A Red Umbrella, Worms, and Uninvited Guests

“Do you think just us the three will be enough to fight the worm?”

“No, not really, but I’m sure we’ll get at least a couple more. Murph and Shveet will probably show. Five or six should be enough.”

By the end of the night, including our reinforcements and folks who dropped in and out, we would end up numbering over two dozen scattered across the server. The battle ended up being waged over the course of about four hours and involved numerous capital ships and at least two sizable orgs. One of which was a top tier PVP org that by all rights should’ve easily trounced us.

Oh, and worms. Lots of worms.

But first, let’s go back a few hours to a bit earlier in the day, to a very different operation under very different circumstances.

Part I: Operation Exterra’s Red Umbrella

It was mid afternoon on the East Coast United States, Redscar and Exterra were wrapping up a very successful Align and Mine joint operation. A couple days earlier, the Nomads and Exterra had very literally bumped into each other in the Orbituary Contested Zone (shockingly, with zero casualties on either side) and after a quick cordial chat Exterra invited Redscar to join them for a joint operation on Saturday. We were on good terms, and didn’t really have anything else planned, so we agreed.

I proceeded to type up the event information for the Nomads and settled on “Operation Exterra’s Red Umbrella” as Exterra’s request of us was for air support.

And so about ten Nomads showed up and we dutifully reconed the Hathor location and then proceeded to guard Exterra’s ground team and miners for two-ish hours. It had been relatively uneventful with only some light air combat from a few potential threats

For most of the operation, Redscar’s “Red Squad” flew CAP (Combat Air Patrol). We would patrol the skies and call out any “bogey” that any of us spotted (a particular shout out to A.Z.H, whose call-outs were consistently on point and really helped guide our fighters to their targets). The closest pilot would generally try to engage and at least scare off anyone who wandered into our patrol area. Most engagements, for better or for worse, resulted in the interloper being shot down. We don’t really take chances in situations like this, and we had a job to do, so we did it.

However, a couple hours into the operation a pair of solo’d Idri frigates with a Polaris escort cut things short and tried to crash the party. Exterra’s naval assets and Redscar’s pilots fought a very successful holding action (aka we stalled the capital ships) so that Exterra’s mining team along with their freshly mined goodies could withdraw.

Notably, during the closing moments of holding action as the cargo ships were extracting back to Seraphim, our glorious leader, Pioneer, and flight lead himself MurphyJack decided to take a somewhat… risky… course of action by attempting to goad both Idri and the Polaris out of the flight path of our extracting teams.

To the surprise of everyone, this worked and the two Idri chased Murph’s lone Hornet into deep space. The Polaris proceeded to break off and dock which gave me an opportunity to slip aboard to get intel on the owner which I passed on to Exterra’s leadership to do with as they wish.

Unfortunately for MurphyJack, his ISP (Internet Service Provider) had other plans for the rest of his afternoon and proceeded to cut out during his brave maneuver. He had been pointing towards deep space, his ship was lost, and he was never heard from again.

The Idri then vanished as well. Exterra decided they were still up for a fight and started regrouping for a hunting operation to get revenge on the folks that interrupted their mining operation. Not that there was necessarily “need” for much revenge as the operation was quite successful and losses had been extremely minimal.

Aside from Murph’s tragic loss to the endless depth of space, only one Nomad crashed (quite literally from a game crash which resulted in a ship crash). Exterra’s AAA was destroyed in a possible incident of friendly fire with the taskforce’s Idris. And I believe a single Exterra pilot was shot down by the intruding capital ship force.

All in all, a successful operation. Around 30-40 people between Exterra and Redscar showed up (the majority being Exterra of course) and all our objectives had been achieved even if they might’ve been cut a little short. By this point, it was around 4 PM and it was a nice day out, so I needed a break and a walk. I said goodbye, gave the usual interorg formalities and thanked the Exterra folks for inviting us and a job well done and headed off.

But it, along with a message from Murph, got me thinking…

What if we could get these kinds of numbers for a worm hunt (Stormbreaker)?

Little did I know a very “sweaty” and skilled PVP org had been apparently thinking the same thing that very same day…

Part II: Worms

Worms. They’re in apples, the ground, brains, all over the place. In Star Citizen, you can hunt them. The biggest, so far, are in Pyro, specifically on Pyro I in the middle of a very large darn near planet wide storm at an illegal research facility. To summon the largest of worms (known as “Valakkar” in lore) you must get an access card from another planet, don a “Pillsbury Doughboy” radiation suit, and “do some science” (shoot lots of NPCs). I’m skipping a few steps but that’s the gist of it.

