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What it -feels- like to pod pilot a ship
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Kel hound
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2011-12-11 09:49:54 UTC
I have for the past few days been somewhat station bound, as one might imagine this had left me somewhat bored, unable to stretch my wings as it were. It has however also enabled me to mingle with my crew - whom I rarely even see, let alone socialise with. A few nights I was invited to a bar on one of the inner decks of the station we are docked in, it was an interesting experience to say the least and while the outing was largely void of excitement one question did so catch me off guard that I am compelled to share both my answer and the actual question with you good people.

I was, quite innocently, asked what it was like to pod-pilot a ship.
At first I found this to be an incredibly odd question, after all it is a bit like asking someone what their hand is like to use. I had to think about it for a while but eventually I was able to come up with a metaphor I felt would both appeal to them and explain it.

A ship is like a lover. Cliche I know, but pod piloting a ship is like making love to your partner.
A standard ship feels like cuddling with your lover. Your both safe in each others arms and are both there for each other, but you also get in each others way sometimes. Other times it is difficult to anticipate one another's needs and desires, you must constantly whisper to each other in-order to work as one.
A tech 2 ship is like making love to your partner. Your both in sync and in rhythm with each other and know each other well enough that you natural anticipate the desires and needs of the other. Its not a perfect synchronisation though, there is still a clear line between yourself and the ship.
A tech 3 ship on the other hand is like the climax. It is so easy to lose yourself when flying the ship that the lines between self and ship fade and blur away all together. I cannot speak for everyone but I know I have been in the middle of combat more than once and found myself "seeing" with gravimetric eyes instead of reading sensor telemetry or "feeling" missiles and lasers strike my shields instead of interpreting damage control data. Alas the reverse is also true. I have also died while in a tech 3. It is like awaking from a nightmare to find that your leg was amputated from under you while you were asleep.

Im curious if any of the other pod pilots out there have a similar experience to share, has anyone else had a similar question posed to them? if so Im curious as to how you answered.
Mikkel Lybecker
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#2 - 2011-12-11 10:31:49 UTC  |  Edited by: Mikkel Lybecker
I'd just like to say that I totally don't get this at all. And you creep me out.

If you fly a Tech 3 ship anywhere near me I'm getting a restraining order.
Audrial
Fly By Night Corporation
#3 - 2011-12-11 15:09:29 UTC
I do believe you've shed the light on my dilemma! Having unfortunately enraged quite a number of station masters by my misaligned dockings and departures, I do see now that it indeed is not me but rather the ship that I am flying that is to blame. I shall strive to get one that is more in 'sync' with me.

I thank you and remain indebted to you, sir.

xxxxooooxxxxooooxxxx Audrial
Rana Ash
Gradient
Electus Matari
#4 - 2011-12-11 17:54:45 UTC
I think you really need to check your Pod, and have some tech check your telemetry. Cause you are so close to going nuts,bonkers,insane.

Flying a ship should not feel like you are loosing limbs or making love..
Ishtanchuk Fazmarai
#5 - 2011-12-11 19:26:06 UTC
Now, this begs one question... do the ladies who ever grant access to your intentions feel managed like a pod ship? And thus, what kind of ship? A use-and-forget shuttle? Or a fancy officer-fit faction Battleship?

Roses are red / Violets are blue / I am an Alpha / And so it's you
Roga Dracor
Gladiators of Rage
Fraternity.
#6 - 2011-12-11 21:24:49 UTC
I beg to differ, you all must be using very outdated pod equipment. Your Corporations should really step into YC113. I have no heads up displays, buttons or levers in my pod, I can imagine that to be very dangerous in a combat situation.

My interface connects directly to upper thoracic vertebrae, delivering electronic stimuli directly to the brain. I become vaguely aware of my "body", the cradle of my intellect tucked neatly away inside of my current being, the ship. I liken it to the analogy of feelings welling from the heart. After all, in our base state, emotion begins in the chest, not the head. The shields and armor become the skin and meat of my being. The stimulus of damage is pain. I react as a weapon of destruction.

It is that instinctual interface with the ship that makes us what we are. I revel in the abstraction of what I have become. If he chooses to visualize it thus, with all the sexual overtones,,... wasn't there an ancient philosopher who ruminated on such behavior.. Anyway, he at least, begins to realize what he is.

You all really should plug in Infomorph Psychology and finish the course..Pirate

It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then, and it's a poor sort of memory that only works backward.
Kel hound
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#7 - 2011-12-11 22:13:01 UTC
To be fair this explanation was the result of more than a few beers.
Aphoxema G
Khushakor Clan
#8 - 2011-12-12 14:45:58 UTC
As unspeakably intimate it is to have such a raw connection with a spaceship, it's never been sexual for me no matter how intoxicated I've been.

