What was your first experience with the Elite universe and what keeps you playing it today?

I picked up Elite during the first UK COVID lockdown as I love flying in games and a friend recommended it. I started by working towards a DBX and used that for tourist missions.

The Fatherhood is one of the reasons I’ve kept playing – it’s a great group and there’s always something to do. Otherwise, it’s the flying itself that keeps me going; it’s fun flinging ships around!

Tell a quick story about your favorite moment in Elite: Dangerous.

It’s hard to pick, but the first time I joined a wing for a Combat Zone is up there. At the time I’d mostly avoided combat, or at least just took the odd low level mission. I was still in the DBX with a couple of Railguns, so not the most suitable ship, but joining in the destruction raining down on those poor NPCs felt very epic.

Tell the story of how you earned your callsign.

I was out hunting Thargoid interceptors in a hastily retrofitted DBS with Xpression, Legion_r917th and Marina97. We took down a Basilisk easily enough, with Legion tanking most of the damage. Later, I was under heavy fire from another interceptor. I kept pushing through and eventually I was on a small percentage of hull remaining.

Xpression came in to the “rescue” while I was narrowly avoiding the green tinted death, but his limpet bopped my hull a little too hard when it attached and killed me…

Tell us about your favorite ship in the game.

My favourite ship is TFS Altered View, my DBS. It’s a shieldless build I made for the Fatherhood PvP tournament last year, with plasma accelerators alongside a thermal vent beam and corrosive multicanon. I take it out bounty hunting and when winging up for combat zones now.

It’s a blast to fly – very quick and agile, no drift and it’s cold. No shield means more speed and more weapon capacitor! While its hull is pretty strong, no shield means the durability will eventually give in, which I find adds a bit of spice to combat.

What drew you to join The Fatherhood?

It was proving difficult meeting up with my friends in the game so I looked for a squadron. At the time I had 2 kids, one being about a year old, so I liked the relaxed ethos. I spend a lot of time gaming, but interrupted frequently. Everyone’s been very understanding of sudden disappearances!

What’s your day job, and how do you balance your home, work and gaming life (or do you)?

I’m an accountant-ish working in the UK and I’m normally on between 20.00 and 22.00 if I manage to get on in the evening. Always happy to jump in if a job needs doing!

What is one thing most people don’t know about you that you wish they did?

I’m a socially awkward introvert. One thing that’s nice about discord is that I can watch conversations going on and join in without having to find that gap to interject. I tend to write messages 3 times before posting (or not); if you see my typing a lot, don’t assume it’ll be an epic length! (I do love to write a story though)

How did you come up with the name of your Commander?

I’m a fan of Iain M Bank’s Culture novels; one particular character that stood out was the ship mind Grey Area (also known as something less wholesome). Unfortunately, I had to modify it a little for Xbox live as it was taken.

Any fatherly advice for new CMDRs trying to make their way in Elite: Dangerous?

Have fun; if it’s feeling like a grind then change tact or break it up a little otherwise you might just burn out and not enjoy the game.

What was your first experience with the Elite universe and what keeps you playing it today?

I honestly cannot remember much about playing Elite for the first time in December 2017. I remember feeling very aimless and quitting very quickly after starting. When COVID hit a little over two years later, I found myself with a lot of time on my hands and wanting to give it another shot. Reddit actually helped me a lot with showing me a path forward and even lead me to The Fatherhood after a while. That’s when the game really started for me. Before joining the Fatherhood, I was focused on grinds. After joining was when the fun started.

So I would say my first “real” experience playing Elite as a game rather than just a grind was winging up constantly in our favourite combat system when it was still new to us. It was my first time doing combat, making real credits, and having a blast while doing it.

The camaraderie and the pure joy from messing around with your squad mates, trying to fit four Corvettes into a tightly packed battlefield in the middle of an asteroid belt, constantly bumping into each other and loving every second of it…those were some of the best memories I’ve ever had playing a game. And that feeling continues to this day.

Tell a quick story about your favorite moment in Elite: Dangerous.

Not to sound like a broken record, but soon after combat was buffed! Everyone was ready to take a break from constantly mining, to finally earning big money doing something exciting in a wing for a change! The hype during those days was through the roof, with someone else getting a FC almost every other day. Maybe I’m just remembering it with rose-coloured glasses because it was all so new to me, but that time still seems magical.

