FTL Voyage 2 (victory)
(A captain’s Journal)
by Vas Vadum

Ranks / Positions (by the end of the voyage)
(Core) Vas: Pilot Level 2
(Core) Silent: Weapons Level 2
(Core) Wroth: Shields Level 2 | Level 2 Repairer (Diseased - Left Behind)
(Rescued) Mara: Engines Level 2
(Conversion) Baars: Fireman (Immune to fire) Level 0 everything
(Slave Rescue) Teldarin: Ship Patrol Level 0.8
(Hired) Xin Xin: Ship Patrol Level 1
(Joined) Lombard: Ship Patrol Level 0.9

Ship, before final battle:
Weapons: Burst Laser III, Burst Laser III, Bust Laser II, Artemis
Augmentations: Long-Range Scanners, Advanced FTL, Engi Med-bot Dispersal
Drones: Defense I, Hull Repair
Upgrades: Shields 8, Engines 8, Oxygen 1, Weapon Control 8, Drone Control 4, Medbay 1, Crew Teleporter 3, Cloaking 3, Piloting 1, Sensors 3, Doors 3, Reactor 25

    The 3 man crew of the ship “Vore” 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, had just finished installing a mini fridge in the 4 main rooms requiring people to stay in there nearly 24/7.  The crew had decided to set up a living pad in the area behind the pilot’s cockpit.  This consisted of a large bed, a few consoles, a shelf full of new-age digital storage media for movies with a large HD screen and all that jazz.  The 3 core members lived together in that one room when not needing to be in their stations.  Silent being the weapons expert, needed to be in his station every single battle, and Wroth being the shield expert had the same requirements.  Vas though had to man his post 24/7, or at least slightly monitor it till he was able to jump again when the FTL had charged.  The 3 crew members had been flying together for a while, and had received a mission to steal a data chip from the Rebel fleet.  This wasn’t a very difficult mission, the Rebel fleet wasn’t guarding this data chip very well when relocating from a base of theirs that had a critical malfunction.  This chip contained the secrets of their weaknesses.  This would help turn the war in the Federation’s favor!

Now that we have the chip, we need to rush back to the federation.  As soon as we managed to make our first FTL jump with the chip, we found it had a tracer on it.  Immediately disposing the tracer, we found that the enemy Rebels were now following our FTL signature.  This would prove to be difficult to escape with but we no longer had a choice of turning back.  We needed to explore and find the credits to upgrade our ship, or we would not stand a chance getting back through all the hostile territory.  We had it easy for a long time living in such a peaceful place.  Now it was time for us to join the war.  Using what credits I had, I decided to upgrade the doors first.  I don’t want fires and intruders walking around as if it were easy peasy.  Now that we were ready, we set off on our journey.

We have an encounter with a Mantis fighter who immediately charges weapons to fire on us.  Silent takes aim at their shields and weapons, an effective combat strategy I had taught him.  The enemy immediately took out our oxygen, so we needed to finish the battle quickly.  Lucky for us we took out their shields and their weapons at the same time.  While finishing the enemy off, I decided to vent the oxygen in the room with the fire, then sent some of the ships remaining oxygen into the room so Silent could repair the oxygen generator.  We collected the scrap from the enemy ship that we had blown up and used it to upgrade the reactor.  We set off again once all repairs are done, a pirate stops us demanding a toll or we’ll be attacked.  I hate these pirates and decide to charge up my weapons.  The enemy tries to escape!  We had disabled their ship and they try to escape!  So I sent the command to lob another missile at their ship, since missiles aren’t infinite, we rarely use them.  It was a perfect strike, taking out their FTL drive also took out their ship.  Damn pirates, they never learn from their mistakes.  We come upon a fleet trying to figure out how to take an enemy ship in tact, we pass by as we don’t have the equipment to help in such a task.  Another jump and our long range scanners pick up the Rebel fleet gaining on us quite fast.  A mercenary was nearby who offered to mimic our FTL signature, but we needed the credits and had to turn him down.  Instead I used the credits to upgrade sensors, so we can see enemy movements inside their own ships.

On our journey to escape the rebel fleet chasing us, we come upon a civilian ship who is being chased by a pirate and decide to aid the civilian.  We encountered a bomber, who launched a bomb into our shield bay, Wroth took some damage, as did our shields.  He quickly repaired and went back to work to keeping shields up during the battle.  After the battle was over, wroth went to the med bay as the civilian science vessel thanked us with some credits.  While Wroth was recovering, I scooped up the salvage to score a little more as well.  I notice a distress beacon, and decide to answer the call and head to the system to see who needed help.  It appears someone’s FTL drive can no longer lock on to space beacons, so we decide to help them by letting them use our FTL signature to follow us to their destination.  On our way there, we come across another civilian in danger.  Luckily it’s just an auto attack ship.  No repairs on it, so this will be easy.  Turns out this battle wasn’t as easy as we thought.  I really need to upgrade our shielding, our engines and weapon systems are down.  This auto assault ship has some strong weapons.  It’s shields are down, all we need is one good hit at their weapons.  After the battle was over, the entire crew including myself needed to go to the medical bay after quickly repairing the oxygen.  Total ship oxygen was down to 14% before it was repaired.  We were all taking damage from lack of oxygen.  All 3 of us had been hit by lasers as well.  Once the ship was full of oxygen again and all repairs were done, we were able to move on again.  Though with our hull nearly gone, we needed to find a store to repair at or we were in trouble.  At least the civilians we rescued repaired some hull damage for us and when we dropped off the other people who were following us, they also repaired some of our hull and even shown us their supplies so we could upgrade our ship further.  We bought a drone control system with what little we had, so we could protect our ship better.  I’d rather missiles not hit us so the drone that shoots down missiles was a nice thing to have.  When we sell off an old tool we didn’t need, we also got a long range scanner.  We found that our exit is now infested with Rebels and go hide in a Nebula.  We need to escape quickly.  Unfortunately this nebula has an ion storm going on which cut our reactor power in half.  All systems shut down except oxygen and weapons.

