Ever thought of buying a Nova, but decided to buy another M3 because nearly every enemy would be faster than you with poor 160 m/s. Then this new product could be interesting for you.
It has been developed by Pirates. You want to know what it does, OK:

- It gives you additional engine power, making your ship considerably faster
- The increased power can only be achieved through the additional input of energy into the drive. This is not entirely unproblematic and contributes to drive damage, especially in M1, M2 and TL class ships. TS drives, similarly, display symptoms of fatigue.
- The tuning lasts for a specific maximum time depending on ship class (M3: 80 seconds, M2: 160 sec.)
- This new power has its costs though, using energy cells over the time or 1 spacefly for the whole duration, maximum e-cell consumption depends on class. The engine will only use e-cells if you have no spaceflies.
- After the tuning process the engine has to cool down, making the Tuning Unit unavailable for 3 minutes.
- Cost: about 110000 Credits


To activate the Unit simply go to the Additional Ship Commands section of the command console and choose "Mk1 Engine Booster ON/OFF"

Note: Make sure you have a shield activated otherwise tuning won't start, structural integrity would be in danger. There is an emergency shutdown if you open cargo bay during the process (open -> wait for max. 12 seconds)

Two new commands are added to the Fight Command Menu: Patrol Single Sector and Patrol Multi Sector. These commands are only available on M6 and larger craft when both Fight Command Software Mk1 & Mk2 are installed. These commands patrol a defined area and engage enemy ships (not stations) when they are found.

The following features are standard to both patrol commands:

* The patrol will move at the speed of the slowest ship. It will wait upon reaching each waypoint to allow any stragglers to catch up.

* The standard friend/foe settings of the lead patrol ship are used to determine if a ship is an enemy. Patrols will only engage ships that can be detected by one of your ships or satellites.

* If any ships are attacking your in-sector bases or ships, they will be targeted by your patrol whether they are set as an enemy or not in the standard friend/foe settings. Now your patrols will engage any 'bad' pirates that attack you, even if you have pirates set as friends so that you would normally leave them alone.

* Wingmen are controlled automatically, with no special input from the player. To assign a wingman to the lead patrol ship, simply order a ship to follow or protect it. The wingmen will be recognized and officially added to the formation upon reaching the next waypoint.

* All ships in the patrol will engage the same enemy, focusing fire on a single target to ensure that your patrol is not split up, and that targets are killed as quickly as possible. Targets are prioritized based on their level of threat to you.

* When wingmen are substantially damaged, they will leave the patrol, fly to the nearest friendly / neutral shipyard, and contact you for orders.



Since the patrol commands use the standard friend/foe settings to decide whether or not to engage a particular ship, it is worth making sure all users understand exactly how they work. There are two settings which determine if any individual ship is a friend or a foe.

Race Settings:
These are global toggles for the individual races. If you set Argon to enemy, every Argon ship will be considered an enemy, regardless of whether or not it thinks you are an enemy.

Show As Enemy If Enemy To Me:
This is perhaps one of the most misunderstood settings in the game. This toggle will cause a ship to be considered an enemy if it thinks you are an enemy. So let's suppose you have Argon set to friend. If you have 'show as enemy if enemy to me' on, and a certain Argon ship thinks you are an enemy (perhaps you're doing a bit of smuggling?) you will consider this ship an enemy and engage it. If you have 'show as enemy if enemy to me' off, your ship ignores what the other ship thinks of you and uses only the global settings to decide that this Argon ship is a friend (as it proceeds to try to destroy you). The default setting for 'show as enemy if enemy to me' is on.

Important Note: every pirate ship in the universe initially considers the player ship an enemy, so regardless of whether you have the global setting for pirates set to friend or foe, if you leave 'show as enemy if enemy to me' on, every pirate ship will be considered an enemy and engaged.


This command will prompt the player for four waypoints in a single sector. The ship will fly to the sector if it is not already there. Once the sector has been reached, the ship will begin scanning for enemies and patrolling between the waypoints.


This command requires a sector patrol list to have been already built before it will work properly. Defining a sector patrol list is discussed in the next section. Once the command is started the ship will fly to the nearest sector in the patrol route if it is not already there. It will then move along the patrol route scanning for enemies. There are a few interesting features of the multi-sector patrol command:

* The patrol will move through the sectors defined in the sector patrol list one by one. When the end is reached, the patrol will return to the first sector in the list.