After chatting with some of my fellow Nomads who had peeled off from the earlier “Red Umbrella” operation with Exterra we decided we were still up for some action today and would gather for a worm hunt later in the evening around 7 PM Eastern. That was about three hours from then and that was a somewhat short window of opportunity for anyone potentially interested to set aside a few hours of their time to join. I’d put out the invitation to Exterra too and maybe we’ll scrounge enough folks for a proper hunt.

Flash forward to 6:50 and the turnout was looking a little sparse. Only five folks had signed up for the event and two of those had been marked as “tentative.”

With just myself, PlutoProductions, and Skeeter in the voice channel we briefly discussed if we could even do it with such low numbers. I gave my assurances that at least a couple more folks would show.

Fortunately, I was correct and Murph (who was NOT lost to the depths of space after all), Shveet, and a handful of other Nomads did trickle in putting our numbers around eight as we undertook our first worm hunt of the night.

Worm Hunt 1:

“Players! One down.”

“How many of them?”

“Looks like four.”

“Let’s try talking to them. We’re twice their numbers.”

“Okay I’ll tr… another down.”

“We’re on the shuttle. You’re going to kill them all before we can even get there?”

“Probably They keep running into my gun!”

There were seven of us on the shuttle with one or two trying to catch up. Our scout, Autumn, was currently engaged in a little “force recon” at the ASD facility. We had debated if it was too hot but ultimately decided we could easily take on a party of four.

And hey, we could maybe even recruit them and add em to our numbers?

We never got the chance.

By the time we got off the shuttle Autumn had wiped half their team, and the worms they’d spawned took care of the last two. All that was left was to kill the big ol’ worm.

Easy enough.

And… well… it was.

It was so easy that a couple of our group, including Shveet and Shinzo (no related to the former Japanese Prime Minister) peeled off to help a newer player traverse the Stanton-Pyro jump point. We had it all under control.

Bringing down the worm is a straightforward affair. It just requires ammo and lots of it. Shoot the weak spots, don’t get melted by the smaller ones, watch your radiation, and don’t get jumped by players.

That last part was our biggest concern since we just took out another team and they could very well come back for revenge.

“Do you still have a marker for your Connie?”

“Uh oh, no.”

That’s a big red flag and we had just killed the big worm and started cleaning up (looting). So, I hopped on the shuttle back to the landing area to check on my ship. I fully expected a fight and a one-way trip but… no? Nobody here?

It was clear.

All the ships we’d brought were dead but otherwise they looked fine. Weird. No one ever interrupted us at the facility either. Huh, okay.

Called for extract and we made it out with our booty.

Easy… too easy… let’s do it again!

Worm Hunt 2:

We regrouped, rearmed, and refitted at Checkmate and headed out again. I scouted ahead this time and, after passing on what appeared to be a busy one, I found another ASD facility for us. This one had no players and almost no empty ships, so it seemed like a good candidate.

And it was.

Things yet again went smoothly, we killed the worm, and it was time to get those teeth and pearls out. BroccoliRob, Ranok, and I hopped on the shuttle to go check on our extraction ships. The ships all still had AR markers on our HUDs, so everything seemed kosher.

The three of us were standing on the shuttle riding back chatting and overhearing the cleanup crew getting to work on gathering the teeth and pearls when we got near the landing area. I turned around just as the fog cleared, and a terrifying rectangular silhouette, surrounded by multiple smaller ones, came into full detail as they hovered over the landing zone.

“OH SHIT! IDRIS!!!”

Part III: Uninvited Guests

“GET DOWN!”

We dropped to the floor in the hope that none of the ships had spotted us. Even if they didn’t, there was no way the roughly half a dozen (at least) heavily armed dudes standing by the shuttle’s docking station could’ve missed us.

It was a quick firefight. Rob and Ranok went down but were thankfully only incapacitated. I managed to survive but was wounded. It wasn’t clear how many of them we took out. I know I got at least one. We held them off long enough for the shuttle to depart with us badly beaten but amazingly alive on it.

As we limped back to the ASD facility and started digging in, our air support arrived back at the landing area, and we started to get the full scope of the threat approaching us. Per the scans of our fighters, there were:

• At least seven aboard the Idris (which is, as of the state of the game now, approximately a full crew).
• An Asgard (this will be important later)
• A Fury
• A Zeus
• Multiple other fighter craft (Talons, Gladiuses, Hornets, etc.)

Toss in the roughly half a dozen infantry we had already made the acquaintance of and that added up to a crew of well over a dozen, likely over 15 but we’ll never really know. Plenty of other third parties would join the ensuing melee.

At first, it was quiet (well, mostly, the occasional NPC would still wander into our guns). We pulled most folks back to shuttle’s docking station on our side of the storm. Our fighters tried probing and thinning the enemy’s air support but ultimately, there wasn’t much they could do against that frigate.

