See, this guy’s line of thinking is one of the ones to avoid.
Ships have crew. Don’t kill them unless you need to for a worthy cause.
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I tell my crew that they’re signing up for most likely suicide mission. Always. But the crews other ships have ain’t my concern, especially if they attack first.
Next you’re telling me I should use slaves instead or some other Amarr ■■■■, right?
No, I myself do not use slaves on my ships apart from those that have comitted crimes within their lifetimes for the rare instances I do need crew for ‘suicide missions’.
I consider it distasteful to force slaves to risk their lives for the Empire. One should come to the conclusion that it is worthy of that sacrifice on their own.
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Good, slavery is lazy. Talking to your crew is essential, morale and motivation 'n all that.
Pretty much every mission of mine is suicide mission so eh, can’t really comment on sacrifices. I like my Caldari heritage, but I wouldn’t sacrifice myself to any Caldari (or any other) entity any more than I’ve already done.
Not really, no.
Most of my operations have been primarily exploration and some private research. As a result engagements have been limited, but when they occur it’s more of a nuisance than anything.
I do enjoy combat. I’m a little hesitant to admit that for … a few different reasons, but, it’s true.
For me, it’s … the satisfaction, I think. There’s a quality in my character-- Saede Riordan called it “killer instinct”-- that finds fierce joy in the killing strike, whether it’s with a laser volley, a pistol shot, or a metal sliver. I do a lot of thinking about it even when I’m not fighting anyone or probably about to fight anyone. Actually, I think that might be the difference between a kill I can enjoy and one I can’t: the feeling of a kill is a feeling of success, of planning and work paying off in the most primal way: “My talons are red. I’ve hunted well!”
Only, if the success is unearned (like when the target is trivial), boredom replaces joy, and that’s sort of where I start as far as how I feel about all this. “Bored” is maybe the most disrespectful way to feel about taking people’s lives I can think of. There’s a feeling of atrocity about that, of human beings lined up in a slaughterhouse to be butchered.
Even leaving aside whether I can enjoy a kill, I want to have more respect than that, at least as a rule. I don’t want to be that person who’s bored while removing fellow sapient creatures from this world.
Further, or otherwise, this quality of mine isn’t … safe.
Usually I don’t really have enough against anyone in this world to really want to kill them, so stuff like “justice” doesn’t enter into it. If I’m opening fire on you it’s probably just because someone’s called you as a target. If the one whose will directs me calls for it, I don’t need any other reason.
Only, that in its purest form … it’s not something I’m okay with being, or becoming. Or becoming again. In the moment, it makes no difference to me, but the next day, and the day after, and the month and year after that? I seem to have have a hawk’s instincts, eager for blood and indifferent to the rightness of it, but I don’t want to look back on my life as a record of lives destroyed.
So if I for some reason can’t or won’t won’t exercise my conscience when it matters, it’s better if my will’s bound to a better person, someone whose judgment I can substitute for mine. Maybe, by having a light of that kind to follow, I’ll develop a stronger moral sensibility of my own.
At least, maybe my existence won’t be such a dark stain on this world as it might otherwise have been.
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And this is a good example of why you will burn, Newelle.
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Ah, so, knowing his lordship, Else, I don’t think he’s talking about slaves who’ve filched a bit of extra protein from the pantry from time to time. He’s talking about penitent slaves: people who’re enslaved because they did awful things. He’s saying if someone has to die, he’ll use condemned prisoners. He’s also distinguishing people who bare personal responsibility from those who’re enslaved because of something an ancestor did-- he’ll only use those who committed the act personally.
I think. (If he did mean what I think he meant, his wording definitely wasn’t clear.)
People might have objections to that, too, but. . . .
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Indeed.
Mr. Shutaq’s views come dangerously close to rejecting the logic of generational slavery, which would be unorthodox.
Goodness, go out of my way to do something nice…
This interpretation is the correct one.
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Regarding ‘crew material’…
Lets just say that majority of my fund spendings are devoted to their funerals.
My crew lended their devotion to my cause, some are former slaves themselves whom I give them sibcerest gratitutes for helping me, a freedom fighter from a holder-turned-traitor background.
They deserve respect, although I always make sure they do have measures to save themselves in time of emergency.
