Armoury OXP

Overview

This is a new meta-OXP containing the following of my older OXPs:

• Anti-Missile System
• Captured Thargons
• Drones
• Missile Rack
• Probe

It supercedes and updates those OXPs. If you have any of them installed, please remove them and install Armoury instead.

The devices within are the products of the Aquarian Shipbuilding Corporation

Description

In addition the following new items are included in the Armoury OXP:

Anti-Missile System

The Ships Weapons Department of the Aquarian Shipbuilding Corporation would like to present an extension to the highly popular Missile Analyser equipment, the Anti-Missile System. Using identification data from the analyser, this system targets any incoming non-standard missile with one of up to six anti-missile darts stored in a hull-mounted launcher. These fire off automatically in an attempt to intercept and neutralise the incoming weapon before it can strike the ship and cause damage.

Equipment

• Anti-Missile System

This is the main launcher, costing 8,000Cr and available from tech level 10 or higher planets. It is hull-mounted to allow a clear fire-path all around the ship, and needs no pylon space. The initially purchased launcher comes fitted with a full complement of six darts.

• Anti-Missile Dart

These darts are available from any stockist of the main system to refill the launcher when it has less than 6 darts loaded. They cost 500Cr each.

• Removal

For those commanders wishing to change ship, the launcher is removable at a suitably advanced system (tech level 7 or higher) for the small fee of 500Cr, although a good second-hand price is credited for the launcher and any remaining darts in it.

Captured Thargons

The latest development from the labs of the Aquarian Shipbuilding Corporation, building on their success with the Drones series of robot fighters. They have now succeeded in directly reprogramming alien Thargon fighters, allowing their usage by any ship.

The control unit mounts on a ship's weapons pylon, and is triggered in the usual way. When the system is activated, the linked reprogrammed Thargon robot fighters deploy and seek out any hostile or alien targets in range and ruthlessly engage them. Once combat has concluded, any remaining fighters return to their mother ship for collection using the fuel scoops.

This device is available from any system of tech level 12 or above, and requires an empty weapons pylon and fuel scoops fitted to the ship. Any Thargons lost or destroyed can be replaced at a similar tech level location.

Warranty

Please note that this item does not allow control over normal Thargons, which will remain hostile to anything non-Thargoid in nature. Whilst every effort has been made in their reprogramming, glitches cannot be entirely ruled out, and the responsibility for any kills made by the fighters remains firmly with the purchaser.

As these ships are robotic in nature, any kills and ensuing bounty they earn is also accredited to their legal owner and their craft.

Drones

After a bruising large-scale encounter with a Thargoid fleet, the Aquarian Shipbuilding Corporation's ships weapons division heads decided that an answer was needed to the threat posed by Tharglet robot fighters. Using some captured examples, some missiles, know-how and a couple of trumbles (they had to work late and missed dinner), the dedicated backroom boys have produced two standard civilian drones, plus a special Galcop variant especially designed for the next encounter with the Thargoids.

• Combat Drone

This is the standard model drone, pylon mounted and launched via a special cannister launcher. Interacting with the launching ship's targeting computers, it seeks out targets hostile to the mothership and attacks them using its in-built beam laser.

It will carry on seeking out and harassing hostile targets (and drawing their fire) until either it is destroyed, runs out of fuel or no targets remain. In the latter two cases, the drone will go inactive and can then be fuel-scooped (where fitted) like any other cargo, and if damage is light it can be refuelled and used again.

• Kamikaze Drone

A variant on the Combat Drone, this equipment features a light yield warhead, with the decision to use it being under the control of the drone's systems. Designed to be more deadly to its primary target, it is of course at the expense of being reusable if the warhead is deployed.

Aside from this it works in exactly the same way as a standard Combat Drone in terms of pick-up and reusage.

• Anti-Thargoid Drone

Commissioned by Galcop, but with the current levels of threat made more generally available, this variant is designed especially to fight Thargoid vessels. It has an enhanced military-grade laser and fuel mix for extended range. The drone's targeting computers are programmed to seek out and target any Thargoid vessel, and will ignore any other ship type.

As with the other drones, if it survives its alien encounter, it can be scooped and if sufficiently undamaged, refuelled and reused.

Missiles

• Tracker Missile:

A special interceptor missile which does no damage, but instead deploys a cloud of nanoscale tracking beacons. These can be detected via an advanced space compass (which must be fitted for the missile to be available for purchase) anywhere in the system.

Available from tech level 6 at a cost of 500cr each.

• Displacer Missile

A new experimental piece of equipment, which uses synchronised quirium resonance to induce a short-range witchspace jump in the target vessel, moving it a random distance away from its current location (but leaving it otherwise undamaged unless it hits something on arrival). Only effective against ships that are powered and have witchspace fuel.

Available from tech level 4 at a cost of 400cr each.

• Kicker Missile

A non-lethal missile, which is designed to give a high-velocity kick to any ship that it detonates against. Depending on the mass and thrust of the target, this can be enough to send it out of scanner range.

Available from tech level 8 at a cost of 800cr each.

• Cutpurse Missile

An illegal hacking device based on a standard missile but carrying no explosive warhead. Instead it has a small limpet mine transmitter, which attaches onto the target ship and attempts to interface with the ship's systems (which can take a few seconds). If successful, it triggers the ship's emergency cargo dumping routine.

This missile is illegal to sell or purchase in any Galcop station and its use is seen as an act of piracy by police vessels.