We manage to make it to the exit and leave.  We decide to go to the uncharted nebula.  With our long range scanners, we’ll be able to pick up a little more inside them and it’ll slow down the Rebel fleet for a while.  In this nebula, we encounter multiple fights, and chase down a rebel target who tries to alert the enemy to our location.  They took out our oxygen but we had won the battle soon anyway so we could repair it without issue.  We now have enough scrap to upgrade our shielding and reactor. We jump to a new area of the nebula and find a federation fleet ship trying to escape.  We manage to boost our sensors enough to catch up to them.  The only passenger on board is thrilled to have found friendlies and abandons his ship to join us.  I have sent this new guy, Mara, to the engine control room.  While navigating through the nebula, we accidently bump hulls with another ship.  This Mantis ship threatens us because we barely touched their ship!  They decide not to shoot us, but I decide to shoot them. Coming up on another shop after our battle, we buy a cloaking device, and a new weapon.  These will help us greatly.  During the next few battles, we use the cloak to our advantage and cloak just before the enemy’s weapons fire.  Causing them to miss us completely and then decloak when we fire ours, taking the advantage of disarming them before they can hit us again.  This new tactic seems to be working well, so I go after every pirate I scan down to collect scrap while in this nebula which has slown the Rebel fleet considerably.  We make it to the exit though, as there was no where else to go in the nebula and decide to head to the Rock sector, even though it was hostile.  More chances to get scrap and upgrade our ship!

Once in the rock sector, we find immediately a few ships, some of them surrender and offer scrap, fuel and ammo so we let them live.  Don’t need to kill unless absolutely necessary after all.  On our journey, we find a Rock ship that has abandon it’s civilization and wishes to know the truth.  Their religion was used to keep them in check, much like religion on Earth was when we had visited back there once.  We gave them our data, and they were so happy they joined our crew.  It was only one guy though, the other took his ship and left.  Baars, the new crew member was sent to the oxygen room as he is immune to fire.  This’ll help keep the oxygen systems from going down as he can repair them immediately if they get damaged.  While on our journey, we find a ship in distress and try to investigate.  Our engines were damaged in the process, the asteroid belt was too dense.  Our only direction to go was a dangerous system near a star, we had to hope to get out of there fast before we were burned alive.  Some local “friendly” rock crew decide to give us free scrap and a repair arm modification to our ship after we exchange a few “friendly” attacks.  After this, we take leave of the sector to a Civilian sector.

With no credits left after upgrades to our ship, we need to continue searching for more pirates to kill or people to help.  I manage to jump in on an auto attack ship, so what I do here is since my crew needs some training, I disable it’s engines and keep them disabled, deploy a drone to keep missiles from hitting us, and let it fire on our high powered shields.  This helps Wroth with his shield recovery training.  During this training, Silent had skilled up enough to provide a 19% weapon reload boost, and so far Wroth had skilled up enough to do a 20% shield recharge boost.  The enemy had run out of missiles so he was no longer able to fire missiles at us, only his laser weapon.  Since I wasn’t using my FTL Drive, the enemy fleets had trouble detecting where we were and were unable to follow till we made another jump.  As we enter a Nebula, a black market trader ship asks us if we want to buy an unknown weapon, we don’t have the cash so we try attacking.  They send 2 rock crew to our ship to attack us, we have to finish this battle quickly, as these guys are slow but strong.  We finish the battle, but the invaders attacked Wroth, who fled to the medical bay.  The enemy is taking out our sensors, which is kinda pointless since they don’t work inside a Nebula anyway.    We must kill the intruders quickly.  I, Wroth, Silent, and Baars head to the shield room when the enemy moved back in there to attack the shields.  We killed them, Wroth and Silent took some heavy damage and were sent to the medical bay.  After we get out of the Nebula, Slavers try and steal one of our members.  I decide to attack in retaliation.  When they are about to die, they send over a slave as a bribe, we decide to let them go.  This new free crew member’s name is Teldarin, and he is great in attacking intruders and has increased movement speed.  Before leaving the system, we sell some old parts and install an advanced FTL drive.  Allowing us to go anywhere we’ve already been no matter the distance and we install a new highly powerful weapon.  Now all we need is a glowing green guy for extra power...