Murph put out a call for reinforcements (we needed capital ship support in particular). In the meantime, we dug in and expedited the worm cleanup. However, we had other problems, beyond the Idris that is.

Our numbers were split. With seven of us on the facility side and all our reinforcements stuck outside the storm, we were pretty solidly outnumbered. Not to mention our ammo was getting low as the worm ate it all.

The first uninvited guest was clearly just a scout. They came alone on the shuttle and were swiftly dispatched before they could get off. I found a barely operational Ikti mech and placed it behind the boxes at the shuttle station drop off.

The next few shuttles were empty which gave us some preciously needed time to call for reinforcements and wrap up cleaning up the worm.

Then, they stuck.

A shuttle brimming with figures in heavy armor and heavy weapons swooped in and we opened fire. We got most of them but three made it out the side and fell out of our sight. Murph and a couple of folks from the cleanup team managed to take them down but not without taking some losses.

That could’ve gone worse…

A few minutes later… it did.

“IKTIS! ONE? TWO… THREE… FIVE! Five dropping in from the Asgard!”

These hit us hard.

We took lots of loses. I managed to kill two of the intruders and hide but we lost almost everyone else on our team in the process. Most had set their spawns at the facility and were able to get back into the fight quickly. However, many didn’t, and I was briefly entirely alone as Ikti mechs stomped around the facility.

In the meantime, on the other side of the storm, our air and space forces were busy in an almost equally desperate fight. Cadoyle answered the call and brought his Idris Fuji’s Revenge to the rescue. Yet he too was incredibly outnumbered by the enemy’s fully crewed Idris and its fighter complement. A friendly org of Canadians had said they were on their way with a couple of Idri as well but were having troubles with the jump point from Stanton.

Pluto, Autumn, and our other fighter pilots managed to down multiple Talons, Gladiuses, and Hornets left and right, but that Idris was still too much of a threat to approach the landing area.

By this point, we’d managed to retake the ASD facility. Took out another shuttle full of enemies, got the pearls out, and were digging in when suddenly another enemy group of players appeared out of nowhere. They downed a lot of us and executed both members of our party and those from the enemy Idris team.

The situation was quickly degrading into a full-on melee, but we still had a job to do:

Get those worm teeth out.

And by golly, we were going to get those damn teeth out.

Teeth Extraction

After getting rudely executed by our new uninvited guests, I spawned back on Checkmate (I hadn’t set my spawn at the facility). I grabbed some ammo and hopped on my Asgard with the hope that I could swoop in and extract the teeth and team. I made it back to the air space above the landing zone to see a chaotic scene of fighters engaged in various isolated dogfights and the enemy Idris vacillating between attacking our Idris and threatening the landing zone. I took the Asgard to a “safe enough” distance above and tried relaying the situation to everyone.

As I took my overwatch position and a new white dot popped in on the radar.

“Uh oh, another Idris, on fast approach”

There was immediate confusion if this was one of the Canadian Idri we had heard was coming. It wasn’t them.

One fully crewed enemy Idris was already more than we could handle right then, could this be another?

To our relief, it joined in the fight against the enemy Idris. This gave me and a wingman enough of a window to swoop down to the surface despite having pretty much no clue what awaited us there.

Despite the endless melee at the facility, the ground team at the facility, Murph, Superion, Rob, and Ranok, managed to start delivering the precious worm’s teeth to the shuttle station. Those of us on the landing zone side then slowly and precariously extracted them to Checkmate. We did only one first just to see if we’d even make it out alive.

“First tooth stored!”

Tired cheers from the ground team.

“Keep em coming.”

Then three.

More cheers.

Two left.

Then our formerly “friendly” third party Idris turned on our air and space team and things started going downhill fast. Our Canadian friends only managed to get a single solo’d Idris through to help us but, unfortunately, it died quickly.

It was past midnight local time. Despite our numbers having swelled, we were exhausted and all spread out. Our capital ship backup was still too far out (if it was even still coming at all) and neither enemy team was giving up, but they did give us a window of opportunity, and it was closing fast. Both enemy Idri pulled out, with the fully crewed one clearly just going to repair and return as some of their fighters stuck around.

We were still missing two teeth though. The ground team could account for one but not the other.

Yet time was up, and Murph called for extraction. After debating whether they should hijack the Zeus the enemy left at the landing zone, they discovered that someone’s Prowler Utility was amazingly still in one piece. The team shoved the final tooth in that and finally got the hell out of there.

It was already well into the next day. My “semi-impromptu worm hunt” had turned into a massive, hours long battle and the Nomads were all dead tired. We had achieved all our objectives and, as it turned out, taken on two orgs (Ares and Part-Time Heroes). The former of which is a notorious PVP org that should’ve beaten us soundly.

On all fronts, the Nomads were victorious that day.