FTL Voyage 1 (defeat)
(A captain’s Journal)
by Vas Vadum

Ranks / Positions (by the end of the voyage)
(Core) Vas: Pilot Level 2
(Core) Artex: Shields Level 0.5 | Weapons Level 2
(Core) Seth’cor: Weapons Level 2 (Deceased)
(Civilian Rescue) Will (Human): Shields Level 1(Deceased)
(Hired) Bovee (Engi): Engines Level 1(Deceased)
(Hired) Pipaluk (Rock): Level 0 everything (Deceased)
(Hired) Valeriya (Mantis): Level 0 everything (Deceased)
(Hired) Rafn (Engi): Level 0 everything | Reactor for Weapons (Quit)

Ship, before final battle:
Weapons: Heavy Laser I, Beam Laser II, Heavy Ion, Breach
Augmentations: Long Range Scanners, Stealth Weapons, FTL Jammer
Drones: Sys Repair, Anti-Pers.
Upgrades, 25 Reactor, 8 Shield, 3 Engines, 1 Oxygen, 8 Weapons, 3 Drones, 1 Medbay, 3 Cloaking, 1 Piloting, 3 Sensors, 3 Doors.

    The 3 man crew of the ship “The Drake” prepare to set out on their voyage to get the intel they recovered to the Federation.  As they prepare, they do final inspections on their ship and make sure all systems are functional.  Vas, the captain sets up in the very front of the ship with a mini-fridge and his computer to the side for times when we may be stuck somewhere.  Artex heads off to the shield control room to monitor and boost shield systems wherever possible, each room having it’s own mini-fridge in it so each crew member doesn’t have to leave very often and won’t run out of food/water to quickly.  Seth’cor sets up inside the weapon control room, rigging some wires around and changing power flow to slightly increase weapon fire rate while he is there to manage the systems.  Once we have all got ourselves settled, long range scanners indicate that the Rebel fleets are nearby.  It’s possible they may be following us!  We must find a suitable long range FTL location fast to get this data we recovered to our comrades.

So we start our first FTL jump of the voyage, and come upon a Rebel Fighter.  We are not very well equipped for battle just yet but we must fight anyway.  Sethcor decides to target their sheilds and weapon systems, placing a perfect strike on the shields with a missile and disabling their weapons right off the bat. It wasn’t a very long battle once we had disabled their defenses and weapons.  Our first success with receiving no damage at all.  Just in case the Rebel Fighter sent a distress call, we left immediately after salvaging the ship, jumping into a nearby nebula for cover.  This makes it harder for anyone to track us down, slowing down any followers.  We wait for our engines to recharge and make another jump and come upon an automated attack drone defending a Rebel station.  We could avoid it, but captain Vas wants to see what’s inside so we attack.  The enemy fighter destroyed our oxygen systems, we quickly try to finish the battle before our oxygen becomes thin. By the time we finish, oxygen is down to 30%, but we managed to fix it before any of us had any serious problems.  The station was cleaned out, but we managed to take a bit of salvage and used what we had to upgrade shields and doors.  We leave the area, landing on a Mantis ship who immediately opens weapons to fire on us.  It was no match, Seth’s tactic of disabling shields and weapons is a great one.  Prevents them from causing any damage to us.  The salvage we recovered was enough to upgrade our reactor slightly and we move on, finding a Rebel scout attacking a refueling outpost.  Sethcor informs the captain that we are low on missiles so we can only use lasers, which is ok, automated ships don’t repair themselves anyway.  Once the battle is over, we assess the ship to see the damage, we have a hull breach and have lost 25% of our hull in the previous battles.  We must find a place to repair.