Jumping to Zoltan sector, we start exploring around for scrap, our ship is almost complete.  I’d rather like to upgrade one or 2 of my weapons further and hire on 2 more crew.  We find an advanced ship attacking a Zoltan, the captain hails us, advising us to leave immediately.  This strange ship has some special shielding.  We take down the shield immediately with our new powerful weapon and bombard them into surrendering.  They give us a nice amount of scrap.  Jumping into a Nebula, we find that this is definately getting harder.  A ship managed to damage our 3 layers of shielding and destroy the med bay, door control and sensors.  Wroth, the local repair bitch, was sent to repair everything, alone!  While he did, I decided to upgrade the shields to their final level and max out the reactor, using up the last of my scrap.  I see a distress signal and rush to the rescue once medical bay is repaired, but no one is left.  I send over a few people to collect what we can, may as well not let their supplies go to waste after all...  A nice fair amount of supplies, what a lucky break.  A rebel ship attacks us shortly after, they surrender before we destroy them though and gave us a good amount of supplies.  I decide to upgrade the engine, to make it easier to evade shots fired.  After, I find another automated attack ship and decide to do a little more training with it, skilling everyone up in evasion and shield management.  Now msot everyone doing their proper jobs is as efficient as can be.  Checking out a few markets and selling useless crap found along the voyage, I hire Xin Xin, to aid in internal ship defenses.  Only one more crew member needed.  A very specific race.  I break for the system exit now to head to Engi controlled sector.

We fight a few standard battles, no real damage taken.  I find a new weapon, though now our weapon system is underpowered with a max of 8 reactor cores allowed to go to it, having 2 weapons taking 4 each, 1 taking 2, and another taking 1.  I really hope to find this final crew member soon.  We happen upon an engi ship being attacked by Rebels.  I decide to intervene and save it, they are to beat up to make it home and ask for a tiny amount to get home.  It wasn’t enough, they were asking for to little so I decide to give them double, and add in some missiles and drones as well.  They gave us a great technology in exchange, not expecting us to do this.  Now all over my ship are these little medical nanobots to heal everyone constantly.  The Rebals had caught up with us unfortunately, so we had to fight a few difficult battles.  Managed to escape to Zoltan’s next sector.  Only one more long range jump to go.

A Zoltan science vessel immediately requests to dock with us when we arrive, though this could be dangerous, we do so anyway in hopes that they were friendly.  It appears they were only testing to see how friendly other species were, and rewarded us for saying yes.  After a while of exploring, I find 1 shop, nothing good.  1 Black Market shop, even less good stuff.  A distress beacon, but I decide to leave the crazy man on the planet to himself since I don’t have the proper equipment to help him. I use a counterfeit ID card to get onto a Zoltan station and sit at the bar for a bit, then hear about a Rebel fighting a Zoltan, trying to make the aliens on an under developed world obey the Rebels.  I decide to protect them, and let them develop at their own pace, a new member joined us there, Lombard.  Just before exiting to the final sector, our home, some enemies teleport aboard our ship.  I decide to let the intruders destroy a few systems, like the cloaking device and the scanners.  Both weren’t in use anyway.  This’ll help our local repair bitch Wroth skill up in repairs!  Well, at least he can now repair things 20% faster.

We jump into our home sector, to find that there is a massive Rebel Fleet ship in the area, preparing to destroy us all.  I need to move fast to engage it.  I’m still missing some of the supplies I had originally hoped to get but I’ll have to make do.  In one of our battles, I decide to try a technique out that they had used on us.  Except I disabled their med bay before teleporting a squad on to kill the last of the people on board.  We find a station which appears to be deserted.  I send a small crew aboard to look for survivors and one of our crew caught something and started to react violently to it.  We had to escape, and leave Wroth behind with his disease.  Had to drag Silent back forcefully as well.

Our first encounter with the monster ship, was much easier than expected.  I targeted their missile array first, though they managed to disable some of the weapon so I had to change to a new weapon.  After disabling their missiles, it was rather easy to take them out.  Without their missiles, their main weapons just bounced off my shields mostly.  On the second encounter though, it took much more effort.  Had we not had Silent with us, we would have lost.  Successfully taking them out once again using cloak to hide from the large wave of drones every so often and do repairs, the patrol guys killing drone bots and healing at the same time, it was rather rough.  Good thing we had the hull repairer around to keep our hull in tact before each new batte.  Time for round three...  Lets see what happens this time.  Well that was surprising.  They sent 2 of their 4 remaining crew onto my ship, easily killed by my 3 Mantis patrol.  Their shields had some extra strength to them but their weapons weren’t that great anymore.  And their power serge was just a simple energy weapon blast which was solved by a cloak or fully charged shields with minimal damage.  I took out their shields first thing and that’s what did them in.  The second encounter was the most difficult of all.

Now that the war was over, we went back to find Wroth, he had still been infected but we managed to quarantine him and drag him to some advanced medical facilities.  It took a few months but they managed to stabilize and cure him.  Once cured, he rejoined our crew and went back to his post after lots of alone time with Silent.  With my hidden cameras in the room, only I know what happened in there....  And that won't’ be going in this log.  All is well that ends well huh?