Grade 8 Weapon size: Ramming with a large ship

On November 11th this year I wrote about Speedbowling and how I thought it should be:

Speedbowling was born. First I heard of that title I was hoping to see 10 other ships in a triangle and one pilot crashing into that group as hard as possible, but that's not what it is.

Well it seems the great Captain Flint picked up on that. He is producing a series explaining the different weapons in Elite and how to engineer them for different effect. It seems he is finally getting to my favorite weapon: The ship itself. Obviously ramming the opponent as hard as possible is also delivering quite a bit of damage (to both participants of the fight).

But for science you need to try in a controlled environment. There are many big communities in Elite, but if you are looking for as many volunteers as possible to play sitting duck in a small spaceship being run over by a fully armored imperial warship the Buur Pit is the place to go. While many communities might be reluctant to the idea of being mass-killed repeatedly for science the most discussed question among the Buurboons was "what color should the my sacrificed ship have for you to get the best video footage?"

The standard paintjob on a sidewinder fits the job as a bowling pin nicely, I think

So this weekend we all lined up our ships to get repeatedly rammed - sure I had to capture some footage of that. So here is a bit of video:

It was great fun - and many thanks to all participants, that showed no sign of being tired, no matter how often they had to rebuy their ships and re-align. Looking forward to the report on this very special weapon at Flintlock Engineering - if this is your kind of thing, make sure to subscribe to his channel. Even if you do not care about the content, he has a great radio voice.

Operation Ida: Helping Space Stations In Need

Elite:Dangerous is a game without a preset goal - but communities have evolved, setting their own goals. Some time ago many space stations have been attacked and massively damaged. The attack has been blamed on the alien race we share our galaxy with, the Thargoids, even though no one has seen it happen. But we are not here to investigate the crime.

These damaged stations need a lot of materials to be fixed - millions of tons. This is why players started the "Operation Ida". Concentrating on one station after the other, members of this community haul shiploads of Beryllium, Polymers, Semiconductors or whatever else is needed to the stations in repair to get them fixed. The margins from this trade are small in credits, but big in feelgood as you can actually see what you are hauling all the stuff for.

Many stations have already been fully repaired - many others still are in need.

With the upcoming christmas holiday hauliday Operation Ida also has some events going on: Starting on December 14th at 15:00UTC a damaged station will be announced, that gets a high speed repair. The goal is to completely repair this station within 24hrs. This requires a lot of help, so whoever can spare some time should join in.

Also you can join Operation Idas discord and help in day to day station repairs. Any help is appreciated. Find all the details on Operation Idas website: https://www.operationida.com/ - it is easy to participate and every ton of cargo shipped to the stations in distress helps.

The "Levitating Landfill" just delivered 664tons of Beryllium to Truman Hub to support the ongoing repair