At first it was frightening, like a dream that I was afraid wasn't a dream. Simulations at PTS had the same feel but the sheer reality of willing a gun to fire was hard to accept after they set me loose. I shot down many pirate vessels before my first encounter with another capsuleer.

Murdering people inside a ship was hard enough; I had a psychotic episode at least once a week and locked myself in my apartment. Even though I was already at a point that I couldn't forgive myself, I was afraid to somehow make it worse stepping into another ship.

It's still hard today, but there was something even more overwhelming the first time I lost a crew. I lost some frigates, but being in high-sec the handful of people who assisted me were easily recovered. No one had to die before I took the training wheels off and let myself command frigates unaided.

When my corporation joined an alliance I was offered training in combat maneuvers, I had no idea how different it would be. I was in a Stabber and it was decimated by a fleet commanded entirely by capsuleers. None of my crew survived and it hurt me in a way I didn't know I could be hurt.

These people were my blood and bones. When I became a ship, the thought of people being inside me made those people such a part of me. I had dreams of things crawling inside my body, scary things but I was afraid of letting them out that I might die.

I died three times with that Stabber. When the hull exploded and I lost connection I was ripped apart. When the crew either died from the explosion or their suspension pods were shot down my malicious forces, I was eviscerated. When my capsule was wiped out in just a breath, my soul was snuffed out of existence.

For weeks I barely slept, remembering over and over that I was dead and I was just an animated puppet with someone's memories stuck in my head. After I got a grasp on that, I felt a gnawing guilt for the people my body had been protecting who died because of my decisions. I was trapped in the fact that when I possessed a ship I either would murder someone else or the people who trusted me would be betrayed by my stupidity.

None of that even compared to the feelings I had when I destroyed another capsuleer. The closest thing I had left to a peer, it's like I murdered my own sister.

Pod-piloting is a magnificent experience, but for the weak-willed like me it's horrifying. I don't think there's anything human left of me.
Astrid Stjerna
Sebiestor Tribe
#9 - 2011-12-12 16:18:53 UTC
Rana Ash wrote:
I think you really need to check your Pod, and have some tech check your telemetry. Cause you are so close to going nuts,bonkers,insane.

Flying a ship should not feel like you are loosing limbs or making love..


My corpmates will tell you that I'm usually the least poetic of the bunch, but I still think you're being too literal.

It's like....being an extension of your ship. You don't think about breathing, or walking, or seeing -- they're all things that you just do. They happen, regardless of whether or not you actively think about them.

Plugging into my pod is just like that. The only difference is that I can 'see' a few million miles further with my sensors.

When I wake up in a clone vat, I'm diminshed somehow. I can't see as far, I can't 'hear' as much as I could through the ship's systems. I feel....smaller. Isolated.

Sometimes, I feel afraid.

I can't get rid of my darn signature!  Oh, wait....
Aphoxema G
Khushakor Clan
#10 - 2011-12-12 17:07:15 UTC
I'm sort of surprised I never discussed this before, just seems like one of those things. I had no idea anyone felt differently about it than I do.
Rana Ash
Gradient
Electus Matari
#11 - 2011-12-12 17:24:12 UTC
Astrid Stjerna wrote:
Rana Ash wrote:
I think you really need to check your Pod, and have some tech check your telemetry. Cause you are so close to going nuts,bonkers,insane.

Flying a ship should not feel like you are loosing limbs or making love..


My corpmates will tell you that I'm usually the least poetic of the bunch, but I still think you're being too literal.

It's like....being an extension of your ship. You don't think about breathing, or walking, or seeing -- they're all things that you just do. They happen, regardless of whether or not you actively think about them.

Plugging into my pod is just like that. The only difference is that I can 'see' a few million miles further with my sensors.

When I wake up in a clone vat, I'm diminshed somehow. I can't see as far, I can't 'hear' as much as I could through the ship's systems. I feel....smaller. Isolated.

Sometimes, I feel afraid.


I may be, and the man did admit to having a few beers. But if you are feeling pain or arousal when flying, i really think you need to have things dampend.
I can't think of anymore distracting than feeling pain everytime my ship gets hit by a projectile..
Kel hound
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#12 - 2011-12-13 00:21:34 UTC
Rana Ash wrote:

I may be, and the man did admit to having a few beers. But if you are feeling pain or arousal when flying, i really think you need to have things dampend.
I can't think of anymore distracting than feeling pain everytime my ship gets hit by a projectile..



