Swords
22 Jan 2024Jana Razeki
Public logJana Razeki
Monday, January 22, 3310
The title of this log will make sense later. Yeah, weird way to start things off, but I wanted to get that out of the way... right away.
So, what have I been up to the last month or so? Mostly, as you might expect, fighting Thargoids in the Bubble, then... taking a break from that following some "fun". Very questionable "fun".
What kind? Well, it involves Medusas. So, you can probably imagine. It started when, at a point where there was a lull in the fighting in... what was it, Luggerates? Some weeks ago, around its surface port, had one of those big bastards show up around the conflict zone. And all I had was some of those puny peashooter multicannons.
And what did I do? I fought it, of course. And I don't really need to say that it was terrific. I don't think I even could take a Medusa on, on my own, when its swarm is involved, so maybe I felt slightly encouraged by that... but I still don't know what I was thinking, back then.
Damn, those things suck. They're great at swatting Scouts, decent for a Cyclops, you spend about a minute and a half firing at a Glaive until it's down, if it's just you, and a Basilisk... well, you can do it, if you keep the pressure on it all the time, or have some backup, though it's still a slog.
But a Medusa? Completely different universe, it feels like. Like, I wasn't even able to scratch the hull of that thing before its passive regeneration started fixing it right back up, without much of a care in the world. The only way I even had a slight chance of beating it was to team up on the bastard with a bunch of the local defense forces and hope they didn't get slaughtered before one of its hearts was exerted.
And the cannon's description reads they're good at destroying hearts. Well, I can tell you, they are not actually good at it with a Medusa. It took me... usually, almost the entire time that the heart remains exerted to take it down with four of the cannons. Admittedly, I use two large and two mediums, so I can have a beam laser, but it's far from being a non-standard configuration. Once, I wasn't even able to kill one of the hearts before it went back to being inert.
I also lost count of the ships that it slaughtered while I was just trying to do something about it. Must've been a dozen at the very least... if not two. Not exactly something I'd call a worthy tradeoff. Could even have sworn it was targeting those other ships deliberately because by myself, I might as well have been a mosquito trying to kill an elephant.
I did, eventually, get there, of course, with repair crews throwing on whatever quick fixes they could to keep everything together between the hearts, while its shield decayed, since I didn't quite manage to avoid all of the fire it threw at me. Not to mention those pesky Scouts coming in to help it every now and then. But I'd lie if I said I felt like it was a great victory or anything, looking at all the kills that it 'scored' until it was put down.
When it was out of its hearts, I just kept holding the trigger for both the beam laser and multicannons down until its sheld broke, while periodically hitting that boost key to throw off target lock, and then... well, I went through god knows how many reloads just to finish it off, away from the main defending force. It was like watching a large download ticking on while you're forced to use a low bandwidth connection.
Yeah. Like I said, those multicannons suck. "Just fit missiles, Jana." Not that simple, because those are better at exerting, and then they absolutely suck at taking out hearts. Didn't feel like I'd achieved much, even though it was technically a worthy kill. Not that I am there to kill, per se. And I returned to find Glaives pestering the port, but those were like swatting big flies after that Medusa.
That experience made me decide to go and throw those gauss cannons on... someplace else, since it seemed like forces at Luggerates were getting a handle on the invading Thargoids. Mahlina around Titan Cocijo, to be precise, partly because I'd heard, and seen, that those stupid Glaives don't show up around an outpost, and that was a bother I could do without. They also needed help and I kinda heard some people suspect Kira was last seen there before getting abducted, so I thought, maybe she'd want that place to remain clear of Thargoids.
It didn't, but that's a different story. I had a go with those gauss guns and they were... just way better. To the point that I don't understand why we haven't tried to further improve our own, self-made... or developed, weaponry. There was one project at the start of the war, and... that was it. They made gimballed weapons with faster shot speed. Woohoo. Yeah, it's an improvement, but not much of one.
So, anyway. My experience with the gauss cannons, once I kind of got the hang of them... well, I was doing a lot better at fighting off the tougher interceptors. Certainly made the kill times a lot faster, but I don't like those gauss things too much anyway, since some genius designer decided their shot needed to be charged up and released within the same trigger pull, so you have to be on target when it finishes. Easy for center of mass, not so much when you're trying to hit a Scout or heart.
And I ran into more Medusas, too, of course. More than I can remember seeing in the previous year or so of fighting... not that my memory means much, because I let others do that task.
They're a whole other thing when that damn swarm of their is involved. But I felt... a little more encouraged to take one of them on anyway, because now I had weaponry that felt more adequate. And, hell, was it ever so, so much better than those peashooter cannons. I had an actual fighting chance without half a dozen ships as backup, well, limitedly. Still not the best pilot and missing some engineering touchups not available to me at the moment.
The first of those Medusas went... surprisingly well, all things considered. I had luck in finding other pilots with their own Guardian-equipped ships around who... well, at the very least, they played a distraction sometimes. I find it hard to tell who's responsible for what when there's a good few of you hitting the same target.
Another one that showed up later... yeah, that one didn't go so well. Maybe it put up more of a fight, or I just got unlucky with that stupid, shitty swarm launching its annoying suicide missiles everywhere, not to mention the constant flinging of caustic shit via missiles that those local defense forces keep triggering.
