Flying in an air show IN SPACE

Despite being new enough in the region that few agents are willing to give me any work, and the recent loss of the mining colony, my lowly level one agent strokes my ego by praising my piloting skills before inviting me to participate in a Minmatar-Gallente air show. As the show will take place in space I'm a little hazy where the 'air' comes in to the equation, but I'm quite enjoying being told how 'mad' my 'skills' are so I agree to take part. I'm quite eager to perform some barrel rolls.

My first task is to jump to a different system to pick up my entrance badge for the show. I suppose this weeds out all the poseurs who don't know their pod from their elbow. My agent is awfully happy that I passed this first stage, happy enough to reward me with a Gallente shuttle in which I can perform my acrobatics at the show. I would have much more gratefully received the new ship if I hadn't bought a Caldari shuttle about half-an-hour earlier, but it's the thought that counts and at least I can now thrash the nuts off the Gallente shuttle to give a proper display.

The air show begins, crowds waiting for spectacle and entertainment! To give a good show for all the stands I need to fly to a series of beacons as quickly as I can. This should be easy enough, so to make it more of a challenge I decide to fly it ten minutes before the daily galactic shutdown. I warp to the air show arena in deadspace and start scanning for the first beacon, but the only beacon I can see is the one marking the deadspace region. I calmly start punching every button in my pod, as I imagine a crescendo of boos and hisses rising from an audience watching the thrills of a shuttle floating in space, until I get the overview showing every object in space.

Ah, the beacons are not 'beacons' but 'large collidable structures', the very objects that clutter up my overview in just about every other mission and so are routinely removed from my settings. It would have been nice to know in advance. Now that I see the first beacon I set my shuttle to maximum velocity and fly my pants off racing from beacon to beacon.

My next task is to rescue a pilot who gave a spectacular performance of crashing his ship in to an asteroid and then blow up some drones to give the audience a fireworks display of explosions, before the finale of a high-speed fly-past. 'If you can use and fit a micro-warp drive please feel free to do so. You'll go crazy fast!' my agent tells me. Why, yes, I can use MWDs, let me jump in to my frigate for some 2,000 m/s action.

Of course, I know I'm heading in to a pocket of deadspace and that warp drives, micro or otherwise, don't work in deadspace, hence the name. But my agent wouldn't specifically say that I should use an MWD if I have one if it won't work when I get there, would he? Yes, yes he would. I drop out of warp and start my supposedly spectacular high-speed fly-past by crawling past the stands at sub-shuttle speeds, my ship's computer repeatedly complaining that I cannot use the MWD because of interference.

Stupid agent. Little wonder he languishes at level one.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: deadspace, eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic