The Earth Conundrum: Book 1 of the Alliance Conflict (15 page)

The third test was nearly impossible. The Alliance fighter was pitted against three Hiriculan opponents. The three fighters were using the rectangle formation; one leading fighter directly facing the Alliance fighter with the second slightly behind and above and the third slightly behind and below the leader. Alliance fighters had learned that if they focus on the lead fighter, they could often kill it before they were destroyed by the other two Hiriculan fighters. The Alliance pilot was down two lives, with only one obstacle and one life left.

The final test was easily the hardest. The pilot had to attack a Hiriculan capital ship. Having died, the pilot was again on the Advranki cruiser, was again addressed by the Advranki female and was again offered the chance to change weaponry. At this point it was actually advantageous to change from ship-to-ship missiles to ship buster missiles. However, the female would not allow the change. Alliance pilots had given up talking to the Advranki female as she refused every request for better missiles.

Pilots would launch and would switch their shields forward at maximum power. Then, they would make an attack run at the Hiriculan cruiser. They had to try to avoid incoming fire from the ship, make it to attack range, fire a barrage of missiles to lower the shields in a section, and then if possible fire their ship-buster missile. It would damage the capital ship, but not significantly hurt it. They needed two missiles blow a hole in armor plating and damage it enough to keep it from leaping in hyperspace.

Alliance Pilots would then continue past the somewhat damaged Hiriculan ship and land on the Advranki cruiser; thus ending the simulation. They were graded on every aspect of the test, from speed to flying skill to remaining fuel to number of kills to number of lives remaining, to heart rate to well, to almost everything. The minimum score required to pass was 1,000 and Alliance pilots typically scored anywhere from 1,100 to 1,440.

This was the piece of information that Carank was missing. Since he didn’t know how actual Alliance pilots fared on test, he had no idea if the humans were doing better or worse in their video game.

The human video game was nearly identical to the actual flight simulator. The simulator only had two modes, the obstacle course (final examination), and on-line battle. The human video game contained a third mode for basic flight training. The other key change was the Advranki female’s opening speech. Victor knew that humans would grow tired of hearing the longwinded speech, so Lorano inserted himself into the game and gave the opening speech.

It went like this, “Hello humans, welcome to the Alliance. I am Lorano, a male Altian and this is Karen, an Advranki female. Our races, combined with Solarians, make up the Alliance. We are fighting against the Hiriculans, a race determined to destroy our way of life and we need your help.”

Lorano loved the play on words. The Advranki female in the simulation had no name (though Alliance pilots had given her a few select ones). Lorano had solved this by finding a human female’s name that sounded similar to Carank’s name. He also neglected to mention that ‘destroy our way of life’ probably meant something more along the lines of ‘disband the Senate and redo the Alliance governing process to allow for more control by the Hiriculans’. Oh well, at least the opening speech was short.

Everyone that played on-line was given a unique sign-in name and a ranking. The results of each battle were kept in a massive database. Players could fight each other in one-on-one battles or join together in missions. Players soon discovered that the farther they made it through the obstacle course, the higher their ranking in the on-line game became.

Lorano hadn’t anticipated the sheer number of humans that were going to play the game. During the first week, 100,000 humans had tried the test. By the end of their first month, the number had stretched to 500,000. When
Vista’s
crew celebrated 60 days on the planet, 2 million humans had tried the flight simulator and the number was increasing daily.

The difference was astounding. The aforementioned 80,000 Alliance pilots had been taking a test with the sole goal of passing. They had been told how to pass, i.e. die here, fly here, and shoot there. An Alliance pilot would typically try it 15 -25 times before passing and rarely try again. The humans, on the other hand, were playing a game. They were trying the course 20-25 times a day. Further, they weren’t told the solution, so they found new ones.

…………………

Bill Blaze was one of the first people to buy the flight simulator. He hooked it up on his Playstation®4 and played it and played it until he became tired of crashing into the wall. He tried everything he could think of to pass. One time, he got a brilliant idea. He asked the Advranki female at the start of the course to exchange the ship buster missile for a gravity missile.

Karen said, “No.” This was her standard response.

However, Bill was not to be denied, so he asked, “Why not.”

Karen responded, “You haven’t given me a compelling argument.” This was a change. Normally, she simply said no, but this time it seemed she was open to discussion.

He said, “Look Karen, the gravity missile is significantly cheaper than the ship buster missile. If you let me change and I live, you can be the hero for allowing the change. If I die, you will be the hero for saving money on missiles.”

This logic must have made sense to her because she allowed the missile change. Blaze put on his flight helmet and heard the status checks whispering in his ear. He checked his weapons package and verified the missile change. Then he launched from the Advranki cruiser and flew through the obstacle course.

As he was approaching the 90 degree turn, he fired the gravity missile. Then he set his shields to maximum at the bottom of the ship. He veered his ship hard to the right and let the gravity wave from the explosion bounce him away from the wall and carry him though the turn. It took him four tries to make it through the turn. If the shot and turn weren’t timed perfectly, he would smash into the wall or be destroyed by the gravity wave. Even then, it was a rough, bouncy turn and the art of bouncing off of a gravity wave could best be described as inelegant.

Despite the lack of grace, he exited the turn alive. He was the first player (in Alliance history) to complete the first stage without dying. He gained a fair amount of notoriety when he published his solution on the chat boards.

Based on his initial success, Blaze tried to request a different missile at the next stage. Karen told him no. He asked a second time and got another no in response. Blaze realized that no matter what the request, the first time he would ask Karen for a different missile she would always respond no. If Karen was asked the question a second time, she would either respond no or respond with a variation of “Why.” If the second answer was no, then the missile could not be changed. If the answer was anything other than no, then there was an opportunity for replacement.