But well, that thing happened where I knocked off a Medusa's last heart and was quite determined - along with a couple of other pilots - to get the killing shot in. Maybe a little too determined, because I was stuck at around twenty percent hull integrity and then some idiot made the Medusa fling caustic missiles everywhere, while that idiotic swarm decided I had to be its primary target. As did the Medusa, apparently, given that it was shooting at and tried to zap me.
I got the killing blow. I also limped away with the hull barely holding on by a thread and a repair limpet that I threw out while I let my ship drift in the opposite direction of the fighting, and tried to burn off that caustic snot before it got into the reactor or something equally terrific. An eye for an eye, you could say, but my ship didn't blow up there after getting disabled.
Luckily, the patch job done by the limpet held until I got rid of the corrosive gunk. Had to call it on the fighting that day, because that was no repair job a stressed, overworked outpost crew would be getting done. Felt lucky that the landing gear even still came out after jumping into a nearby, clear system, and the ship didn't fall apart around me when it came down on the pad.
Haven't been interested in seeing a Thargoid too much since. Only did a few ventures out into invaded systems recently, the last... week and a half, maybe. Still, I guess this maybe proves it wasn't so much the pilot as the equipment holding back my ability to fight against them. Probably will also keep the multicannons anyway, if I feel more like covering a support role. Medusas are not good for my heart rate, and especially not Hydras.
And, yeah, I mentioned Kira. Visited her again... about two weeks ago. She's definitely gotten a lot better since. With that whole... mental thing. Whatever's been happening in that brain of hers is allowing her to talk a lot better now, that's for sure. And she looks... quite happy, I'd say. Still not quite how she used to be, but I guess it's just a matter of leaving her the time to heal properly.
The docs said it's got more to do with the physical state of her brain than anything else, at this point, so they'll be keeping an eye on things for... a little bit longer. Until February, at least. Middle of the month, maybe. And she's changed... in some other ways, too. But I'm definitely not going to mention how. I don't think she'd like that. Still looks human, though.
Anyway... other matters. One from the last log, so I'll go there first.
Said I wasn't sure how to go about where to engage Thargoids within the Bubble, but I've come to something that I think I'm fine with. I don't feel too comfortable screwing with their stuff, like those weird spires that shot out of the ground a few months ago. And, really, I don't much care for those uninhabited pockets of space they decided to claim for themselves. If they want to keep that, fine, as long as they stop screwing with ours.
Meaning... I'm perfectly willing to help retake what was ours once. And, of course, keep them from attacking more of our stuff if they try going into it. Be that already invaded systems or ones at the alert stage.
That brings me to... the latest and greatest development. Ram Tah's planning to throw a Titan killer weapon at us. Something I've got mixed feelings on.
Why? Two main reasons, really.
One of them is that there's still... however many captives it is on those Titans, and I'm not sure how good of an idea it is to go ahead and start blasting them while they're still on there. Maybe in part because I might have a friend stuck on Titan Oya, hopefully not getting converted into... whatever twisted shit the Thargoids have in mind for them.
The other reason... this is one hell of a double-edged sword. Or several, if you want to look at it literally, since this is a thing they're going to throw out to us pilots when the time comes. Or maybe we should rightfully be called idiots, sometimes.
I'm not trying to imply everyone who attacks the Titans is an idiot, by no means. I'd have the valid reason of wanting the Thargoids out of our space with... no real personal grudges, as long as they stick to the barnacles in their nebula colonies. Or whatever they consider them as.
But I don't think I will. I've got... the partial hope that this is actually going to work and drive away the Titans, but I have a gut feeling telling me it won't be that easy. Or that it might end up attracting something worse and kicking this invasion up another notch. Or two. Or... far too many.
I'm still going to support that initiative, though. Planning to grab a bunch of Guardian relics and hand them over to Ram Tah, probably going to be heading out in that direction... tonight, I think. How long I'll stay out there, though, not sure yet. Even if I don't fight at the Titans directly, I might get some use out of whatever funny stuff he ends up giving us against the invasion force. Either while the Titans get dealt with, or things just get worse. If there's something bigger or more Titans lurking out there, waiting to respond to a call for help, like when the Proteus Wave fired, it won't be too pretty.
To that end, I've gone ahead and gotten myself permission to be active within the Anti-Club Accord network... it was surprisingly easy to have them let me in. Maybe because of the issues I've got with Feds and Empire. Could be I end up cooperating with them on some things like opposing superpower interests. Maybe learn something more, I don't know yet. I'll get myself an impression of what they're like and how they do things over there first.
And, of course, once I have, ask about that whole dilemma of whether it's worth supporting Sirius and Azimuth for engineering upgrades and the upgraded Guardian weapons, respectively... as that was why I considered going to them in the first place, but it'd feel wrong to just barge in there only to ask that, without bringing in anything useful.
Still, both of those things are pretty important to me, especially with the possibility that I would want better weapons in case the war worsens. And also that engineering nonsense where I can't fully upgrade my thrusters unless I get that idiot Qwent to 'refer' me to Palin. Or head to Colonia, which is just not an option.
Hopefully, he's not reading this.
End of log.