While my metaphor was sexual in nature I never claimed to feel arousal while flying my ship. The metaphor I gave was the best I could come up with on an intoxicated brain to explain the sensations to someone who was not a pod pilot. Before people start running away with that idea any more than they already have, flying a spaceship and being the heart and mind of any ship is in no way a sexual or arousing experience for me.
If anyone has a better metaphor for explaining this to a non-capsuler... well this is why I posed this metaphor and question to you all. I used intercourse because I could think of nothing more intimate.

When I am flying any ship from my pod, when I am being fed sensor data through my plugs, it is as though I had gravametric or LADAR eyes. Yet I am still able to clearly conceptualise "me" and being different from my "ship". With my Loki or my Tengu I occasionally need to remind myself that I am still in a pod, to assert the difference between my self and my ship. Occasionally I don't want to. Occasionally I just give in and for a few hours "become" my Tengu or my Loki. This is what I was trying to convey, that there is a deeper connection than is usual with a strategic cruiser. Anyone who has lost one of these ships while flying it can probably attest to this. It is usualy bad enough to lose your ship. You "feel" your armour and hull reduced to piece-meal, parts of your ship get blown off into space. Damage control report flood in faster than you can process them. Crew are dying from fires, hull breaches and explosions. Then suddenly the last of these sensations cut off and your floating in a black egg in space.
In a stratigic it is even more personal than that. I lost my loki once, I don't even know how to convey how that felt. The mental anguish was unlike anything I can remember. I had to spend the better part of a day re-familiarize myself with some of the training for my ship just to help me focus again.

And Aphoxema? I suspect most people feel as you do/did. Some of us are just better at hiding it.
Roga Dracor
Gladiators of Rage
Fraternity.
#13 - 2011-12-14 16:45:30 UTC
I would not dampen the stimulus of pain, which increases as damage is taken. Shields feel like a gnawwing discomfort, eminating from the area damage is coming from, when armor is shed, it stings, and when a ship goes into hull, I am damn sure feeling it, along with any crewmembers unlucky enough to miss the escape pods.

The pain is brief, and it reminds me of the humanity that is being shredded under our collective scrutiny. I have given enough of my humanity. I will keep the pain, thank you. I begin to understand the abject lack of compassion that reigns around here..

It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then, and it's a poor sort of memory that only works backward.
Verone
Veto Corp
#14 - 2011-12-14 18:10:15 UTC
Kel hound wrote:
I have for the past few days been somewhat station bound, as one might imagine this had left me somewhat bored, unable to stretch my wings as it were. It has however also enabled me to mingle with my crew - whom I rarely even see, let alone socialise with. A few nights I was invited to a bar on one of the inner decks of the station we are docked in, it was an interesting experience to say the least and while the outing was largely void of excitement one question did so catch me off guard that I am compelled to share both my answer and the actual question with you good people.

I was, quite innocently, asked what it was like to pod-pilot a ship.
At first I found this to be an incredibly odd question, after all it is a bit like asking someone what their hand is like to use. I had to think about it for a while but eventually I was able to come up with a metaphor I felt would both appeal to them and explain it.

A ship is like a lover. Cliche I know, but pod piloting a ship is like making love to your partner.
A standard ship feels like cuddling with your lover. Your both safe in each others arms and are both there for each other, but you also get in each others way sometimes. Other times it is difficult to anticipate one another's needs and desires, you must constantly whisper to each other in-order to work as one.
A tech 2 ship is like making love to your partner. Your both in sync and in rhythm with each other and know each other well enough that you natural anticipate the desires and needs of the other. Its not a perfect synchronisation though, there is still a clear line between yourself and the ship.
A tech 3 ship on the other hand is like the climax. It is so easy to lose yourself when flying the ship that the lines between self and ship fade and blur away all together. I cannot speak for everyone but I know I have been in the middle of combat more than once and found myself "seeing" with gravimetric eyes instead of reading sensor telemetry or "feeling" missiles and lasers strike my shields instead of interpreting damage control data. Alas the reverse is also true. I have also died while in a tech 3. It is like awaking from a nightmare to find that your leg was amputated from under you while you were asleep.

Im curious if any of the other pod pilots out there have a similar experience to share, has anyone else had a similar question posed to them? if so Im curious as to how you answered.


What in the name of all that's god-damned holy did I just read.


Verone CEO & Executor Veto Corp WWW.VETO-CORP.COM
Istvaan Shogaatsu
Guiding Hand Social Club
#15 - 2011-12-16 01:05:59 UTC
Verone wrote:
Kel hound wrote:
SPACE MADNESS


What in the name of all that's god-damned holy did I just read.


I think this guy's grown a little too attached to his capsule's waste tube. The user manual clearly states "don't jam it up there..."