Tell us about your favorite ship in the game.

The DBX. I don’t know why exactly it’s my favourite – other than it’s the ship that’s been with me from almost the very beginning. It’s small and nimble enough I never have to wrestle it into position, or struggle to find a place to land – it goes where I want it to go with little to no effort at all. And it looks great doing it!

What drew you to join The Fatherhood?

I had started thinking about joining a squad and the topic came up on reddit. HunterMemnoch happened to be in the same post as me and suggested I check out TF. Being as large as it was and as a father myself, it was a pretty easy decision to join and it became home very quickly. Suddenly I was surrounded by a group of people who were just in it to have fun together, while letting life come first.

What’s your day job?

I’m an Elf! Well, that’s what my kids told people when they were younger. You know all the huge stuffed animals and prizes you win at carnivals and amusements parks? I help design them, communicate with our factories in China to get them made according to our specifications, and then do all the groundwork to bring them across the ocean.

We all wear several hats in our small business, but I’m basically the guy who makes sure it all runs smoothly – from import, bookkeeping, logistics to talking with customers. If you’ve gone to an amusement park or carnival in Western Canada/US – chances are you’ve seen my work.

What is one thing most people don’t know about you that you wish they did?

I’m pretty good with languages – although a ton of people are in this squad it seems. I spoke fluent German while completing my Abitur in Germany (although I’m fairly rusty now), conversational in French and have a basic understanding of Italian.

How did you come up with the name of your Commander?

It’s stupid but here’s the backstory. I was reading an article a long time ago which dove into why Facebook’s policy at the time permitting only one name change per lifetime was problematic. An example they gave was some poor teen, who left his Facebook profile logged in, and his friend changed his name to Bonquiqui Shiquavius – leaving him stuck with it for life.

I thought that was the most ridiculous problem I’ve ever read about, but as I also needed an anonymous name for Slashdot, etc, I took it for my own. I used it for Elite because I figured I would never really be playing with anyone else – I had zero desire to play multiplayer at the time. By the time I started to regret not choosing a cooler name, it was too late – everyone knew me already as Bonquiqui. So Bonk/Bonq/BonBon I stay.

Are there any activities in Elite Dangerous that you have yet to try? If so, what are they and what’s keeping you?

AX combat and core mining.

I actually managed to kill one single Thargoid interceptor in a wing with CMDR Michael A Corleone, but died in the caustic cloud. He got the kill shot so there’s no record of that on Inara either. Never got around to trying again. Maybe after LS3 though…

Core mining – well, I got burnt out on mining during the Painite rush. No interest really in picking it up again. On the other hand, core mining always seemed like something I should know how to do at least. Maybe someday…

Any fatherly advice for new CMDRs trying to make their way in Elite: Dangerous?

Wing up as soon as and as often as you can. Don’t worry about not being good enough, or having a great ship. Just join and have fun with us. You’ll get better much faster AND have a ton more fun doing it than slogging through the game on your own.

What was your first experience with the Elite universe and what keeps you playing it today?

Back in 1987 on my Commodore 64. It had been out for a few years before the game was able to make it my way. I also played Elite II for a bit. A friend showed Elite:Dangerous to me on his XBox, and I was impressed enough that picked it up a few weeks later for my PC. Today, I keep playing it because of the community the squadron has nurtured and because it’s still fun to fly spaceships. It’s just as rewarding, however, to help flatten the learning curve for newer pilots.

Tell a quick story about your favorite moment in Elite: Dangerous.

I have to pick a favorite? That’s tough. Certainly at the top of the list, though, is the time some squadmates were doing bounty hunting in small ships. I brought my Federal Gunship, flew that for five minutes and promptly flew back to port and took my Eagle II off the chopping block and built it for our small-ship event we nicknamed SEHAI, (Sidewinder, Eagle, Hauler, Adder, iEagle). I find there’s few things more fun than a flying in a wing of paper airplanes taking out a Deadly Anaconda or winning a Conflict Zone.

Tell the story of how you earned your callsign.

Can’t. Oddly, I’ve never really done anything that stands out like my squadmates. I don’t mind. It will happen eventually.

Tell us about your favorite ship in the game.

I have great memories about every single one of the horses in my stables. I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to narrow it down to even three, and so far, I’ve failed.

What drew you to join The Fatherhood?