* It is not a requirement that the sectors in the sector patrol list be adjacent to each other.

* Upon starting the command, the patrol route will be written to the player logbook so the player can confirm which sectors are to be patrolled.

* Only sectors which are in the sector patrol list will be scanned for enemies. If a patrol needs to cross a sector which is not in the sector patrol list, it will pass through it as quickly as possible, ignoring all threats unless it is specifically attacked. This allows you some flexibility in defining the patrol area. For example, let's say the player wants to defend Argon Prime and Ore Belt from attack, but really doesn't care about what happens in Home of Light because they have no operations there. If the sector patrol list is made to only consist of Argon Prime and Ore Belt, the patrol will start in Argon Prime, scanning and engaging enemies. It will then fly as quickly as possible through Home of Light (since the player is not interested in this sector) to get to Ore Belt. Once in Ore Belt, the patrol will scan and engage enemies before flying quickly back through Home of Light to return to Argon Prime.

* It is possible to add / remove sectors from a ships patrol list while the ship is currently patrolling. You do not need to restart the patrol command, it will use the new list automatically.


Sector patrol lists can be defined for any ship M6 class or larger. They may consist of any number of sectors. The command to add/remove a sector from the sector patrol list is towards the bottom of the command console in the 'Additional Ship Commands' menu. Select the 'Add / Remove Sector from Patrol List' command and then select a sector. Depending on the following criteria, certain actions are taken:

You are beginning a new list:
The patrol sector list will be created for this ship and this sector will be added to it as the first entry

Sector is not currently in the list:
The chosen sector will be added to the end of the patrol sector list

Sector is already in the list:
The chosen sector will be removed from the patrol sector list

Sector is already in the list and is the initial entry:
Selecting the first sector in the sector patrol list clears the list completely, allowing you to start over.

There are a number of tips/tricks you can follow to keep your patrols working together as a team.

* Ships assigned to move in formation will only move at the speed of the slowest ship if they are in formation before the lead ship begins to move. Once the ships reach the patrol route and begin patrolling, the lead ship will pause every sector to regroup. However, if you issue the patrol command to the lead ship while it is several sectors away from the patrol route, and then issue the wingmen follow commands after the lead ship has begun moving, all the ships will begin moving towards the start of the patrol as fast as they can. They will wait to regroup once they get there. If you want to avoid this, issue follow commands to the wingmen before you issue the patrol command to the leader so that the ships stay in formation.

* In the case of a multi sector patrol, the patrol will not continue on course until the wingmen catch up to the leader, so adding a ship to a patrol from several sectors away is not recommended. (and can cause the patrol leader to get impatient)

* When engaging enemies, ships will break from formation to accelerate to attack speed, but wingmen will not get ahead of the patrol leader. If the leader is faster than his wingmen, he will separate from them as the group flies towards the enemy. If this is not desirable, pick wingmen that are as fast or faster than the patrol leader.


The player is charged every hour for each ship in the patrol group according to the following table:

M1: 10,000 cr
M2: 10,000 cr
TL: 5,000 cr
M6: 3,000 cr
M3: 300 cr
TS: 200 cr
TP: 200 cr
M4: 150 cr
M5: 100 cr

Money is charged directly from the player's account. If you cannot afford to pay your patrol ships, they will stop working.


When extended ship information is activated, the player can see the following information in the ship name:

Script name:
Will display if this is a Single or Multi-Sector Patrol and if the ship is the patrol leader or a wingman.

Advanced Information:
For the patrol leader, the following extra information is provided:
W: # S: # - number of wingmen in patrol and number of sectors in patrol list
scan - the ship is currently scanning for enemies
scan* - the ship has found enemies and is currently engaging

This command can now be found in the additional ship commands section of your command console when a trading system extension is present.
Selecting this command for the ship you are currently piloting allows you to toggle turning on/off advanced script information in all of your other ship's names. The command will ask you for which format you would like to display the information:
0: No Advanced Information, ex. 'My Centaur'
1: Script Name: Ship Name, ex. 'PS Leader: My Centaur'
2: Script Name: Advanced Info, ex. 'PS Leader: W:0'
3: Script Name: Ship Name Adv Info, ex. 'PS Leader: My Centaur W:0'

Running this command from the command console of a ship you are not currently piloting will reset the ship name back to the original name. This can be useful because after you've stopped a ship from running a command, advanced information may still be in the ship name. If you don't want to manually change the name back to what it was, you may quickly run this script to reset it.

