Recently, there was a terrible accident in Elite: Dangerous. During a rescue mission by the Fuel Rats, two ships were destroyed. And it was caused by a cat!
What are Fuel Rats? They are like space roadside assistance. Whenever you run out of fuel and get stranded in the vastness of space in Elite, you can call the Rats. They will selflessly fly out to refuel your ship.
It is noteworthy that the Fuel Rats are not NPCs. Rather, they are players of Elite who spend their free time providing galactic breakdown services. The Fuel Rats are widely respected and admired for this. Even the player who painted the Elite logo onto the galaxy couldn’t have done it without the Rats.
Everything was going perfectly until the cat came…
A pilot was stranded in “Col 285 Sector KB-X A17-3” and called the Fuel Rats for help. The distress call was received, and a member of the Rats set out to rescue the pilot and his ship.
Deadly collision instead of rescue: At first, everything went smoothly, and the Fuel Rat began to initiate the rescue mission. But then suddenly, the rescue ship accelerated with its boosters and rammed the stranded ship full force.
No one survived the collision between the massive space tanker and the stranded spacecraft!
A real “cat-astrophe”!
The owner of the destroyed ship was furious about this incident and immediately unfriended the Fuel Rats before they could offer an explanation. After all, he had lost his ship and possibly valuable resources or research data.
But what was the reason for this incident? According to a statement from a spokesperson for the Fuel Rats, a cat in real life jumped onto the keyboard of the Fuel-Rats pilot on site. This must have initiated the fatal boost process.
Actually, there are safety precautions: While that is already quite bizarre, it becomes even crazier when one considers that the Fuel Rats have precautions in place for just such situations.
The protocol for rescue missions states, among other things, that the landing gear must be deployed to avoid boosts and not to face the stranded ship head-on.
Cats always find a way: According to the Fuel-Rats spokesperson, this is all inadequate when dealing with the destructive energy of a bored cat:
I can’t rule out that the cat could have retracted the landing gear, turned on the windshield wipers, jettisoned all cargo, activated the autopilot, and spread paw taps all over the desk before activating stealth mode.
Fuel Rats want to make safety protocols “cat-proof”: The loss of a customer is a serious matter for the Rats, so they want to develop better safety protocols for the future to prevent such cat accidents.
Because even though it’s funny that “a cat killed a rat,” it’s not good PR for the Fuel Rats if their customers are rammed to death instead of rescued.
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