I had been flying solo until a post from Elite Dangerous on Facebook, giving a shout out for the squadron. It’s difficult not to like a group whose motto is “When the kids go to bed, we go to space.” And their ethos: Don’t be afraid to ask questions, play when you want and if you take a break, we’ll be glad to see you when you log back in. I was originally in Bravo, but I moved to Delta when we structured the Squadrons to fit time zones better.

What’s your day job, and how do you balance your home, work and gaming life (or do you)?

I work at a box factory with a few odd jobs I get to balance. It pays the bills and it keeps me busy for twelve hours at a time. The game is pretty much the default thing I’ll wind down my day with. I’ll pop in on my weekends during the mornings as well before the rest of my family wakes up. Once my youngest wakes up, it’s time to wrap it up and get stuff done. 🙂

How did you come up with the name of your Commander?

It’s the first words my oldest son said, and I adopted it various times when I was stuck for a username. My wife asked him “What do you want for Christmas?” and she heard my infant son say “Gizoo.” She’s from Montreal, so Gizoo was given a more French spelling.

Any fatherly advice for new CMDRs trying to make their way in Elite: Dangerous?

Break. It. Up. There are parts of this game that are grindy, and the rewards are a whole lot less shiny when you’ve been burning yourself out unlocking engineers and filling material bins in the shortest time possible. Do something else for a bit when it starts feeling like a chore. If you have questions, it doesn’t matter if we’ve answered it a dozen times or more, we’re happy to answer because this squadron loves to flatten the game’s learning curve.

What was your first experience with the Elite universe and what keeps you playing it today?

Like most people, my first experience with Elite was clumsy and bumpy. I’m not ashamed to admit that it took me at least four hours to figure out how to navigate the outside of an Orbis station, line up with the mailslot, then enter and land without hitting anything. This game has a pretty steep learning curve! But also like most that make it beyond the first few hours, I found it highly rewarding.

I keep playing today because I still find the game very relaxing. Even after 1750 hours, it’s great to just turn on some youtube and explore in my Anaconda for a few hours every now and then.

Tell a quick story about your favorite moment in Elite: Dangerous.

I don’t know if I could pick a single favorite moment playing Elite. After 1750 hours, you have so many moments that are awesome. But I can single one out.

The moment I learned how the Engineering system worked. It’s not glamorous or sexy, but figuring this system out made me feel very accomplished. Putting the whole thing together from Reputation to Building your Relationship with them, gathering mats and using traders… having it all click together is a moment that paid off about 40-60 hours worth of grinding and work. I felt accomplished and that was awesome for me.

Tell the story of how you earned your callsign.

Hooo boy, ok. So we’re about midway through the second part of Lost Souls 2. I’d been with The Fatherhood for years at that point and had survived without doing anything “Callsign Worthy”. One Sunday afternoon, I’m coming in to land at one of the Waypoint Meetups at Biological Signal 5 on this planet. While making my approach I thought I was the first one there, which was odd because I was never the first at the meetups. So I ask in the Discord: “Hey, where is everyone?” thus began about a 30-minute back-and-forth about me swearing I was at the right spot and the group saying they were at the right spot. I would have given it up to instancing, however someone finally asked “Hey, Druid, are you sure you’re at Geo Signal 5?”

And thus, my callsign was earned that day!

Tell us about your favorite ship in the game.

My favorite ship in the game, hands down, is the Asp Explorer. Ships’ name is the TFS Oban 14. The AspX is a spritely little explorer ship that can pack everything you’d want for deep space exploration and still be fun to fly.

It’s a ship that with minimal thruster upgrades can really zip through canyons and around mountains and just be a general hoot to pilot.

What drew you to join The Fatherhood?

Easy, I needed help. I wanted to be good at this game, but just hit a wall. I looked at Squadrons on Inara and came across The Fatherhood. The casual mission statement combined with the friendly and helpful membership were an easy sell.

I initially joined Bravo, I believe. Whatever the first PC Squadron was. Since then, however, I’ve been in Delta and Hotel, helping those Squadrons grow overtime.

What’s your day job, and how do you balance your home, work and gaming life (or do you)?

I’m a Cyber Security Incident Manager for one of the worlds’ larger banks. I keep pretty strict work hours and try my best to respect my time away from work. However, I have so many hobbies and things that I’m into that video games only get a small piece of that pie. But usually when my girlfriend is at her own D&D sessions, I’ll spend a few hours playing games.

