Fighting is expensive!
25 Mar 2022Tiffany Yür
"hello, I understand you're a military station, you deal ships for combat and make weapons for them??""Eh, mrs has got it correct, we are a military installation and do just that, can I be of some service?"
"Umm, you see, I've come to a possession of several small fighter vessels, i think, and a couple of what look like battle ships. I wonder if you could see what could be done with those? See I'm a trader, and don't know about anything of fighting."
"Well, yes, of course. I believe you're Commander Tiffany Yür, who has brought us supplies and supplied nearby worlds with our produce, was I correctly informed?"
"Yes, here's my id, once again, if you need to see it."
"That's no longer needed, thank you. Now, it could help to see the ships you want us to improve, we have a service for moving vehicles you know.
"I'm ahead of you, I've already called them and they're brining in the vessels as we speak. I wondered if you could present me what sort of improvements you do, do you by any chance have an Imperial Eagle here being outfitted? Mine's pretty damn lousy and weak.
"Um.. this is an Alliance military post, we don't do that kind of thing, we do mainly big warships and some fighters Alliance uses. I could give you a tour of the facility so you'll see for yourself. Would that be Ok?
"Of course, please. You see our freight company gets harrassed by pirates every now and then and I thought some decent weaponry or maybe fighters would be just the thing. I've complained to the allied police force about these pirates, some even give believable callsigns like normal names, of course most are silly fakes like "Hexamark", "Twopie", or even "Alan Moron", and I've reported these to security forces. It just looks like they got their trails very well hidden, I haven't seen any bounties set to the names I've given them. Probably they just want to be sure no innocent gets killed when they finally raid some lair of pirates. So a private security section for the freight company, is my idea. We'd mostly aim to target those who attack our freight or passenger ships. Of course they change their call signs every now and then, but a swift strike to known places of pirate activity immediately after a successful interdiction of our vessels could be a sign for them. Ah, I see you have Eagles here.
"Oh yes, we sell them a lot. But to be frank, it is not a very good fighter, it's more like a learning and teaching vessel, very popular, though. I guess there are hundreds laying around even in this system. Most are of course shot down, but some have learnt to build their own from the parts. This is why we really can't normally track them down by their ship signature...
"I see, now what would you recommend for us then? I need it to be well shielded and efficient enough to cause serious harm, or destruction, even death to those trying to interfere with our normal business. It would be flown by rather inexperienced people so in order to minimize losses it shouldn't be too expensive.
"That would be nice, wouldn't it. You may not know this, but pirates sometimes tend to move in swarms, no single ship can easily handle, say 20 pirates around it. An experienced war ship pilot may do it. And here we are, our warships.
The discussion went on and on until I asked "so, you can upgrade my Chieftain to become a massacrer of inexperienced pirates? The first thing I'd need is some 5A thrusters, then? Let's put them in and I'll take it to a spin around the moon, no?
The answer stopped my dreams of quickly organizing a strike force against pirates. "Mrs. We are a military installation, we do not do engine upgrades or frame shift drives, we are mainly conserned of the Thargoid threat, thus we have those experimental weapons I showed you. You'd use them against regular pirates? It's a waste of energy and money especially now when they've been attacking some stations and all. "
"You would know about Thargoids, but the problems of freight are of no concern to you? I think you have nothing for me, at least now. Thank you for the tour."
I left the Installation and began to upgrade the fighters and warships Heylindh the pacifist had left in their stock condition. Have spent like 40 million on them now and will get the Chieftain upgraded as well
o7 Cmdr Tiffany Yür