(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, TheDespoiler, Guardian, GunKitty, Chummer, Inquisitor, Lizard, RedFox, SemiSolidSnake, ElfMama, Not_the_Face!, Anonymous3, Anonymous4, Anonymous7, Anonymous9, AggregatorOfSorrows, M.Mollen, WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot, DigDug, BigGunn, Dolcett, Starwatcher, Backlog, DarkAvariel, Knocker, Hullu_Kapteeni, GrimDark, BloodForTheBloodGod, Queen’s_Bitch, BackDat@55Up, DoYouEvenDPS?, MajorTom, Parca, and DarkAngel are in the chat.
Anonymous3: So, I finally managed to get to Tsk’neth, see what went down there.
Lizard: Tsk’neth… that’s the place that the Black Stars went Cinder vs. Evil Dead on, right?
Anonymous3: Yeah. Anyways, the reports are true. Black Star owns the system now, and Tsk’neth IV is flat out GONE! I think what’s left will form a loose asteroid belt in the next few millenia.
DarkAvariel: What in the--? How did he destroy a planet?
TheDespoiler: I would assume that he shot it. A lot.
Not_the_Face!: But, even their rail shots wouldn’t be enough to blow up a planet, not anytime soon.
Backlog: He wasn’t limited to those railguns. I just checked the chat log, and he specifically said that the senior surviving authorities in the system signed off on the planet being both uninhabited by sentient life, and in need of Exterminatus.
DarkAvariel: So, what does that mean?
Backlog: The treaties involving using superluminal weapons against inhabited planets have loopholes. Namely, the fact that if someone in authority signs off on a planet being uninhabited by sentients, then the treaty doesn’t apply.
Backlog: And, under Alliance law, having the senior officials call for Exterminatus gives any mercenary company with the capability license to execute Exterminatus on that planet, using whatever legal means are at their disposal.
BurtBacharach: Wait, you mean he went and lawyered himself into a position where he could use Starbolts on a planet?
Backlog: Yes.
M.Mollen: In my defense, the planet really needed destroying.
RedFox: Hey, Mollen, what in the hell have you been up to in the Alliance? The spacer bars were talking about an upcoming Corporate War, and all the profits they could make from it, and now they’re pissed as hell because they won’t get to profit.
Starwatcher: Oh, yes. I saw that the Yathru Corporation declared a formal corporate war against Black Star. That was supposed to start yesterday.
RedFox: According to the spacers I talked to, it started AND ended yesterday!
M.Mollen: The spacers were right, then. Yathru declared war, and gave a set date for hostilities to commence, under corporate warfare bylaws. They were intending to launch a campaign of sabotage, sanctions, and subterfuge to try and win concessions from me. I declined to play their game.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Starwatcher: Is that why your entire damn offensive force, at every base I could get contacts with, used X’thari drives to jump out in the last couple weeks?
M.Mollen: Yes. As set down by the corporate bylaws, I did not start my attack until the set time. However, once that time came, forces that I had prepositioned struck the Yathru Corporation in every system they had a major presence in, destroying orbital infrastructure and sweeping away any defenses, before eliminating the majority of their assets.
Blaze: Wait, Yathru owned entire planets. Does that mean you…
M.Mollen: Greenwave was deployed on four planets wholly owned by Yathru Corporation, yes, including Maccara, their headquarters planet.
Blaze: Well, fuck.
DoYouEvenLyft?: Well, that would explain why Yathru’s stock has just gone through the floor.
SEA-TAC_Sweetie: Yes, I would think that anyone who owns Yathru stock is reconsidering their life choices at the moment.
WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot: So, Yathru challenges Black Star to a corporate war, thinking that they would play the game same as all the other corporations. Instead, Black Star goes immediately for the jugular, and wipes the corporation out?
M.Mollen: A fair approximation.
Dolcett: Hey, Mollen. Why was the lovely lady I had over for dinner complaining about you ‘recommending’ that the Alliance declare Exterminatus on Maccara, even after you Greenwaved the place?
M.Mollen: Ah, that was an unfortunate result of operational constraints from various treaties preventing me from doing what truly needed to be done in that case.
Dolcett: How so?
M.Mollen: Well, the big brains at Yathru decided that experimenting with zombie plagues as a bioweapon was a great idea. And they put one of their primary research facilities in a subterranean complex located underneath the capitol of Rak’kun City.
Golddigger: I don’t know if I should be terrified, or sending the devs a case of beer.
M.Mollen: Why not both?
Dolcett: So, wait, the zombies, and any samples, were kept in a high tech facility, and Greenwave eats tech. What is keeping the zombies from overrunning the planet?
M.Mollen: Well, there’s a 15% chance that the destruction of the facility’s structural supports will cause the whole thing from collapsing, causing enough destruction to destroy the samples. I think that’s a little high, myself. I’d put it closer to 10%. But, anyways, other than that minor condition, well, it is only a matter of time.
DarkAvariel: THEN WHY DID YOU GREENWAVE THE PLANET BEFORE BLOWING THAT SHIT UP?
M.Mollen: Because the only way into the facility was a tunnel from a mansion on the edge of the city that belonged to one of Yathru’s owners. No weaponry permitted under the Corporate Court’s rules of warfare would do the job, which meant the only way to destroy the samples would be to send my people into a zombie movie.
DarkAvariel: But there are over 1 trillion people on Maccara!
M.Mollen: And they mean less to me than 100 of mine.
M.Mollen: For now, the threat is contained to Maccara. Even when it gets loose, it will be effectively impossible to gather samples without also introducing Greenwave to ships or facilities you’d rather keep intact. So, that makes it safe-ish, until the planet can be declared dead, and wiped clean.
DoYouEvenDPS?: What’s your beef with zombies, anyways? I mean, you’ve gone out of your way to go and blow up everything halfway connected to zombie outbreaks.
M.Mollen: Zombie outbreaks are fun in other games, like old school MMOs, where you know that the NPCs aren’t ‘real’ and they’ll just respawn, and once the event is over it will have just been a fun event. This game isn’t like that.
Requiesce-in-Pace: Ah, yes. When the world is ‘real’, that makes it all hit a bit harder. The Biohazard games are fun to play, but you wouldn’t want to *live* in one.
M.Mollen: Exactly.
Starwatcher: So, what did Black Star win in this little war?
M.Mollen: Ownership over a few systems that formerly had populated planets, and control over another Gateway. I’m going to sell most of what we won, though I’ll hold on to Maccara until I can figure out whether I’ll need to destroy the planet, or if just burning a continent to the mantle will work.
DarkAvariel: You aren’t playing around, are you?
M.Mollen: I just got through saying how this world is ‘real’, right? Why would I play around with things like this?