Multi-Playing

One marvellous but not immediately apparent facility of Pirate Galaxy is the ability to play unrelated campaigns on its different servers. Pilot characters are unaffected if you create one on another server, so you lose nothing in doing this other than splitting your online time between campaigns. You can be a level 50 player on Solaria, but log on to Askone for the first time and you have a rookie pilot to manage. Once again you’re in a tin-pot ship with a pop-gun blaster, and a collector just strong enough to pick up the lighter varieties of dust. Log back onto Solaria and your grizzled veteran doesn’t even know you’ve been away.

For those who don’t know, the Vega system was overhauled a while ago. The reason given for this was to raise quality to that of the later systems, improving players’ first experiences of Pirate Galaxy. The story line was rewritten and the planets got proper names and a face-lift. I was a Beta-tester so only knew the original Vega. I could of course just fly back there and have a look around but that’d no fun at all. The best option is to start the whole adventure again on a different server.

My main game is on the Askone server, which is set up for English speaking Europeans. During the early days Askone was sometimes not available, so on those occasions I logged onto the German server Korell. The servers have become steadily more reliable so I visited Korell less and less, leaving my substitute pilot languishing on Vega 3. After the face-lift I logged back on and found myself half-way through an unfamiliar storyline on a planet I didn’t recognise. I hate not seeing anything right from the start, just like Woody Allen at the pictures in Annie Hall.

I chose to start from scratch on Solaria, one of the North American servers, as it has the advantage of players mostly speaking English. I speak a little German but not enough to try and coordinate hit-and-run tactics mid-battle. The conquests are all scheduled for convenient North American times but I rarely if ever take part in conquests so that’s not a problem for me.

If you’re getting bored with your pilot, fed up of Mizar, or just want a break from your current grind, create a pilot on a separate server. See everything from the factory-fresh cockpit of an AnIn-1300 Light Transport one more time.  Just be prepared for “Noob!” jibes.