I, unfortunately, don’t have regular gaming hours so it’s a bit hard to catch me online. If anyone wants to wing up for anything specific, feel free to ping me in the Discord!

How did you come up with the name of your Commander?

It’s a common gaming tag that I created based off one of my old Dungeons and Dragons characters. They were a Druid that really liked to blow things up.

Any fatherly advice for new CMDRs trying to make their way in Elite: Dangerous?

Two things:

Find a community of people who can help you. This game is very difficult to learn and until you’ve climbed the hill, it can seem impossible. Find a group of people who are willing to help you through it and your enjoyment of the game will increase dramatically. I firmly believe that FDev meant for this game to be played communally.

Learn how to Mine. It may sound weird, but learning to Mine will teach you a great deal about the basics of the game all while doing an engaging task. You’ll learn how trading works including the galactic market, you’ll learn how to land and take off from platforms and Orbis stations, you’ll learn how to fly your ship in a dangerous environment and know how your thrusters work, you’ll learn how a great many ships functions work as well. Plus, building a mining rig will take some understanding of ship building. It will also make you a boatload of credits! So yea, learn how to mine!

What was your first experience with the Elite universe and what keeps you playing it today?

My first memory of Elite is running out of fuel two jumps in and realising I’d made a mistake I reset my Commander save. After that I began to follow some of the Elite Youtubers of the time and began to learn what I needed.

I keep playing for a few reasons. One is, I really enjoy the community, which is for the most part very welcoming and helpful. The other reason is I enjoy going out and exploring the galaxy – which is made even better when I find ELW’s to taunt Cmdr “Thunderseal Rebuy” Soantii.

Tell a quick story about your favorite moment in Elite: Dangerous.

Ohh this is a tough question. Probably my favourite is when I did my first buckyball to Beagle and got to meet one of our commanders, Commander GrumpyinUT at Beagle Point who at the time was doing a circumnavigation. Turned out I was the first member of The Fatherhood he met as he’d been going for 6 months (it amused him that it had taken me just 13 hours and 45 mins to get to the same place as he did).

Tell the story of how you earned your callsign.

When I went to ECM (Elite Community Meet) in Manchester in 2019, I arrived the day before, so I had all day to wander around Manchester. Whilst doing so I was chatting with the Wing Command guys and they were suggesting places to eat. I inadvertently let slip that I’m extremely picky with my food and that McDonald’s was pretty much the only place I’d go to. They decided to give me the nickname “Mc” in honour of this.

Tell us about your favorite ship in the game.

My favourite ship is probably the Anaconda, although the Krait Phantom is a very close 2nd. I know a lot of people dislike the Anaconda because its slow and not very maneuverable, but thats pretty much why I love it. It feels like I’m piloting a massive cargo ship especially as the view has the ship stretching out in front of you.

I have a couple of them but my favourite one will probably be my first Beagle run Anaconda, the TFS Star Skimmer. I haven’t flown it since I arrived back at Schwann Port when I returned from Beagle beacause I wanted to leave it just as it was when I arrived back.

What drew you to join The Fatherhood?

When I first started Elite I’d taken a look at a few wings but never got around to applying to any. In 2017 I took a break during the latter part of the year and when I restarted playing again around Christmas/January I started to look again and saw The Fatherhood.

As my son was by then 4 and my game time was becoming a bit less (I was gutted when my son stopped having Afternoon naps) I saw The Fatherhood and the whole play when you can/no time commitment needed really appealed to me so I hit apply.

When I first joined there wasn’t any in game squadrons at all so my first one was Alpha when squadrons launched. When Randalph set up Pioneers I immediatly jumped to it as I rarely do anything other than exploring so Pioneers was a more natural fit.

What’s your day job, and how do you balance your home, work and gaming life (or do you)?

I’m quite lucky when it comes to game time because due to my heart condition I only work 2 days and as I work in education I also get all the school holidays off. Late June and Early/Mid July is especially great for game time as my son is still at school but I’ll of finished work because the college finishes for the summer in mid June.

It does mean though that I’m rarely around in the evening though as I tend to watch TV with my wife.

What is your secret to becoming such a master of delegating responsibility?

Practice and a desire to not have to do stuff yourself, oh and making sure you get promoted high enough. 😀

What is one thing most people don’t know about you that you wish they did?

