Of all the things added in the last few weeks, the Border Skirmish is by far the most fun item ever. The only thing is, I know at least for me, my participation is temporary, because I'm UIT. I would like to suggest that for border missions (of which, according to the news post, there will be more of) you allow UIT players to pick sides. It feels like UIT are the bastard children of VO (no N3s, no sweet BP without group, etc) and I think it's unfortunate. There are certainly a lot of us out there. Let us UIT folks choose a side so we too can enjoy the best missions in the game.

What? Michael told me it was just based on standing. So if a UIT has good standing with Itani or Serco, they can fight on either side. Is that not the case?

For BS, it is the case now, but I thought that was temporary, for testing sake. Perhaps I misunderstood, which would be great! For BP, you cannot take it unless you are Itani or Serco. UITs have to be part of a group that takes the mission to join it.

I would like UIT to be able to take part in major engagements on either side, although they made be forced to permanently choose one side or the other in the nearer future.

The advantage to being either Itani or Serco, I hope, would be the ability to advance within the respective militaries and take a greater part in participating and commanding (!) engagements. UIT personnel would be restricted to lower-level supportive posts.

In this way UIT people would be able to participate while still retaining most of the benefits of being UIT, but the more dedicated Itani/Serco would be able to play greater parts in the war. There has to be some tradeoff, otherwise UIT becomes too advantageous.

IMO, it would be great to have it that way, although I don't think the UIT should be forced to take sides permanently (temporarily bombing standing with one nation, perhaps, bu it should be possible to always earn it back) - their neutrality should remain their advantage.

Border Skirmish Suggestions:

- Could you make some serco vults guardians and itani Border guardian warp in with the Cap ships?

- make the fleet seems like : 1 HAC 2 Teradon and 2 Tridents ( plus let say 10 light fighters)

- give us rewards (i've killed 2 of those natsy teradon and ain't got **** for it )

- MAKE IT A PERMANENT EVENT:
as every player flying through Deneb B12 should be the witness of huge and scary battles any time he across the place. Make the Cap Ship spawn back when one is killed. That should be nice , but ONLY if no player take the mission. we should be abble to eliminate the menace with a group of let say at leats 5 players. then the next menace should be appear one hour after players clean the sector.

[EDIT] Ho and the HAC should be abble to hold light fighters (vults and cents) and release them when one is killed.[/EDIT]

Now like other ppl says, the mission is JUST great. but you feel a little lonely for a war zone IMO .

"It feels like UIT are the bastard children of VO (no N3s, no sweet BP without group, etc) and I think it's unfortunate."

Oh and as for UITs, well stop whining or make an alt, well its kinda tough, but really, its a Itani/Serco conflict in an Itani/serco frontier...( where the hell is UIT in that?) I think let them participate as group members of whatever side they choose would be fair enough.

Good work guys !

I do not see the Border Skirmish mission in any of the Serco stations in Geria. What gives?

@thanatosTree:
they spawn every 4 hours.

Should be down to every 2 hours now.

Awesome Inc! And sweet about the 2 hours too! I'll completely choose a side!

mmmhm.. the UIT should supplant "Border Skirmishes" with "Uber Trade Missions of Great Justice (tm)" to Itani or Serco worlds.. give them the bang, give US the buck :D

Craig is right...the UIT are who they are because they didn't want to get involved in the serco/itani conflict and went elsewhere. If you are in VO to kill lots of smurfs, I applaud you. However, is generally out of character to do this as UIT.

Krazy/Craig, I might agree with you, except there is absolutely no way for a new player to know that UIT cannot do certain things when they first start playing the game. At the moment, there is NO advantage to being UIT. You can still become universally liked by all nations if you're so inclined no matter what your race, there are no UIT only missions, and UITs supposed trade advantages don't actually exist. In fact at the moment, being a UIT is only a disadvantage, because you cannot take BP missions on your own and can participate in CtC but not reap the benefits (no N3s).

We already know that this will change in the future. The new BS mission is a great indication. UIT can now pick a side, and atm, pick either side! It's awesome. The very fact that UIT are 'neutral' allow for a certain lattitude in their behavior. UIT are in it for the money, and so it follows that not only do they dominate trade, but they also dominate the mercenary and pirate trades as well.

I think the real advantage UIT should get would be a special trading mission between serco and itani.
It would give you huge money and XP and ONLY uit could choose it in UIT station of course!)

tumble, I agree that UIT should have some of its own special missions. I think there should be more of them for each nation (even for individual stations) and figure there will be...eventually.

N3s are nice, but if you're really worried about that, go try an AAP...I like them better. Unless you plan to do nothing but BP/BS, they will be as easy to obtain for a UIT working in yellow/grey space as an N3 would if you could buy them.

I did a lot of ctc in the past with Priapus, a UIT who did a ton of it for the Serco not because he wanted some material reward from it, but because it was a good time. I guess the UIT is stuck with that for now.

I finally got to try the BS mission today and wow.....

Those teradons are armed to the teeth. The uber cap ship guns, awesome, The gatling turrets, fun to dodge, capship guass, awesome. And i could have sworm that when i was at the underside of it even some neut like weapons shot at me. at any rate. they are a impressive piece of hardware.

The 3 waves of enemies also very cool

what would make it more fun is if more fighters came through with the teradons cause it starts with a wave of fighters, then a teradon, then another. if each of those came with escorts then the player would atleast have something to do besides becoming a one hit wonder for the defenses of the enemy ship as fun as that may be.

It'd also be, like, cool if, like, winning the mission gave more than 1200cr/kill and 300-1900xp/kill.