On the advice of Dave Gilmour (yes, that Dave Gilmour from Pink Floyd) Alex and Geddy composed their 18th album entirely acoustically. And it shows, even though much of it may not have been recorded acoustically. For me, this is Rush’s best album since Power Windows, and vies with Farewell To Kings as my third favourite. It’s a different sound to anything that went before it. Where Rush seemed to be almost finding their feet once more with Vapor Trails, Snakes & Arrows sees them at their brilliant, innovative best. Highlights include the smashing opener, three instrumentals (more than any other Rush album) and Faithless – one of my favourite Rush songs of all time, which also contains some of Neil’s best lyrics. Special mention must go to the track “Hope”. It’s just an acoustic guitar piece composed and played by Alex. It is some of the most beautiful and heartfelt music I have ever heard him play. It is an absolutely superb album. And it was so good to see Rush still delivering the goods after all this time.

More thoughts on Snakes & Arrows further down…

• Far Cry
• Armor And Sword
• Workin Them Angels
• The Larger Bowl
• Spindrift
• The Main Monkey Business
• The Way The Wind Blows
• Hope
• Faithless
• Bravest Face
• Good News First
• Malignant Narcissism
• We Hold On

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Mamba

Now, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with this ship. I’d already tested half a dozen combat builds and there are yet still two combat builds to go. So I didn’t want to do any fighting in her. She is such a beautiful ship though, and also very, very fast. She’s kind of the equivalent of a Lamborghini I suppose. So I’ll fly her like someone would drive a Lamborghini. Just taking her around all the fashionable spots and showing off. And what could be more fashionable than the Sol system?

It’s always good fun to visit Sol. See your home from space. And touring the solar system is really good fun! One cool, or rather hot thing to do is to land on Mercury.

Or maybe visit Jupiter and Saturn? You can even land on Charon, or venture out further and land on the massive “ninth planet” Persephone. Or even venture further out and visit Voyagers I and II. You’ll also find that Mars has changed quite a bit.

It was a very pleasant trip. It took ages to get to Voyager and when I found it it was too dark to get a decent screenshot. It’s a very nice ship to fly! Next time around, when I revisit all of these ships I will probably try some combat with her.

UPDATE: Well, it seems I have found a role for the Spindrift! Check it out further below!

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Type 10 Defender

This ship is an absolute beast! Almost from when I started playing, years ago on PC, I have always wanted to try the T10. And I have always dreamt of using nothing but turrets and leaving her with crew while I take a fighter out and use that. So that’s just what I did!

She took such a long time to engineer, collecting all the materials and then touring all the engineer sites to get exactly the experimental modifications I wanted. All pulse lasers, to go a bit easier on the power drain, but also with reinforced shields, six reinforced shield boosters and multiple hull and module reinforcements. No avoiding fire in this! And, of course, a large fighter hanger. I placed a couple of tons of gold in her cargo as bait, took her to the nearest high risk resource site, launched my fighter and waited.

What then took place was just about the most fun I have ever had in Elite Dangerous. Seriously commanders, if you have never tried this you have got to have a go. I watched, awestruck as she tore after every bandit that challenged her. I didn’t have to do a thing. And the noise! Oh the noises she makes as she thunders around, causing carnage and death. She quite took my breath away. She might not be too nimble, but she can still dance. And I had no idea she would dance like this!

I then took her to a Hazardous site in the next system. Mu Ceti has some stunning places to do ship to ship combat, all brightly lit by the large blue star. And again, she stunned me with her grace and power. Once it was all over, we flew in formation for a while before I docked my fighter, and took her home. I am so doing this again!

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“I don’t have faith in faith
I don’t believe in belief
You can call me faithless, you can call me faithless
But I still cling to hope
And I believe in love
And that’s faith enough for me, that’s faith enough for me”

Rush – Faithless (Snakes & Arrows)

Now I’ve had a lot longer to spend with Snakes & Arrows than when I wrote the piece at the top of this page, I find it’s the lyrics in particular that have connected with me so poignantly with this album, more so than anything Neil had written before.

