Issue #21
Sunday, June 12th, 2005Quator Blockade
Disagreements between Fearless Pride in Quator and the citizens of Delta Pavonis came to a head this week with the establishment of a line of Fearless Pride MO’s between Quator and Delta Pavonis. The symbiotic relationship between the two sectors has deteriorated over the last several months over a series of escalating incidents between the two sectors and Fearless Pride felt like something needed to be done.
The formal reasons given to the construction of the MO’s was protection from Delta Pavonis pirates and the price protection for food at the Class M planet of Quator (Fearless Pride’s home base). However, as long as the Micona starbase is able to offer high prices for food and water, it will be hard pressed to keep traders from making the run unless Fearless Pride blocks all traffic going through the sector.
Was this a smart move by Fearless Pride assuming they established the MO’s in an attempt to curb food prices? A well-known financial expert shared his insight and discovered that it will likely take several months to recoup the cost of the MO’s. Whether it will really be worth it to Fearless Pride remains to be seen.
Reactions to the situation have been mixed with some traders absolutely outraged, while other individuals and alliances in full support, and others in support for an interim period under the assumption the MO’s were put up for economic reasons only.
Federation Fighters
Since the opening of the new areas, quite a few new alliances have been created with a hope for making a name for themselves in the new galaxy. This week’s new entrants include the Human alliance and the Federation Fighters – both Federation alliances. While nothing has been seen from the Human alliance, the Federation Fighters look to be a Fed based alliance with a goal of becoming the best fighting group around. The Federation Fighters recruits more experienced pilots and they only pilot fighting ships. A majority of their time is spent freelancing, gaining skills, and gaining rank. Established by several well-known and well-armed fighters, this alliance has a solid foundation on which to build. Best of luck to the Federation Fighters.
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Red Alert for Red Cell
The Red Cell alliance put a Pirate Watch Program together this week whose purpose is to make Rashkir space a bit safer place to live. With the opening of the new territories, pirates have flocked to the new areas with the knowledge that there would likely be many less defended buildings and many newer people to prey upon. Red Cell, an alliance with many more established pilots in their ranks, has had their share of problems in Rashkir space and has decided to do something about it. Initial reactions have been a bit skeptical to the establishment of this program, but anything that makes Federation space a safer place is a good thing in my book. Good luck to Red Cell in this endeavor.
AGONY AUNT
Dear Aunty T,
I have been keeping a very embarrassing secret for the last month. I haven’t told anyone and I don’t know what to do.
The secret is that I really fancy a Defense Droid I work with, she’s funny, witty, charismatic, beautiful, and she’s got GREAT riveting. She’s everything you could wish for in a Droid. I haven’t told her how I feel, I can’t tell her either as another droid fancies her as well. I’m frightened he might try to turn me into scrap metal. Our boss has told us we’re not allowed to have relationships with co-workers but I have to do something as this is overloading my circuitry.
So please Aunty T what should I do, I need to tell her how I feel. We could run away together, I know this great little Droid Complex that we could move to but I don’t know what to do I’m frightened she might say no.
Yours
Love struck Defense droid.
Dear Love Struck
I am happy to say that this is not a thing that you should be ashamed of, but merely a small error of thinking that can be fixed. There is nothing wrong with fancying another droid in your state, as I can tell from your letter that you are merely suffering a chemical imbalance.
To keep defense mechanisms operating smoothly many droid owners use a cheapish form of ethanol in their rad-cell fluid cleaner. This over-dose of ethanol is having an effect on you whereby things appear new and strange to you where they frankly shouldn’t be.
In old Sol, this condition was referred to as “having beer glasses”.
Please inform your droid operator as to this imbalance, and follow it with a two-day resting period. After this daily life will return to normal and you will be able to operate as a fit member of your defense team.
Note to droid operators. If you are having problems with dysfunctional droids or droids that seem to have lost “that special something” consider changing you rad-cell cleaner. A good brand is Rad-Daz and can be purchased from any reputable dealer.
Yours
Aunty T
[Editor: Just like to say thanks to both “Aunty T” and to the ever changing “Love Struck Defense Droid” – you both know who you are and thanks]
Pardus Roulette (by Miguel Sanchez)
The universe is a dangerous place. Wild creepy creatures roaming in outer space, unscrupulous smugglers and evil pirates lurking on every system, and worse of all, daily threats by hothead pilots willing to take a hit on an innocent trader for a few credits.
But apparently, all of this does not provide sufficient adrenaline for some.
I was hanging out at the Drunked Space Maggot last friday, which everyone knows is the best pub in all Eridani, when I met this
young human pilot called pixx, who obviously already had had too many drinks and was trying to become friends with a scary looking creature full of fangs and claws. I dragged him over because I had started overhearing his story and had become interested, and I wanted to hear the rest before the hisses of the creature, which were growing more threatening, turned into something that prevented him from finishing his tale.
