On Einstein

 The Star Trek RP group Infinity welcomed a brand new ship this weekend, the ISS Einstein, captained by David7 Bravin. 

A brief ceremony took place at ground level, where Admiral Keely Scrumptious gave a brief and inspirational speech - two of the best qualities of any speech, I'm sure you'll agree - confirming the nomination of David as the new captain of the Einstein, which will be active in Roleplay on Mondays. For the full schedule of roleplaying, check out the calendar. This is useful both for would-be roleplayers (you can see which ship is active in a time frame that would suit you) and also for casual visitors, so you can avoid crashing one of their missions.

Currently listed under the legacy region name 'Astraios Colony' and soon to be renamed Infinity, this outpost of Starfleet is built on a Var region - and that means space, serious space for multiple ships not to mention ground based buildings below. This newest ship the Einstein is located at about 8000m in the sky...   HG Address is at the end of the post as per tradition.

... and has all kinds of interactive systems that make the unfolding storytelling come alive. Missions start with a debriefing in the Meeting Room, and this immediately sets the scene for the proportions of  the ship, not so large that it feels like it has a cathedral ceiling, but big enough to allow the sort of camming second nature to anyone in virtual. It's not an easy balance to achieve. Add to that some outstanding textures, nifty scripts and dedicated players, and it's easy to see why the appeal of this RP group has endured for over a decade.

 Take the transporter room, for example.

Alia.Soulstar: These transporters were designed by the brilliant Astro Balut, they perform a trick that no one else has worked out how to do. Throughout Opensim and SL, teleportation only operates one person at a time, but these transporters will move 6, in their positions, to anywhere on 3RG or even the HG if you instruct them to - they do this by fooling the servers into teleporting a ghost person who has 6 others attached for the ride, it's clever stuff ! Pauline NOVA419 was at the controls

Alia.Soulstar:   We are too many to all go on them now but I'll take a group to demonstrate... in this instance we will just go to the transporter room of another ship so that we can come back quickly - touch a pad if you want to come

Pauline NOVA419: 5 more guinea pigs, please :) Setting coordinates.

Transporter: Beaming 5 persons to USS Feynman

Pauline NOVA419: Energize

Tina Bey: wauuu

Thirza Ember: that's very cool

Alia.Soulstar: we can beam down to planets or anywhere that we feed coordinates to the transporters. They are a direct facsimile for the ones in trek.

Turbo Lifts that carry several people from one floor to another are also featured on the ship, and these cool window-spangled corridors that allow you to get the feel for the dimensions of the ship are also very cool. 

The tour was a delight also because to the fabulous cordiality of all involved. Ferre, Salsa, Dolfke, Georgina, May, Victoria, Han, Narek, Silver, Lacy, Niavri, David7, Keely and Alia, who gave us the guided tour, and of course grid owner Lazuli Pooraka, to mention a few of those present, made us outsiders feel welcome and it's clear that anyone tempted to get involved with the roleplay will soon find themselves surrounded by fast friends.

David7 Bravin, Captain of the Einstein.

Much emphasis is given to scientific discoveries on the ship, and there are lots of workstations featuring weird and wonderful exobiology

and there's no shortage of screens and poses to put you in full-on trekkie mode.

The heart of the ship is, of course, the bridge, where once again every texture shines.

Lacy Underall: The job of Ops is mostly to handle the communications, scanning and sensing, and the view screen. For each function I can choose (based on the plot) to find things or not. I can scan and detect lifesigns.  Note that it shows up on the main viewscreen, I can change the viewscreen to display any of the assets we need to use for our missions.. stars, planets, ships and characters.

Tina.Bey: The facilities are incredible, congratulations!

panel: Sensors activated... Scanning subspace... Scanning complete

Alia Soulstar: Ops has the ability to control much of the "input" action in a mission so that we can add feedback to our plot

Lacy Underall: I can hail other ships when we want  to talk to them and finally, we have characters - those are the "voices" of other ships, characters etc

Galileo Flight Ops: Hello visitors

Lazuli Pooraka: How many images do you currently have in the library?

Lacy Underall: Around 30?  We add as required. There are 10 character voices I think.