Available from tech level 8 at a cost of 800cr each.

• Field Missile

An ECM-hardened missile that scatters several mini-mines upon detonation. These proximity weapons will detonate on close contact, causing additional damage to any craft in the vicinity as well as any survivors of the original missile strike.

Available from tech level 6 at a cost of 1000cr each.

• Probe Missile

A special collaboration between the Aquarian Shipbuilding Corporation's ships weapons and equipment divisions has led to a special one-off item widely requested by a number of parties, the Probe missile.

Usage - This useful device flies for 100km directly away from the launching ship in the direction it is facing, and performs a scan at the half-way point of its journey and on arrival. Details of what it finds are radioed back to the launch ship in each case, and the missile then about-faces and returns to its launcher for pick-up and reuse (via the normal fuel scooping method).

Missile Rack

The Ships Weapons Department of the Aquarian Shipbuilding Corporation would like to present their latest item, the mini-missile rack. With the increase in frequency of combat with the Thargoids and the rise of pirate activity, many commanders are finding their old trusty ships less capable due to the limited amount of missiles that can be carried.

• Missile Rack (Std)

A rack of three standard miniaturised missiles. These have lower yield, range and speed than standard missiles, but are otherwise useable as standard weaponry. Once the rack is emptied, it is automatically ejected from the pylon and will self destruct once it reaches a safe distance from the ship.

• Missile Rack (Hard)

Similar to a standard rack, but the three missiles are ECM-hardened.

• Interceptor Missile Rack

Similar to a standard rack, but containing three interceptor anti-missile missiles.

Missile Machine

A special system mounted in the ship's cargo hold, with an auto-mount feed system to one of the ship's weapon pylons. When fed 1 ton of radioactives and 1 ton of alloys from your cargo hold plus a little fuel, in a short time the machine can produce up to three standard-grade missiles. The optional addition of 1 ton of computers (if they are available, the machine will use them) allows better and more complex control circuitry, hardening the missiles against ECM.

Production can go on as long as there is suitable cargo in the ship's hold and pylons available to accept the missiles (if there are less than three available, less missiles will be produced). The only time production is not possible is when docked, for the maintenance crew safety.

Bombs and Mines

After the discussions concerning the trunk energy bomb (and its impending removal), I thought it may be worth playing around with a few new bombs which could be used as replacements. All are pylon mounted due to the current limitations on keyboard triggering of OXP equipment, and all can also be carried by NPCs (currently with low probability and Uni bomb set not to be an instant-killer for the player ship).

• Buzz bomb - the base version of the weaponry. Consists of a special energy emitter mounted on the pylon and linked to the ship's energy banks. On triggering it sets off an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) through the ship's shield emitters. The energy drained from the ship's energy banks is amplified and transmitted, causing damage to any powered ship in scanner range (cargo pods and asteroids are unaffected). Damage inflicted depends on proximity to the bomb and the energy supplied to the emitter (which is destroyed in the process of firing). Fail-safes are included to prevent the bomb causing damage to the carrier ship itself, and also to ensure that at least one full energy bank is left after detonation (the bomb has a small built-in energy reserve of its own which is added to the energy drawn from the ship if available). Due to technological differences, these bombs have been reported to be less effective against alien technology.

• Bug bomb - a variant on the buzz bomb, tuned especially to be damaging to alien technology, at the expense of some potency against normal targets.

• Stun bomb - another variant, tuned to affect ships' systems, especially flight control and pilot interfacing. In practice, this tends to leave the target ship helplessly spinning in space for a short period of time. When used against a player craft, it causes the ship to tumble into a new random orientation.

• Uni bomb - the final variant, tuned to resonance with the active Quirium in the target's engines and energy systems. In practice, this tends to overload them and cause catastrophic and explosive failure. To prevent a negative impact to the gaming experience, when used against the player this bomb just causes severe energy loss.

• Interdictor Mine - classified Galcop munition for pirate and large-scale fleet pacification. It is an offense for non-Galcop ships to utilise such weaponry.

• Screamer Mine - anti-Thargoid armoured mine, which induces nausea and disorientation in their neurological pathways at a range of up to 25km. This infuriates and distracts them so much that they usually target the mine, drawing fire and creating a useful diversion. Available from tech level 9 at a cost of 1000cr each.

• Void Bomb - a small singuarity kept in statis until the bomb detonates, at which point it is released and grows in size. This is a high-density entity which attracts all things within scanner range, and damages them on contact. It lasts for a short period of time until it has consumed all local matter, at which point it collapses.

• Decoy Mine - a modified cargo pod containing several warship-class Thargoid fake mylar balloons produced by Ganelon Inc. These expand on launch and simulate alien vessels, causing a distraction and allowing the launcher to slip away or press the attack.

Technical Information

This OXP requires at least version 1.82 of Oolite. The Anti-Missile System requires the Missile Analyser OXP.

Download

Armoury.oxz (0 downloads).

License

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution - Non-Commercial - Share Alike 3.0 license with clauses - see readme file.

Links

• Thargoid's OXP page.
• Missile for a list of other oxp's

Quick Facts

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Version	Released	License	Features	Category	Author(s)	Feedback
1.21	2020-06-16	CC BY-NC-SA 3	New bombs, drones, missiles and other weapon systems	Weapons OXPs	Thargoid, Rustem (maintainer), Milo (maintainer)	BB-Link