It seems eons ago I joined the crew on Varyag, an existence mostly of dashing from one section to another, sprinting down corridors & diving over parapets to carry out essential repairs before the damage goes critical & the ship blows up. Once it would have taken me minutes of wandering “wtf am I now, do I go through this door, or that one, heelp?”. My intelligence is now 52 (so I am merely borderline retarded now, finding my way around has helped my eBrain cells no end). My Blueprint Comprehension has tripled since I joined the crew – so now I am ready to have a go at crafting those Composite Planks (the reason I signed up to get the skills in the first place). But nothing is straightforward, I am L20 Vehicle Structural Engineering – but I would like the skills to operate a RK20 Repair Tool, so now I should get to L27.5 to run one of those beauties properly. Mind you they are costly beasts to operate – but the boost they can give to repairing damage, so necessary in emergencies J . It is not mad repairing all the time of course, when I can I like to sit in the co-pilots chair & watch what goes on. I would love to have a go at piloting a MS, the Captain must give permission (and I know Yoshii is well disposed to this) but it is a requirement that pilots on Varyag have a minum of 25 VSE. So it is not a straightforward march to ones goals, there are all sorts of branches & byways on the way. It is a true saying it is not the arrival but the journey that is important. The crew of Varyag (and I guess all MS) is international, and I have pleasant conversations, is more social than in a Guild – I know it grates on me when I am being mobbed by monsters & there are soc. members & friends who like to chat. Likewise when I am free & send a message “Hey Bra, How's things? “And get an answer oooOOOooo, and its eer sorry my bad Here we are all busy or otherwise at the same rate – so coversations flourish, its fun. To gain experience as a pilot, it is necessary to be attacked by mobs, but the skill they give quickly diminishes (about 2-3mins) the pilot has no easy way of seeing this, other than by skill or experience. So you can have a situation of 30 mobs attacking, dealing out tons of damage, helping the crews experience no end but only causing the pilot stress – so then its dash for the safety of the SS turrents. In fact taking the MS out is a cost/benefit balancing exercise – the aim is to get the maximum damage the ship can take with the minimum of fuel with the maximum benefit in skilling to pilot & crew. It really comes down to pilot experience. Relations with other MS and the elephant in the space room (Pirates Yaargh!!). When I signed up with Varyag I was told, “don’t do that, they have a baad reputation” well nothing I have seen stacks up to that. In fact my observations have shown the opposite to be true. I look on the forums & they are awash with fake news & alternative facts – so I gave up & trust my instincts. I do know there is a “so called” Vigilante who is allied with another MS & targets Varyag crew – that would include me I suppose, though it should be obvious from my posts I don’t like pirates much. But I prefer the honesty of a self confessed pirate to the hypocrisy of someone who is a Pirate in everything but name. Speaking of Pirates, Varyag was destroyed by one a couple of days ago – I was the only crew & the pilot said,” rather than sit around, lets go out & do some skilling”. He is experienced and could take damage right up to the line without destruction – then up pops this pirate, I know her, a fellow Australian. There is this song about my Home Town \o/ The Newcastle Song. Here is the link She would have seen us, the damage, the mobs, taken a guess about time zones & in she went “Dont You Ever Let a Chance Go By”, Let’s DO it. It was close, if I had a RK20 maybe we could have made it. Sorry bas, I did try I applaud her – Pirate or not, she has the steel to be one. It is very hard to destroy a MS, damage can be done indirectly – going out & aggravating mobs, draining them dry & then not killing or turrenting them. If pilots seats & gunners seats are empty, the mobs lose interest & drift away, but they are then useless for skilling. If they are destroyed it takes 8/12 hours for new ones to spawn – to me that tactic is a very low act Varyag offers a FREE warp service between planets – that’s Yoshii’s response to proxy wars, and an honourable one. So stackables can be transferred through space IF. You come aboard, you log off, you have Yoshii’s chat channel & you DON’T LOG ON AGAIN till she tells you its safe. You TT to the Space Station and then you spend 7ped to TT to the planet. Don’t assume that it is safe when you arrive - I was sitting in the CO-pilots chair & watched us arrive at Calypso SS, we parked and then I noticed a couple of red triangles with bad karma light up & zoom away. A passenger took his Sliep down & was promptly destroyed – luckily he had no stackables. And Karma, I found out about this – if you destroy a ship with higher Karma than you have, your Karma decreases. If you destroy a ship with lower Karma than yours – your Karma goes up. Anyway, have rabbited on for long enough “Over the Hills & Far Away” is my Theme song. Queen Yoshii commands and we obey. I have Peds in my Pocket Am going to buy some more RK5s & WW, gotta get that RK 20 J Let’s Do it \o/
Took Yoshii's free flights twice already since my return and I have to say thank you and well done to her and the crew!
