April 11, 2006

To fill you in ..

Well firstly I should recount one of those 'ofark' moments. Those who know me will have heard this one already so apologies in advance.

Anyway as I am pretty sure I've mentioned, there's a variety of missiles you can find that show as 'unknown' and sell for a significant sum (like 80K). Anyway at some stage recently, I've collected one.
Also recently, I ran into a bunch of Xenon, including a P, which is one of their funkier M6 craft. Armed with my trusty 'stick I decided to take 'em on.
Hurriedly (as you do) I saved first when I realised it may be a good idea - no point in seeing what the P was capable of the hard way. The closest Xenon was about 2K away at that time. They were heading for me so I was not travelling that fast .. no point in rushing the inevitable .. and there was less chance of getting swarmed if I stayed away.
Anyway as I grabbed the stick I hit the missile fire button. Since I didn't have it on loud I didn't hear the announcement, or if it did, it didn't register.
A couple of moments later I was close enough to start firing on the Xenon with a PSG. That's the weapon in the last post, the cyan glow. It's essentially an expanding ring of hurt. Good for lots of small fast bastards.
By the time my first shot was expanding, it was around 1km away. Oddly, that's the same range as the aforementioned missile. The hapless Xenon were now 1.5Km away.
In essence what happened next really took under a second. However in the 'ofark' of the game time continuum some things happen painfully in slomo.
There was an almighty bang.
Each and every Xenon ship turned to a ball of flame [at this point I realised I had fired the missile]
"The End" came up.

Had I realised that thing was in motion I'd have just run. There is a reason that they sell for the price they do .. anything within 5km of the point of the blast is obliterated. The split second of Xenon on fire was just the time it took for the blast to reach me .. maybe 3 frames total. If I'd known, I'd have run and tried to hit it with another faster missile from a larger distance.

So anyway here I was, head in my hands, headset on, laughing at myself with 'the end' on the screen. And I wonder why my partner thinks I am mad.

So anyway I reloaded that save, took the Xenon on and got my arse handed back to me, and to add insult to injury I didn't score a kill.

On another note game wise I've basically given the Paranid hell. They despise me. It's fun taking their ships and cargo. I've done part 1 of the 3 parts of the next mission, which involved entering Xenon Sector 101 (sounds like a TAFE course doesn't it ?) and finding a small bit of cargo near an M0 wreck.There was about 50 bits of crap floating around, and luckily I only collected 10 before I found the one I needed. Even in a Discoverer which is the second fastest ship, I had a lot of trouble collecting cargo and keeping clear of the hordes that were around. Since then the Disco has been renamed 'Xenon Hero'. Much as I'd have liked to take that missile in with me then .. the Disco can't fire it. On the way back to Argon Prime I found a PBE factory (Pulsed Beam Emitter - next weapon "up" from a HEPT) which pretty much rapid-fires extremely fast and painful blasts. The Xenon L can carry it, but not the Nova, which I have appropriately renamed "Le Poobox".

I sure hope that a freighter counts for the same as a fighter .. otherwise I ain't doing myself any favours combat rank wise. Some of the ships are M class rather than T, but not many. Those that are M class can usually outpace the Nova, so I *finally* repaired the Xenon. It's a bit quicker but not much. Besides that, it looks way cooler.

The Xenon, loaded with 2 APBEs and 2 each of B and A PACs has been granted the honourable title of "Feral Wombat" in appreciation of prior service, including barely surviving several near fatal wounds, helping me find half the universe, and likely a third of my kills. The original Buster probably got 1/5. the Nova 1/3 as well.







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