!

quote: I am 85% British, just like Mr Bean Shy to the point of ridicule, you've probably never been out of the UK. Take the Brit Quiz at www.darrenlondon.tripod.com/britquiz1.htm Quiz written by Daz LOL! I've lived in Canada all my life. Now I live in Victoria, famed as the westernmost point of the British Empire. Cricket and lawn bowling leagues outnumber hockey here 2 to 1, and there's a pub called the "Stickey Wicket" I love it here.

After the MP patch, will time continue when you are docked in SP?

Having read over your post in Experiences, I can offer a bit of advice: Run. You were outnumbered and outgunned. At the very least, you should have ducked in close to the station and allowed it to help you. Alternatively, you can nearly jump twice for every carrier jump. You could have been clear back to Jupiter before he even got close to the jump point. Only very smart AIs use cloaking. You were up against a very tough opponent. Once MP is out, you'll have support. You can gang up against the carriers, and call in your own carriers for fighter support. Then you'll be able to take 'em down every time.

quote: Okay. The little bit about them joining up against the Gammulans with the Syrions basically nulls out any of that "Droidan vs. Syrion" stuff you came up with. That much I do know. I disagree. Galcom and Insurgents came together to fight the Gammulans at the Battle of Jupiter. That hardly rules out GalCom vs. Insurgents.

