JuneBeatle on Reddit tells us a story about unexpected friendships in Elite: Dangerous



“I just wanted to share an experience I had this past weekend that really pushed the fun level for me. I was out bounty hunting at a Nav point when I saw a message pop up in the upper left - "Nice Viper!" I had never really paid much attention to the message field except to see which NPC Wanted ship was spamming it so I could target in on them, but this one caught my eye as it didn't seem likely to be an NPC message. So I messaged back: "Thanks! Are you a LIVE player?" Lo and behold he/she was an actual person.



Maybe this is common for many of you commanders, but this was my first interaction with another live player beyond just seeing their yellow square/triangle on my radar (and sometimes unfortunately, red).

We briefly chatted about our Viper configurations and then went on about our separate bounty hunting... and then about 5 minutes later I came across a very mean looking Wanted Anaconda... I messaged: "Any chance you want to tag team this Anaconda over here?" No response, so I figured he/she wasn't reading messages and started taking on the Ana on my own (foolish, I know). The Ana had rear turrets that tore me up quickly and right as I was at 20% and about to turn for my escape run, my new friend buzzed across the screen unloading M-Cannons in the Ana's face and drawing its attention! I turned and joined in, and we spent 2 minutes alternating attack runs until we finally killed it.

I felt guilty that I got the 40K-ish bounty but they commented that it was all good, that this was the most fun they had had on ED yet. We spent another 20 minutes separately hunting, and joining together whenever an Anaconda popped (2 more times, and unfortunately I again got the bounty on both - felt very guilty about this), then we both parted ways as we were out of ammo. With an accepted friend request, I said goodbye.



I absolutely loved this, and it is to date the most fun I've had on ED. Anyone else make some friends out there in the cold deep of space?”



We are pleased to announce our Elite: Dangerous Book Competition winner – Taylor Goehring, with this stunning submission.