Special Abilities

The Fascists are almost as sneaky as the Bird Men but not quite. The Fascists have only one special ability beyond the fact that three of their starship cloak, and that is the Pillage Plant mission.

The Pillage Planet Mission

The Pillage Planet mission causes a team of Fascist crew members to beam down to the planets surface and with the help of the starship they kill off 20% of the planets population, both native and colonist. The belongings of this 20% is then converted into supplies and megacredits that are left on the planets surface.

Plundering a planet for around six turns will cause riots on the planet. Plundering for about eleven turns will cause a civil war, but at this point very little of the population (if any) will be left. The reason that it takes so long for a civil war to start is because the Fascist crewmen round up any troublemakers on the planet and make sure that they are part of the 20% killed.

The Fascists can be made immune to the “ ATT ” and “ NUK ” planetary friendly codes. This is set in the HCONFIG.EXE program. It is recommended that the Fascists remain immune to the planetary attack codes, if they are not immune it severely inhibits their ability to be competitive.

How to Initiate The Pillage Planet Mission

To select the Pillage Planet mission you must go to the main starship screen. Press the [F1] key from anywhere in the game. Then toggle through the choice of starships until you find the starship you wish to Pillage Planet with and then press [ENTER] . This will take you to the main starship screen.

At the main starship screen press the [M] key to bring up the primary mission menu (Table 2.5 pg. 26). From here you press the key that corresponds with the Pillage Planet mission ( [9] ). Now the Pillage Planet mission is selected. Remember that cloaking starships will not remain cloaked while doing the Pillage Planet mission.

The Fascist Empire Fleet

The Fascists have not been able to master the construction of very large warships. Their fleet is comprised of many high massed medium sized starships. They, like the Feds, prefer the use of torpedoes over the fighters. Although they do not have many fighter carriers the Fascists do very well against fighter races due to their higher than average number of beam weapons per starship.

Other Special Abilities of the Fascists

Raceplus

The Fascists new ability is now linked to the D3 Thorn ship. This ship in the hands of the Fascists will allow them to perform a ship boarding mission. This means that they will beam a boarding crew aboard an enemy vessel and have the ability to capture the target ship.

There are two configurable and controllable portions to the Fascist’s mission (other than on or off). The first is the combat modifier of the boarding crew. This is a number between 1 – 4. This is the attack factor by which the number of crew in the boarding party is multiplied by. This resultant number will determine if you capture the ship or just kill enemy crew equal to the boarding party times their multiplier. (i.e., The 150 person boarding crew has an attack multiplier of 4. This mission will capture a ship with 600 or less crew, or kill off 600 crew, if the enemy ship had 601+ crew). The other configuration is the fail rate of the mission. This is a number between 0-30%. If the mission fails the boarding crew was detected coming aboard, isolated and spaced.

To perform this mission you need to meet several requirements. The ship must have at least 151 crew. It need to have 40 supplies and some fuel. To perform the mission you transfer at least 1 unit of fuel to the target ship. The friendly code needs to be set to BAC. This will cause 150 of the D3’s crew to beam over to the enemy ship. The supplies will then disappear. This is the point where the program checks the fail rate of the mission.

If the mission fails the Fascist crew was caught coming aboard and spaced. This does not cause anything to happen to the D3 (Fascists are immune to torture). If the mission succeeds the Fascists will kill a number of enemy crew equal to 150 times the attack multiplier. If this amount is greater than the crew of the target vessel it is captured and is then crewed by a 75 member Fascist crew. The other 75 are lost in battle against enemy crew and intruder defenses.

Gryphon, Nemesis & Jupiter

Deep space missiles.

