Furious With Frontier!

I thought it was over. I’d finished it. The Rush Fleet was complete! It had been a lot of hard work, and I had lost a lot of sleep obsessively hammering this website out on the keyboard. The relief when I published the last two ships for the last Rush album was overwhelming.

And then, all excitedly hopeful about what would be announced in the new format, “Frontier Unlocked” this coming year in my favourite game of all time, Elite Dangerous, Frontier Developments dropped a bombshell.

At first it was fine. ZAC IS BACK! Wonderful wonderful Zac!

And Update 18 – “Take It To The Titans”. I’ll admit, a lot of this Thargoid stuff is a little outside my playstyle zone but it’s all been incredible to watch on other players’ streams and to see the mind blowing screenshots on social media. And what I have played of it has been tremendous fun! The whole Thargoid War Arc has been utterly breathtking, even though I’ve only really dabbled in it. This “culmination” looks really, really exciting!

I was also very pleased to hear that powerplay was being totally reworked and would be a lot more engaging! It’s something I’d always wanted the Fleet to be involved in but was always put off a little by it’s current, cumbersome iteration. Now I’m very excited to finally be able to begin seeing what roles the fleet can fill for the various powers of the Galaxy!

And then, what I presumed would be the the icing on the delicious cake Frontier would be serving us this year, there will be a new feature added to the game! What will it be? New planets to land on? New life to explore? Base building? Racing circuits? What? It’s so exciting! I felt I was riding the crest of a wave!

But it all was to come crashing down…

It was all so perfect! There are 19 Rush albums (not including “Feedback” an EP of covers – how could I name any ships after songs that weren’t written by Rush?) and 38 ships. Easy! Two ships per album. Nice and neat for my simple, autistic OCD brain to get itself around. Okay, there was a bit of a problem with the Cobra Mk IV to get around but it was an easy problem to solve.

But…there will now be new ships. Just think about that for a second.

New ships!

I just stared at the image of the Python Mk IV which now graced my screen. The colour drained from my face. Panic began to ferment inside my belly. I felt as if a gaping hole was opening up under my feet and I would disappear into it, falling for eternity. Where in the name of Braben would I put any new ships? And there were going to be four of them? How is that going to fit neatly within the framework I had based the whole concept of the Rush Fleet on? What am I going to do? I can’t cope with this! I certainly can’t not include them, but neither can I have some albums with three ships and others with just the two! I could include each of the solo albums by Geddy and Alex but, they aren’t strictly Rush albums are they? And I could include the live albums but as they don’t include any new material that isn’t anywhere near an elegant enough solution for me.

I’m absolutely at my wit’s end; shaking and tearful with despair! I’m listening to the whole Frontier Unlocked all over again hoping that there’s something that…

…wait. What was that?

At least four new ships? Arf did say “at least” didn’t he?

Erm…Frontier?

How about another nineteen?