Organizing an Interplanetary Arms Smuggling Ring…

June was pretty crazy for me, and came and went before I even knew what happened.  During the last month, I wrapped up a massive project at work that I had been working on since the beginning of the year.  Additionally, my sister got married, and three days later, my new brother-in-law’s mother dies; talk about an emotional rollar-coaster.   One thing I was able to do towards the end of the month though was sit down and get back into Elite Dangerous.  I started out with a week or so of deep space exploring, doing a big loop which took me 5000 light-years out from Sol, which sadly isn’t as far as you might expect, but netted me several million credits.  Shortly after I got back to civilized space though, I got involved with an in-game group for the “Dangerous Games” event, which plans to write a player group as a legitimate, canon, in-game power.  This is essentially the equivalent to a competition where CIG would make Oddysee a full canon background entity in the lore of the game universe.  Needless to say, the competition is fierce for this event.

But getting involved, soon I was helping to organize an interplanetary arms smuggling ring, shipping custom firearms some 140 light-years, into a long-run system… a
“long run” system being one which has more than one star, and the space station you want to get to is quite some distance away from the star you arrive at in the system.   The long-run was about 15 tedious in-game minutes of mostly mixed boredom with the occassional anxiety every time another ship would appear on the scanner leaving you to wonder if it was a potential pirate planning to jump you.  The organizing was mostly coordinating the activity at the start of the run though, because the firearms in question could only be purchased in batches of 72 tons.  Afterwards, the game wouldn’t let you buy any more until you got rid of your current haulage. Strictly… 72 items per customer.

So, the logistics started with two or more “rats” buying up firearms 72 tons at a time and ferrying them out to a waiting mid-sized cargo carrier, typically a Lakon Type-6 transport ship.  This ship, with a much larger hold than 72 tons, would then get transferred the cargo canisters from the rats via cargo-ejection, and limpet collector drones.  The game doesn’t let you buy more than 72 tons, but there are no rules against “acquiring” more than that.  Working constantly, the rats would fill up the small cargo carrier (in some cases several), until one of the “haulers” would show up.   These “haulers” were players flying REALLY big ships.  These are like the Hull-E’s of the game: Imperial Cutters, Lakon Type-9’s, and Anacondas being most popular.  These haulers would get transferred all the cargo from the smaller ships, or in many cases, directly from the rats themselves until their massive 300-600 ton bays were filled, at which point, they would then complete the run.  Often, the haulers would have a player or two flying escort as well to help take any sudden heat off.

This strategy allowed almost an effective constant flow of goods from the source port to the destination port with far fewer players required than everybody trying to huff-it over 72 tons at a time.  While the group I was with didn’t have the raw player numbers to secure first or second place, we ended up taking a strong third, in the first of four events.  The whole time, I was thinking that if Elite Dangerous can organize something as far reaching and intricate as this, I can’t wait to see what we’ll be able to do in Star Citizen!  The possibilities have reignited my passion for the game, and I can’t wait to get some playing in this weekend with my org-mates.   Till then, Demonseed out.