In their infinite pursuit of destruction, the Fascist government authorized its ships’ captains to install long-range deep space missiles on all ships tech 6 and above. NOTE: the ships below tech 6, such as Ill Wind, will NOT be able to launch missiles. From now on, any ship with torp launchers and that is orbiting a Fascist planet will be able to launch three types of missiles: Anti-Fighter, Minefield, and Biological. Each missile costs 10 of each mineral and 20 fuel and moves at warp (7) straight toward its target, which has to be an orbit of a planet. To launch a missile, the ship has to be of tech level 6 or above, be orbiting a Fascist planet, have the necessary minerals in the cargo hold, warp factor 0 and set a waypoint to the target planet. The range of the missile is unlimited; but be aware that really long-range missiles could take a long time to get to their destinations.

The FC for Anti-Fighter missile is “LFM”. This kind of missile seeks out groups of fighters. If no ships or no ships with fighter bays or no ships with fighters are found, the missile has no effect; otherwise, it separates into many small warheads, each with individual targeting capabilities. Each warhead one of four things, with random probability:

1. completely misses. It would report “ship undamaged”
2. destroys a few fighters. It would report “X fighters destroyed”
3. destroys a lot of fighters (hit a squadron on patrol). It would report “X fighters destroyed”
4. follow a group of fighters into the ship and explode in a fighter bay.
   

In that case, a fighterbay is completely destroyed. (so now it is possible to see a Gorbie with fewer than 10 bays, for example).

NOTE: it is impossible to detroy a carrier’s only or last fighter bay.

To launch a Biological missile, set the FC to “LBM”. This missile would release bio-toxins into the planet’s atmosphere and have a (15%) chance per colonist to kill him. Therefore, the effects are largely unpredictable; the missile might either have no effect or decimate the entire population, but on average it will kill 15% of the population.

To launch a Minefield missile, set FC of “LMM”. This missile would deploy a (900)-mine-units minefield, with a radius of (30) ly.

NOTE: the minefields can be contained entirely inside one another! I.E. you can have two minefields at [2000:2000] and not have them join together. The missiles can be swept when they reach the target point, or at any point along its path (only in the end of turn).

To attempt to destroy the missile, you must set ships’ missions to mine sweep. The default chance of successfully sweeping a missile is TotalNumberOfBeamWeapons times BeamWeaponTechLevel times (100%). For example, a Biocide with 10 heavy phasers will have 10*10*(100%) or 100% chance. One Patriot with 2 Heavy Blasters will have 2*6*(100%) or 12% chance.

The planetary defense (not starbase defense) outposts also participate in this missile sweep. No special FC is required; the defenses will automatically attempt to sweep all approaching missiles. However, their effect is much smaller than that of ship-based weapons (each 10 defenses are equal one ship-based laser).

The damage levels are of course configurable. If the missile is detected in space (i.e. it has not yet reached its target) then a scan message is sent to the owner of the target planet every turn the missile is in flight (provided that the missile is in range), as well as to the missile’s owner advising of its status.

A player who owns the missile can destroy it at any time using planetary FCode “Dxx”, where xx is the missile’s ID number. This ability is transferred to non-fascist players during team game, but with a catch: the Fascists, showing uncommon foresight, have built-in an override frequency into each missile control unit they give away in their ships. A Fascist player can “push the big red button” for any missile in flight, whether launched by him or by someone else.

Board Base.

The Fascists from a Coldpain class Cruiser can board a base of an enemy race. If the assault is not repelled by the base troopers(the probability of the assault being repelled is number-of-defense-posts divided by 2 minus 25% plus (25%) from the GCONFIG program), the base is damaged (25%), all base fighters are smashed, half the defense outposts are broken, and all built components (hulls, engines, beams, and launchers) are destroyed. In addition, all stored torpedoes are beamed out into space. Some Fascist crewmen are killed during the assault; since only a fully-crewed Coldpain can do the board mission, the ship must return to a base to pick up additional crew. The Coldpain have FC of “BBx”, where x is anything (to prevent the capture of the ship), not be cloaked, warp 0, and not be towed.

NOTE: the damage to base is progressive; that means the first ship will damage a base to 25%, the next ship to 43%, the next to 58%, and so on. It is next to impossible to completely destroy a base by boarding it repeatedly.