The Vulture is Mightier than the Joystick

I've just had to spend an hour re-calibrating, re-mapping and otherwise fiddling with my Thrustmaster T Flight Hotas.   After re-calibrating the joystick and fiddling with the ED throttle controls, I still had no deadzone control zero speed at all.  Very dangerous if you are docking.  In the end I had to unplug the USB plug and swap it and the keyboard around into different ports and then it was suddenly fixed.

What happened to cause this?

I had a little collision yesterday evening with a rock, well I say rock, but I couldn't actually see it because the thing about space is, it's black, and the thing about asteroids in Resource Extraction Sites that are in Shadow is that they are also black, so a black blob passing in front of blackness is impossible to see until you start grinding into it.  Anyway, I yanked the Hotas into full reverse, then when that didn't seem to free me started thrusting laterally left and right to try and work myself loose, another yank backwards on the reverse throttle finally freed me, damage: none apart from the Vultures outer shield ring.  But it seems I may have scrambled my joystick calibration during the encounter.  Isn't the Vulture a tough little ship?

The Imperial Rank of Earl

Got the final Naval Progression Mission to Rank up in the Empire today to Earl.

I just had to kill 9 pirates in a neighbouring system.  Nothing was in the system apart from a Red Dwarf and an T-Class Brown Dwarf.  So I started hunting the Unidentified Signal Sources.

6 pirates down in the first 2 USS's and then I saw a Strong Signal Source, and decided to cautiously give it a go, but as soon as I saw what was in there I was like "No, RUN!!!"

2 wings of high class combat ships comprising Fer-De-Lances and Vultures???  I don't think so.

The final USS contained a wing of 4 pirates comprising 3 Sidewinders and a Cobra.  A bit more my size.  I popped 2 of the Sidewinders before the Cobra even got involved.  Call yourselves a Wing? lol

So back at the dock I turned the mission in an went from Count to Earl.

However, I don't really want to be Earl, its a male title,  I raised a ticket about the Imperial Ranks being Gender Specific back in January.  Frontier's support said they would pass it to the devs; but 3 months later it's still the same and has started a foray on the forums.

David Braben even was asked this point during the AMA session on the forums yesterday:-

 Originally Posted by Alexandra Wolf 

I'm very much a fan of how Frontier has handled gender balance in its NPC characters, but as an Imperial citizen I'm quite disappointed to be hailed as a "Lord" and then "Baron" and so on. Is there a reason why the Empire has no Lady/Baroness/Viscountess/Countess ranks, or is this fixable? (FYI, there has never been a female equivalent of an Earl, perhaps Marquis/Marquess or Duke/Duchess could be substituted?) Also, will ranks within powers avoid this issue?

"You're right. This has come up before too. There is some context here, but I think it is something we want to look at down the line.
Margaret Thatcher insisted on being "Prime Minister" when she took power (ie not "Prime Mistress") and many female actors are not known as actresses at their own request. Similarly women chairmen. So there is an argument that gender-specific roles will lose their specificity over time".

I think the problem is that yes, Frontier would like to do this however there's a long list of things to do that have higher priority and as the female player base is very small - 1 in 20?  They don't see it as a priority for the developers.

But thanks to Misterjunkz, I'm happy now :-)  #EliteDangerous should take note.

@marajaden FIXED :P pic.twitter.com/JiBmUUHMPt
— Mister Junkz (@Misterjunkz) April 25, 2015

David Attenborough

Just got 277k for shooting David Attenborough.  Do I feel guilty.... errrrmm nope :-)

Gopher A Slash

This one really made me laugh...

Mousebladder

Does that mean he pees himself?

Bodge It And Scarper

Spotted in LTT 9810 during the kill wanted ship Community Goal.  Unfortunately he was on the right side!

Nu Community Goal

Was looking at the "imported from" tag on the Station collecting the Metals in Nu.

Looks like stuff has been coming from absolutely everywhere! But I have to ask you, who the hell is hauling Gold all the way from SOL!  ROFLMAO - its gotta be 120 light years, if not more.

Good news is that the goal should have been completed this afternoon, but Frontier have raised the levels with "additional orders" so we can carry on earning loads of money here for another day or two, and the rewards are already at the Ninth tier now this evening :-) so big bonuses will be due to everyone partaking.

I got knocked out of the top 15% today whilst I undertook the dreaded "W" word today, but 2 hours this evening popped me back up there.