This page is actively being worked on. Information here may be inaccurate or incomplete. |
The Fuel Rats are a more or less flatly structured collective of equals. By necessity, there is SOME form of management in the form of the Ops Team and the Overseers, but by and large, the Mischief operates by means of unity towards a common goal. Disagreements are worked out by listening to each other, suggesting solutions, and (hopefully) deciding collectively what to do. Our collective is more like the communes of the ancient Greek philosophers Aristotle and Epicurus: they did not need government or leaders because they were basically in agreement about what needed to be done. The “collective” is a team, sharing a common goal. Military units have to resort to hierarchical command-structures in order to get people to do the right thing in a situation where disagreement is fostered by political pressure. In the Fuel Rats we prefer to expect people to do the right thing. If someone doesn’t fit in, they’ll get polite suggestions to find another hobby than Fuel Ratting.
Even though we are leaderless, we are a collective; the actions of each individual reflect on how others perceive the collective. Every one of us makes all the Fuel Rats collective look good. Which also means that if one of us is misbehaving, they make all of us look bad. If one Fuel Rat feels another is making the collective look bad, your starting move should be: “Hey, please think how your behavior reflects on the collective.”
We are The Good Guys and first and foremost our job – our only job – is to save stranded pilots quickly, courteously, and professionally. Some of us are fairly serious role-players. By all means, role-play if you like. Or not. If one of your fellow Rats is role-playing, it’s probably nice if you play along.
Since the game hasn’t got a very good fee-structure or means of exchanging wealth, we talk a lot about charging a 100t of platinum, an arm, or a liver. If you want to work something out or role-play something with a rescuee, have fun.
Please do not mix other game-play with your Fuel Ratting; while you’re out on a rescue, you represent the lot of us. If you decide to get creative, just be thoughtful.
The Fuel Rats are not a war guild. Yes, we’ll equip good shields, fast ships, even guns, but it’s hugely unlikely that a Rat-pack will go to war. After all, many of the Rats are on different sides and factions. When we’re being Fuel Rats, we’re all on one side: The Fuel Rats. Otherwise… it gets complicated.
The Doctrine of Individual Excellence: If we do our best, individually, then collectively we’ll be awesome. |
In truth, any ship can be made to serve as a Ratting ship, although the nature of our service often leads to certain types of ships being preferred. The most frequent ship to be found in the hands of Rats are the Asp Explorer (The RAsp) and the Anaconda (Rataconda), due to their superior jump range and flexible modules.
There are a few things that come as a bare minimum to enable your ship to refuel another though:
Note that you do not need a dedicated Rat ship to do your ratting in. Many rats prefer to customize their ship for ratting by using light, class D modules and foregoing weaponry for added jump range and speed, but as long as your ship has a fuel transfer limpet controller and a few limpets, any ship in your shipyard can be used for ratting. People often rat 'on the side' while out doing other things, like mining, exploring or combat. Especially on long range exploration trips, many a client has been saved by a rat that just happened to be in the neighborhood, rather than thousands of light years away. |
IRC is our communications backbone, and where all our rescue activity takes place. Although we have a presence on both Reddit, the Elite: Dangerous forums, Discord and various other media, 99.9% of our rescues happen on IRC, with the other media mostly serving to help get our clients to IRC.
Our IRC network is irc.fuelrats.com, which is served by two servers; one in the EU and one in the US (irc.eu.fuelrats.com and irc.us.fuelrats.com). Clients are primarily connected to the US server, falling back to the EU server if the US server should, for some reason, be down. Clients connect using a customized KiwiIRC web client, which presents them with a form requesting important information, such as their commander name, their platform (PC or Xbox), their location, and their O2 status. Once they fill out the form, they are connected to our IRC server, and sent to the rescue channel, #fuelrats.
