Here we go. At long last, Incursions is finally here. So, since I’m home with my sick daughter, I’ve decided to live blog the event. Right now little girl wants to snuggle and watch a truly awful Disney show. So I will cope by keeping track of the first day of Incursions on Server 11. We’ll see how it goes.
11:47 am
Dailies done. Headphones on. Listening to a Willie Nelson live cover of Paul Simon’s American Tune. One of Simon’s prettier songs, and Nelson covers it amazingly.
Server 11 is actively sweeping every system. The morning has been spent cleaning out every unshielded base, server-wide.
11:55 am
Events are in preview. Looks like we’re matched up with Server 21.
12:15 PM
Successfully crossed over. Got in a nice little spot on server 21 next to a big base, by accident. Held my own against a good number of ships from a native alliance… until a level 57 showed up, then it was time to move on.
1:01 PM
Raided four more bases on server 21. Two of them were on. One of them wasn’t happy. Despite massive amounts of warning about the nature of this event, he still wasn’t ready for it. Oh well. The 200+ million dilithium he lost will maybe teach him a lesson.
Our server is off to a big early lead.
1:55 PM
Time to go knock out the “All Out Attack” event. Worked the Augur a bit, cloaked, and found some Enterprises.
Then I got impatient, and ran my Kelvin, supported by my Cerritos.
2:33 PM
Base Raid #6, or so. Sinniser.
A 49 tried to stop me. Then he got distracted. Then a 36 sniped my Antares and didn’t come back once my Enterprise took him out.
In other news, our big lead is gone. One of the whales on our server got caught napping.
3:00 PM
Initial thoughts on Incursions.
- It’s really fun. It’s active. It’s different. I’ve been finding it hard to find time to write because it’s been “go, go, go” for the better part of three hours.
- I’m frankly amazed at how smoothly this is running from a technical standpoint so far. Lag isn’t that bad for me, and the scoring seems to be working. I did not have faith that this would actually work.
- I don’t think that I like it on Tuesdays. If I wasn’t taking the day off to be with my sick little girl, I’d be missing this event entirely. That, and there are an awful lot of events within Incursions. I get that it’s here to avoid Territory Capture sessions, but a lot of players are missing it because they’re at work.
- I’ve really missed raiding events. A lot.
- Players aren’t getting the “no shield thing.” They’re trying to repair ships and send nasty messages rather than just moving their bases. Guilt has never been an effective shield defense, and in this event, when you get points for destroying ships and raiding, it’s a win-win for the attacker.
- The fast pace of this event makes it fun but makes any real cross-server conversation difficult at best.
- That said, the event has made at least temporary friends out of old enemies. Feels almost like an old Star Trek cliche. Pick your favorite “stranded on a barren planet with a Romulan,” or team up with the Jem’Hadar or Borg episode.
3:55 PM
Congratulations to alliance UFPA from server 21, which was the first alliance to get anything off me in years. I got caught in my old multitasking habit, trying to do the Battle pass event while raiding. So my Franklin was headed to level 46 swarm space when a level 54 got me. Took me a couple of minutes to repair my Discovery, and get the Franklin back to move, but it was a tense couple of minutes. Lesson learned.
But not nearly as tense as the call then got from the kids that our indoor cat might have gotten out. Life always puts things in perspective really, really quickly. Luckily, my wife managed to find that cat by opening a can of cat food. The cat never went outside, but had it gotten out, my kids would have been devastated.
Anyway, back to raiding.
4:30 PM
So after four and a half hours, I’m top five on all three leaderboards. Not bad, but I don’t think there’s any way I finish nearly that high. Unless my daughter has trouble sleeping again tonight, then it may happen.
4:45 PM – Vinniculi Vermicula
I haven’t gone through the names of all the servers, but the one we’re up against, server 21, Vermicula, might have the most obscure name of them all. The only time “vermicula” comes up in Trek is in the TNG episode with the fish people, Manhunt. The Antedians, as they were called, ate “vermicula” which were just smaller fish, out of a bucket.
And while I know this only because I looked it up, every time I see Vermicula on the top of my screen right now, I can only think about the folk song, Finniculi, Finnicula. It’s been stuck in my head for hours now.
And since it gives me a chance to link to Rodney Dangerfield singing, here you go.
Day Two, 9:26 AM
The good news, server 11 came back with a vengeance while I slept last night, and my daughter’s cough seems to be getting better.
The bad news – the lag, which wasn’t bad at all yesterday, was here with a vengeance this morning. The other bad news is that now my son and I are coughing.