Blue Support for Sell-Steal-Transport (SST)
So here's the inside scoop on how to be a Blue in a "split corporation."
YOUR JOB is to support the larcenous activities of your Red partner. The most important thing of all is to conserve HER turns so she can use them for stealing and making money. For a Red stealing in Colonial Transports, every turn is worth around10,000 credits EACH. She spends 3 turns moving a hop in her Flagship, your corp loses 30,000 credits income. So everything you do should be with the intent of using YOUR turns to conserve HERS.
Unlike her, you are always Fedsafe, which gives you the ability to conduct business at Star Dock is relative safety. So a major part of your job is buying fighters, shields holds and various hardware items for your corp's ships at SD -- "servicing" the cargo ships. The only exception being a Red CEO's Flagship, which only she can pilot. In cases where she must go to SD, (including also when the Red needs to bust planets), you will usually stand guard in the sector while she does her business.
The other main support activity is direct assistance while she does her dishonest duty. This includes advance exploration of stealing areas, towing her ship (with her in it usually) to these areas for her to run her stealing turns, and supplying "refurb" ships when she gets busted and loses holds, and towing her back to a safe haven after the day's stealing is done.
A typical day of split corp stealing goes like this:
The Blue goes to the chosen stealing area -- somewhere where there are 6 or more equipment buying (xxB) ports close together (the best layout being several in an unbroken line) -- in advance. She checks for enemy figs and limpet mines (by density scanning), and drops beacon fighters at each of the targetted xxB ports, and perhaps also in sectors surrounding them (these are known as "picket figs"). Common practice is to drop 25 figs or so, plus 10 mines and 2 or 3 limpets in each xxB sector, and one toll fig in each of the sectors leading to the xxB's as pickets.
Then she tows in the cargo ships her partner will use for stealing (a pair of ships -- Freighters, Mules, or Colts) and drops them at the "far ends" of the range of xxB port sectors. It's good practice to leave them guarded by several hundred defensive figs. Then she tows her Red partner to a nearby sector (a dead end sector is ideal) within ship transporter range of the stealing ships (10 hops in a CFS).
Note: Since you can't lock a tractor beam on a manned ship with figs on it, the Red must drop figs first, then the Blue locks on a tractor beam and waits, then the Red picks the figs back up again, and the Blue tows her to the next stealing sector.
She then goes about her business, upgrading the ports the ships are in and running her Sell-Steal-Transport (SST) moves.
Then the Blue's job is three-fold:
- to stand watch: check periodically for other players entering the game (especially enemies), intercept anyone intruding on the stealing area when the picket figs get encountered and deal with them.
- to tow the Red from sector to sector when needed, since the Red's turns are too valuable to waste moving a big, non-transwarp ship around.
- to supply refurbs.
REFURBING: When your partner gets busted, she loses an amount of holds off her ship equal to 9% of the amount she was trying to steal. For example, if she were trying to steal 150 holds of equipment in a Taurean Mule, she would get fined 13 holds by the port authorities for getting caught. Less holds means making less money, so they must be replaced immediately. One way is, of course, to tow the ship to SD and buy more holds for it, then tow it back. But this is uses a lot of turns and, as I'm sure you've noticed, holds get more expensive the more your ship already has. To buy the last 25 holds on a Colt costs well over 100,000 credits.
But holds can also be captured in combat by destroying another ship. If the ship is unarmed (0 fighters), attacking for 3 or 4 battle points will blow it up and salvage some of it's holds. When this happens, the attacker salvages one third of however many holds the destroyed ship had on it. So if a Mule that's lost 13 holds being busted destroys a Frieghter with 39 holds on it, it captures back 13 holds. Buying the Freighter and the extra holds costs less than towing the cargo ship to a Class 0 port and buying the holds outright (and also costs less turns.)
So when your partner gets caught, she radios to you on subspace "I've busted in sector xxxx and need a refurb." You then make a run to StarDock, port, and buy a Merchant Freighter. Be sure to make it a PERSONAL ship, or your corp mate can't attack it. You then blast off from SD, transport yourself into the new Freighter, port with it, and buy additional holds for it. Finally you blast off StarDock, transport back to your ISS and tow the MF back to where your Red partner is impatiently waiting. (Some people even have written scripts or macros to do this.)
A Freighter comes with 35 holds. To refurb a Mule, it needs 39, so you have to buy an extra 4 holds for it. For a colt, it's an extra 33 holds.
You tow the sacrificial ship back to where your Red partner is patiently waiting. You drop it and she destroys it, capturing it's holds. Then you tow her to the next xxB port (as described before), TRANSFER THE MOMEY she's made so far to you -- where it's safer -- and the drama continues...
You do this until she runs low on turns (like 50 or so remaining). Then she transports herself back to her Flagship and you tow her back to a safe spot, or directly to Fedspace so she can quit and cloak out.
That's it!
