Issue #79
Monday, December 11th, 2006The War Cometh
It’s everywhere. The anxious feeling you get when the inevitable is going to happen, and there’s nothing you can do about it but wait? You know the feeling: the birth of your first child, waiting for the first light of Christmas morning, and well, of course, faction war? Yeah, that feeling is in the air, and while nobody knows when the tension will snap, everyone is waiting for it to happen. It’s inevitable.
Around the universe, alliances are gearing up for what could be a very rough, very long, and very costly war. The opening of the Pardus Core has already increased tensions over the galactic council’s daily supplements. The fact that the Empire has one sector less has them agitated over their treatment. I’m sure they’ll be looking to even this out a bit.
The last Fed/Imp war was relatively limited to action within the neutral zone. Sure there were a few actions within each of the cores, but for the most part, damage was limited to the neutral zones and starbase destructions there. This time around, well, there’s much more to consider. The playing field is MUCH larger this time around. There’s also much more at stake. While initial thoughts were that action would be concentrated in the Pardus Core, recent actions in Edbeeth have proven that MO’s aren’t exactly all they’re cracked up to be. A steady pounding can RELATIVELY easily break a fully decked MO. Where does this leave us? Too much territory to defend. The cores of both Imp and Fed can be broken. And with the new starbase explosives missions invented (see related story below), attacks on the faction cores will definitely be more likely.
As if that wasn’t enough incentive, faction leaders have already begun celebrating destruction of rival faction MO’s with additional privileges added to the destroyer. That’s right, you destroy a rival SB, you gain rank – not a little either, but massive rank – 30% rank. Now while that’s not much for the lower ranks, the upper ranks would save literally weeks with a 30% rank gain….
Tension is heating by the day. Alliances gather their forces and resources. Plans are being made. It’s only a matter of time. Just waiting for that spark. What will it be – when will it happen? Not sure. All we can do is wait.
ISN – InterStellar Nexus
Throughout recent Pardus History, there have been several attempts at creating some kind of banking institution. Most have met with failure – mostly due to legitimacy. Well, Gkara has created ISN. Instead of simply acting as a bank as an individual, ISN has been created wholly as a banking institution. No need to go to an individual as the banker, you join the alliance (or give to an ISN employee), place your money to whom you want it to go to, and ISN makes sure that the money goes where it needs to go based on whatever criteria the money placer has instituted.
For example, this a great tool to use for the purchasing of nooks and/or starbases. Money holder sends money to ISN. The money is not transferred to the original owner until the starbase is transferred to the new owner. Upon seeing it in the news, ISN will then transfer money to the original owner. Additionally, joining ISN will prevent players from having to travel across the universe to receive funds as needed. Other services include the use of the ‘conference center’ (AC) for multi-alliance discussions as needed.
All in all, this is a very interesting idea, and I look forward to seeing whether ISN takes off. Good luck Gkara!
Christmas Glitter
Every Christmas, you see red and green everywhere. Thus the demand for red and green paint is high. Well, this year, there seems to have been a problem with the Ska’ari painting facilities. Instead of producing 1k tons of red ship paint, and 1k tons of green ship paint per the original order, the ‘intelligent’ Ska’ari instead added a few additional zeroes to each thus producing 100k tons of green paint and 100k tons of red paint.
Well, to help ‘alleviate’ the problem of all this additional paint, the Ska’ari had this ‘great’ plan to hold a contest, and whoever won, to paint their ships red and green Chirstmas colors. The contest was a huge success. Not only did the Ska’ari break even, but the craze caught on.
Around the universe, ships have been painted this green and red to copy this original design. An additional 100k tons of paint have been ordered, and the Ska’ari responsible for the idea have been promoted several times over. So to anyone who has an issue with the Christmas colored ships? Blame the damn Ska’ari. It’s their fault.
Cosmic Explorer
A writer for the Tribune broke off and started his own publication here recently. Bryan has created the Cosmic Explorer. I have to admit, some of the things he is doing over there make sense and stuff I wish I could do (or could have done). As much as I have always tried to be a partial in my articles, a harrier hating, crab cursing, slaver of the Federation has, well, a hard time being neutral sometimes.
The Cosmic Explorer was created as a paper, then the alliance created around it. Totally devoted to the news, the alliance plans to stay neutral in affairs in its attempt to be the impartial bystander (not as much alliance politics to get in the way). Also along those lines, the Explorer staff plans on staying faction neutral – no Emp/Fed/Union ties to get in the way of the news.
This is good stuff. Great ideas. I wish them good luck and look forward to seeing how well they do!
Explosive Words
Deep in the pardus core in a cloaked lab between the Empire and the Federation, scientists were apparently working on a smaller version of the Usube bomb. The intent of these explosives was a much smaller scale explosives. Apparently the destruction of a planet, while obviously successful, was TOO much. Instigators needed something a bit less to be able to continually push the pain between the factions. So they worked on explosives that would bring a starbase to its knees.
Unfortunately, during testing in the Pardus core, the test ship fell upon a cloaked Lucidi squad which didn’t buy off on the fact that the ship, was, how do we say it, oh, legitimate. The ship was destroyed. The explosion was big enough to attract the attention of Empire and Federation forces which arrived at approximately the same time at opposite ends of the explosion. Remnants of the explosion were taken by both to study with heavy suspicion directed at the opposing faction. Through backwards engineering the explosives were recreated by both the Federation and the Empire (with the Union ‘obtaining’ a sample during an Empire test run).
The result? A new explosives. Big enough to cripple a starbase, stable enough to withstand even an explosion on board the ship. Effective enough for factions to want to use them against the opponents during war – and willing to pay handsomely for it.
As if tensions weren’t high enough already….
Other main points of news this week include:
One Pilot Loki Odinson apparently working to bounty every member of FHA.
An attempt to frame NZI as an integral portion of the Moonie operations. Instead of rehashing the entire thread, I figured I’d post the link for interested parties here.
An interesting (and amusing from my point of view) little ‘discussion’ regarding some action between the Angels of Liberty and IG. This can be found here.
And that’s about it for the week. Safe travels and happy hunting.