I'm writing this short story to fill in the blanks between "Eternal Diligence" and my appointment as Wing Commander of Gamma Wing. Although this story is not intended as a MP story, if you have MP ideas for this story, email me at [email protected] The Death of the Calypso Chapter 1: Lt. Hans Peterson was actually getting bored. He didnÔÇÖt quite believe it at first, since he was used to soaking up the quiet times between action, because soon enough, action came, and he would wish it was quiet again. So this feeling of boredom was new to him. But now he was pretty much sure of it. He was bored. Not that heÔÇÖd led a boring life. Oh no, heÔÇÖd led quite an exciting life, by most standards. By GalCom Marine standards, even, heÔÇÖd been quite busy. As a private heÔÇÖd been the last off a cruiser before the commander had scuttled her. Hans still didnÔÇÖt like thinking about that. ÔÇ£A marine shouldnÔÇÖt leave his commander behind,ÔÇØ was what heÔÇÖd thought at the time. He was older now. Maybe wiser. He could see why what the commander had done was necessary. It still didnÔÇÖt sit right with him though. After that heÔÇÖd served on the Diligence, as a Sergeant. A fine old carrier, the Diligence had seen more action in her time than most serving Fleet Commanders. Technically, he still was serving on the Diligence. She was undergoing a complete overhaul after an extended campaign against the Vesperons, a campaign that had cost the lives of PetersonÔÇÖs entire squad. The DiligenceÔÇÖs commander, Sev Badgerius, couldnÔÇÖt stand being behind a desk during the refit, so he took command of the GCV Calypso. The Calypso was a Solnar class cruiser refitted as a research ship. Her main guns had been replaced by a super-sensitive sensor array, and her marine complement had been replaced with a science crew. Hans, now a Lieutenant, had taken the position of Combat Officer. Since then, things had been quieter. Not completely quiet, mind you, since scientists had all the common sense of children on Christmas morning when it came to new things. New and dangerous things. HeÔÇÖd pulled the scientists out of trouble more than once, and the thought of the last time, with the foolish technician attempting to get a blood sample from a Polarian sand dragon, brought a smile to his face. But that was three months ago. ThereÔÇÖd been nothing since. Hans was growing bored. He stood up from the wardroom table and paced to the window. There was the usual beautiful backdrop of stars, but no planet. They were in deep space, hunting spatial anomalies. Not a lot for a marine to do. ÔÇ£This does not bode well,ÔÇØ he said to himself. ÔÇ£ItÔÇÖs been quiet for too long. This is the calm before the storm, and this storm is going to be bad.ÔÇØ And with that feeling growing in his gut, he started down to the armory, to make sure heÔÇÖd be ready. Lt. Commander Allison OÔÇÖNeil sat at the Sensor station on the bridge of the Calypso. As Tactical Officer and XO to Cmdr. Badgerius, this is where she spent most of her on-duty shipboard time. SheÔÇÖd been sitting there for ten hours now, along with one of the technicians. OÔÇÖNeil stood and stretched, her hands brushing the conduits running along the ceiling of the bridge. Tall and well built, her stature, along with flaming red hair, currently worn up and out of the way, and a tough-as-nails demeanor, had earned her the nickname ÔÇ£Big AlÔÇØ on the Diligence. Here, things were more relaxed. Most people here just called her ÔÇ£OÔÇÖNeil.ÔÇØ The technician looked up at OÔÇÖNeil. ÔÇ£Time to call it a night?ÔÇØ he asked. ÔÇ£Looks like the phantom flux point isnÔÇÖt going to make an appearance tonight.ÔÇØ OÔÇÖNeil nodded and stifled a yawn. They had been looking for this thing for three months; following scraps of probe data into the farthest reaches of the Rebelan region, at the edge of known space. A Flux point which appeared suddenly, swallowing ships whole, and then vanishing again. After three months of searching, they were certain it existed. They just didnÔÇÖt have any direct evidence. Not yet. OÔÇÖNeil looked at her watch: 1:27 am. Well past the end of her watch. The Comms officer had the conn, so she was not needed on the bridge. She waved goodnight to the bridge crew as she stifled another yawn, and headed for the turboshaft. She never got there. The Sensor console let out a single, attention seeking chirp, and the main viewscreen was suddenly filled with the green aura of a flux point. The technician sat up suddenly. ÔÇ£WeÔÇÖve got it! Flux point forming! All criteria within search parameters. This is the one weÔÇÖre looking for. PositionÔǪÔÇØ he paled visibly. ÔÇ£Jesus! ItÔÇÖs 300 meters off our starboard bow!ÔÇØ Allison was instantly alert. ÔÇ£IÔÇÖve got the conn,ÔÇØ she said crisply. She turned and headed for the command chair, which the Comms Officer was vacating. ÔÇ£Shields up. Hard to port. All ahead slow.ÔÇØ She pressed a button on the chair which sent klaxons blaring throughout the ship. ÔÇ£All hands, emergency stations. Commander to the bridge. All officers to the bridge.ÔÇØ As Sev Badgerius came instantly awake, dressed and headed for the bridge, and as Hans Peterson rushed from the armory without putting down the rifle heÔÇÖd been cleaning, the Calypso continued to close on the flux point, drawn in by its distortion field. 300 meters had closed to 200, and 200 was rapidly dwindling to 100. At 132 meters, a bolt of plasma-electric energy erupted from the flux field, and struck the CalypsoÔÇÖs forward hull. The shock of the impact threw Badgerius to the floor of the main corridor. He skidded a few meters and rolled back to his feet. As he did so, he saw Lt. Peterson heading for the bridge turbolift, a rifle in his hands. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as they both entered the turbolift. ÔÇ£DonÔÇÖt you think thatÔÇÖs a bit premature Lieutenant?ÔÇØ he asked wryly, nodding at the rifle. Hans looked at his Commander and smiled. ÔÇ£You can never be too ready, sir,ÔÇØ he said. The lift opened to the sound of the Comms Officer. ÔÇ£ÔǪshields down, hull down to 63%. We have reactor damageÔǪÔÇØ Another shock shook the ship. The lights flickered and died, and then came back on. OÔÇÖNeil was using her command voice now: ÔÇ£All power to the hyperdrive. Set course for Rebelan. Jump!ÔÇØ As the Calypso disappeared into hyperspace, the flux point responded with fury, as if angered at its escaping prey. Half a dozen bolts erupted from it and struck the CalypsoÔÇÖs aft hull just as the research ship finished its entry into hyperspace. The lights went out again, and this time they didnÔÇÖt come back on. The only light was from the bridge windows. Located as it was on a column above the center of the ship, the bridge overlooked the shipÔÇÖs forward hull. Badgerius could see the air venting from a hull breach on deck 2, and the starboard nacelle looked seriously damaged. It was a wonder we could jump at all, he thought. ÔÇ£Report, OÔÇÖNeil,ÔÇØ he said as he took his chair. OÔÇÖNeil strode to the Logistics station. She examined the readouts for a moment, then said, ÔÇ£ItÔÇÖs bad sir. The reactor core has been ejected. Hull breaches on decks 2 and 3. Main engines offline. Secondary life support is gone. Communications is gone. The shuttle bay is offline. No radiation detected.ÔÇØ Badgerius sighed. They would have to abandon ship. ÔÇ£Activate the distress beacon, please, Lt. Arquette,ÔÇØ he said, addressing the Comms officer. Arquette looked at her console and said, ÔÇ£SOS beacon offline, sir.ÔÇØ As Badgerius began to give orders to move any crew in areas covered by the secondary life support to safety, OÔÇÖNeil whispered ÔÇ£Oh noÔǪÔÇØ Badgerius looked up in alarm. ÔÇ£What is it, OÔÇÖNeil?ÔÇØ he asked? OÔÇÖNeil was hunched over the TacOps display. ÔÇ£Sir, thereÔÇÖs a problem with our Hyperdrive trajectory. WeÔÇÖre off course by 110 km. WeÔÇÖre going to come out of hyperspace inside RebelanÔÇÖs atmosphere.ÔÇØ The bridge was silent. Everyone looked at the commander, who was looking at OÔÇÖNeil. Finally he spoke. ÔÇ£All power to auxiliary thrusters. Take the helm, OÔÇÖNeil. All hands,ÔÇØ he said, pushing the intercom switch, ÔÇ£prepare for emergency planetfall. Brace for impact inÔǪÔÇØ he consulted the navigation display, ÔÇ£ÔǪeight seconds.ÔÇØ Rebelan was an uninhabited world, with thick jungle circling the equator. It was above this jungle, at 21 degrees North, 87 degrees west, that the Calypso exited hyperspace. Right in the middle of a tropical storm. Hans Peterson remembered the next moments only as flashes. The lightning outside the windows lighting up the bridge. OÔÇÖNeil shouting that the ship was still descending. The commander transferring battery power to thrusters. The sickening scream of metal being torn apart. And then, nothing.

