Equipment
Your ship starts with 8 bars from of power from your reactor, for things beyond the most basic ship functions. Some things, like the control room and pilots seat, do not use much power and run off this system power. The engines, shields, and weapons, however, require enormous amounts of energy to operate.
Shield Lv1 - You currently have one level of shield. Each level of shield takes 2 power and prevents one laser hit (before collapsing) or one level of beam (without collapsing).
Weapons (4 hard points) - You currently have three bars to apply to weapons - but you can choose your initial loadout. More on that later. You can only ever have four weapons at once on the Kestrel.
Engines Lv2 - You currently have two bars towards your engine, which is your max.
You have a level 1 life support (using up your final bar), a level 1 medbay (currently unpowered), and basic doors, sensors (cameras on board the ship), and no autopilot.
You also have a basic retrieval arm for spacework, and a decent amount of hanger space to store things of value (which runs under pretty much the entirety of the ship). Together, these will allow you to collect and store valuable from defeated enemies, which can be traded for ship improvements or new equipment.
About weapons
There are five main types of weapons in this game:
Lasers: Actually more like plasma, these high velocity energy weapons deal a point of damage each, but often fire and burts and generally recharge more quickly than other weapons. They are stopped by shields, but destroy a level of shield.
Missiles: Homing missiles move slow enough that they can penetrate enemy shields. Unlike lasers, however, missiles can not simply be created from reactor energy - they are complex, expensive devices.
Beams: These weapons offer the best damage per time unit return in the game, and they have a small amount of shield piercing. Rather than stopping them, shields merely reduce their effectiveness (and they do not collapse the shield). Few beams, however, are powerful to even penetrate one level of shield, and without something to knock it down they are useless.
Ion Weapons: These weapons fire a special kind of energy that disrupts enemy systems. Hitting an enemy shield disrupts the enemies shield generator as if it was hit directly. Ion damage does not last forever, but it cannot be repaired either - The effect from an ion weapon lasts for four turns.
Bombs: These items get teleported directly into the enemy ship, bypassing shields and other defenses! Unfortunately, they don't carry enough yield to do significant damage to the ship itself, but they are more than capable of killing personnel, setting fires, and wrecking enemy stations and subsystems.
So, let's pick some weapons...
Pick your weapons, and we'll be ready to head out! We have a few options available here, so pick, crew! (Also, claim your starting stations)
Quadgunner: You start with 4x Laser Mark I. These each send out a single laser, and can be fired every other turn. Spreading your offense out over several weapons and hardpoints makes you capable of continuing the assault even if two are damaged, but it does limit your upgrade options - you will end up having to replace weapons instead of simply adding new ones. And you'll have to more a bar of energy from somewhere else to power them all.
Federation Standard: You start with 1 Laser Mark II and an Artemis brand missile launcher, as well as a half dozen missiles. The Mark II uses up two bars of energy, but fires 3 laser blasts in the same amount of time it takes the Mark I to fire once! A definite upgrade. The Artemis missile launcher is a fairly standard model, dealing 2 points of damage on impact.
The Hullfucker: You start with a Breach Missile Launcher, which takes 3 bars and deals 4 damage, in addition to creating a breach state - that means that the hole it creates is simply to big for the ships automated response to close - sucking all the air out of the room struck, and maybe even anyone located IN the room at the time, if they survive the blast. You also get a dozen missiles.
The Ionizer: You gain an Ion Blast Mark II. This weapon can fire every single turn, dealing 2 points of ion damage to whatever it hits. However, your offensive capabilities are limited - most likely, you'll have to disable their defenses and propulsion, and then send a boarding crew over in the shuttle to take the ship in hand to hand combat.
And finally...
You might also want to decide on your starting stations. In a turn of combat, remember, you can move up to three rooms, (except Rocks, who can move 1, and Mantis, who can move 6). At least one of you needs to pilot.
Once your choices have been made, we'll make our first jump!
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Topic: Faster Than Light: Roll to Jump (Read 11515 times)