Special Abilities

The Robotic Imperium has two special abilities that are very useful to them in the pursuit of the conquest of the Echo Cluster. This race has the ability to construct fighters onboard their carriers and they can, also, cause their torpedoes to yield four times as many mines as any other race.

Building Fighters in Space

The Robotic Imperium has the ability to construct fighters in space by using free space in their carrier starships cargo holds. To do this the starship needs at least 3 Tritanium, 2 Molybdenum and 5 supply units for each fighter you wish to build. Once you have these resources on the starship you select it’s primary mission to Build Fighters. The next turn the resources will be replaced with fighters.

How to Initiate The Build Fighter Mission

To select the Build Fighters you must be at the starship menu screen. To get to this screen, press the [F1] key from anywhere in the game, and then up or down arrow through the list of starships until you find the starship for which you wish to select a mission. When the starship is in the selection box you press the [ENTER] key.

Once at the main starship screen you 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 Build Fighters mission ([9]). Now the Build Fighters mission is selected. Remember that cloaking starships will not remain cloaked while doing the Build Fighters mission, if the Robotics have somehow stolen or captured a cloaking starship.

Laying Four Times as Many Mines

The Robotic Imperium’s ability to generate higher yield on their torpedoes in not a selectable ability. Whenever the Robotic Imperium’s starships lay a mine field (pg. 28-29) it will produce four times the yield as any other race. This means that you take the equation, Figure 2.2 on page 29, and multiply it by four to determine the number of mines produced by the Robotic Imperium.

The Robotic Imperium’s Fleet

The majority of the Robotic Imperium’s fleet is designed around the basestar fighter carrier design. While even the fuel tanker of this race is capable of launching fighters they only have one starship capable of launching torpedoes. The choice starship of the fleet is the Tech 6 Instrumentality Class Baseship. This starship is the size of a battleship and can carry up to eighty (80) fighters. Their largest basestar, the Golem, can carry up to 300 fighters.

Other Special Abilities of The Robotic Imperium

Raceplus

The Robotics now have a new ability added to their Cybernaut Class ship. The Cybernaut now has the ability to repair other vessels in space, without supplies. They can also repair Robotic crew members by using supplies.

The Cybernaut mission is activated by selecting the friendly code of ‘RDV’. This will cause the Cybernaut to repair the most damaged vessel at its location. If the vessel is a Robotic ship the Cybernaut will repair (fix / restock) 5 Robotic crewman per 1 supplies onboard the Cybernaut. This mission requires that the Cybernaut be under Robotic control and that it have at least 1 unit of fuel.

Gryphon & Jupiter

Cloaker Detect.

The Robotic Pawn class Baseship may detect the computer emissions of enemy cloaked vessels nearby. With the FC of “DEC” and warp factor 0, a Pawn may detect cloaked ships of all races and super-spying Birds up to (49) ly away with (50%) probability. The computer chief will also report the warp factor the ship is under, and will attempt to identify the race that owns the ship. That cannot always be accomplished, though, and in (50%) of the cases, the computer chief will report a randomly chosen race, that may or may not be the correct one. (in the other 50% of the cases, the correct race will be reported). The host may choose if the race of the cloaker receives a message about detection. NOTE: The Pawn on this mission cannot be towed.

Mass Drivers.

As an alternative to small/medium/large Deep space freighters, the Robots may now use Mass Drivers to transport minerals or supplies to distant planets. This requires that a ship with hull mass over 100 is stationed above the “source” planet. The ship must use the FC “MDx”, where x is the mineral to transport: “M” for moly, “D” for duranium, “T” for tritanium, “N” for fuel and “S” for supplies, have more than (20) fuel, and set the waypoint to the “target” planet. The next turn, (100) units of the mineral requested would be transported over. NOTE: the target planet must be closer than (100) ly. It does not have to belong to the Robots.

Nemesis & Jupiter

Viral Field.

Due to their very nature, the Robots are proficient with computers. They have just found a way to establish a viral field. The field wipes the enemy ship’s computer core, erasing the ship’s name, resetting the FC to “VRF”, erasing destination, warp factor and transporter info. The ship that is caught in the viral field is effectively stopped dead in its tracks, unable to move, beam anything up/down and even cloak. In addition, the existing cloaking shield is no defense; Robotic viral field penetrates the cloak. Therefore, the Cybernaut, which is the only ship equipped with the viral field generator, can easily disable an entire enemy fleet and cause the enemy to assemble another one as the first fleet’s ships drift helplessly in space. To activate the Viral Field, set the Cybernaut’s FC to “VRF”, warp 0, and the enemy race to disable as primary enemy or mission kill for all races. The Cybernaut loses 5% of its crew to short-circuits as the enemy fights for control of its computers. The Cybernaut has to have at least 100 “crew-bots” to establish the field. The Cybernaut can neither move nor be towed if the field is to be maintained.

In order to prevent the creation of an impenetrable defense around the Robotic empire, no 2 Cybernauts can be present within 100 ly of each other. In this case, the Viral field will not work on both. In order to prevent an “unreachable” Cybernaut, the device cannot be operated from within a planet’s warp well (1-3 ly).

Build Colonists.

Any Robotic ship has an opportunity to build more robot colonists from minerals and supplies. The NMCONFIG lets you specify which mineral to use; 1 of that mineral, 1 supply and FC “BMR” will build more robots. For example, if NMCONFIG is set to Tritanium (default) then a ship having 100 tritanium and 100 supplies will construct 10000 shiny new robots, or 100 clans. This ability cannot be given away with team game.