ROTFLMAO! Your father: PCMCIA!!! We had a pneumonic to remember that in school: People Can't Memorize Computer Information Acronyms. Hmmm. As for personality, how about: Uniformly polite and friendly ATM and Gas Pump Personality: "You have violated Droidan Space. Please lower your shields and prepare to be vaporized. Have a Nice Day." PBS Robot Personality: "I am ASTAR, a Droidan Marine. I can put my arm back on. You can't. So Neener Neener." Microsoft AI. "Droidan Battlecruiser: Yes, we can." Apple AI. "Smile!" Seriously, though. The Droidans are a race of robots, which seem to have been created by the Syrions. It's all very mysterious. Maybe you worship the Syrions as gods. Maybe you serve them as slaves. Maybe they are "The Creator" I'm sure you'll come up with something.

Droooooool... Man that's going to rock.

Done

I thought as much.

No, after they destroyed the target that had aquired me, they jumped. I checked their orders, and it was SAD, with the Sunflash as the target. That Sunflash did not have me targeted, the other one did. When I re-ordered them to escort me, the orders changed back to Escort, target: GCV-Diligence. I've noticed this several times. I will engage in combat with FCs protecting me. Once the immediate danger is passed (ie no one is currently attacking me) the FCs revert to SAD, and go hunting if I don't reign them in. I had attributed this to Low AI levels (All under 25%) of my pilots.

Here's a question. What does the symbology for the weather forcasts mean. It'll say something like: Weather: Normal (This I understand) Forecast: Hot 13M (This I don't) At first I thought it was "Hot in 13M" but the number never changed, and the weather never got "Hot" I left it running for several hours. Anyone know what it means?

Tractoring a disabled fighter will bring it aboard. Here's how I know: I was in Lennen on my way to Polaris when 3 cruisers (spacestar and 2 sunflashes) enter the system. I think the spacestar came in from Sygan, and the Sunflashes came in from from two other locations, so they were all spread out. I had 2 fighters out escorting me, but they hadn't entered the system yet. The Spacestar decides to take a swipe at me, and jumps. He comes out of hyperspace about half way between me and the jump point, just as my fighters come through. It exploded just as I finished my first pass on it. Unfortunately, my fighters forgot that they were escorting me, and jumped to take on one of the Sunflashes. I gave them escort orders, and jumped for the Polaris wormhole. As I jumped, I watched my first fighter come out of hyperspace, and immediately take a hit in the canopy. Pilot and copilot dead, but the ship's still intact. FC2 made it clear and jumped to my HS exit point. The second Sunflash had decided to take me on, however, and was waiting for me there. While FC2 held off the Sunflash, I came out of hyperspace and launched my 2 remaining fighters. Just as I did so, FC2 took a hit in the canopy with the same results as FC1. I decided to fight it out so that I could retrieve those fighters. Big mistake. The second Sunflash joined in the fight, and I was now taking on 2 cruisers. My fighters lasted less than a minute against the combined 24 PTA turrets. Now I'm pissed. Now I need to recover those fighters. After 3 minutes of manouvering, and a lot of missiles fired, I destroy the first Sunflash. I'm not in great shape. I've got intruders marauding my decks, reactor's down to 60%, and a dozen other systems are less than 50%. I don't have enough power to keep all my combat systems online. So, I take a chance. I take Aux Life support offline to bring my turrets back up. It's a gamble, but it'll hurt the intruders as much as me. Turning back to the other Sunflash, I know I'm outgunned. My shields generally hovered around 6%, and I wasn't hitting too often with my damaged IOD, and I couldn't fire missiles because I couldn't risk turning off my EMD. I was just about to make a run for the wormhole, about 26 km away, when a Mk3 battlecruiser came through the wormhole, firing on the Sunflash. Checking my radar, I didn't see any blue or green dots, so I gathered that he'd turn on me when the Sunflash was destroyed. About 30 seconds later, the Sunflash was history, and I made a beeline for the wormhole. Unfortunately, my engines were damaged, and I couldn't make more than 800. The mk3's fighters were cutting me to ribbons, and I thought I wasn't going to make the wormhole. A few zigs and zags later, though, I was in friendly space. I nearly forgot to repower up the Aux life support, though. No casulties, but most of the crew needed to sleep off the effects of hypoxia. They had plenty of time to do so. Three and a half hours of repairs later, I launched from Velari, returned to Lennen, and retrieved my fighters. I'm am now trying to return them to operational status.