We jump into a nebula to hide for a bit while we try and fix the hull breach, while there we find an incapacitated ship and send someone over to search it while repairing.  He returns with a repair drone schematic and some salvage so we can upgrade our shields just a little more.  After we get repairs done, we take another jump and find nothing, jumping again to find a pirate attacking an unidentified ship.  Vas decides to be a hero and engage the pirates that offered a pitiful bribe for us to stay out.  Taking the med bay offline and removing engine power, we strengthened our shields for this battle.  It turns out we saved a Rebel scout!  He agreed to delay the Rebel fleet behind us for as long as he can.  After he leaves, we jump into another random system, happening upon an asteroid belt and an auto Rebel attack ship.  This will be easy, the only threat here is the asteroids!  Before we could even fire upon the ship, the asteroids destroyed the vessel.  Oh well, we at least got some salvage.  The shields held off the asteroids quite well and we jumped out when possible.  Landing on yet another automated Rebel ship attacking a station.  Sensors indicate the fleet is following us again so we make quick work of this ship and make for the next system after receiving our gifts and salvage from the station and wreck.  We arrived at the long range beacon finally, and a mercenary asks us if we wish to hire him.  This pirate wasn’t going to join us, and we didn’t need his services at the current time so we turned him down and left for the Rock controlled sector. We were certainly shoot on sight there, but needed to pass through regardless.

This sector has indeed proved dangerous, our first jump and we are attacked by a Rock salvage crew.  They surrender shortly after we take out their weapons and gave us a bribe to let them live.  Having run out of missiles, and needing the cash, we took it and left.  We found 2 distress beacons and go to investigate.  The first beacon proved to be dangerous, a ship  caught in some asteroids with no life on board.  We tried to investigate but took damage and left, the next beacon was a man who had lived in a cave for years, but his mental status was to dangerous to trust on board so we left him there and headed for a local shop we scanned down to repair our ship and refuel.  Well that was a nice visit, we managed to buy a cloaking device and sell off a few things we didn’t need.  Completely out of cash now, we leave for the next system with the enemy Rebel practically directly next to us.  Landing in another asteroid belt, with a Rock scout hidden amongst the asteroids, they target us, oh boy.  Another battle.  We left promptly due to the asteroids picking apart our shield layers and find another Rock ship, this one was different.  They were tired of their home world’s lies and were afraid we’d lie as well so they closed frequencies and left, as did we.  Being low on cash, we happened upon another ship, luckily this one had some cheap stuff and we sold another piece of equipment we found so that we could install a long range scanner and a new weapon.  This long range scanner turned out great, we avoided 2 battles and found some salvage on our way to the next long range jump location!  When we got there, a pirate was attacking another ship who had just activated his distress beacon.  We decide to save them rather than accept the pirate’s pitiful bribe of asking us to join him.  The enemy used a teleporter and teleported on board our ship, they are attacking the oxygen generator!  We quickly lob missiles and lasers at the enemy ship, soon they beg us to stop and bribe us with an even better bribe.  They leave our ship and leave the other alone.  We now sit for a while to send our resident mechanic Artex repair the oxygen generator, again...  Seems this thing needs more shielding!  After repairs are done, we leave for Mantis controlled space.

This location is hostile as well, and rather dangerous as the Mantis are known to teleport aboard ships and attack from the inside.  Long range scanners will help us navigate through their space though so hopefully we make it through easily enough.  We find a distress beacon and decide to check it out.  We arrived at a station with an disease spreading, and go aboard to try and help them control the masses.  Sethcor starts to exhibit symptoms of the disease, and we are forced to leave him behind before we catch it too.  The Drake is now down to 2 crew members, Artex must now man the weapon systems.  We leave for the next system reluctantly, knowing there is no way to save Sethcor but not wanting to leave him behind.  We go a few jumps and an intruder is detected, it’s a fugitive who begs us for our help.  The Engi police show up and ask for the fugitive.  We agree and hand over the fugitive and they reward us quite well and leave.  After upgrading the reactors and weapons a bit, we resume our voyage.  Several jumps, several Mantis ships destroyed, we find a store and start buying new equipment, installing a drone bay and some new weapons and spend the last upgrading our reactor to handle it all.  We happen upon a station who’s defense systems are malfunctioning and the crew can’t get near.  We use our cloaking to approach and disable the system and we are rewarded for disabling the system safely for them.  During the final battle to leave the system, we aid a civilian ship who was under attack.  The enemy uses large missiles to bypass out shields and do about 50% hull damage and Artex was injured.  Once the battle was over, the civilian ship had one passenger join our crew, and Artex went to the medical bay to recover.

