So, my girlfriend and I had just purchased the game, and we jumped right into a our own LAN multiplayer game. We spent many hours simply mining asteroids, then the moons when we discovered that was much easier. Then doing the random missions on our way out to mine.
Eventually, we got to the point where we had upgraded our ships as far as we could in the Sapphire system, and we were ready to follow the storyline into the next system. At this point, we hadn't even encountered our first combat situation, and we were having tons of fun exploring, mining, doing random missions, making money, and upgrading our ships.
It's a good thing we upgraded our ships with the best frames, shields, and weapons, because as soon as we jumped to the next system, we were immediately ambushed by hostile ships, and we hadn't had any combat practice at all.
Three ships were already coming at us while our IDS slowed us back down to normal flight speed. I veered to the right to engage two ships, and Quinnia veered to the left to confront the other.
We were yelling out our combat status and how well we were faring. But within half a minute into the fight, she accidentally engaged her jump drive and disappeared from the skirmish.
I had just released my first Rockeye missile, and after having taken down my foe's shields with my beam weapon, it obliterated him completely. As I propelled through the burning wreckage of his ship, I disengaged IDS, swiveled around to focus on the other ship pummeling my rear shields, and distributed my shield energy equally to all arrays.
As I was drifting backwards with inertia, preparing for the other ship to get into weapon range and planning my strategy, Quinnia's target had turned back and was pursuing me from my starboard side. Crap, I had forgotten about him. I checked my shields. After equalizing, they were at about 75%. I considered diverting more power into shields, but I knew without adequate firepower, I wouldn't be able to take these two down. Frantic, I called for Quinnia's help, but she responded she was still making her way back to our location, but couldn't find it. I didn't have time to check my navmap for coordinates, so I just hoped for the best.
I turned my view around to the incoming ship that she'd been engaging and targeted it. Its shields hadn't recovered yet! I immediately burst my thrusters directly toward it, firing a barrage of beam and particle weapons. My second Rockeye missile screamed toward its cockpit just as my horizontal thrusters propelled me away from its return fire and the inevitable explosion as my missile made contact. I didn't have time to check if he was dispatched, though, because I was was already taking heavy fire from my port side. My shields had almost failed by the time I noticed.
I equalized my shields and engaged IDS at the same time while searching for my other target. He sped past me as IDS got me back to a straight flight path, and I made a wide arc to engage this last target head-on. My shields were at 25% now equally, and I was out of missiles. My weapons energy hadn't fully recharged either. As our ships made their approach, I figured there wasn't much I could do except hold my breath and squeeze the trigger.
As the first (and probably my final) exchange of fire began to ensue, my enemy's ship was suddenly deluged with a spray of energy blasts from his starboard side. Within milliseconds of the onslaught, a Viper missile drilled into his weakened side, exploding his ship before he could fire off more than a few rounds at me.
Quinnia had found her way back, and she destroyed the remaining ship seconds before I would surely meet my demise. (Who said the girl couldn't save the day? True story, too!)
Quickly communicating coordinates, we jumped out of there before anymore enemy ships arrived.
We went back to mining for a while after that.
I shan't ask the obvious (ribald) question. (Devil get behind me.)
:P
