Advent Day 18 ! Butterscotch Turian Trooper Ejecting

Hello everyone,

Late one today, just finished watching The Last Jedi again ahead of watching the last one in the series probably tomorrow. Got things to do and they'll take me near a cinema ... Convenient huh ?

Well, maybe not quite as advantageous as it sounds because my ankle is still poorly and I should really be resting it completely.

What's behind the doors today ? Small confession, this was meant a little bit as a Behind The Scenes pic ...

There we go. I'm happy with the set up, where I have last year's Advent Calendar box lifting everything up to a good level compared to the Mass Effect pictures. What I tried to show there was my left arm holding up a rather heavy other end of the posters book ... while my right hand is holding the camera. It's needed some nifty fingering and the timer to get the pictures, hopefully they're working out !

4D is still around but he's left the stage to my microwave hot cow this time. 4D will be back. One negative thing I think from this set up is that the new lego is disappearing into the backdrop that they're standing on. They're not distinct enough. Always learn, always keep an eye on what you can do better, while recognising what's good enough to do again next time.

In the background, we have Turian Rebel Garrus Vikarian posing with his sniper rifle. Lovely voice on the Garrus, another bit of excellent voice acting brings the character to life. Garrus is a bit of a lost soul in the first game (I almost said movie there and the Mass Effect games can be a bit like long movies in their storytelling and events). But you help him find a direction. A moral compass. A prompt as to whether to go towards light or dark.

Oh - tonight's might be a quick one because it's late already and I kinda need to hit Publish before midnight again !

Marshmallow of the day is another Butterscotch marshmallow and it's being guarded there by a Rebel Trooper. However the Rebel Trooper could not save this marshmallow. I feel there should be a MUAHAHA in there somewhere. Hmm.

Today's Elitecember theme is "Rebuy". I'll start with the drawing today ... and it's a bit more of a development in to ideas for how the dwagons would fit in to a cockpit. Not easy with a tail, wings and those ears ...

Yep. Not looking good for our Dwagon Commander today ....

Poor fella, sitting in his pilot's seat, hearing scary warnings going off all around ... ship coming to bits ... so he has to go for the last resort and eject lest he share the fate of his failing ship. Normally an ejector seat sees the pilots reaching down between their legs for the pull thing that triggers the explosive ejection system. But ... the arms are kinda short there so there's a pull thing that has a chain going to the ejector handle.

Ingenious dwagons being ingenious.

It actually might have to be more like a folding in survival cell than a float in space in a suit thing. The ears and wings make it very awkward to fit on suit and helmet. I've seen the survival cell idea before ... Timothy Zahn wrote it in to his Conquerors Trilogy. Things didn't go well for the humans and their fleet finds itself coming to bits, with the designed in survival cells forming around the occupants as escape pods. Neat idea.

But yeah, the rebuy system kicks in in the game when your ship goes :

Uhoh.

Everything went dark, save for the explosions. This was a Type 9 at the weekend, one of two that went BOOM. It's not a mission ship. It was strange actually, I usually have no problem navigating out of interdictions and to safety ... the attacker this time was from a mission, so they must have been considerably more difficult / powerful than the average.

Quite quickly after the boom you see this :

That's the rebuy screen. For the cost of 5% of the value of the ship, you can have the same one back again with all upgrades and equipment in place. If you can't quite afford that, then you can turn off bits of kit. If you can't afford it at all, you have to choose the other option, which is the basic Sidewinder again.

The idea is that you should never fly without enough credits to afford the rebuy, otherwise it's a bit too much risk. My Commander is running on quite a bit of credits in the bank at the moment though, so that's not a problem. I don't think this one will be wanting for money any time soon, although I will need probably double that to fit out the big ships. There's no rush.

The rebuy is a bit of a strange system actually, you only pay the insurance cost when you lose a ship so the insurers are losing 95% of the value when they pay out. They don't make any money. Still, it's a game and not a real life thing.

Phew !

Off now, probably seeing that last Star Wars film tomorrow so I don't have to be paranoid of spoilers (and cos I've always been a Star Wars Star Trek devotee). Don't worry, I'm not planning to give out any spoilers. And then off work until 6th Jan ! (With a possibility of having to come in for Something. I'm not sure if Something will happen though)

See you tomorrow for "Combat Zone". I think that one's going to need a little imagination ...