I find way more ELW’s then I let on.

How did you come by the superpower to break things?

That was a surprise—even to me—until I was given admin priviledges on the Discord and I started experimenting. 😀

How did you come up with the name of your Commander?

It’s a name I’ve been using for a while. I first used it for my character in World of Warcraft around 15-18 years ago. I’d always liked the name Draz after a character on a TV show I used to watch when I was a kid and the Kul bit came from thinking I needed something like Skull on the end for my WoW character so I just shorted it and stuck it on the end.

Any fatherly advice for new CMDRs trying to make their way in Elite: Dangerous?

Take you time. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, we were all new to the game once and it does have a lot of stuff to learn about – even now I’m clueless when it comes to a lot of stuff and I’ve played nearly 5 years. Don’t think you need to bee line to the big ships as quite a few E:D players prefer the small and medium ships. Have fun.

What was your first experience with the Elite universe and what keeps you playing it today?

My first experience of the Elite universe was way back in Elite 2. The whole open-world nature of the game was at the time incredible, and the idea that you could run a trade route between Sol and Barnard’s Star just blew my mind. Frontier: First Encounters may have been as buggy as hell, but the narrative story that was written provided some great focus to the game, and I also enjoyed the different careers you could follow.

As for Elite: Dangerous, I remember my first experience was eventually learning how to take off and enter supercruise, promptly dropping in to a nearby pleasure cruise. To this day I don’t know why I did, but I thought it would be cool to just open fire on the ship. I mean, how difficult could combat be? Oh how naive I was! Suffice to say I respawned back at the station, and then took the safer option of running a few courier missions on the BGS…

In terms of what kept me playing, exploration for me was a massive part of the game. Within a few months of playing, I had already set off to Beagle Point, and I’d say at least 70% of my total time playing has been spent on some expedition or other. EDSM has been an incredible resource for me, giving me plenty of waypoints for me to visit as I plan my expeditions. I’ve explored to the extremes of the galaxy, and visited some incredible locations along the way.

In between expeditions, helping out with The Fatherhood’s BGS activity has also been something that kept me playing. There has always been an objective, and in those early days some of our BGS achievements made me really proud. We may take it for granted now, but I recall the campaign to expand into LHS 197 was hard fought, and required a degree of coordination that we weren’t yet proficient in. Being able to help out in that was a proud moment for me.

Tell a quick story about your favorite moment in Elite: Dangerous.

I think my favourite moment in Elite was when we coordinated a welcome home party for CMDR GrumpyInUT, who had been out circumnavigating the galaxy in a Sidewinder (IIRC). First off, it was great that we were able to get a good number of The Fatherhood CMDRs online together in game to celebrate the achievement of another of our CMDRs – it made me truly appreciate the good community that we have.

However, what made it my favourite moment is that as part of the party, we wanted to organise a parade of honour which consisted of the careful positioning of ships. I was actually out on an expedition when GrumpyInUT arrived home, so had arranged to jump in with Drazkul for the occasion. I was flying around in his fighter, taking various photos to commemorate the event. At one point, I was lining up to take a photo of the then Deputy Squadron Commander. However, somehow I managed to hit my boost button, and ended up boosting straight into him, earning a reckless flying fine not just for me, but also for Drazkul! Suffice to say, after that point many people got very nervous when I was flying around in a fighter…

Tell the story of how you earned your callsign.

My squadron callsign is “Numbers”. Back in the very early days of The Fatherhood, a few of us got really enthusiastic with coordinating The Fatherhood’s efforts to be placed in-game as a PMF. We very quickly had to get to speed on how the BGS mechanics worked, and use that to coordinate our efforts. My RL job at the time had me heavily involved with extracting and analysing data, so it was a natural fit for me to combine my day job with my hobby. In no time at all I had developed an Elite Dangerous BGS dashboard which we used to monitor the progress of our BGS campaigns at the time. A few veteran members will no doubt recall the early days of doing recon runs so that we could update our data after the daily tick!

In recognition of these efforts, CMDR Olthuis proposed the callsign “Numbers” to Wing Command. I was made up to have such a callsign suggested, as it was in some way a reward for the effort that I’d put into The Fatherhood. It’s also why I’ve always been keen for callsigns to not just celebrate the stupid things that our commanders have done, but on appropraite occasions, recognise the phenomenal effort that some of our CMDRs put in.

