Grouse posted: TL;DR: Lonely nostalgic (probably dumb) proxy suggests FireCon/X-Mode 3: A Firewall-wide body/ship swap held in multiple locations simultaneously. Meet those people you've been arguing with in on The Eye and "buy" them a drink for the sake of camaraderie. Also, body/ship laundering for the sake of transhumanity, hooray?! I know, that at least half of you Pragmatists out there are gonna scream at me "OMFG OPSEC" and "Waste of Time and Resources." I get that, but honestly, I don't think a little bit of relaxed org-wide team-building would come a miss. Especially considering how thankless our particular brand of "saving the world" is. But while I wasn't a hardcore Lifeboater or a Singularity Foundation guy before the Fall, I do remember going to some meet-ups, and chatting with likeminded people. (I'd describe myself at the time as more "Boat-curious" if anything.) (Now that I've offended half of you, time to offend the other half.) How many of you were at the Second Battle of Locus? Remember how awesome that party was? I'm sure any of us who were there appreciated actually being able to openly celebrate our accomplishment (for once). I mean, who hasn't gone out for a few drinks or a nice meal with their team once in a while? For that matter, this might be helpful for those who haven't been doing well lately. A time to relax and unwind with people who understand exactly the sort of crap they deal with on a daily basis? SOP says we've got some nice little out-of-the-way places where we store all sorts of stuff, like backup servers, morphs, ships, etc. Well, morph and ship stocks need to be re-balanced occasionally, right? I mean, it's pretty bad when the only biomorphs your body bank has in-stock are Neotenics, right? Or if the only synths left in stock are the three Reaper morphs that are technically only for base defence? Or if the only smallcraft you have is a squadron of surplus Titanian Fleet fighters? (That wasn't my fault, I swear it was an accident. We were in a hurry and I kinda forgot. (pls stop dinging my rep over it)) We have to periodically sort out our logistics anyway, right? Why not organize a Firewall body/ship swap? We're all professionals (unpaid, but still professionals nonetheless), we know how to talk about this stuff without violating opsec. Anyone not on a ship darkcasts in. I'm sure there'd be plenty of kill switches for you real paranoids. Hell, if you're worried about too many ships and people on a single remote asteroid, then I'm sure we've got more than one. We could set it up like buildings at an old-fashioned convention (FireCon or X-Mode 3?) and darkcast between various outposts if we wanna hang out with people there instead. We ship in some booze, food/feedstock, party favours (who *doesn't* know a scum drug dealer?), put on some music (I'll bring the French Folk Metal), and try playing Twister in zero-gee. I just miss the meet-ups, okay? They were fun. Even if we were discussing horrifying things and half of them wound up becoming true, it was still fun talking to people who "got it," you know? And I'm tired of only ever getting together with you people when all hell is breaking loose. PS: Sorry for the wall of text. (pls don't ding my rep over it)