A recent spate of civilian killings and a surge in Pay or Die piracy has left a number of pilots wondering what is going on and who will step up to counteract the increase in violence and robbery.

Attempts were made to contact various pirate leaders, but only one responded. When asked whether pirating had, for some reason, gotten much more profitable, pilot Jargo of the pirate squad Outlaw responded, "ME?" When asked what he saw as the primary obstacle to successful pirating, he retorted, "YOU!"

MEC Celebrates New HQ Opening

Klatsches Hold – To celebrate the opening of its new main offices on Klatsches Hold Station, MEC sponsored a series of races from KH to Hyperial and back on 108.1.26. The race had three different entrant categories based on pilot level, and had three ways to score – order of completion, successful docking, and number of flux kills en-route. The entrant classes were: Class 1 (level 34+); Class 2 (levels 15 – 33); and Class 3 (levels 0 – 14). Scoring included points for docking order (50, 40, 30, 20, 10 – 1^st through 5^th respectively); 5 points for successful dock at Hyperial, and another 10 points for successful final dock at KH; and 3 points per flux killed during the race.

"No one died or missed the time limit," announced the beaming MEC President, Istanbul. "The only glitch per se, was a young pilot, of level 3, who was taking a bit too long on the way back, so we had WITTMANN tell him to get his butt back to station if he wanted a prize. Luckily there were no disputes over the scoring, though there was one close call in points. RedDwarf had 39 points for class 1's 3rd place, while Sunfish hadn't killed any flux and made second place with exactly 40 points."

(click here for more)

Quantar Core - On 108.2.10, secret military convoys departed Quantar Core. Anonymous sources claimed that the objectives of the convoys were reclamation of rare commodities and ores that had been stolen by pirates and stashed at their unregulated station bases. The convoys were led by king0815 of squad QSSP. While most of the pilots were Quantar, there were two Octavians from the Black Templars who were contracted to aid in the mission.

Evening's End -- JPR Hosted a "Real Space" fight night on Friday 108.2.1 with a 100 million credit prize purse. Eight of the thirteen entrants were from OV and ROH – with OV sweeping the first three places: 1) Magnus-Ex, 2) Jimac, and 3) Algore. JPR also provided live broadcast coverage of the event.

Promoters reported that the fights went off smoothly. Both participants and spectators appeared to have a great time.

In Conversation
The Art of the Arc in Jumpgate Evolution^tm

Because there has already been so much focus on JGE game features and graphics, we decided to do a Darkspace Dispatch interview with Jumpgate Evolution(tm) Community Manager "Awen" on the subject of both official and independent, player-driven story arcs in the new game.

According to Wikipedia, a "story arc" is "an extended or continuing storyline in episodic storytelling media such as television, comic books, comic strips, video games, and in some cases, films."

Q. In the past, the Community Manager was responsible for managing the story arcs (and event) within the game. Will that true of your role for JGE on U.S. shards?

A. I imagine that I will absolutely have a hand in implementing live events on the servers as well as helping the story along. It’s very important that our players realize that we’re handing them a tool in which they get to play out their own stories. We have Keith working on a backstory for Jumpgate so by our beta phase, our players will know who the main players are and what has been happening since the Shift.

(click here for more)

Dream Gadgets

(First in a Series)

Jumpgate is a game that lends itself to RP and immersion in a unique way because the game does not dictate your profession, personality, skills, intelligence, leadership, etc . . . YOU do. So when you want to become a real immersion junkie and "lose yourself in the role" there’s myriad gear and gadgets for the gamer who goes too far.

TrackIR 4: Pro is a very interesting immersion tool. TrackIR is a head-tracking device offered by NaturalPoint that provides up to 6-way "look-around" (they call it six degrees of freedom) with the objecting being a more realistic "you are there" feeling.

The TrackIR basic hardware consists of a small infrared "receiver" that mounts on top of your monitor, and a Vector Clip – a reflective device that clips to the peak of a baseball cap. There is also a TrackClip PRO which is an alternative to the Vector Clip. The TrackClip PRO is an LED device that attaches to your headset.

I found the TrackIR to be amazingly simple to set up. The only thing that caused me to expend any brain power at all was when I figured out I needed to do a software update to get it to talk to Jumpgate. There’s lots of configuration power with regard to sensitivity, and you can set sensitivity curves for each "degree of freedom" axis – which NaturalPoint defines as pitch, yaw, roll, x, y and z.

(click here for more)

(Darkspace Dispatch will be featuring the classic comic strip "Evil Asteroid."  Although some of you have already enjoyed these comics when they were originally published, we wanted to re-run them as we believe them to be both hilarious and timeless.)

Click here for more . . .

Betrayal
a Jumpgate Novella by Fellblade
(reprinted with permission)

- Part XIX -

The stars wheeled around Lithe Shadow as she curved toward the Omni V Jumpgate in the Quantar Core sector, the pilot inside guiding his flight through the darkness of space idly with one hand, the other cradling a cup of coffee. He flicked through the comms channels, listening to the speakers, most of whom seemed overly stressed. A couple of Quantar pilots requesting assistance because they had heard that a notorious pirate was about, a Solrain cargo tow pilot screaming impatiently at a rookie pilot who was attempting his second ever docking, but on all of them the small symbol in the lower right of the screen which meant there was a priority transmission. Arouin didn´t need to listen to the transmission to know what it was about, he just needed to get away from it. Arouin aimed at the gate keeping the throttle high and after a minute or so the blue glow surrounded him and he felt the peculiar wrench of the journey through space-time as he triggered the jump drive.

On the far side of the gate he pulled away quickly out of the path of an oncoming convoy of Octavian cargo tows and their Phoenix fighter escort, and headed for Ekoo´s Stop... and from there... onwards to The Stith. The journey was largely uneventful, on the whole a rather disappointing lack of juicy pirate targets, but Arouin ploughed on through the void of space, making the occasional detour around an asteroid cluster which blocked his path, careful to give the brown-grey lumps of deadly rock a wide berth. All the time he was watching his radar, looking for anything that he could make a meal of... or anything that might make a meal of him.

(Click here for the complete text of Parts XIX and XX)

"Quotable"

"Its your story to tell, we are just giving you cool ways to tell it."

Scott "Scorch" Brown,  President, NetDevil, Ltd.

". . . (Jumpgate) is still by far the best RPG I have ever encountered because it had the best roleplaying tool ever designed: Freedom to influence the world."

Nemz,   Pilot

 

Darkspace Dispatch Back-Issues

Vol.   I, No 1 (104.7.24)           Vol. I, No. 2 (104.8.12)           Vol.   I, No. 3 (104.10.2)          Vol.   I, No. 4 (104.10.2)
Vol. I, No. 5 (104.12.7)          Vol. I,No.6 (104.12.28)        

Vol. II,No.1 (105.1.25)         Vol. II,No.2 (105.2.26)          Vol. II,No.3 (105.4.24)         Vol. II,No.4 (105.6.16)
Vol. II,No.5 (105.8.7)         Vol. II,No.6 (105.10.10)          Vol. II,No.7 (105.12.27)

Vol. III, No.1 (106.2.20)          Vol. III, No.2 (106.5.25)          Vol. III, No.3 (106.9.26)

Vol. IV, No.1 (107.2.18)          Vol. IV, No.2 (107.5.16)          Vol. IV, SR-1 (107.6.22)

Vol. IV, SR-2 (107.6.22)          Vol. IV, SR-3 (107.10.26)

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