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Earth and Beyond Week - Day Four: Jupiter
- May 30, 2002 16:52 PM PST
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Travel to the moons of Jupiter in Day Four of our Earth and Beyond Week. The Jenquai explorers await.
The Jenquai are the descendents of mankind's greatest explorers, who settled the moons of Jupiter and made their lives in those low-gravity, harsh environments. While the low gravity of their new homes eventually made them physically weaker than their Terran and Progen counterparts, the Jenquai set their minds to perfection of the self rather than the body. When you start your Jenquai character, you'll immediately be confronted with the Jenquai philosophy and the way they put the problems of the mind first and the sculpting of the body second.
This philosophy extends to Jenquai ships, as well. As a Jenquai explorer you won't be the toughest ship in the galaxy, or even the fastest, but you'll have access to some wonderful toys that will make other ship captains green with envy. Your ship has more slots for system devices than any other, giving you the ability to tack on warp foci, scanner upgrades, and mining equipment that will make your ship much more efficient. While you can't stick three different weapons on your ship early in the game, you will use up less energy warping, and that cloaking device you get at level 10 will make sure you don't need to fire up the weapons you do have as often.
The life of an explorer is an exciting and often lonely one. Your basic job is to be the eyes of your people. Your scanners are much better than anyone else's, so you'll be aware of destinations and enemies much sooner than the rest of your group. You gain exploration experience by visiting these strange locations you find, and by taking the advantage to mine asteroids, moons, and long-abandoned hulks to find rare materials. When a trader needs a rare mineral to build a powerful weapon, he'll ask an explorer to go get it, and the explorer should know where to get the best minerals and how exactly to get there.
It's not all exploring and mining, though. An explorer has all sorts of tricks to aid his group in battle, as well as skills to help himself escape a difficult foe. Jenquai explorers can Fold Space, a skill which enables them to teleport themselves (and, at higher levels, their group) to a random location some distance away, allowing for a slick getaway. Explorers also gain the ability to cloak themselves, so they can enter deadly areas with relative safety, and they can Jumpstart incapacitated ships, essentially resurrecting them after a failed combat. As you can see, explorers are handy to have around, and not just when you need a mineral mined.
