Paola Rinaldo

	Paola Rinaldo
Paola earns 8 when contact is made with Kivanç via the Comms Terminal.
Skills:
1	Radio Expert
2	Logistics Expert
3	Shooter
4	Biologist
5	Rebel
6	Gunner
Position on title lists:
#12	Commander
#10	NERON Administrator
#1	Communications Officer

Paola Rinaldo is the daughter of the ship owner Gioele Rinaldo. She lives in the constant hope of leading an adventure which will shake up her life. To denounce the Federation's post-colonial system, she starts a pirate radio station on campus with her boyfriend Kivanç Terzi. During one of their shows, she accidentally intercepts disturbing communications informing her of an impending Mush invasion. Fleeing for her life, she meets up with her father who permits her to board the Daedalus, abandoning the man of her life on Earth.

How to play

Paola's main task is to work on Communications. This takes a lot of and can only be performed by her alone (once the connection is up), which means that the crew will expect her to focus almost exclusively on it. In turn, they will usually work to help her gain by building the Swedish Sofa on the Bridge for her to sleep on, and she is encouraged to eat as many Standard Rations as she needs, ideally sharing the Stainproof Apron with the Laboratory crew to avoid getting dirty.

With some support on the connection, a good Paola can then do 2-3 NERON upgrades, get the day 3 base and go through all of Xyloph before the day 5 base comes up.

However, she is not detached from what is going on, as her General Announcement ability leaves her with a responsibility to inform and organize the crew - if not by herself, then at least helping out the acting Commander by relaying their messages over the ship's speakers.

Bronze

Radio Expert: Paola's first skill. This ability saves the crew a few when (re-)establishing the signal, and lets you do this yourself more easily, but that is basically it. Logistics Expert offers a better bonus in terms of .

Logistics Expert: Paola's most valuable skill. And people will love to hang around with you! It is most often used to give Frieda(or any other Astrophysicist) additional for their Astrophysics job. Alternatively Jin Su with Logistics Expert and the sofa on the Bridge will help you gain 3 per cycle for communications.

Shooter: Allows you to help shooting Hunters by using your free Shooter Points in the Front Turrets, or fight a Pacifist Mush. But Logistics Expert is a better choice, allowing others to shoot even more (though using turrets is generally wasteful anyway).

Biologist: Better than Shooter, and potentially vital, but still worse than Logistics Expert. With this skill you can help out the research team once all Comms tasks are finished or if there is a break between Rebel Bases.

Rebel: Paola's unique skill. Its (mediocre) value comes from saving on decoding Rebel Bases, similar to the Kivanç bonus. Should only be taken if you plan to decode many of those. Logistics Expert is still more useful in general.

Gunner: Paola's latest skill. A good alternative to Biologist when it comes to finding an occupation after Comms are done, especially on very long ships.

Silver

Logistics Expert / Radio Expert: Cheap to acquire and generally useful, this will help others help you.

Logistics Expert / Shooter: Allows you to power the bridge and also shoot some Hunters or Pacifist protected players using .

Logistics Expert / Biologist: This will enable you to become valuable part of the research team later in the game.

Logistics Expert / Rebel: A good combination if you don't want to miss any Rebel Bases.

Logistics Expert / Gunner: More specialized than Shooter, but also more effecive at what it does.

Gold

Logistics Expert should always be picked if available. Other skills depend on the situation and your preferences, with Shooter and Gunner making an effective combination.

Mush

With no excuse to get Dirty except eating without the Stainproof Apron (which is not hard for her to get) and a narrowly defined task that is also easy to check, a Mush Paola usually has little choice but to mimic a human for the longest time.

She has good reason to wait for her moment, however: If the crew is not aware and cautious, trading an inactive (or even active!) character for PILGRED and then doing a Transfer into the acting Commander can instantly end the game in a win with little effort, making a Mush Paola a more dangerous "rusher" than Raluca!

Useful tips

• If you don't have a Swedish Sofa, there is a good solution: You can sleep in the Medlab bed while Finola/ Andie can stand next to you and benefit from Logistics Expert instead. If there are inactives on the bridge, then let Frieda take the sofa and do the same!

• Since Paola is the default Communications Officer, she does not need her iTrakie/ Walkie Talkie to talk and can drop it to free up an inventory slot.

• In the later game when all Comms work is done, you should pick between Shooter, Gunner or Biologist, depending on the state of research and whether you have a Pilot Magebook.

• Picking Biologist in the early game is a mistake. You do not have a lot of AP - and you should use them to update Neron, decode signals and access Xyloph. In the late game, it might be pointless as well, if you have a working team of researchers and the Mush are dead.

Biography

3131 

Born on Earth, in Italy.

3146 

First expedition off-Earth: At the age of 15, Paola ran away with a troop of space mercenaries. She meets an alter-universalist commune of neo-hippies on Mars IV which heightens her sensitivity to the plight of the miners on Tau-Ceti. Her father finally takes Paula back to Earth at the end of the year.

3148 

Paola is sent to Rome to the University of San Lorenzo to study structural biology. Despite her poor attendance, she got good results. At this time, Paola set up her first pirate radio station where she denounced the expansionist policies of the federation. The war on Sol and the ever-reducing education budgets were two of her favourite topics. She definitively cut all ties with her father who as a director of a company using prisoners to mine mineral deposits is directly involved in the shifting colonialist policies of the PresidentGL Maubrick.

3149 

Paola meets Kivanç Terzi, a Turkish student who helps her set up her antennae. After losing two transmitters which were wrecked by local police, they pooled their collective knowledge to come up with a revolutionary olfactory method of communication. By projecting synthetic pheromones over short distances, they managed to transmit information without transmitting detectable waves. They could then start broadcasting again and the campus police couldn't do a thing.

3150 

Following the uprising on Ross248, the government ignore the protests and make Mush the scapegoat for any and all injustices. Paola is outraged by this false incrimination and resolves to prove that the people of Tau-Ceti and Ross248 had nothing to do with the bloodthirsty man-shrooms described in the federal announcements. That same year, Kivanç detected unusual interference on the olfactory broadcast channel, but didn't pay it any attention.

3151 

When the interference increased, Kivanç and Paola identified exchanges in an unknown language. Kinvanç started trying to decrypt the language and managed to decipher the most commonly recurring messages. They talk about the "purification of the Sol system", "the transfer of violent subjects", and even "the spore bank". He is finally arrested the following month during an anti-spongic check by the FDS.

3152 

Gioele contacts his daughter to warn her of imminent danger. The Mush invasion described by the government 3 years ago is real. The entire Sol system is under threat. He offers her a place aboard his Ark-World project ship, the Daedalus, which must save the human race from certain demise. Paola accepts but she wants to save Kivanç first. he is being held in a detention centre in France. She asks her father to transfer him to Titan and into one of his mining colonies.

3154 

48h before the operation to help Kivanç escape, a tragic accident obliges the crew of the Daedalus to move their departure forward. Paola must decide to leave Sol without Kivanç but she vows to get back in touch with him no matter the distance between them.