The #fuelrats channel is meant for rescue traffic only, and chatting should only happen in #RatChat. |
Once the client is connected, our trusty IRC Bot, MechaSqueak, is notified of the new case and triggers a Ratsignal, a word that most Rats have set up as a highlight to warn them of new cases. From there, a rat currently holding the role of Dispatcher handles the case workflow.
Primarily, the client communicates with the Dispatcher, and the rats communicate with Dispatch in the IRC channel. Once assigned on a case and winged up with the client, the rats can freely communicate directly with the client through in-game text or voice chat.
Although we keep the #FuelRats chat channel very brief and almost mechanical-sounding, the in-game voice and text chat is an opportunity to give the client a good experience. Some CMDRs like to roleplay; feel free to play along with them. Others appreciate a more informal, out of character tone. Adaptability is your greatest resource here. Our first priority is of course to give them fuel, but our second priority is turning a crisis situation into an enjoyable game experience. |
While on a case, your primary task is getting to the client as quickly as possible, which usually means you will spend most of your time enroute on the "jump-honk-scoop-jump" cycle. During this time, you will also receive friend and wing invites from the client, which you need to report receipt of back to Dispatch. Most rats do this while in witchspace between systems.
Been spending most of your time in Solo until now? Check out the Wing Mechanics Tutorial |
The most important things to report are:
Confused by the above terms? Consult The Fuel Rats Lexicon |
To see both an annotated example of a rescue and some real rescue chatter from #FuelRats, click here. |
Top Speed: 250 (340) | |
---|---|
The Rat King – Anaconda : OK, now you're just showing off... At least it isn’t gold. Top Speed:180 (240) | |
Speed: 200 (300) | |
The Usain “Rat” Bolt – Cobra MK III : Quick and nimble. Your clients will wonder what that blur was. Top Speed: 290 (415) Fuel Capacity: 16tCargo Capacity: 20t Unladen range: 27.20LY Full tank range: 25.63LY Fully laden range: 23.55LY | |
The Dad Rat – T6 Transporter : Fill your bathtub with fuel, this can ONLY end well. Top Speed: 230 (366) | |
Top Speed: 253 (331) |
"Client Arrival" -> "Normal Rescue" -> "Dispatch preps client" -> "Rats call jumps" -> "Dispatch assigns rats" -> "Rats travel to client" -> "Refueling" -> "Debrief and paperwork" "Client Arrival" -> "Code Red Rescue" -> "Dispatch logs client out" -> "Rats call jumps" "Rats travel to client" -> "Dispatch logs client in" -> "Refueling" |
No two rescues are the same. Even though many of our rescues run through our standard operating procedures like Snickers hot off the factory line, we are quite frequently faced with situations that fall outside of what our SOP covers. Long Range Rescues, escort missions due to broken fuel scoops, nudging SRVs that have gone orbital back to the surface - The Fuel Rats are sometimes called upon to do some very weird rescues. And for the most part, we try to help those too, even if it falls outside our standard job description. Some of them are covered in our Special Rescue Scenarios page.
Elite: Dangerous has a steep learning curve, and many newbie players find themselves in need of calling upon our services. Some make common mistakes that we have included procedures to help avoid. Find out more about them on our Common Client Mistakes page.
No matter how good our SOP has become over time, we are still at the mercy of Murphy's Law, and sometimes things do not go quite according to plan. Some of these things, we have learned to work around - in most cases. Take a look at Issues and How to Solve Them. For the Xbox platform, we have some additional information in Xbox Troubleshooting.
Once the client has received fuel, we share some information with them to help prevent them ever needing our services again - although some people apparently love us a lot, as they keep coming back. This Debriefing Guide serves as a good reference for the knowledge we want to impart to our clients.
With the client debriefed and safely on their way home, Dispatch should have cleared the case, and if you had the honor of getting the first limpet of fuel to the client, you will have a private message from MechaSqueak, containing a link to our paperwork form. This is where you file any notes about the rescue, and whether it was a success or a failure. Once you have finished the paperwork, it is common courtesy to notify dispatch that you have completed it.