A Clan of 1

I find myself as the Admiral of an empty clan.

For a long time I was a member of The Ghost Warriors, a fine clan with helpful members and a relaxed atmosphere. The founder was an old buddy of mine which is why I joined, but he left a while ago. Since then the clan got a little thinner but the new leadership were still a good bunch.

A few weeks back the founder contacted me and asked me to join his new clan, The Order Of Heroes. I felt a little guilty about leaving the Ghosts but still said yes. There were half a dozen members or so and I was made to feel welcome.

Life is very busy at the moment so it was a few days before I logged back on. When I did I found that everyone had left the clan but me. What did I do? Does my ship give off poisonous fumes, do I emit dangerous geek rays?  I've no idea what happened, but as the only member I found myself as the Admiral of my own clan.

Now this is cool in some ways. For example I now have a Blue Tail.

I can also fly to Vega and pilot the conquest ship. That was a lot less exciting than I hoped. Maybe if I actually took part in a conquest rather than just hung about in orbit.








Now I really should just disband the clan, as I have no real interest in conquests or being an Admiral. However it seems a shame to let the 3,610 crystals and 61 log files in the clan fund go to waste. Anybody want to take it off my hands? You can join and I'll just leave, making you the new Admiral. This outstanding offer is for a short period only, because sooner or later I'll just have enough and go Ronin again.

Well at least I can say that I had my own clan, if only for a little while. Fear my Blue Tail.

'Molikar Search'

The preceding story mission was: 'Gaining Entry'

The following story mission is: 'Jogging Memory'

Time to see if the crazy theory, seat of the pants engineering and cunning flying has delivered the goods. Let's find out if that modified Fusion Drive will stop the Molikar Long Range Guns (LRGs) blasting you from the skies.

Fly to Molikar and try for the surface. Natassia tels you that Ethan Copernicus will meet you and help in the search for Vicius The Mutilator and the imperilled Rosebud. Now I don't feel that it would be a significant spoiler to say that you do reach the surface of Molikar safely. I'd have been more than a little cheesed off if the last few missions had been nothing but a wild goose chase.

Strangely though, Ethan lands scant seconds after you do, in a borrowed ship named Freedom's Force2. What the hey? Where did he get a modified fusion drive from? Did he get the first one off a production line that chugged into life after your prototype was built? I don't remember seeing him doing any of the legwork? Why didn't he test the damn thing by going first? He's to blame for all this anyway the bearded buffoon. Mutter, grumble...

Okay calm down, it's only a game. Ethan has a few areas of interest to search, and to be fair he does come along and absorb a lot of Mantis hate as you go. Eventually you find a confused amnesiac in a damaged ship. The Mantis are all over him so you have to kill them quick. When he's temporarily safe, the mystery man tells you that his ship needs an orbital thrust engine so it can break into orbit. Ethan stays with the poor soul as you search the one area the amnesiac has not yet checked.

In my first try at this mission the amnesiac was destroyed quickly. In my second try Ethan did a poor job of protecting him and he was killed just as I saw an object on my scanner. Third time was the charm though and I found the engine he needed. Mystery man must be related to Montgomery Scott because in seconds his ship is repaired and streaking up, up and away.

Next you have to return to Baumar and escort the amnesiac to Jogan, which isn't too difficult. Ethan and Natassia then wring their hands over the fate of Rosebud and the mystery man. Enough of this! Next mission.

'Colonial Counterattack'

Oh the warm glow of belonging

The preceding story mission was: 'Alerting Colonials'

The following story mision is: 'To Mantis Stronghold'

You've reached the orbit of Axiom, and Tobias has a final word before you get down to the surface. It seems that the Colonials don't know about the attack on Lyris so you have to warn them. Ivanova is at Administration City so find her there. He also generously says that he now respects you after your recent heroic exploits.

Finding Ivanaova is easy enough, and she's already told General Walter Victory of the Mantis attack so he's now preparing a head on attack. Go and find him at military HQ. On meeting the General all I could think was, 'What a Fantastic moustache.' All he could think was, 'Conscripted pirate scum.' Fair enough I suppose, considering.

He's prepared to give you a try as a messenger though. He sends you to deliver the call to arms to four bases. Off you go to reach the four Colonial Guard outposts at the cardinal compass points around the city, but you have to do it in under five minutes. I was in my Shock Speed Stun so this was the perfect mission.

I streaked away to the first base, using the Speed Actuator to let me use the Afterburner more often. No problem this mission. The Guards are keen to fight, so after you deliver the message to each base they fly off towards their HQ. After you've done all four bases, go back to the HQ yourself.

The General is impressed with your flying, and might be inclined to try your fighting skills later. He announces that it's war and there's a Mantis attack force on Aurora. It's time for revenge.

27th July Update

The core of the latest Pirate Galaxy (PG) update was v2.0 of the achievement system. Splitscreen described it as a new system but I think that's a bit of a stretch. Some new achievements have been added, such as Grand Explorer, and some bugs have been fixed.

Best of all you can now find out what elements of the Blueprint (BP), missions and zone visited achievements you are missing. I've posted before about the need for this so I'm glad to see it at last. Before this update I was 1 short of having all the Gemini BPs, but had no idea what it was. I had assumed that it was a Shock ship Gemini BP as I didn't have a Shock so couldn't see BPs such as Stun Charges or Speed Actuators. I could see the Tank, Storm and Engineer BPs and I had all of the Gemini versions of those. I even wrote a list of all the Gemini Shock BPs and had gone through the system collecting at least one of each to discover which was missing. When I found that I had all of them I was not happy and assumed that either it was a bug or perhaps a paint job BP that I hadn't found.

Then came Achievements v2.0 and I found that it was a Warping Aim Scrambler. How a BP that you collect in Antares can be the missing Gemini BP I've no idea. Still it only took me 5 minutes to get to Terasa and collect via the deaths of a few level 19 Avengers. At last, the Gemini BP Collector achievement was mine.
Update: In the changelog for August 11th 2011 it says 'Fixed a bug in the achievement Gemini Blueprint Collector that caused it to also require Antares blueprints.' Well that resolves that problem. Thanks to whoever read here then went and got it fixed.

Every time I get a new achievement I check my position in the Hall Of Fame. At that time I was number 1,086 so the top 10 don't have to worry yet. However the Hall Of Fame ladder has a flaw. For some reason there is a cut off of some sort at 1,018. See the screen grab. I'm on the lower side of the cut off so should actually be some places higher. I'll try not to sulk until Splitscreen fixes this.

Update: I've recently realised that the names in the ladder at the top of the second section are all GMs. It seems that they are causing some sort of log jam in the ladder.