Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 95 – March 25th.

We manage to roll well and sell the boats (5,400), the extra boat guns (150), the U-bots (300) and purchase hypercharges. Hypercharges set us back 1000. We also buy Ace a PS bot at 600.

We dish out 585 to the crew, pay the 1600 for the hypercharges and the PS-bot. We pocket 3,665 today.

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe nothing.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.

Cargo of note:
4 CU Status Unit (e103),
9 Side Arms TL-1
2 TL-4 heavy hand weapons with explosive effects,
5 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
4 Doses of pheromones (e009) in Duke’s pocket,
and the ship is fueled with 5 hypercharges.

1 Alicorn starship with TL-1 Guns. We owe nothing.
1 Hopper with TL-2 Boat guns,

Cargo of note:
5 Military U-suits (e044)
5 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
and the ship is fueled with 5 hypercharges.

We have 203,860 in cash and we are wanted on Palatek.

Morphing Styles - Emily Revisited

I've been rocking out so much work, my hands hurt. Better than being bored. I've been drawing a lot of inspiration from my wife, Kitty and my daughter, Cat. 

The first image I did over the weekend was actually sparked by a class I'm taking, Children's Lit. It's Prince Philip and Aurora under a tree. After I got my groove on, I started taking requests. That lead to Alice then Ariel. I've been working entirely in ink up to this point. Well, not "entirely", I sketched out the designs in pencil first and then diligently erased the lines.

The final request was from Kitty and was really outside of my comfort zone. It was Marie from Aristocats. I love the artwork in this movie, it's classic 1970's stuff. In many parts of the film you can still see guide and the sketch lines under the colorful animation.

I don't remotely work in this style but decided to give it a shot. I worked with only two pens and 4 colored pencils. I can't say that I am entirely comfortable with the colored pencils, as I am more of a charcoal or ink sort of guy, but I really enjoyed the process.

I don't even own a set of colored pencils, I raided Cat's school supplies for them. I worked until about 2 am last night to get it done and framed.

I have to say, framing up 3 of four pieces of art in as many days feels good. But now I am Disney'ed out. I want to get back to my own favorite subjects.

A few weeks ago, I accidentally closed an open pen in my sketchbook, marring a favorite drawing of a character named Emily. I did have a photo of the sketch which I thought would help recreate it. I was going to throw it on my lightboard and go at it. But I was still feeling adventurous and decided not to redo something that I felt was done. Instead, I set out to create a new pose of Emily, in the classic Rosie the Riveter style. To enhance the retro feel, I replaced her 1980's styled space suit with one from the Mercury missions.

I had thought that this would be another ink job, but as I worked with my daughter's colored pencils in reach, I decided to give them a try. It's missing something, so I know I be reworking her again. But the process was very enjoyable.  

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 93 to Day 94 – March 24st.

On Day 92 and 93, we take another two days of RRR for accelerated healing. Everyone is back to full health before we take off at a cost of 225 secs. My primary motive for doing this was resyncing the days to the real date.

I have never been clear on the mechanics of going from planet to planet. I think it takes one move out and one move in for a total of 2 hours. Maybe I’ll change that some day. We land at the spaceport with 8 hours or 8 rolls left.

We don’t manage to sell or buy anything useful today.

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe nothing.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.

Cargo of note:
1 Boat guns, TL-2,
4 CU Status Unit (e103),
9 Side Arms TL-1
2 TL-4 heavy hand weapons with explosive effects,
5 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
4 Doses of pheromones (e009) in Duke’s pocket,
3 U-bots,
and the ship is fueled with 5 hypercharges.

1 Alicorn starship with TL-1 Guns. We owe nothing.
1 Hopper with TL-2 Boat guns,

Cargo of note:
5 Military U-suits (e044)
5 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
and the ship is fueled with 5 hypercharges.

We have 200,195 in cash and we are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 92 – March 23rd.

We land at the colony and go for medical help. We pay 225 for 3 points of healing each and it takes all day. Healing is limited due to the tech level of the planet.

In the meantime, Emily sells the books we found for base price 12,000. We roll a 3 on the multiple table and this turns into 36,000. Nice. Each crewman receives 1% (360 secs.) of this leaving 32400 for Duke and Emily.

I’d like to unload these skimmers. It takes 2 hours to get skimmers from the list. We sell them for 90 each or 360 secs. total. Again, the crew gets a cut of 1%. We’ll round to four secs. each and we take in 320 secs.

Today is done.

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe nothing.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.

Cargo of note:
1 Boat guns, TL-2,
4 CU Status Unit (e103),
9 Side Arms TL-1
2 TL-4 heavy hand weapons with explosive effects,
5 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
4 Doses of pheromones (e009) in Duke’s pocket,
3 U-bots,
and the ship is fueled with 5 hypercharges.


1 Alicorn starship with TL-1 Guns. We owe nothing.
1 Hopper with TL-2 Boat guns,

Cargo of note:
5 Military U-suits (e044)
5 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
and the ship is fueled with 5 hypercharges.

We have 200,420 in cash and we are wanted on Palatek.

Pandemic Radio for Sunday, March 22nd, 2020

Back in the day, I would've made you cassette tape but in this day and age, those are no longer supported. Even still, this is TheseOldGames and while technology changes the sentiment remains the same.

This series will continue as long as deemed interesting. You can also catch my latest daily series, Strictly (Duke) Springer here. If you like artwork, I also have a semi-series where I've been doing inking.



This list includes the following songs:

White Stripes - My Doorbell
Chumbawamba - Tubthumping
Len - Steal My Sunshine
Barenaked Ladies - One Week
Tegan and Sara - Closer
BTO - You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet
Tea Party - Heaven Coming Down
Delerium/Sarah McLachlan - Silence
Moby/Swen Stefani - Southside
Talking Heads - Burning Down the House

Youtube was selects as an option as I felt it would be the most accessible. Having said that, someone will probably get the message "Not available in your region/country".

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 082 to 91 – March 22nd.

Ok, time to cheat some more and change the parameters of these posts. We are going to spend a whole week here in this one post, as each roll takes 5 hours or half a day.

Doc, Ratchet, Bones, Ace and Lucy are staying on the ships to guard them. They actually have very little combat abilities, it’s more to keep them out of the way. In Duke’s group, we have Lefty and Jon. Emily has David and Deadeye. We are loaded for bear, each character has a Heavy Side Arm, a U-Suit and a PS-bot. The Ruins are pretty dangerous, which is why I left the non-combat characters behind. Ace doesn’t have a PS-bot, so I would have to take a medic along, which I don’t want to do.

Let’s look at the ships as they stand now. I have shuffled a lot of stuff around with only three parameters. First, each ship’s hopper must be able to serve as a lifeboat, so they need 6 empty CU. They are jammed packed with all kinds of things. I put some useful items in the crew quarters, u-suits and life support units. The Antelope has 34 empty cargo bay slots while Alicorn has 50. Theoretically, I could pack 10 or more items into other spaces on the ship, but I don’t want to do that.

I want to find a lot of items here, primarily skimmers and ship’s boats. They will eat up repair units to get them working but it will be worth it. Skimmers are worth a base of 30. Boats are worth a base price of 600 but have the special problem that they can’t get into orbit themselves and there is no place to sell them here. However, I can do the Russian doll trick and pack them into the cargo bay, one per ship and fly them to orbit and then to the next planet in this system. Theoretically, I have 5 pilots, so I could get 3 into orbit in one trip then pick up 2 more per ship for a total of 7. It’s tricky but doable.

Now, I have this cheat in place. Duke’s team will explore and Emily’s team will haul the stuff back to the ships. Technically it isn’t cheating, but I have a veritable army of helpers.

Day 82: we roll 7 and 9. Seven is a damaged skimmer and nine is a damaged robot, U-Bot. The Engineers get to work. The skimmer needs a repair unit as does the robot. We had 35 RU and are down to 33. Everything we find here is tech level one.

Day 83: we roll 10 and 2. We find a side arm and ship’s boat. The boat is needs 3 hits of repair. The skimmer and U-bot from yesterday are repaired. 

Day 84: We find some books in a room (e88) and an intact U-bot. The boat requires one day of repair with 2 engineers working on it. We are down to 30 RU.

Day 85: We find some damaged U-suits which may or may not work if repaired with a repair unit each. We chuck them as they are a waste of time and RU. We also find another room with 30 secs. worth of coins. The boat is repaired.

Day 86: More damaged U-suits, which we throw away. We also find a single RU. We now have 31 RU.

Day 87: We find a pair of damaged skimmers.

Day 88: We find another RU and a side arm. The skimmers from Day 6 are repaired. We now have 30 RU.

Day 89: We find a second boat with 2 hits and another intact U-bot.

Day 90: We get another RU and more damaged suits. The boat is repaired and we are down to 29 RU.

Day 91: We find an intact skimmer before disaster strikes. We get hit by a pulse of radiation and our suits causes a secondary flash which doubles the damage. Duke is down to 2 hits while Lefty and Jonathon are reduced to zero hits. Their PS-bots keep them alive until help arrives.

Here is our haul: 3 U-bots, 2 ships boats, 4 skimmers, a set of books (e88), 30 secs. in coins, and 2 TL-1 side arms. We have 29 RU left. Doc and Bones can keep Lefty and Jon alive, while Duke sits there, slightly charred.

On the display below, I don’t bother to show the u-bots and books. Each cargo bay is holding a 40 CU hopper and two 10 CU skimmers. We are ready for lift-off.

We are heading to the colony for healing and a used skimmer lot.

We have 167,925 in cash and we are still wanted on Palatek.