Alia Soulstar: there are 40 or so but we add new ones with each mission, and the images are cached so they load instantly for all viewers

Lazuli Pooraka: It will become amazing in a short time

Tina Bey[es→en]: does it have spaces to fly ships, as it was in LANI in the past?

Alia Soulstar: so one of the things we do in mission planning is decide what screen images we need and what character voices we want to use then plug in any new ones, this new console allows either ops or helm to run from either side, so you can dial up your position in ops

Lacy Underall: Helm and Ops have dual controls, so either console can cover all the functions for both

Alia Soulstar: thanks Lacy, let's look at the science desk, Niavri has a few new controls too

Niavri Zela at the science desk

Niavri Zela: here I can scan planets, objects, stars and send out probes for the detailed results that will be roleplayed as appropriate to the mission

Tina Bey: how many ships are there to explore outer space?

May Spring: 5 ships one of which is in SL and a huge space station

Alia Soulstar: We are still building the feedback screens into this desk, they will be fully operational in a week or so and will echo similar controls on the engineering console... another feature lets them project their data to the main screen if the Captain requests a view. To see how feedback screens work, lets look at the tactical console

Tina Bey: great!

Alia Soulstar: tactical is where the fighting happens, during a battle the shields can degrade or be knocked out, and we get feedback throughout

Tactical readouts, shields down ...oh no!

Tactical Console: Shields UP... Damage Report: Shields at 70%... Shields at 40%... Shields at 10%

Alia Soulstar: we can channel auxiliary power to bolster them, or target forward shields for extra power,

May Spring: Red alert

Alia Soulstar: and we can hunt enemy ships by, scanning and acquiring targets, locking on the hostiles to arm weapons

May Spring: Tom Paris does an excellent 'Red Alert Curry' on USS Voyager

Tactical Console: Target locked... Phasers fired at target

Alia Soulstar: there is an auto destruct sequence but that requires multiple input, there is no way we'd trust security not to blow up the ship just for a bet

Pintsized officer Salsa Tinkerbell

Salsa Tinkerbell: Dolfke almost destroyed a ship when engaging Auto Destruct

Lazuli Pooraka: That was when she was not shooting Captains.

Salsa Tinkerbell: hihihi, being a Captain is a very risky position with a Vamp on board

Alia Soulstar: Soooo that is a once over overview of the craft... obviously there are many other features to discover, I will add that we are constantly developing new features on these ships, and they feed back to the older ships too. Any questions or comments?

Thirza Ember: where does David plan to take the ship to on its maiden voyage >

David7 Bravin: Not yet decided

Alia Soulstar: I'm sure David will have a lot of fun planning missions, he has a great crew and an interesting speciality for his adventures

Thirza Ember:  try not to destroy the space time continuum

Tina Bey [es→en]: hahaha

David7 Bravin: will try

Alia Soulstar:  feel free to explore the facilities here... we post our mission times on the calendar so you can avoid landing on a mission, calendar is here: https://starfleetinfinity.com/cms/upcoming-events/ and it's worth exploring the other ships too as they are all laid out differently, There is a 10 Forward on this ship, that is actually forward, for relaxing and socialising. We welcome new recruits too, anyone who wants to seek out new worlds and drink Cardassian Sunrises into the small hours, we have an opening for you :)

Visiting the exterior of the ship

The above is just a small part of what we were shown on this inaugural tour, this has to be the premier venue for anyone seriously interested in sci fi roleplay, and looking to spend time with kind, positive people with a good sense of fun. Let's end with the words of the Admiral.

Keely Scrumptious: I say those few words, knowing they cannot at all describe the tremendous amount of work and effort that has gone into the creation of this ship, from its first inception, to blueprints and diagrams, schematics of every deck, the many conduits, power couplings and ladders that are interlaced to create this vessel of exploration. The physical manifestation of this starship began with an idea, and came to reality through the expert hands of Captain Alia Soulstar and her sidekick in systems design, Mr Han BoShi. Together they laboured over the construction, from the first deck to the last replicator, their work is supreme. To them, and their team, I say, 'well done'.

HG Address: grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002: Astraios Colony 

If this doesn't work for you try going to  grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002 and look for the teleport poster.

hop://grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002/Astraios%20Colony/412/440/8644