Let’s take “Armor And Sword”

“The snakes and arrows a child is heir to
Are enough to leave a thousand cuts“

Neil in his beautifully written essay “The Game of Snakes and Arrows” writes about friends who had given homes to rescue dogs. He relates, “If those puppies had been “damaged” by their earlier treatment—made nervous, timid, or worse—they would always remain that way, no matter how smooth the rest of their life might be. It seemed the same for children.” The song is about how, as children, when indoctrination is implanted into us, we cannot help but have our character shaped by that as we grow. As someone who had a fundamentalist christian indoctrination forced on him from birth, along with his brother, and often brutally, the whole song hit me like a wrecking ball. Then there is the song “Faithless” the lyrics (quoted above) don’t really need too much explaining, and (possibly due to said upbringing) I sympathize with them perfectly.

Let us also, now, look at “Far Cry”

“Pariah dogs and wandering madmen
Barking at strangers and speaking in tongues
The ebb and flow of tidal fortune
Electrical changes are charging up the young

It’s a far cry from the world we thought we’d inherit
It’s a far cry from the way we thought we’d share it“

About the enormous gulf between the way we imagined, as teenagers, the future that seemed to be promised to us and the way the world has become. It was all so promising for a while wasn’t it? And now it all seems to be turning so sour. Something that troubles me regularly these days.

Yet Neil never abandons hope, as we see in the chorus:

“One day I feel I’m on top of the world
And the next it’s falling in on me
I can get back on
I can get back on
One day I feel I’m ahead of the wheel
And the next it’s rolling over me
I can get back on
I can get back on“

Speaking of “Hope”, there is the aforementioned twelve string guitar piece of that title by Alex, one of the most reassuring pieces of music I have ever heard. The title was chosen from that line in the song “Faithless” and, as Neil relates in his essay, is a like musical secular prayer. I don’t really want to carry on here for too long, choosing which lyrics to highlight for this little piece is a difficult task, they are all so precise, perceptive and beautifully communicated and sung by Geddy. Now, you may disagree, possibly even passionately disagree with my views on Neil’s words, and that’s fair enough. Lyrics are for the listener to interpret as they see fit and Neil was perfectly happy with that. Yet I think for the last song, the consensus might be more homogenized. Life can be an awful struggle, and sometimes we are tempted to just throw in the towel and walk away from everything, even when we’ve been working so hard. Geddy relates in his autobiography exactly what these words mean for him, but for me they take on a slightly different angle. I care full time for a severely disabled wife and two adult autistic sons. At times, it can be extremely tough, which caused one song in particular to really stand out from the others.

Therefore I’ve decided to end with the last track “We Hold On”:

“How many times
Do we swallow our ambitions
Long to give up the same old way
Find another road to take

Keep holding on so long
‘Cause there’s a chance
That we might not be so wrong
We could be down and gone
But we hold on

How many times
Do we wonder if it’s even worth it
There’s got to be some other way
To get me through the days

But we hold on!”

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Mamba Titan Bomber

Since the enormous Thargoid mothership “Titans” arrived on the outskirts of the Bubble, the current Thargoid War has been raging. Sometimes humanity beats the bugs back, sometimes the ‘Goids attack on so many fronts we cannot help but secede territory. Only very recently has a weapon been found that can help destroy the eight great engines of the Thargoid war effort.

Protected by a dense caustic maelstrom cloud and a powerful pulse wave that hurls back any ship that attempts to penetrate its centre, these gargantuan, biologically engineered, city sized command centres were thought to be invulnerable. Gradually technology was developed by humankind for ships to survive much longer periods inside the caustic maelstrom and penetrate through the terrifying pulse wave, only to despair as pilots beheld the antediluvian cosmic terror lurking within. Eventually, due to the ingenuity of Thargoid specialst Professor Palin and the engineer Ram Tah, a torpedo was developed that could be used to cause a Titan to overheat, forcing it to reveal its vulnerable core.

The fightback against the Titans had begun!

I was watching Ricardos Gaming channel on YouTube. He was outfitting a Fer-De-Lance to attack a Titan. The reason he was using the FDL rather than, say, a Krait Mk 2 (which appears to be the craft of choice for diving on a Titan) was because it has six utility slots rather than the Krait’s four. Handy for adding extra caustinc sinks to get you though the cloud! I have other plans for the RushFleet’s FDL, the One Little Victory, so I thought I would use her sister, the other six utility slot medium ship, the Spindrift!