Tell us about your favorite ship in the game.

Ha, at first I thought this would be a difficult question, because there are so many ships that I’m fond of. I have a special place for my AspX TFS Twoflower’s Folly, because she took me all the way to Beagle Point and earned me my first Elite rank. When I arrived home in Hajangai, I bought myself a Python – TFS Sapient Pearwood – which has been such a journeyman ship for me. There is very little you can’t do in it, it’s certainly one of the most versatile ships in the game and when I wasn’t exploring, we were inseparable!

When the Krait Phantom was added to the game, it took over from the AspX as my go-to exploring ship. TFS Lu-Tze’s Broom is highly engineered, and the jump range that I can get from her is what has allowed me to reach some of the more difficult-to-reach extremes in the game. We’ve travelled the galaxy together and I’m very fond of her.

However, despite all of the above, there is one ship which is more special to me than the others: the mighty Keelback! Much maligned and misunderstood, but there’s something special about the Keelback. Guardian technology, and surprisingly flexible array of hardpoints and space for a fighter hangar has made TFS John Keel a surprisingly capable exploration ship. If I ever need to make the journey to Colonia, then there is no better choice!

What drew you to join The Fatherhood?

I’d never really been one to play computer games online with others. But for some reason, Elite: Dangerous was different for me, and I quickly decided that my experience would be better if I shared it with others. I was a recent dad and so wouldn’t be able to commit too much to a group, so when I saw TK’s advert on the Frontier Forums, it seemed a really obvious choice. I jumped into the Discord server, received a nice warm welcome from Jeb, and the rest – as they say – is history.

What’s your day job, and how do you balance your home, work and gaming life?

I’m a qualified commercial accountant, and in my current role, I manage the company’s finance and accounting systems.

In the past, I didn’t do a very good job of managing work and gaming life. Often my afternoons in work would be taken over analysing the daily BGS tick results, administering the Discord server, and planning my next expedition with little work getting done. I guess in my defence, having young children destroyed me from a sleep perspective, so I’d struggle to focus in the afternoon on work after having 4 hours sleep or so. Doing E:D related stuff was always the easier option! Suffice to say I got to the point where I felt I was too involved with E:D and that my work was suffering. As such, after returning back from Lost Souls 2 I took a significant step back from E:D.

Balancing home / gaming life is a bit easier. As a general rule, if my children are awake then they are my focus. Getting my two children into good bedtime routines has been essential in allowing me to get valuable gaming time. I also make sure that I spend time with my wife too – 9pm each night is our time together, so gaming time tends to be 7-9pm during the week.

What is one thing most people don’t know about you that you wish they did?

As part of my early BGS research, I experimented with collecting “Unknown Artifacts” from the surface using just the cargo scoop, instead of using the SRV. What I then did with that T6 full of Unknown Artefacts is a story for another time…

How did you come up with the name of your Commander?

In a past job, I was responsible for developing financial models used for project appraisal. One of the guys I worked with for one project was somewhat optimistic with his assumptions, leading to some very aggressive profit projections. I can’t quite recall how it started, but turning through an updated set of model inputs started to be known as “roddling” instead of “modelling”, which then developed into a nickname of “Roddleton”, as I was the one doing the “roddling”.

A very eccentric surname required a similarly eccentric first name, and thus my alter ego – Randalph Roddleton – was born!

Any fatherly advice for new CMDRs trying to make their way in Elite: Dangerous?

My advice would be to take it slow, and avoid the temptation to go straight into the big rank/credit grinds. In the first instance, I think it’s a really dull experience, and makes you miss out on some of that early variety as you are finding your way around the galaxy and try to find out how you want to play. I think it’s a more rewarding way of playing, and if you do it right, then you can rank up without really noticing.

What was your first experience with the Elite universe and what keeps you playing it today?

I was introduced to ED by an acquaintance who mentioned off handedly that he was building a computer for “a game”. I asked, “A GAME?” He then told me about ED, being a 1:1 model of the Milky Way Galaxy. From there, he needed to say no more. While the game was downloading, I began absorbing tutorials and watching the myriad of content that was available. I remember being daunted, overwhelmed and more than exited. I was elated. This WAS the game that I’ve been waiting for my whole life

Tell a quick story about your favorite moment in Elite: Dangerous. Tough question.