After a few minutes, I knew I had a scoop. I heard enough to let me know where to go in order to collect my next paycheck at the Tiacken Tribune. It was a bit sketchy because I couldn’t work out all the details before pixx collapsed in a drunken stupor, but I was already running towards the spaceport with my destination in mind: the Grefaho-Olphize wormhole. I was going to investigate… the Pardusian Roulette.
As I was reaching the outer limits of Federation space, I became increasingly restless. I usually don’t go to the Neutral Zone, prefering the orderly Federation Core planets to these unruly places where the laws are at best a subject of jokes. I sighed heavily as I passed the last Federation Military Outpost on Pass Fed 01, receiving the usual automated warnings about how my ship was now on its own, and my security could not be guaranteed as per Fed Regulation FR-042-B, and so on.
I started crossing the Grefaho system, heading to the Olphize wormhole, when I felt a huge explosion which rattled my ship and threw me out of my pilot chair to the back wall of the cabin. I was under attack! Some pirate must have followed me and fired a missile at my ship! I was ready to run to my escape pod, cursing the bad idea which had brought me to this lawless place, when the onboard computer announced reassuringly that a wormhole explosion had just happened nearby. Of course, I thought. I had come to the right place.
When I arrived at the wormhole, I spotted about twenty ships orbiting it. An oddity for such a remote place, but something that I had expected. I was immediately greeted on the local comm channel by a pilot who introduced himself as Bowles.
Bowles: Hey, we have another contender! Welcome Miguel. You arrived just on time for our next game, just come over here and I’ll transfer the goods to your ship.
Miguel: Hi there. Err, well I’ll just have a look first, if you don’t mind. I came here out of curiosity.
Bowles: As you wish. Anyway, we already have some contenders ready, so you might just have a seat and enjoy the show, har har.
Miguel: All right. So, what do you guys do around here ?
Bowles: Pretty simple. The game is called the Pardusian Roulette. Works like this: take two pilots with some guts. The first pilot takes a good load of explosives onboard, say 30 tons. We play with 40 today, which is more fun. Now, have the two contenders jump through the wormhole over there.
Miguel: What ?
Bowles: Let me finish.
When they both get to the other side, or I should say IF they both get to the other side, the pilot with the explosives on board gives them to the other, and receives 100,000 credits from him. Then they both jump back. If they make it safely, the second pilot gives the explosives back to the first and receives 200,000 credits from him. And so on. The game usually ends when one of them is too scared to continue, damn cowards, or with a beautiful fireworks display, har har.
Oh but wait, they’re ready to go! Damn, I missed a round of bets because of you. Now just watch.
On the local comm channel, live video feeds of the two cabins in the ships of the courageous contenders were being broadcast. One of them had a livid face and gaunt eyes, the other was strangely brimming with excitement. The comm channel became silent, space filled with tension and excitement. Shortly after, the two pilots jumped through the wormhole, their ships disappearing in a trans-dimensional electro-magnetic pulse, and onboard computers reported that the two ships had arrived safely on the other side.
Loud cheers erupted on the comm channel, by people who had bet on a succesful jump. Credits were being exchanged back and forth, and the two pilots were getting ready for their second jump. Again, a nervous silence took place, and soon afterwards, the two ships reappeared through the wormhole. Another succesful jump.
After more cheers, the nervous pilot quickly announced that he had had enough, took his 200,000 credits and sped towards Federation space. The crowd was obviously displeased, and his opponent wanted to chase him and force him to play for another round. It was obviously bad manners to only play one round.
But soon, another contender took his place. Bets were being placed furiously before the pilots were ready, and this time, the game lasted for six full rounds. With all the excitement, I even started placing some bets, but unfortunately lost 10,000 credits, betting on a failure at the sixth jump. Oh well, there goes my Tiacken Tribune paycheck. The losing pilot was unwilling to try a seventh jump and was the subject of jeers by the crowd. The other one was quite happy to leave with 600,000 credits and a ship in good condition.
The third game started, but didn’t last long. At the second jump, there was a huge blast, which produced a tremendous shock wave through the whole system. My onboard systems even went briefly offline because of the proximity of the explosion. Immediately afterwards, I heard huge roars and cheers from the whole crowd - even those who had lost credits on the bets - because after all, this was the real fun of the event. The video broadcast was showing the winning pilot smiling broadly, but only static where the other one had once been displayed.
