Featured CMDR: Brian “UI” o’Fish

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

My first contact with Elite was the original green wireframe on black game on an Amstrad CPC 464 computer, back in the eighties. I didn’t get very far back then, but still have fond memories of the apparent vastness of the playground that it already provided.

Some years ago I got an Xbox, and bought Elite: Dangerous right away. I failed miserably at landing training and shelved it. Then somehow, early 2019, I retried and really got into the groove.

What keeps me playing ever since, is the vastness and diversity and non-story-drivenness – making me playing it, on my pace, always enjoyable.

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

My commander name and gamertag is actually an old nickname that was given to me by friends back in university days, being an allusion to my fondness of certain Monty Python movies and movie scenes. Find The Fish!

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

Oh, hmm… funny what popped up in my mind for this question is actually a quite non-consequential element, gameplay wise, which nevertheless impressed me. I was visiting Jameson’s Cobra for the first time, gathering data mats, and on leaving the site, noticed that in the same system there was another human signal source, on a different moon. I went there and discovered (for me…) one of the old INRA sites, which you can drive around in an SRV and read some interesting data link stories about on site.

Very atmospheric.

What made you decide to join The Fatherhood?

After a few months of playing and using Inara, I realized that squadrons were a thing in the first place, and for a few weeks, looked around their presentations there on Inara. The Fatherhood stood clearly out for its “when kids go to bed” motto and general approach to casual, at your own pace gameplay. So that’s why, and I never ever regretted the choice.

Tell us about your favorite ship in the game.

My favorite, although I haven’t played it for a while, is my Chieftain, the TFS Ethic Compromise. It was the first ship I engineered with some direction and purpose, learning from the great guys in #ship-crafting, and using it when starting to participate in our BGS efforts by running CZ support. It is the ship that made me enjoy PvE combat.