//S.O.D. Activity///

There hasn’t been much new happening in SOD since the time of the last newsletter besides a new Oddfight.  The prize for this one is a brand new Mustang Delta (or it’s store credit equivalent) which I picked up personally right off the assembly line over at Consolidated Outland.  It’s one hell of a vicious little combat fighter.  Unlike the Origin Jumpworks 300 series, it’s less of a “boom and zoom” style attack ship and more of an “angry hornet”… flying strafing circles around the target stinging away and too quick to swat.  If you’re interested in your chance of winning it, be sure to attend!

The Star Citizen content leak was something though and has me thinking about tactics against the Vanduul.  Even if you’re avoiding looking at the content that was leaked for fear of spoilers, you might as well check out the prototypes of the Vanduul ships.  It’s probably going to be the only time they’ll be sitting still long enough to take a really good look at and admire.

//Food for thought//

I’ve been playing a lot of Elite Dangerous lately, but sadly, only on Solo mode.  Why?  Because currently, griefers are just too powerful in that game. The game as it stands makes it far too easy for them to grief other players for no reason and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it.  Even traveling together with three friends in a “wing”, perhaps you in a heavy transport and them in some of the most vicious attack fighters in the game.  A griefer can sit in the middle of a “prime system” (i.e. the game’s equivalent of Terra or Sol, something supposedly under tight control by law enforcement), then target just your heavy transport and knock it out of warp.  You activate your “beacon” to let your wingmen know where you got pulled in, but it’ll take them at least forty seconds to turn around, lock your down-wake, and fly close enough to it without overshooting to “join” you for combat.  Meanwhile, in those forty seconds, your next to worthless combatwise heavy transport, which costs 7 million credits to replace if destroyed and is carrying another 5 million in cargo (which you hope to sell for a 300,000 in profit) gets hammered by the griefer’s “specifically geared to grief” combat ship as he lays a torpedo and two dozen dumbfire missiles into you destroying you in about 20 seconds.  The cost of all those munitions coming to about 5000 credits on his part.  Then, without stopping to pick anything up or to gloat, retracts his weapons (3 sec), activates his jumpdrive (8 sec powerup, 5 sec countdown), and is gone before the first of your “protection” detail has even made it in.  Even if he was asleep and got destroyed along with me, the cost to replace his attach ship would be typically only around 250,000 credits compared to the 12 million I just lost.

So, I got to speculating about griefing in Star Citizen.  Already, just because of “how it does things”, you should never be left hanging without your escort if you have one, but then it becomes a “bum-rush the transport” battle.  The worst case I can envision is a Gladiator or Tali being flown by some kid with way too much playtime available (thus things like game-funds and munition costs aren’t a major problem), and unloading EVERYTHING into the Org’s Hull-E, ignoring the six fighters, or the dozen missiles which will assuredly destroy him as well because his replacement/rebuy costs aren’t nearly as expensive as what he just griefed.  Tactics wise, an escorted ship would need his escort far enough away to give advanced warning of the impending attack and time to counter, or warn-off suspicious players before they even get within range of attacking your transport.  I’m sure CIG has other ideas in mind on how to prevent or at least keep to a minimal the “bum-rush kamikaze” style of grief attack.  I’m interested to hear thoughts on this.  My email box is always open at demonseed@oddysee.org

Article written by DemonSeed Elite for Oddysee Community Newsletter #2