Special Abilities
The Colonials have developed two abilities to help them impose peace to the Echo Cluster. One in a unique ability and the other is shared by only two other races. The unique ability possessed by the Colonials is the ability to sweep mine fields with their fighters, the other ability is to build fighters in space.
Building Fighters in Space
The Lost Colonies of Man have 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 need to 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.
At the main starship screen you press the [M] key to bring up the primary mission menu (Table 2.5 pg. 26). From here, 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 Colonials have somehow stolen or captured a cloaking starship.
Sweeping Mines With Fighters
The Colonials , to keep their fighter pilots in practice, have developed the tactic of letting their fighter squadrons fly out up to 100 light years from the carrier and use their fighters to attack and destroy enemy mines.
The number of mines that each fighter is able to destroy is decided in the HCONFIG.EXE program. The recommended setting for this switch is twenty (20). This gives the Colonials a unique advantage that they can use and will cause the other races to be wary of them. It, also, makes them a natural enemy for the Robots.
The Lost Colonies of Man’s Fleet
The Colonials share many starship designs with the Rebels. They have a wide variety of small through large starships to choose from. Their flagship is the Tech 10 Virgo Class Battlestar. This starship can hold up to forty (40) more fighters than the Evil Empire’s battlecarrier and it is only half the size.
Other Special Abilities of The Colonials
Raceplus
The unmatched ability of the Colonial fighter pilots is once again demonstrated by their new ability, Stealth Fighter Gather mission.
This new ability is race specific to the combination of the Sagittarius and Gemini class ships. This mission only has one configuration. This configuration is determines the maximum fail rate of the Stealth Fighter Gather mission (SFG). It is ranged between 5-50%.
This new mission is linked to the ability of the Colonials to have excellent fighter and ship to ship communication. The combination of the Sagittarius and Gemini allows for unprecedented levels of this communication. This mission will allow fighters from a Colonial Sagittarius to sneak onto an enemy planet and steal a unit of fuel, supplies,
To initiate this mission you need fighters, a Sagittarius, a Gemini and a target planet. To start this mission you need to have the fighters on the Sagittarius. The Gemini and the Sagittarius need to be at the same point in space and they need to be with in 100 LY or less of a target planet.
When you perform the mission you set the Sagittarius to intercept the target Gemini (the one to receive the minerals) and you set its friendly code to ‘SFG’. You then set the friendly code of the Gemini to equal the target (planet you want to gather from) planet’s ID# . You also, need to set its mission to GATHER X, where X is one of the items you can select to be gathered.
When this is done the fighters will launch and raid the planet. The planet does have some measure of defense against this mission. The planets defense outposts can help protect from the effects of this mission. The number of defense outposts will determine the percent chance to catch the fighters coming into the planet. (i.e., 20 defense outposts = a 20% chance to catch a fighter sneaking in). If a fighter is caught it is destroyed. The max. percentage of being caught is determined in the configuration setting (5-50%). You can have more defense outposts than this but it does not improve your odds of catching the fighters, the pilots are just to impressive.
The calculation for being caught is done as follows. The program looks at the number of defense outposts and uses that as a base number for shooting down fighters. If the number of defense outposts exceeds the configured maximum, the maximum is used for calculating fight shoot down. This final number is both the chance to be caught and if caught, the percent of fighters possibly lost. A mission that has a 30% failure chance and is caught, will loose up to 30% of the fighters used in that sortie.
If an ally wishes to allow you to raid his planet and not shoot you down. He can select the planetary fcode of ‘SFG’ for his planet. You can raid a planet with SFG fcode and will not be shot at.
The fighters, after gathering, fly back to the Gemini and deposit their minerals there and then return to the Sagittarius before movement commences.
Gryphon & Jupiter
Fighter-vs-base strike.
WARNING: this mission needs host 3.2.015 to allow for base destruction. With prior versions of host, the base will be damaged but not destroyed.
The colonial ships can send fighters to attack enemy bases. Several ships can join their fighter squadrons to attack a base at an enemy planet by using the FC “FBA”, setting the warp factor to 0 and waypoint to the target planet. The attack value of an attacking fighter is 4 * (120%). The defensive value of a fighter is 4, a defense outpost is 1. Only fighters and defenses of a starbase participate in defense. The following is the algorithm used to determine the outcome of the battle:
while (there are attackers) and (there are defenders) do begin
if – (random (attackers*skill-of-pilots) > random(defenders) then increment base’s damage
if – (random (attackers*skill-of-pilots) > random(defenders) then decrement defenders
if – (random (attackers*skill-of-pilots) <= random (defenders) then decrement attackers
if – base’s damage >= 100 then kill all defendersend – if there are no defenders left then destroy the base.
The surviving fighters DO NOT RETURN from the mission.
NOTE: To prevent this ability’s abuse in the end-game, it is performed in auxhost2 phase, after movement and combat.
Nemesis & Jupiter
Anti-Defense mission.
A fully loaded Colonial Patriot class carrier can send its fighters on an anti-defense mission. The fighters will cross the space and attempt to destroy enemy defense outposts, if the Patriot’s FC is set to “KDP”, Kill Defense Posts, warp factor to 0, waypoint to an enemy planet and the primary enemy to the race that owns the planet. A number of outposts will be destroyed and a number of fighters will be shot down, depending on fighter pilots’ skill as set in NMCONFIG. Do not forget that only a full Patriot can do this mission. The Patriot must also have fuel.
Please be advised that the planet’s population will build decoys when the number of their defense outposts comes down. When the planet is completely stripped of its defenses, it will display its decoys to lure the fighters in. THERE IS NO WAY that the Colonial fighters will be able to detect these decoys! If a planet has no defenses left and a Patriot sends the fighters on a KDP mission, they will report destroying x number of defenses, however all they got were decoys and no real damage was caused. KDP cannot be given away in a team game.
Sub-space bubble.
THIS IS TIMHOST-ONLY MISSION. IT CANNOT BE DONE WITH PHOST.
Any starship that belongs to the Colonies has a bubble device that can create a subspace bubble around the ship and propel it forward, in any direction. The ships enclosed in these bubbles are partially out of this universe and exhibit some special properties. Their properties include BUT ARE NOT LIMITED to: they totally ignore any and all mine and web mine fields; they do NOT engage in combat at the end of their movement phase; they are not affected by ion storms (unless they end their move in the middle of one, in which case they will be subject to normal ion storm movement/damage); they can resist towing (including cloaked-tow); they are not affected by fascist missiles (unless they end their move on a target planet); they cannot be forced to surrender; they are not affected by gravity wells of planets (this means a colonial ship can end its move 1 ly away from a planet); they cannot be robbed. To create a subspace bubble, starships use fuel.
The fuel use formula is: new_fuel=round(fuel-20 (hull_mass+cargo+fuel+number_of_torps_or_fighters)/(drive_tech_level+1))
As evident from the formula, the distance traveled does not matter; ships moving 1 ly use as much fuel as those that move 80 lys. The maximum amount traveled within a bubble is 81 ly, disregarding the drive_tech_level. The waypoint must be between 1 and 80 lys away and warp greater than 0 in order for the space bubble to work. You can’t use the bubble to sit in one spot! The FCode to use it is ISB, Initiate Subspace Bubble.
Team game note: due to the many common ships between the colonies and other races, only the following ships are available in team game for non-colonials: Cobol, Aries, Virgo, Scorpious. Colonials can still use all their ships.
Note: The cobol class ship will NOT make any fuel while in the bubble.