FTL Voyage 3
(A captain’s Journal)
by Vas Vadum

Ranks / Positions (by the end of the voyage)
(Core) Vas: Pilot Level 2
(Core) Triko (Mantis): Security Patrol Level 0
(Core) Felicity (Rock): Weapons Level 2
(Core) Kevin (Engi): Repairer Level 0
(Rescue) Charlie (Rock): Shields Level 2
(Rescue) Ma Fan (Human): Engines Level 2
(Hired) Hassifa (Zoltan) Power Core Level 0
(Rescue) Filip (Mantis) Security Patrol Level 0 (Quit)
(Hired) Borman (Slug) Psychic Level 0

Ship, before final battle:
Weapons: Burst Laser II, Breach II, I. Bomb, Hull Mil.
Augmentations: Stealth Weapons, Adv. FTL Navigation, Weapon Pre-igniter
Drones: Sys Repair, Defense II
Upgrades: Shields 8, Engines 5, Oxygen 1, Weapons 7, Drones 5, Medbay 1, Teleporter 1, Artillery Beam 4, Piloting 1, Sensors 3, Doors 3, Reactor 25

    The 4 man crew of the ship “The Osprey” 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 each choose to build a small living space in their quarters.  Vas, being the captain takes the pilot seat.  Triko takes the shield systems, Felicity takes weapons, and Kevin takes the engines.  The Osprey is now ready to depart.

We have received word that the Rebels were preparing to transport a data server from a station that had been sabotaged.  I move in to just outside station sensor range and hide my ship behind an asteroid.  Leaving the crew to guard the ship while I’m away, I stealthily invade the station in a small shuttle and move in to steal this data package before it’s moved out.  The station is falling apart, their reactor core was overheating and about to go nuclear.  Someone manages to see me stealing the data package, but I get out successfully with it.  The Rebels now know who has their secrets, and start following us by locking onto our FTL signature.  We need to get this data back to the federation as quickly as possible and thus we start our journey back to our home sector.

Our first jump was eventful, I had responded to a nearby distress call to find a colony devastated by a war and find a lone survivor.  I invited him to join our crew and sent him to switch places with Triko, sending him to patrol the ship as his specialty was combat, not shields.  Our next few jumps were uneventful, until we come upon a Mantis ship who immediately attacks us.  They cause a hull breach in our oxygen generator room and damage some of our crew.  After the battle is over, I frantically try to repair the oxygen room as oxygen levels dropped to 30%, by the time we repaired it, all oxygen had dropped to 9%.  After getting at least 50% oxygen, we jump into another system, and a traveler hails us, he wants an escort to get to a system close to the exit.  I agree to escort this traveler as it is on my way anyway and I can’t turn down a person in need.  In the next jump, I come across a rebel hiding away inside an asteroid belt, after a few shots, he surrenders and offers some credits in exchange for his life.  I jump to another system and find a rebel automated scout attacking a nearby station, and decide to destroy it.  I collect the scrap and the station sends some supplies my way as well as thanks.  It’s always good helping people out.  I jump into a nebula to make my FTL harder to read, the Rebels are getting closer.  Upon entering the nebula, I find an old federation ship badly damaged and he tries to escape, I manage to follow and catch up barely.  The lone survivor is thrilled to have found friendlies and comes aboard, abandoning his ship.  I sent him to the engine room to take Kevin’s post.  Kevin is good at repair, can use him to repair the ship while in combat.  Ma Fan gladly accepts this task and heads to the engine room to begin his work.  As I head to the next system inside the nebula, I recieved a weak garbled transmission “prepare to be boarded” and immediately hear shots fired on my ship.  3 intruders made it on board and were having trouble with my max upgraded doors, I sent Triko, Felicity, and Charlie to deal with them.  Once they are dealt with, I move on to the destination the traveler needed to go to drop him off.  The traveler is grateful for our help, he repairs my ship for me, and then shows us some of their supplies letting us buy what we needed.  I take a weapon pre-igniter and sell off 2 guns I had collected in previous battles to get stealth weapons.  Now if only I had a cloak...  I head to the exit now and jump to Pirate controlled sector.