She also has three caustic sinks (extra sinks – yes!), a pulse wave neutralizer, and a couple of heatsinks in those six utility slots – all to stop that hull from corroding away and to keep her as cold as possible. For her hardpoints I placed the nanite torpedos (for the heat vents) in the huge slot, two AX missile launchers in the large slots, and a pair of beams with thermal vent in the small slots. A mamba’s fuel tank is relatively small, so I needed a fuel scoop too (only one jump away but the inevitable hyperdictions cost fuel and compromise my ability to jump back) and I found she ran so cold I could engage the FSD whilst still scooping. Then it was just a question of finding the Titan, reaching it, flying through the caustic cloud, penetrating the pulse wave and diving down onto the Titan’s heat vents. On all the bombing runs I made with the Spindrift, I managed to slip through the cloud rather quickly, and mostly only needed to pass through one pulse wave.

I wasn’t noticed by any of the patrolling Thargoid ships or even by the Titan itself until the heat vents on the upper side of the monstrosity opened up and I could begin my bombing run. With the Spindrift, once I’d had a few runs, I found I could usually hit 4-5 heat vents per run. By now, though, your presence is definately being felt and I was attracting the ire of the Titan and also any nearby patrolling Thargid ships. It isn’t long before the vents close again and the enemy’s focus can be disrupted by heading around to target the core, although getting to the underside of the Titan to be able to let off a few AX missiles for the short time the core was exposed proved to be a little trickier.

As I have mentied before the mamba can be rather drifty. Half the time I would fly into one of the Titan’s arms on the way around. Sometimes, if I couldn’t get a target on a heat vent early enough I would end up flying into that as as well (my piloting skills have never been particularly exceptional). After a good few runs, however, I found I could flip her over the edge quickly enough to be able to wait a few short seconds for the core to emerge.

I had tried this in a the Tom Sawyer (the RushFleet’s Krait Mk II) but she wasn’t engineered for cold running. I got noticed and shot at by the patrolling Thargoid ships all the time and constanly shot at by the Titan’s turrets. Also, once the core had been damaged, I could never get away quick enough to avoid its torus field (again, pilot incompetance is probably more the issue here). If you are caught in this it shuts down all your systems and you become a sitting duck for every Thargoid ship in the area! However, flying the Spindrift, I managed to escape this defence every time. After this it’s just a short wait before the whole process begins once more.

Once your hull’s integrity is looking dangerously low, it’s time to leave! At first I would leave after just a couple of goes but the more I attempted these runs the more times I could attack the core before having to retreat. For me, a bombing run isnt a bombing run unless you can come back from it in one piece. Even though I may have damaged the core I feel a bit of a failure if I haven’t then managed to make it back out again. Leaving is a lot simpler. I just selected the system where I had left the carrier and boosted toward the targetted star. Hopefully you will still have enough hull strength to be able to withstand one more push with the pulse wave as you escape. No point in using the neutralizer this time. Wait until you hear it erupt from the Titan behind you and just let it push you all the way out of the maelstrom! It’s then just a short way to travel until your ship is no longer mass-locked and you can jump away out of danger!

The Spindrift turned out to be a really fun ship in which to make a Titan bombing run! Whilst I’m far from being an accomplished pilot, and Thargoid interceptor combat still eludes my skills, making a few Titan bombing runs and making it back home again is one of the most exciting things I have ever done in Elite Dangerous. If you are yet to engage with any of the Thargoid content Elite Dangerous: Odyssey has to offer I can highly recommend it! Also, approximately twenty four hours after a Titan’s core has finally been destroyed, one of the most satisfying things to see is to travel back to its maelstrom in time to witness its ultimate destruction! Something every commander should behold first hand!

If you need a guide to help you make your first Titan bombing run then I can heartily recommend Cmdr Psykit’s video or even the wonderful diagrams provided by Cmdr Daedalus Spyke!

Happy Bombing Comanders!