He decided to review all of the available missiles. There were 40 different missiles to choose from. He asked the Advranki female to trade every weapon for every other weapon at every stage and charted the results. Now, with a simple cheat sheet, gamers knew exactly what missile they could get at what stage. However, at no stage did she give them an additional ship buster missile or even allow them to have their original missile back if they traded it away before the obstacle course.

…………………

Edward Williams noted that the Hiriculans responded to an incoming missile in a predictable pattern. The enemy fighter would either roll left, right, or down on a proscribed arc. Therefore, to kill the solo fighter, one only had to fire a missile at it, watch the way it dodged, then fire a dumb missile on a straight line a based on where the fighter was going to be in a few seconds.

A dumb missile is a missile fired in a straight line at the opponent with the intelligent tracking turned off. It appeared that the Hiriculan fighter ignored, or perhaps didn’t detect, the straight line (dumb) missile. Edward posted a video of his move on the internet and the chat boards had a lively debate concerning the possible reasons.

Several more players tested variations, such as firing it dumb, then turning on the electronic tracking package at the last moment. The enemy fighter would respond by trying to dodge as soon as the electronics were activated, but it was nearly always too late.

Others tried firing the missile with the tracking on, then turning it off in mid-flight. This option didn’t work. The enemy fighter continued tracking the missile after it went dumb and always avoided it. This option was considerably worse than just leaving on the electronics throughout the entire missile flight path.

The leading theory was this - since no one could hit a target using a dumb, straight line missile; it was pointless to fire it. Since it was pointless to fire it, it was pointless for the enemy fighter’s defense systems to acknowledge it. Regardless of the theory’s validity, defeating the one-on-one fighter became almost an afterthought.

While this strategy worked great for the single fighter, it didn’t work nearly as well for the three fighters. While it was possible to anticipate the flight path of one fighter and fire a missile appropriately, it was impossible to track all three. Further, there wasn’t enough time to fire six missiles.

Edward eventually solved this problem. He had grown tired of being killed by the two remaining Hiriculan fighters after killing the leader. So, one time he simply fired three missiles at the enemy and flew past them. The enemy fighters seemed to panic at the unexpected move and temporarily broke off their attack to avoid the missiles. He flew directly to the fourth challenge with the Hiriculan cruiser in front of him and three enemy fighters behind him. Now, video gamers were making it to the Hiriculan cruiser with all three lives.

………………….

Russ Brand, like most others, now made it to the final level without issue, but kept dying. If he put his shields to the front, the three enemy fighters from the previous screen would kill him. If he balanced his shields, the cruiser would kill him. At some point this pissed him enough to give up playing it - for a day. But that was all it took. Unlike some others, he firmly believed that the video game designers had created a solution, it simply hadn’t been found yet.

He realized that day that he needed to go faster, to anticipate the shots better, and to simply play better. He thought about the basic flight simulation, how it forced everyone to switch the fighter to manual and experience the rush of information to his brain. He reasoned that there must be a reason why the game designers created a manual mode.

He went back to the basic training program and pushed the button for manual. He was inundated with information flowing through his mind at a torrid pace and he almost quit after a few seconds. However, he let it flow for 18 seconds. Just as he was about to quit from information overload, he suddenly saw yellow. He mentally grabbed the yellow information and pinned it to a part of his brain that seemed to look yellow. Suddenly, he could control his yah rate.

The flow of information was less horrible now. He began looking for other colors, found them, and pinned them to corresponding colors in his brain. He eventually found enough colors to pilot the fighter. With the flight information streaming directly into his head, he found that he could control the fighter much faster than through the computer interface.

Something else strange happened. His breathing slowed down, his heart rate slowed, and he reached a level of calm and serenity envied by a yoga master. The ship became an extension of his own senses and he could see and hear everything. He felt unstoppable.

He became the first player (in Alliance history) to complete the simulation without losing a life. Also, he was winning nearly every on-line battle and group mission. He quickly earned the #1 ranking.

He posted his new finding on the chat boards. Initially, it was met with skepticism as others couldn’t believe that one could understand the direct feed of information, let alone mentally map colors. However, the fact he was ranked #1 and was the only person to complete the game without dying, quickly won the disbelievers over.

Soon, this became the best way to fly. Now, gamers could react fast enough to dodge the incoming weapons and reach the Hiriculan cruiser, fire their payload, and finish the simulation without dying. While this solution solved one problem, it created another.

The new problem was simple. The Advranki female, Karen, would only trade the ship buster for the gravity missile. So, if you kept the ship buster, you could damage the cruiser, but you would lose a life at the obstacle course. If you gave up your ship buster, you could get past the 90 degree turn without dying, but you could only do cosmetic damage to the cruiser. Plus, completing the mission without damaging the Hiriculan cruiser seemed hollow.

It didn’t matter which way one completed the game. Players that finished the course without dying, but didn’t damage the cruiser scored in the 7,000 – 7,500 range. Players that damaged the ship, but died one time scored in the 7,200 – 7,500 range.

Finally, Jim Donovan put all of the pieces together and solved the puzzle. He traded one of the shield busting missiles for a hyper communication missile. These missiles were designed to be shot through a hyperspace lane to deliver an important communique. These were rarely used in real life though because they were unreliable.

However, this missile was perfect for his plan. Jim changed out his ship buster missile for the gravity missile and changed out a ship to ship missile for the hyper communication missile. With those changes verified, he began his historic run.

He launched and switched to manual, letting the information flow through him. It was a jolt at first, but he quickly locked down the colors in his mind. He sped through the obstacle course, left here, then right, then back left, and finally rode the gravity missile through the turn. He fired a missile at the lone Hiriculan fighter, watched it break left and followed it with a dumb missile to a fixed location. He flew toward the next obstacle, not even waiting for confirmation that he had scored a hit.