Communication
23 May 2022Claude Lecardunoie
After the call from Coolboard, a fellow independant pilot I worked with some weeks ago, I flew back to Clairaut City, in 10 Tauri and put my activities on hold to help him in the fight against the Trask Death Corsair syndicate in HIP 10792.HIP 10792 is 480ly from 10 Tauri, my current location. So, I bought a second hand Hyper Telepresence System and plugged it on my own HUD. With such device, I was supposed to join Coolboard through telepresence and could take control on some of his modules after the binding of my ship's controls to his central system.
We first ran some tests: text and vocal com being ok, I started trying the gunner position of Cooboard's Krait then tried flying one of his skimmers. Deployment is easy. Docking back on his ship is more delicate as both pilots have to adjust their speed with one another. After a few unfortunate tries, we succeeded. We were ready to dive into battle.
Co piloting Cooboard's Krait
Approaching the battlefield, I first decided to take control of his turrets. Cooboard had four turreted beam lasers. I never fired such powerful weapons before and that was impresive. The problem was that as a gunner, you don't have a HUD to follow the battle situation. And also, the coms started to desynchronize which made any tactical talk impossible with the pilot. Actually, with a 20 seconds lag, any conversation was non sense, and could have been funny if we were not in a battle.
Trying to shoot a Trask Corsair Alliance Chieftain from gunner position
I disconnected my Telepresence and started it again in order to resynchronize. It seemed ok at the beginning. I decided this time to take control of one of his skimmer. They are really amazing to pilot: fast, responsive and well equiped. We were both pretty successfull in our respective fights, but again both vocal and text com started to desynchronize making any coordinated attack impossible. I guess my second hand Telepresence system was not good enough to deal with a distance of more than 400ly.
After I destroyed the Eagle I engaged, things got worse. I had taken important damages and only had 60% of my hull protection left. I decided to call Coolboard to dock the skimmer back in his Krait in order to regroup and repair. But the manoeuvre proved to be impossible with desynchronized communication channels. By the end, there was such a delay, that we misunderstood each other, and got seperated for more than the 30km distance of autonomy of the skimmer, which autodestructed terminating abruptly the telepresence session.
This experience proved that I have to work on my communication system. I also planned to install better controls for my ship. This would keep me away from flying in the coming weeks. I was just hoping not to miss too many important events as I knew then that things could change fast in the galaxy.