Ok, I can't seem to stop myself. I've been telling myself, over, and over: "Wishlist items will get you court-martialed or killed" But I can't get the idea out of my head, so I'm going to write it down. Here. Now. *Looks around to make sure the SC isn't looking* It would be cool if (Oh I am soooo Dead! ) the race of the intruders was listed in Perscan. That way, you would have some idea where they came from. *Turns and runs like hell*

Ok, this is an old one. I'll probably be doing another one soon. [ 11-30-2001: Message edited by: Badgerius ]

Wow. I've never seen that. I'd stopped posting marines in shuttles, because I've lost marines after intruders had launched with them. Perscan showed that the Marines lived, too. But that was all BC3k. Now, I've noticed that sometimes I can see the intruders locations in perscan, and sometimes I can just see the number of intruders. Is this based on intruder AI, or is an officer's AI that's to blame?

Ooohh... It's one of those... Nasty. I know exactly how you feel. My advice: Go out, see a movie. These things always seem to come clear after a break, when you're looking at it fresh. It always works for me.

Sorry about that, Cmdr. McMahon, I've been a bit busy. Welcome to Gamma Wing. You are assigned to 1st Squadron, The GuardDogs (hey look everyone, spelled it right for once! ), under the Command of Cmdr. Hugo Pinheiro. I haven't heard from Hugo in a little while, so I'll give you the introduction speech myself. 1st Your Sig is fine. Just add ", 1st Squadron" to the end of the last line now that you're assigned there. 2nd. Check out www.primefleet.com, if you haven't already. Click on CommLink, and get set up on Prime's private web-board. Read the tactics, rules, and regs in the Academy section. Feel free to participate in any tactics discussions. 3rd. Get a password to the restricted section of the board. Fire off an email to [email protected] for the password. He'll also set up a primefleet.com email for you, if you wish. 4th (and finally) Choose your craft. While, I'm not going to limit what you play in BCM, your official Prime Fleet ship will be a cruiser (Heavy or Super), until you are promoted to Squadron leader or higher. Let me know what class you'd like the Endeavor to be. Again, welcome to Gamma Wing. The Guarddogs Squadron is the finest in Prime. More than half of the command staff was in the Guarddogs at one point, including Cmdrs. Rico Jansen, and Remo Williams. I'm sure you'll do that tradition justice. If you have further questions, feel free to post them in the Gamma Wing section of either this board, or the Prime Fleet board.

Well, it's not documented, and it probably won't be. But, you can figure it out yourself by watching your marines/medics search the ship. Most ships seem to have similar layouts, but I haven't tried all the ships yet by any means. The ones I've tried, generally have: Fore, Central, and Aft sections of the main corridor on 4 decks, with the turbolift in the aft, with locations off of those. So follow your guys around, and keep notes, and you'll have a handy-dandy map of your ship. As for dealing with intruders, just put all your marines on search duty, turn off launch control, and wait. This just occured to me. It would be fun to land on a planet, evacuate the ship using the transporter, and shutdown launch control, and primary and secondary life support. Watch 'em suffocate.

Well, I'm not sure exactly, but I think it's pretty loose for UCV. Ship name, for sure, and race/caste, need to be there. Check out the Indie section of the forums for examples. If you follow the indie layout, you should be fine.

Smiley, I like your style I like a commander that knows his duty and does not abandon the people he is sworn to serve and protect. It sounds like you've got the makings of a good commander. I would be glad to have you in Prime fleet serving alongside me. Email our personnel officer at [email protected] if you are interested, or if you have questions. Tell him I reccommended you. Our website (perpetually under construction ) is at www.primefleet.com Fight the good fight, Smiley! [ 11-29-2001: Message edited by: Badgerius ]

You could remove the missiles from the CC loadout until you needed them. I don't think the CO automatically reloads missiles from your stores. The HJ transit time should be plenty of time to reload your missiles, if need be. So unless they decloak right next to you, with your HJ engines offline, you should be able to load your missiles when you need them.

So to jump to the rings (assuming there's debris there) I target a rock, and jump to it?

As long as it isn't the Military Case, then you can put any group you want together. Several such groups already exist. You can read up on them in the Misc Race/Caste Affiliations sections of the board. However, it takes special permission to become an official "Fleet" Talk to the Gammulans, since they just became one, for more details on that. That's also why they don't have a section on the board, since they're brand new.

Syntax Error, Unkown Reference: Assembaly Quothe the sage: "I was taught assembly in my second year at school. It's kind of like construction work with a toothpick for a tool."