i am a giant idiot and forgot how much tech strengths and weaknesses differing across the galaxy can be exploited, and assigned my captured Voinian frigates to the escort fleet instead of taking one for myself. Voinian shields aren't worth shit, but their armor can soak up Crescent phase cannons all day and all night, far more than the disappointingly underpowered freight-courier and its human-civilian-typical mix of OK shields and mostly ceremonial armor. the average Crescent renegade fleet can peel that off me like a banana and i've probably died 40 or 50 times today. but my two frigate escorts have barely been scratched in Crescent space so far. pretty sure i saw them take out a whole Crescent Warship without my help.

so now it's back to Voinian space to see if i can catch a third frigate. when i can get in deep enough, their supply ships have huge capacity (250 tons) and are easy to capture, but sadly hard to keep alive, since the escort AI only knows:

• "stay in formation" (default for captured freighters)
• "attack whatever attacks me" (default for captured warships)
• "return to formation" (for as long as they feel like it)
• "hold position" (which leaves them exactly where you were and impedes their own self-defense)

what it really needs is:

• "you are a freighter. go hide in a corner"
• "better yet, go park in a different star system until i need you"

but afaik the EV series proper never had any more escort commands (except the two for carried fighters, the most expensive and most short-lived consumable in the game ime) so that's what i got.

should have bought a damn Arada instead of buying human lol but really i'm just gonna have to keep trying to snag another frigate. the upside is that, aside from fuel and hunter missiles, it'll be free…

p.s.: one hilarious thing that this game does is that most emergency defense and planned offensive missions are not time-sensitive, so you can literally fuck off for three months and do some trading or raiding and try to come back with a better ship that lets you survive the mission. similar to Mass Effect's general lack of urgency in the future. yeah there's a war on, but i got side quests 🥺

#EscapeVelocity #EscapeVelocityOverride #VyrPlaysEscapeVelocityOverride