The evening was over, because the stock of explosives was empty. I did talk a bit more with Bowles, who was proud that the Pardusian Roulette was enjoying increasing popularity, but worried that it was getting some unwanted attention by “those sickening sanctimonious TPI weenies” who considered it an amoral and evil activity and had started chasing event organizers. That was the reason why they were forced to organize the events in such remote places.
As I traveled back to Federation space, I reflected on the whole event, considering the possibility of one day taking place as one of the contenders of the Pardusian Roulette. Who knows, it might even be fun.
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Do you have a hatred towards a certain ship that looks like a PELICAN? Does it just make your skin crawl watching one of the wretched things gimp through space? Do you expect the Harrier to turn towards you and squawk or spit out a fish or something? And most importantly, do you wish you could do something about it? If the answer to any of the above questions is yes, then you need to join the expanding ranks of CASH! The Campaign Against Stupid Harriers is an organization dedicated to the elimination of the Harrier (by any means necessary). We start off gently with a warning to owners and suppliers then move to more aggressive measures should warnings be ignored. Our design department is consistently forwarding off alternative and comparative designs to Harrier producers in order to get the Harrier decommissioned. Every month, contests are held as to the most Harriers removed from service with the winner receiving the first bowl of Pelican soup. [good soup by the way…] CASH is winning the war. Every week that goes by, more and more owners look at their ship and say “Yes, CASH was right, this is the worst ship in existence!” The Harrier is a dying breed. 7 harriers and counting. Be sensible, be smart, lose the Harrier and join CASH.
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[Editor’s Note: Due to the fact that it is ‘illegal’ to randomly shoot down ships you don’t like (DESPITE the fact that Harriers DESERVE to be shot, dismantled, melted, and used for other more PRODUCTIVE purposes) and under the threat of physical and legal action, CASH has agreed not to shoot down Harriers in Empire and Federation space. However, Harriers caught in the Neutral Zone are fair game to CASH members. Do yourself a favor – get rid of the Harrier, give CASH the victory, and we can all be happy.]
Sector Management – A Beginners Look
A few weeks ago, we looked at planet management – the way a planet works. This week, we’ll look a bit deeper, we’ll look at sector management. Sector management can be seen as trying to provide the needs of the planet while coordinating with the needs of surrounding sectors. Each sector throughout the universe is different and provides different challenges. However, in most cases, the difficulty of pushing a sector to its max is directly proportional to the class of planet and the distance to the nearest food source: in most cases a class M planet. Without food and water, any sector enterprise is going to literally starve.
The other big player in sector development is the supply of energy. The major supplier of energy comes from starbases. In most cases, the planets supply the starbases with food and water, and the starbases supply the planet with energy. The two are relatively symbiotic until we get into the upper echelons of population where starbase energy will need to be supplemented by additional energy sources. (the reduction in planetary growth over 100k means that more energy will need to be supplied to a planet – and the increase of food to a starbase will not meet this increased need for energy)
A well-run sector is like a well-oiled machine. All parts moving in harmony with one another to produce an optimum result – an increase or maintaining of a planet’s population. Higher population equates to higher demand, which generally results in higher profits for all involved. This is one reason that alliances like to ‘claim’ sectors. By being able to plan a sector for alliance use only, there is the ability to control what, who, and how many of each building type are built within the sector. This allows the alliance a huge amount of control. If planned well, the planet could be stocked with all needed items on a tick-by-tick basis. Without alliance control, it’s really a supply and demand kind of attitude. What I tend to find is that the high level items (electronics, droids, robots) tend to be oversold driving the selling price down while the low to medium items tend to be ignored even though the demand is rather high.
The real trick of sector planning is to determine the needs of the planet at a given population level (or at an ultimately planned level) based on your resources. Resources in this case are the availability of food, water, and energy, the number of buildings available, and the number of full time traders to the area. You can have all the buildings in the world, but they won’t do any good to helping grow the planet if there aren’t any traders to move the goods!
So at this point, you know what you have, you should have a plan as to where your essentials are coming from, and you should have a rough idea as to how high you can take the planet. Based on these values, you can gather (from various tools) what the demands will be for the planet at the desired population level and what buildings you will need to meet these demands. Additionally, you’ll need to account for the lower level buildings supporting not only planetary demands, but also demands by the higher-level buildings in terms of requirements. From here, it’s a planet-by-planet process. Who gets what building, at what level, and to put it where. Each sector manager knows the pains of doing this. You like to keep like buildings in the same area for supply purposes, you want buildings that are visited frequently closer to the planet (neb plants) while those infrequently a bit further away, you want the building distribution to be fair to all involved.
Now while I am not the best sector manager (by FAR), I hope I’ve given you some insight as to the pains a sector manager goes through in helping set up a sector. A well-planned sector makes everybody happy. An unorganized sector leads to chaos, inefficiency, and less profit for everyone. So give your sector manager some slack next time he asks you for a certain building type. Odds are there is a reason for it.