Now that I’m here, I may as well clear out some pirates.  A distress beacon appeared on my map immediately on entering, and I jump to it.  A Rock scout ship had run out of fuel so I give him 4 fuel, he gives us some credits in exchange for our generosity and we both part ways.  I land in an asteroid belt with an Energy bomber who immediately charges his weapons and has some sort of strange shield layer that needs to be taken down before any damage can be done.  My Burst Laser takes down that layer easily and then a few asteroids hit them taking the rest of their shield out and their engines as well.  What a lucky battle, I managed to win before they could hit me with a single shot.  I come upon a shop and find that they have just the guy I need.  I hire on a Zoltan member to keep aboard my ship in case of power emergencies.  He works as a great power core!  I send the new guy, Hassifa to the Artillery Beam control room.  I locate a distress signal and head there as quickly as possible  It seems that an unknown disease has broken out on a station and they need help calming people down to get a quarantine set up.  I send the rock crew since they are immune to any human viruses, and they are able to intimidate the workers long enough for a quarantine to be set up.  The station is happy with our support and gives us some supplies.  I make my next jump and land on an automated attack ship who doesn’t have shields and doesn’t have missiles.  Perfect opportunity to train my crew!  Evading and shield recharging is what we are training today.  My engine control guy and me learn a lot, and max out our skills on evasion, and the shield guy is still practicing making shields recharge faster.  Finding more auto fighters and a rebel rigger (killing all), I happen upon another federation ship hiding in a Nebula.  The Mantis crew member Filip abandons his ship and joins us.  I welcome him aboard and give him security patrol.  Before leaving, a civilian ship asks to trade drone parts for fuel as they are low on fuel.  I go ahead and do this, though I would have given them the fuel freely.  I jump to civilian controlled sector and land in a nebula.

It seems my first jump in this sector was a bad one, my reactor is now half power due to an ion storm.  Oxygen, med bay, weapons, and part of my engines shut down.  I divert power from the shields to my weapons to take out the Rebel Fighter waiting for me here.  Easily enough, they surrender and give me supplies, I move to a store to sell what I don’t need and buy a repair drone, this would be nice to have on my ship to automatically repair damage.  After, I jump back into the nebula to find a black market energy bomber, he offers to sell me an unknown weapon.  Turns out it was just a bomb, but then again, this small low power weapon can certainly be helpful when disabling enemy ships and taking out personnel on board. A few more auto ships attacked and were destroyed.  I find a distress beacon and check it out.  Someone’s FTL drive was unable to calculate courses.  I used my advanced FTL Drive to calculate and send a set of instructions for them.  They were impressed, and gave us some supplies as a thank you. I head off again and find a rebel ship attacking a station, I intervene and destroy the rebel.  The outpost gave us supplies as a thanks while I salvaged the Rebel ship.  Soon we will be able to max out our shields and our reactor.  Just before leaving the sector, I had found a shop and was able to sell 3 weapons and 2 drones I didn’t need anymore, scoring some nice scrap to max out my shields and almost max out the reactor.  At the exit, a Rebel attacks us, and we get them down to critical before they admit defeat and give us supplies in exchange for their lives.  I accept this deal and let them live.  We now jump into Nebula Slug sector.

The entire sector is one large nebula, sensors are useless here.  On our first jump, a black market dealer manages to convince me to buy an unknown weapon, Glaive Beam.  It is decent, but I can’t use it for a while anyway as our weapon systems can’t be upgraded for a while.  The recent moving of them had damaged some stuff and it would take a while to repair them for upgrades.  I arrive at another part of the nebula, and before I can do anything, a Slug teleports onto my ship and displays all his wares.  I decide to sell him my new beam weapon and some other useless things, and hire on a Slug since he is telepathic and can see enemy ships without sensors being active, though Filip had to be dismissed from active duty as the crew cabins could only support 8.  I offered to drop him off at any station he chose, and he was happy for the offer as often times crew would be abandon in random space with nothing but a shuttle.  He went off into a cryo-pod to await me to wake him at a station.  In our first encounter with slugs, they appear to have been well equipped, but not well enough.  Our own slug crew member was able to tell us where the crew of the other ship was, somewhat helpful. The enemy slug had surrendered and gave us supplies for their lives.  Seems people prefer to live these days, and will pay for their lives!  Works with me.  We hear some useful intel between 2 slug ships in a distant cloud, they don’t notice us listening in on their coms to gather coordinates to the location they were after.  I decide to head there straight away and find the 2 split up, one heading for the spoils, the other distracting the pirate.  The slug ship destroyed by the pirate had left the other one to fend for himself, now he was telling us to distract the pirate for him.  I decided to go ahead and do this, though when I got the pirate’s ship down to critical, the slug made it to the supply cache and started trying to warp.  I leave the pirate and catch up with the slug, he immediately decides to transfer a large portion of their spoils to me so as to avoid a fight and then leaves.  We finally leave the sector, into the Zoltan home worlds.

We managed to repair our weapon systems for upgrades, now we can finally upgrade our weapons. I spent the remaining credits to upgrade the weapon system and my reactor, then jump and land in a Zoltan security area.  They ask to inspect our crew for fugitives.  I was able to have my slug member talk them down, but I decided to let them inspect my crew since I had no fugitives anyway.  I leave afterwards towards a distress beacon, and have my Engi remotely repair a damaged defense platform that was targeting friendlies.  The station crew was happy and paid us for the repairs.  On our way to the exit, a Zoltan ship with no weapons or defenses hailed us, and asked us to listen to their word.  It sounded like some sort of religious converting thing but I listened regardless.  They asked us to spread the word and gave us a set of coordinates to meet up with someone somewhere.  I jump into a nebula and find Rebels there, the Rebels have caught up.  It’s time to leave this sector.  I leave into Rock controlled territory.

