Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Spur of the Moment.

The last of the Fist Team takes off in a BF-109E to battle the Prize of having the first THI Hawker Hurricane on the Grid.

The Hawker Hurricane was nearly done. Duke Elliot had put the final touches on the plane and Creem Pye was making sure the scripts worked properly. Since it was a Holiday Weekend, and I in the past had noted company sales were high on Holiday week ends in the U.S. I urged Duke to put the Hurricane out for sale. He had wanted to have a launch party, similar to the one for the P-40, but I explained that such took time to organize… but I knew where people would be dogfighting every weekend.

At 9am, Introductions were made and rules explained.

In Zoe Connally’s Blog she often announces a group dogfight every weekend, usually Sunday mornings. I suggested that we approach the dogfighters, and offer a competition, with the prize being the first official THI Hurricane on the Grid.

Duke Elliott and I arrived at Extropia: Second Skies before 9AM Sunday. The group was small but enthusiastic and it looked like we would have two teams of two fight, and then the top team would fight each other one on one to determine who was the winner and the second member would get a THI Car of their choice. Sounded reasonable and we set out chairs, and picked teams. I rezzed pairs of BF-109E’s, each pair in matching colors and sent them on their way.

Then the troubles began. The Extropia territories are 6 Sims with mostly open sky with a Mid Century Science fiction theme (There is an actual Jetsons apartment tower), and while the sims that border “Second Skies” are clear, the other three sims are densely build up, and would slow a computer down. Also a lot of the builds being residences, while allowing aircraft, do not permit the rezzing of objects by non residents. VICE being a system that is dependant on users ability to generate physical bullets. If you fly over the residences, you then are essentially shooting blanks. Since I rezzed the planes I would occasionally get a “not allowed “message, but he participants wouldn’t.

A furball developes around the Jetson's Apartment Tower.

The first fight lasted about a half hour. And the winners were Whitewolfie Mumfuzz and Indra Vlodovic. We waited to see if we could rustle up a second team, but after 45 minutes of asking, no one was interested, So Whitewolfie and Indra fought each other. And the dogfight lasted for many minutes, possibly closed to an hour, mostly because they participants chose to fight in amongst the apartment towers, spamming me with “not Allowed” messages. Pretty soon, Duke had to log off to attend to family responsibilities, and I climbed aboard my Airship to observe the fight, and occasionally haul one of the participants’ planes out of the apartment towers and send it flying again. When the participants would engage in endless Luffberry circles around the afore mentioned Jetson’s Tower, and spamming me with “not allowed” messages, I told them what the problem was and that to win they had to stay away from the residences.

Sin Trenton goes down in flames

Whitewolfie Mumfuzz


Indra Vlodovic


As soon as they got over clear space closer to the airfield the fight was over in 5 minutes. Conversation and discussion commenced. We waited to grant the prize for when Duke got back online, and so we talked and I rezzed copies of the new Hurricane and “guested” them for people to fly. Josh Noonan arrived and I gave a bit of an impromptu lesson on how to build. Finally Duke returned and the prize was awarded and We congratulated them and closed the proceedings. Zoe was right, the event should have taken more planning. Also the venue is good for recreational flying, but the presence of high prim residences was hell on less than optimal Machines. We learned a lot and will be prepared next time.

Whitewolfie hanging close to the Jetsons Tower until chased ut into the open area.


Indra goes down fighting...

...and ends up taking a hot bath. He won a car tho...

Incidentally the Hurricane was then offered up for sale and a good chunk of the party moved to the new Aeronautica Sim. The Hurricane is now available for sale at Aeronautica, Blacktail Ridge, FlyinTails and soon 1944.

--Karl
First Prize, awarded to Whitewolfie

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1 Comments:

Blogger Vidal Tripsa said...

Sorry to hear you ran into troubles while dogfighting, Mr. Reisman! In fact, for both privacy and practical reasons most dogfights are held in Skies of Tomorrow and Dirac Sea alone, though I suppose you weren't to know with both the EDF and RCAF Captains away.

Sounds like a fun time was had, and I heard only good things from those that competed that weekend, too. I can't say I'd be looking forward to buffing the bullet holes out of Botgirl Questi's home if rezzing were allowed there, though!

September 4, 2008 at 6:09 PM  

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