(NERV Game Site – Official DAtS Offline Forums)
Number5Alive, Golddigger, BurtBacharach, CrazyCelt, Blaze, DoYouEvenLyft?, MarcoPolo, MightMakesRight, l33tpally, Bennie, SEA-TAC_Sweetie, Requiesce-in-Pace, MacD, HaveGunsWillTravel, Guardian, GunKitty, Chummer, Inquisitor, SemiSolidSnake, ElfMama, Not_the_Face!, Anonymous3, Anonymous4, Anonymous9, AggregatorOfSorrows, WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot, Dolcett, Backlog, DarkAvariel, Knocker, Hullu_Kapteeni, GrimDark, BloodForTheBloodGod, Queen’s_Bitch, BackDat@55Up, DoYouEvenDPS?, MajorTom, Parca, and DarkAngel are in the chat.
Knocker: What the hell is this about these “X’thari”? What are they?
Number5Alive: Ooh. They’re nasty buggers. No one really knows what they look like, since they always walk around in those technorganic suits of theirs, like some kind of chitin.
Anonymous4: Are you sure they’re suits? Could be actual insectoids.
Number5Alive: Yes, I’m sure. Unless they’ve changed things from Beta.
MacD: Ugh, that was some seriously nasty shit.
CrazyCelt: What happened?
MacD: You ‘wake up’ on a ship, and alarms are going off, and you have to try and get off before the thing goes boom, while landing parties of X’thari try boarding the ship.
CrazyCelt: How tough are they?
MacD: Individually? Not impossible. Their armor is tough, and they’re good fighters, but a combat spec could take one down. Problem is, they’re pack hunters, so there’s never just one.
Number5Alive: Yeah. But you can get a group of them, if you know how to rig traps.
MacD: So one of your traps knocked them out of their suit, and you had time to take a look?
Number5Alive: All of about 20 seconds before the thing came to, noticed I’d removed its helmet, and self-destructed. Took out half the ship with sympathetic explosions.
CrazyCelt: Suicide vests?
MacD: No one knows for sure. But whatever it is, it is like a pocket-sized nuke. Very nasty, if you’re within about 20-30 meters.
Guardian: 5, that was you? I heard talk on the boards about someone in Beta getting a look under the hood.
Number5Alive: Yep. Nasty shock. Didn’t really have time for more than a quick look, and the Beta license didn’t let us save images, for obvious reasons.
Backlog: Man, that would have put you in one of the top spots for the beta, if you didn’t get yourself blown up, right?
Number5Alive: Yeah. Fastest time on the Beta was actually some guy with the Engineer spec. But he showed up on the other specs, too, though with slower times.
M.Mollen: I used to be an engineer in real life. Out of game skills helping game skills, and all.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Backlog: Used to be?
M.Mollen: Medical discharge. I was in an accident, and was left paralyzed from the waist down. Suddenly had a LOT of time for gaming.
Knocker: So are you why the X’thari are showing up all over the place?
M.Mollen: Yes and no. No, I didn’t send them. Yes, they’re showing up because of something I did.
l33tpally: What did you do?
M.Mollen: Led the defense of Nuevo Edo against the X’thari raiders who targeted it, and won.
Knocker: Why would they go off attacking elsewhere, then?
Parca: Because we stomped their asses so hard their mothers felt it. Close on 200 ships and we killed them all, without a dreadnought in our group.
Hullu_Kapteeni: Well, the Boss did call in a favor and get some Imperial assistance to take out the one group.
Parca: OK, fair enough. But we’d already damn near killed them all. That last group would have bled us, but we’d have won.
GunKitty: But now you won, and you don’t have to replace half the fleet.
Anonymous9: So that’s why those Black Star ships ran to the Gateway, and came back today looking they’d been put through the wringer?
M.Mollen: Yeah, had to call in all hands. The Assassin-class corvettes and Reaper-class cruisers are simply not built for slug-fests, and the gunboats are badass for their size, but they’re tiny. Sending that kind of force against a group that included dreadnoughts would be suicidal if that wasn’t our only choice.
BackDat@55Up: Could have cut and run, right? I mean, it wasn’t like you HAD to stay.
M.Mollen: Sure, if you count leaving a planet full of people to die as a viable option. And maybe if there were more of them, I would have made that call.
MarcoPolo: So what does this have to do with raiding in ‘Known Space’?
M.Mollen: Because they had a stealth probe in the system that watched the gate traffic, so they know where we came from. And they now know we have abilities allowing us to fight above our weight class.
Knocker: They’re looking to do tech steals?
M.Mollen: That is what our analysts believe, yes.
Guardian: ‘Analysts’. Heh.
M.Mollen: Technically, I do have several analysts.
HaveGunsWillTravel: That exist primarily so you can say ‘analysts’ with a straight face, and in case they make a jump a more logical mind wouldn’t.
MajorTom: We prefer to think of her as the IT department.
Parca: Chief navigator.
GunKitty: You guys are so bad!
Anonymous4: You have some kind of super-analyst? Is that how you’ve managed to jump ahead in different tech fields?
M.Mollen: The tech jump happened because I got a bunch of clever people together, gave them some tech I ‘acquired’, and told them to go wild designing new things.
Anonymous4: And this super-analyst?
M.Mollen: Is a secret. One that I will torment you with so you won’t think about what else I’m doing while you’re distracted.
Golddigger: That’s cold.
DarkAvariel: So, if most of your fleet is in for repairs, where’s that leave you and Black Star?
M.Mollen: Well, the tech guys are working on some new ship designs, and the Nuevo Edoans are very happy with their investment in Black Star products so far, so we’re going to be building up their fleet for a while.
MajorTom: Don’t forget R&D on the captured X’thari ship.
M.Mollen: Ah yes, the X’thari launched a new ship type at us, so we captured it. R&D is being shared between us and Nuevo Edo, but we may be able to do some contract work for the Empire and Confederates once we unlock a few of their mysteries.
l33tpally: You captured an entirely new type of X’thari ship? How did they not blow it up?
M.Mollen: We kept hitting it with ion cannons to disable the systems and keep them down, and I have Marines, so why wouldn’t I toss them at a problem like capturing an entirely unknown ship type?
MajorTom: That’s why we’re Marines. It is what we do.
M.Mollen: Yep. Oh, and if any of you guys are looking to get thrown into a lot of action, by now any major power will be looking to get as many Nomads into highly lethal roles as possible. Soldiers, spies, fighter pilots… the guy they send into the fusion reactor.
MajorTom: Hah!
Parca: That’s a good one.
Hullu_Kapteeni: He’s not wrong, though. But only for grunts. People like me, who are captains, they prefer we stay out of trouble. Is not like Star Trek at all. A very disappointing lack of sexy green women.
M.Mollen: Don’t give me that crap. That lady last week with the cosmetic mods…
Hullu_Kapteeni: Yes, yes. But is one ever really enough?
M.Mollen: Well… ok, you got me there.
ElfMama: And now I need a cold shower.
Dolcett: Hah!