I arrive and notice the coordinates from earlier are here, in this sector, but first i must check out this distress call.  Apparently I had found a Derelict ship, and took a large amount of hull damage trying to investigate the lack of life signs.  So I decide to head for the coordinates now.  On my way, I find another distress call, another pilot’s FTL had gone haywire so I used my advanced FTL to plot them a course.  Then was attacked by a Rebel fighter when I went to defend a civilian ship.  Defeated it easily enough, the civilian ship had repaired some of our hull for us as well, and then I went off to the location I was sent to.  The only thing here is a Rebel fighter, they prepare to open fire but I hail them first in hopes to communicate the Zoltan message.  After the long talk with the Rebel ship, I talked him down and then a large fleet of Zoltan ships appeared around us, one teleported on board and gave me a large reward for communicating his message, he is happy with what we’ve tried to do and even gave me the schematics to a Zoltan ship.  Several standard battles later, I arrive at a specialized hunter, who hunts  only the Rock race.  I put my Rock crew on the video screen to intimidate this ship, and they respond violently.  I blast them out of the sky, letting my Rock crew do the final blast.  I leave for the exit, and find more garbage and a weapon at the exit, what is it with people and leaving their dead ships behind!  The only place to go is Slug controlled sector, again.  At least it’ll slow the enemy down.

The Slug pilots in this sector are total sleaze balls.  can’t trust any of them.  One offers free repairs to my ship, though I have full repairs anyway and turn him down, instead they attack us talking about how we didn’t fall for it.  The next jump, some Slug wanted to sit down and have a chat with us, captain to captain.  I asked Felicity to pose as captain since they had provided the drinks.  Poison wouldn’t work on a Rock creature, and Felicity knew me well and was able to pose as captain easily.  They had a good drink and talked for awhile, after which they repaired what little damage we had to our ship and left.  I guess not all slug are bad, but maybe they were only friendly because they knew they could not easily kill the captain.  They shown us their wares, but I bought nothing but fuel as I didn’t need anything else and left to the next system.  We arrive at a dense nebula cloud with a federation ship hiding to deep to find,  have my Slug crew lock onto their life signs, and teleport all surviving members of the federation crew aboard.  They went into the cryo-chambers as well to await a drop off location.

We now jump into our base sector, to find a huge fleet of Rebels and Federation in war trying to defend their home base and there appears to be a massive ship in the distance approaching, able to single shot kill our base from a large distance.  I drop off the crew who was in cryo here at the base and they aid the station in defense and get a few new ships operational.  I head straight for the enemy vessel which is probably to powerful for me to destroy.  I am now in range of the enemy ship, I will take note of what my ship has before this battle just in case I do not survive.  It’s unfortunate I couldn’t find a cloaking device anywhere, I desperately needed one.  I sold my hull repair for a level 2 defense drone, hopefully this’ll help me survive our final battle.

Our first battle was successful.  I sent everything at the shields first to disarm the shields, after that, I split my weapons up amongst the weapon system to disarm the opponent.  I took 20% hull damage.  I need to engage again, the enemy fled after I blew off the left side of his ship.  The second battle was harder, he sent a huge amount of power to his drone bay and unleashed 7 or 8 drones who did 30% hull damage in one blow, passing all 4 layers of my shielding and had a bot invade through one of the hull breaches in my ship.  I took out his shields again which left him wide open to destruction, this helped me take out his most powerful systems.  He fled again as I blew off the right side of the ship.  It’s time to track him down again, he doesn’t have much of a ship left, shouldn’t be to hard anymore.  I have run out of missiles trying to get past his special layer of shielding that he managed to put up, I have nothing but a Burst II and my Artillery Beam now.  I sent all weapon power to my engines to help me evade whatever he shoots at me.

During the final battle, Ma Fan had died due to 2 missiles, and my ship’s hull was brought down so bad that my ship would die in a single shot.  I had to flee to do repairs and restock on missiles for my 3 bomb systems.  I had returned just before the enemy ship got near again.  I repaired half my hull and came back to hit.  He brought me down to dangerously thin hull, so bad that my ship was unable to withstand one more hit.  No one died this time but we barely managed to defeat him.  After I had disabled his missile system, my defense drone attempted to shoot down the overloaded plasma shots, though most still got past, several missed the ship.  Cloak was really needed here but I didn’t get it.  I barely survived, and we ended up having a federation member (Ma Fan) die on us.  He was given a proper burial when the war was over.  Another sector saved from the rebels, now to head on to new territory with a new Zoltan ship.