Jumping to the next sector, we find out the Rebels had destroyed most of it, and there are distress calls all over.  We happened upon one and they were just out of fuel, we aided the civilians by giving them 4 fuel, and continues on.  Another beacon, is a ship with a damaged FTL drive, that can no longer find routes.  We help them by leading them to where they need to go, they follow our FTL signature.  A Rebel fighter having very strong shields, managed to escape and alert the Rebel Fleet to our location.  We can not stay in this sector any longer and must burn for the exit quickly as possible.  We were even forced to enter an ion storm nebula and cloak to avoid automated attack fighters, luckily we made it through.

Just before leaving the sector, we found a shop that offered us a deal on an FTL Jammer.  This helped us slow down the enemy fleet, now we have more time to explore and get weaponized for the protection of our home when we get there.  We found a few more stores after soem other easyish battles.  Repaired and sold equipment, then hired 2 new crew members.  Bovee and Pipaluk.  Bovee took the engine systems, provided one extra reactor amount of power to them, and Pipaluk stayed in the middle of the ship so he can put out fires and help repair or defend.  Entering a new civilian sector, we immediately find a shop to pick up one more crew member, Valeriya who was an excellent fighter.  He will  come in handy with defending the ship.  During our travels, we encounter a station fire, and send the Rock crew in to put it out.  They reward us greatly and we continue on our way.  We leave the sector with no real issues, not far to go now.

Entering hostile Rock controlled territory, we find a store and sell off some weapons we collected and gear, we then upgrade our shields and reactor to maximum.  We found a store and hired another crew member, Rafn, though had hoped for better weapons.  We won’t be equipped well if we don’t find some soon.  We are unable to find what we need, so we head to the next sector.  Our home.  Our defenses are high, so maybe we can take them.  We still have our covert ops weapon augmentation so we can fire while cloaked.  Lets hope it’s enough to defend the ship and take out the enemy.

We fight through several rebel ships and flee others, trying to get to the enemy mothership before they get within range.  We arrive at the enemy mothership, it’s impossible to destroy.  No matter  what, our missiles keep missing, only one out of 8 strikes hit and it barely did anything to the enemy.  Their weapons are spread out so they can fire even if we damage one completely.  Their ship is massive and 5 times more superior to ours.  Our Oxygen systems are destroyed and Bovee suffocated to death.  We manage to survive with 2 hull points remaining, multiple breaches in our hull, the enemy ship flees after the left side of it was destroyed.  We flee as well to the nearest repair sector then catch up with the enemy again.  His ship is now more powerful than it was before, 4 times more dangerous than earlier.  We had to flee the battle, every crew member was badly injured and the ship was nearly destroyed.  We never even made it past the shields of the enemy ship. Valeriya, Pipaluk and Will suffocated to death before we could repair the oxygen systems.  We made another jump to a clear system and headed for the base.  Managed to get our close friends and loved ones and escaped before our home was destroyed.  Labeled deserters, the Federation was no longer friendly towards us.  I wasn’t about to die in a hopeless battle, nor was I going to let Artex die in this hopeless battle.  Rafn departed at the Federation base, he disapproved of our abandonment.  He died with the base.  With most of our ship cracked and broken, 80% of the sectors without oxygen, weapons offline, we made a long range jump out and left the area forever, to find our own location to settle in and start anew.  The Federation had died, the Rebels no longer able to track us as we had left range and the FTL Jammer prevented them from being able to locate our signal anymore.