I had been playing the game maybe a month and was out exploring in the SRV at a geyser site. There was a monster geyser in front of me and my Anaconda behind me about 500 meters. I sat there looking at the geyser, blasting into the sky and the roar of the material as it was escaping the vent while others burbled and belched around me, this one in front of me was epic. I thought to myself….. “Huh…, I wonder what would happen if I…” then I drove over it. I was blasted into the sky, tumbling higher and higher. Rocketing and tumbling higher and higher, I managed to fumble out my phone and take a video, then I saw my ship Take off uncommanded.

Now, looking back on the occasion, gyser jumping is rather commonplace, but being a new Commander, not knowing what would happen and then seeing my ship leave as I crossed the distance threshold that releases the ship to orbit as I careened into the sky, well, it was a thrill.

Tell the story of how you earned your callsign.

I wouldn’t say I earned it. Somewhere, there’s a video, documenting it in all its glory. But the short story is, I got “Clipped” by a “Clipper” 100 meters from the summit during a six hour team mountain climbing expedition.

Tell us about your favorite ship in the game.

It’s tough to answer this, each has her own application. I think the one I have the most enjoyment out of flying is probably my Fer De Lance, “Greenis Envy” She’s fully engineered with Super Penetrator Rail Guns and a huge Plasma Accelerator and a couple of efficient Thermal Vent Beams. Landing a trick shot on an enemy combatant at a fair distance is very satisfying.

What drew you to join The Fatherhood?

I heard about The Fatherhood, listening to a Sagittarius Eye podcast. Prior to joining The Fatherhood, I played mostly Solo or Private Group between my friends and I. I joined The Fatherhood Delta and brought with me all my friends, and my own Father, who goes by the name of Pops Ravendish.

What’s your day job, and how do you balance your home, work and gaming life (or do you)?

I am a traveling helicopter mechanic. I work for a company that builds and maintains power lines. The job keeps me on the road for the better part of a month at a time. When things are slow at work, i.e. helicpters aren’t broken, or if I no scheduled maintenance to perform I can be found in space. So, if I’m on the road, Elite: Dangerous-ing is what I do to pass the time. When I go home, my family gets all of my focus. I stay mostly in US eastern and central time zones.

Any fatherly advice for new CMDRs trying to make their way in Elite: Dangerous?

1. Play in open, and enjoy the social aspect of the game. Solo and PG’s certainly have their place. For example: going to Deciat in open, as a beginner assumes the risk of getting squashed by lonely scumbags who love nothing more than blowing up your ship.
2. Use the tools that were developed for this game, ED market Connecter, EDDB.io, Inara, EDSM EDtools.cc etc. I always run EDmarket connecter when I’m dangerousing, it helps keep the tools we enjoy up to date.

What was your first experience with the Elite universe and what keeps you playing it today?

Played a version of the original Elite on an 8086 compatible PC, quite a while ago. I bought Elite: Dangerous on Steam while in a sale, then didn’t have a PC capable of playing it for a good bit. The auto-dock music still remains the same tune. 🙂

The Fatherhood mainly keeps my interest up in playing. Other games I play for a while, then stop for a good bit.

Tell a quick story about your favorite moment in Elite: Dangerous.

I was on a station rescue in a T9 with another Commander behind me. I misaligned a bit on entry and got stuck in the toast rack. Incoming message:

Other Commander: Stuck?
Me: Yep! (laughing too hard to control the ship)

Tell the story of how you earned your callsign.

Haven’t managed enough stupid/silly/awesome to gain one.

What drew you to join The Fatherhood?

I was looking for a shortish expedition while waiting for Distant Worlds 2. I came across Lost Souls 1 by The Fatherhood and liked their ethos, so I ended up joining the squadron – this was before in-game squadrons.

Now running two Commanders: one in The Fatherhood – Alpha (R.Seaton) with more of a bubble focus, and one in The Fatherhood – Pioneers (Madproforg) – more exploration focused.

How did you come up with the name of your Commander?

Madproforg has been a name used for a long time, so just stuck with it for my original commander.

When I created the second, I tried to think a bit differently and picked the name of the main character in E.E. Doc Smith’s Skylark series which I had just re-read again.

Any fatherly advice for new CMDRs trying to make their way in Elite: Dangerous?

Try to have a bit a patience. Especially with the inital steep learning curve, it does get easier but the learning never stops.