Had some fun with Wings tonight. And when I say "fun", I mean I got my behind kicked.
I was hailed by one of the commanders on my friends list, Ed, who asked “want to meet up to try out the Wings features?” (I had to think very carefully how I phrased that..) and I thought, well why not?
He had already added two others to the group, so the four of us made our way to the point roughly in the middle of where we all started in the galaxy, which turned out to be “Zeta Trianguli Australis” or “zeta T” as we call it.
There just was just Ed and myself initially as one of the group had 160+ Lyr to travel and the other commander was in station outfitting. I had switched to my Anaconda and we started shooting Wanted ships at the Nav Beacon as we found them. All went well for five minutes then an Anaconda turned up Wanted. We started shooting him and I had his shields down and Ed was risking life and ship for some close combat, when I realised my shields were dropping fast. There was a second Anaconda on my tail! Eeek! Shields were down and I had no choice but to flee. The AI has been beefed up and while my Anaconda is armed, it was set for defence rather that major offence, so I only had Class 5 shields and no major guns or shield cells. The good thing about an Anaconda, is it can jump away from trouble fast. So a quick trip to Guest City for repairs. Now anyone who has had a big ship in Elite (Clipper, Python, Anaconda) knows that a scratch in the paint costs 100s of thousands of credits and having your hull reduced to 63% is really going to cost. Millions. So when I fired up station services in Guest City and my repair bill was 38,000CR I was laughing. I’d already made that in bounty! That’s one “nerf” I defy anyone to complain about!
Anyway, Ed and Co. (Aleksej and Reighdar had come to Ed’s rescue while I fled) were still at the Nav Beacon having finished off the Anaconda and were making debris of all the Zeta system’s Wanted ships.
I decided to “suit up” properly, so switched into my Fer-de-Lance and re-joined them at the Nav Beacon. Obviously word of the Wing’s killing efficiency had spread, because the Wanted ships dried up. We then decided to go looking for trouble and try and find a Strong Signal Source.
Nav-locked to my FSD, the Wing jumped into super-cruise and travelled back towards Guest City, when a Strong Signal Source appeared on Contacts. We dropped out and found… cargo! Gold canisters floating, alone in space. My gut reaction was “this is too easy, it’s a trap!” and I said so. I started filming at that point (see video below – NSFW some swearing) and I wasn’t wrong. About a Wing of seven Vultures jumped in together and mobbed us. Aleksej hadn’t arrived at this point. Ed was under fire, I was shooting a target, but under fire from all directions. Within seconds, poor Reighdar was toast! Blow to space-dust! Aaaaah! My target's shields were still on one ring, but mine were nearly down. Time to run away! Thankfully the FDL is damn fast, so I beat a hasty retreat, as did Ed in his Cobra.
So if you go into a Strong Signal Source, consider taking more than one Wing. Seven Vultures are a handful.
I’m hoping to try out “trade dividends” later this week to see what kind of money a merchant’s escort can make by acting as a caravan guard.