Word of the Week!
In an effort to better educate Pardusian residents, the Tribune has instituted the word(s) of the week. We shall start the week off with these:
Revenant: One that returns after a lengthy absence or death.
Reaver: a wild force. Balls of energy that roam the wilderness mixing and shifting spirits in a chaotic and harmful manner.
Note these down in your memory for future use. I would hate for anybody ELSE to get publicly flayed for misinterpreting these words!
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We are planning to construct a spacebar in the near future too, to provide the needed amount of liquor and entertainment!
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Canaab: The Planet of Slaves
It’s rare that I get out of the Federation area these days. Sad, but true. Occasionally I’ll head out to the Neutral Zone for a story, but for the most part, I’m content to stay in my little neck of the woods. (and besides, when I head into Ska’ari area, I tend to get…hungry). However, I had the chance recently to attend a lecture by Shael’kut regarding the infrastructure and social policies of Canaab, a class D planet deep in Imperial space. Intrigued and wanting to verify the story for myself, I packed myself some sunscreen, a beachball, a couple changes of clothes, and off I went!
The travel through the Neutral Zone was uneventful (with the exception of a couple day layover in Tiacken where we…uh, nevermind. That’s a story for another day). I passed through Imperial space with mixed emotions. It’d been a long, LONG time since I’d been in this area, and well, my Babel stood out like a sore thumb. Now I know why I left in the first place. I finally found my way to Canaab.
Needless to say, it was an interesting couple of days. After working with and talking with some of these sheiks and ‘merchants’, I’m in no hurry to head on back. If I hadn’t been who I was, I likely would have found myself on a slave transport on my way to some drug facility somewhere.
Canaab has a few large cities surrounded by loose collections of local tribes in the surrounding areas. Canaab supports a very small ‘elite’ class, an existent but small middle class, followed by the lower class where a majority of the population resides. The power in Canaab is in the claws of a few very rich and very powerful sheiks. The first question that needs to be asked is how did these sheiks get so powerful? It’s actually an easy answer. They control the main incoming commodity. Water. Whomever controls the water controls the planet and the people that live there. Surprisingly enough, the sheiks were actually somewhat legitimate business crabs (as far as I could tell). They tended to keep their shells relatively clean and public opinion of the sheiks was more of jealousy rather than hatred.
It took some digging around to discover the slave atrocities on Canaab – surprising considering that slaves WERE the main export of the planet. I had to bribe my way through several layers of contacts before I found a slaver who was willing to talk to me. Based on our conversation, these slavers are power hungry middle class individuals willing to do whatever it takes to make it to the upper-class. If this includes a practice of slave-trading, then so be it. There are various slave-traders across Canaab, each of them with varying degrees of power, and various methods to produce their slaves. For instance one trader owned thousands of acres of land upon which he bred slaves into tribes. Every now and then, he would hold a ‘contest’ between the tribes (usually bloody and fatal among most of the contestants) upon which he made a huge profit off the gambling potential of these contests. Only a small portion of the tribe participated, and the remainder of the losing tribe would be taken into ‘custody’ to be sold as slaves. Another slaver I visited simply moved through local camps at a random interval and kidnapped slaves at whim. Still another sheik paid lower water rations than normal to the local population. However he would be ‘graceful’ enough to ‘supplement’ worker income through the selling of family members. It ultimately led to a “sell your family member or dehydrate” kind of situation. Another would simply run traditional slave camps. All in all, slaving was an integral part of Canaab’s economy no matter which way you looked at it and the traders make themselves rich off of it.
However, it wasn’t quite all doom and gloom on Canaab. Slave revolts were not uncommon and often slave-traders got more than they bargained for in their enterprises. A middle class exists in the larger cities where residents were making a modest living due to the efforts of various local traders (Hutch, Shael’kut, and others). However, greed is tough to overcome, and as Canaab grows larger, more slavers will join the ranks of this profitable ‘enterprise’. As long as the Federation, Empire, and local jurisdictions keep a blind eye to the injustices, the operations will likely continue – at least in the near term future.
Tidbits:
The Chronicles opened up last week – a place to share stories about the Pardusian universe that might not necessarily be appropriate for the Tavern Forum. You can find it here: http://s9.invisionfree.com/TheChronicles/
Citizens of Tiacken:
The celebrations are dying down and life is trying to get back to normal. Be watchful. Be wary. The Shadow still lingers. I can feel it.
Note: The Tribune would like to note that Launch Ball in last week’s issue was inspired by Weltenreiter and Tsereve rather than Perseus and Tsereve. My apologies to Welt.