Space Skilling Saturday 53 (1 year anniversary)

Location: [83196,68480] and environs. 
Time:- 1900 MA.
Present:- Wolta, Nocturaline, Phil and Myself.
Team name:- Sleepyheads 1 year in bed!

We started a couple of minutes late, as this was an anniversary I wanted to do something a bit different so both Wolta and Nocturaline thought of a number between 1 and 10, the lowest got to make the warp and the highest determined the destination. Wolta was lowest and Nocturaline’s number indicated Locusta so Wolta warped to the area in which they are located.

Wolta soon had us working hard, we had no idea how many Locusta we could have attacking the ship and survive so we experimented. It seems about 8 or 9 is the limit and it was not difficult to kill that amount in one sitting starting from a fully repaired ship. During my first sitting at a turret a small anniversary global was achieved. However, once they were killed Wolta had trouble finding more, somehow she had managed to manoeuvre to a distance of 2au from our arrival point.

It took Wolta the rest of her hour to return to the area and once there she handed the helm over to me, I stayed close to the way point and found plenty of mobs. During my stint I took to a gun 4 or 5 times and managed a second global towards the end, skill gains seemed slow to start with but increased and I ended the session with about the usual gain. I enjoyed this session, it was different and in some ways easier, the Locusta cluster much easier than the Cosmic Horrors which makes killing them simpler without a pilot however piloting is a little more intense.

Nocturaline took over as I killed the last mob of my stint and soon had 9 mobs on the ship, which seems to be about the right amount for 2 RK-20s and an RK-5. During Nocturaline’s session at the helm I began the use of random gun turrets to keep the pilots on their toes, the idea is to teach the pilots how to position the ship to bring targets within the firing arc of the different guns. My second session in the lower right turret produced a decent global, I like the lower guns, there is better visibility so they do not feel so cramped. I got to try the lower left turret a little later as well though the results were not as good it did feel better. Thinking about it the gun design on these ships really is archaic, there is no need to see the gun barrels at all and the pilot should be able to see a small screen of each active gun so as to enable better positioning.

After Nocturaline’s session at the helm she warped us back to Arkadia. I worked out I had made a small profit while both Wolta and Nocturaline logged.

From the desk of
Chela Bias.