o7 For 3307
18 Feb 2021Kissamies
Hello again, gentle reader. I promised to keep you more frequently updated, but failed again. It's not that I forgot. I thought about writing a log several times, but was overwhelmed by the rush of events. As I recount them now, I'll probably forget some of the details, but I hope I manage to get across the general happenings of the squadron and myself.When we last left off in July, my new Fleet Carrier Commodore Tramiel had arrived at the freakishly young Earthlike world in the Cat's Paw Sector OI-T c3-51 system with a team of surveyors and scientists. I intended to chart the systems surrounding the nebula and did for a couple of weeks until I got bogged down with the troubles of the planetary survey. It turned out that while the planet is techinally Earthlike, it's really exotically so. It would take extensive adjustment to the local flora and fauna to make it suitable for colonisation. The cost could rival terraforming a non-Earthlike planet. There's also the ethical concern of destroying such unique ecosystem by introducing terrestial lifeforms to it. Such primodial life should be preserved and studied, the scientists argue. It'd be probably better to terraform the planet's moon, but I can't afford such an endeavor. Not this far from civilization, at least.
Late August I received word from our Utopian ally that the Aseveljet faction was in trouble in 12 Persei. At this point I had already called the expedition a bust and decided to rush the carrier back to the Bubble. I rescued 12 Persei and also our last foothold in Momus Reach, and set about to regain stations we had lost in Hel and LFT 300. Unfortunate as that was, it was a good stress test to see which of the systems can take care of themselves unattended.
Just as I was wrapping up restoring our footholds, something surprising happened. Suddenly our squadron was swarming with new members. It was as busy as I had ever seen it. For a while I was busy showing them the ropes, but they learned quickly. Emboldened by this, I decided it was time to take back Momus Reach while also trying to expand towards the Bubble's edge by taking Pardian and launching some expansions from there. Many of the new members were more interested in mining and making money to buy ships and carriers for themselves. They eventually drifted off, but a solid core of faction-oriented pilots remained.
The expansion towards the edge plan went well at first, but after the second expansion from Pardian we started to encounter resistance. The third and final planned expansion got blocked until there was no viable free systems left, and we decided to let the system go. LYR had an issue of us taking over Wolf 186, but granted it to us provided that we'd do a job for them. The job turned out much harder than either of us anticipated due to BGS oddities, but we finished it. Then we tried to take over Wolf 186 and got beat back four times. Then we took Muraba instead with LYR's blessing. The Wolf 186 inc. keeps hounding us in there too and all the promising expansion opportunities have been closed off, so this felt like a frustrating episode.
Our latest effort was to invade Yaringu from Kagudi and then take it over. Three times we tried and managed to get there on the third attempt. First time it went to 16 Persei and we gave that up because I happened to have a diplomatic contact with HFR Corp. at the time. Second was LP 245-17, which was an acceptable alternate target and we took it over. We won the entry war to Yaringu and are now working our way to top. We also gained some allies that are also fighting Yaringuans, the Justicar's of Helios. I also have been helping and advising our other allies and friends with all sorts of matters.
During all of this I also gained a protégé, CMDR Kissanpentu from the Epic division. Once she has built up and acceptable fleet, she can handle the faction stuff if I feel like taking a long exploration trip. She already has the credits, thanks to generous wing missions from the squadron, but engineering materials keep running out. Also the squadron thinks she really ought to have a cargo Cutter. Will have to work on that Imperial navy rank too.