What do you think ?

So -- the new gates --

Managed to arrange to meet up with DDD and White Carnation -- they're only 2 systems apart most of the time, and it was only a ten-jump to get there -- and we had a long chat and a number of beverages.

And we were talking about the new gates and DDD said that it was to do with the coherent focussing of the jump beams, and how the Scientists had finally worked out a way to do more with less -- which is why the *big* gates are now for the region rumps, and the system and local jumps can be handled by these smaller gates, because they don't need the full wrap-round to generate a coherent beam. And White said as how there was a design stream going to evolve new micro-jumps, that might mean you'd jump shorter distances to anchored deep-space locations -- a bit like safe-spots only out between the stars -- and so these could act like junctions that would connect nearby systems even if they weren't able to generate a stable jump from star to star.
I though that would just be a recipe for gankers, hovering round these anchor-points, picking off whover went through, but she said that the micro-gates would be controlled through tags that CONCORD would only give to people with good reputations -- so as soon as you gank someone, you can't use them any more, which would be like leaving people 1M AU from any star with just an AFB to push them along.

I don't know.

It does explain why everything was shut down last week -- it must have been one hell of a job moving all those new gates into position in one day, and calibrating them and everything. So props to Them (whoever They were) who organised it all.

Then we tried playing Presidents and Interns for a while, because I was hoping, if they liked it, they'd join in, and I could recruit them to my election committee, but they didn't understand all the game mechanics, so we decided to call it a night. DDD said he had to get home, when I offered him my psare bunk, and then Baihua said she was allergic to ponie hair so ...


I'd have flown some missions yesterday, when I got back, but Dappled Barney was pining, so we snuck back down to the service levels on the station and did 4K before the security droids spotted us, and another 2K galloping home before they could cut us off. A pity about the giant cake, but they oughtn't to have left it there, all smelling of sugar and madiera wine.

And now I have to nap, before I go and see the man about the cleaning-up bill.