As of frigates, I only crew the ship myself.
And I have been quite proficient in it, achieving 5 point mastery in all 4 empire’s issue of frigates.
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Huh, I think I remember this very conversation coming up last time we spoke in the Summit. I think we agreed that combat is enjoyable. The adrenaline rush is definitely a powerful reason but I also find my narcissistic nature take the wheel at times. Feeling the need to dominate my opponent, if you will. But I never feel bad about it. Not the enjoyment nor the deaths caused.
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Oh boy, it’s like this thread was made for me.
A) Do you enjoy combat? - Yes. In fact it is just about the only thing I enjoy doing in New Eden’s void.
B) Why? - A number of reasons.
1, it is either extremely micro-intensive and challenging if flying solo/small gang, or impactful if flying in a fleet. Either way it can be challenging no matter the numbers depending on what role you fill.
2, I like guns, so guns the size of trucks or small houses are also naturally my thing.
3, It prepares me to defend myself and those close to me, protect my liberty, and learn a skill that is all but invaluable when dealing with other capsuleers.
When I started out as a capsuleer, like many others, I was a more or less ‘mind your own business, mine and enjoy space’ kind of person and that lasted about as long as you’d think. My friends were shot down, our meager assets demolished and I saw firsthand just how incompetent we were at defending ourselves, our highsec alliance’s “defense force” was a bad joke at best. So, I signed up with the mercenaries who destroyed us, and tried to learn everything they knew. I figured the only way to be able to protect your other ventures in New Eden, personal or business or political, was to be able to fight. It was a necessity.
C) If you do enjoy combat, how do you feel about that fact? - Mixed feelings. I’ll be honest, combat makes me feel powerful. Not in a tyrannical sense, ie. lording over others, but in that “I’ll be ok, I can deal with whatever comes my way” sense. I had a very unstable, unsafe life as a baseliner, and becoming a combat pilot has removed a lot of the nightmares of my youth about dying in a ditch with my throat cut. It improves my confidence, and gives me a sense of purpose.
But, there’s a downside. I’m a numbers guy. When I look at the crew compliments, and I know, from experience, how youthful pride and exuberance leads young men and women to think they can take on anything, including crewing a capsuleer vessel, I get this sinking feeling of dread in my stomach, knowing that they have no idea what they’re signing up for. At 18, you’re practically still a child. Yet, at 18, you can crew a Thrasher, and the crews of our ships are populated with the youthfully stupid, the naively optimistic, and the absolutely desperate, the people least likely to evenly weigh the risks and rewards of becoming crew. This bothers me, yeah.
Part of me wishes that I didn’t like fighting, that I’d never learned that lesson and that I should’ve stayed a more or less peaceful economist type. But the other half knows that the combat role is what the capsuleer truly excels at, and those who realize this are the wolves, and the only other role is, eventually but surely, that of a lamb.
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A) Yep!
B) Why? Because I’m a horrible person, really. You shouldn’t enjoy these sorts of things unless it’s Frigate-to-Frigate – or, in clearly cut terms, where there’s no baseliner casualty.
C) A part of me enjoys being horrible. It also helps to have something I can point to when people ask me, why do you frustrate yourself, CC? Well, because enjoying wholesale slaughter is pretty messy, morally and fundamentally, but here I am getting my kicks because it gives me the only sensory stimuli I’ll have all day because I am a dejected, sad little machine masquerading as a boyish man. There’s also the primal satisfaction of conquest, and the special sort of intimacy that only violence can bring.
Maybe some of what I’ve said? It’s a biological (or biomechanical, for some people) urge.
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A) I don’t, except when I do.
B) Those climactic moments of emerging from the odds are few and far between in the endless frustration of searching for and getting defeated by them.
C) I am at peace with what I am.
Jeez Charles, that’s dark.
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Do you expect anything different from me, at this point?
Yes. I’m supposed to be the dark one, did you lose your script?
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I wouldn’t use the world enjoy, but seeing a ship “pop”(but for some reason only the ones piloted by capsuleers) give me such a weird feeling of “satisfaction”.
How do I feel about that fact… well, I have to accept it as it is part of living in such world and also part of being a capsuleer.
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