This software protects small ship classes against rocket attacks by shooting down incoming rockets with mosquito missiles. Mosquito class missiles are required, as well as Fight Command Software MK1 and MK2.

Use:
Activate the software from the additional commands menu. While active, the software looks for hostile rockets which are a threat, and fires mosquito class missiles against them to try to destroy them. To disable the software, select the command in the occupied command slot to turn it off. The software will also terminate if no mosquito class missiles remain on board.

The software can also be used by wingmen or merchant ships flown by autopilots.

The Hired Gunnery Crews plugin is an advanced turret combat script that is built on a simulation of adding live personnel to crew your ships. It adds a new ship upgrade, called the "AEGIS Weapon System", and a total of four new commands for combat and combat support

• "Gunnery Crew: Action Stations" turret menu command - the main feature of this plugin, this command is for serious combat. Available on any ship with a turret as long as there are enough crew, with extra features when the AEGIS Weapon System is also installed.

• "Gunnery Crew: Maximize Captures" turret menu command - when you want to capture rather than kill, this command tells your crew to "tone it down" a little to give the enemy time to consider their mortality. This system requires the extra real-time target monitoring capabilities of the AEGIS Weapon System in conjunction with your crew.

• "Gunnery Crew: Missile Defense" additional ship commands menu command - Available after the purchase of the AEGIS Weapon System, this command gives you long-range missile defense through the use of the Mosquito as a counter-missile.

• "Gunnery Crew: Missile Assault" additional ship commands menu command - Also available after the purchase of the AEGIS Weapon System, this command gives you both the ability to destroy large groups of small fighters, and the ability to issue challenge to larger ships.

Attention: This plugin also improves the behaviour of turrets on AI ships!



Advanced turret combat with the following features:

Target prioritization:
All turrets on all ships (not just the player's ship) that are running this command will attempt to first lock on the selected target of the player's ship. This gives you an easy way to select priority targets. After that, turrets will attempt to lock on ships attacking their ship. With the AEGIS Weapon System, targets are further prioritized in order of their threat level and proximity to the ship. More powerful targets are engaged first, with a preference for targets that are closest to your ship.

Automatic weapon selection:
The best weapon for general use, capital ship engagements, anti-missile, and anti-shield use are chosen out of the list of weapons each turret can use and out of what your ship has on board. During an engagement, each turret will use the best weapon dependent on the type of target, range to target, and the target's shield level. Any available WMDs (which are particularly effective against shields) are used until the target's shields are depleted, at which point anti-hull weapons are used.

Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) avoidance when noncombatants are in range:
The use of Weapons of Mass Destruction (the collective term used to describe weapons that have an area effect or can hit multiple targets) such as Phased Shockware Generators and Ion Disruptors will automatically be avoided be used when friendly or neutral ships are close enough to your ship to get hit by them.

Close-In Weapon System (CIWS) Missile Defense
During target selection, incoming missiles will be targeted automatically. They are engaged only if they are close enough to your ship to be able to hit, and then are engaged with best combination of WMD or CIWS (fast firing, short range) weapons available. With the added AEGIS Weapon System, turrets gain the ability to prioritize incoming missiles according to their threat level - ignoring missiles that are no danger to your ship, and engaging missiles that would reduce your shields by 5% or more of their current strength. Additionally, the AEGIS system allows retargeting on incoming missiles while a turret is already engaging a ship - and then to return to the previous target after missile destruction.

Fire at full speed
The stock turret commands can't fire your turrets at their full speed. You lose between twenty and ninety percent of your weapon output depending on the weapons used. The Gunnery Crews will fire your turrets at full speed - mass drivers at twenty rounds per second with less slowing down during "laggy" periods of game play.


While similar to the Gunnery Crew: Action Stations turret command, this one attempts to avoid killing the targets. It will fire weaker weapons (if available), slow down the firing rate, and continue to use WMDs after the target shields are down. All of this in a bid to entice the target to give up before dying. The same anti-missile and WMD-avoidance features are included in this command.


This "Additional Ship Commands" menu command is intended to give you an extra layer of protection against incoming missiles. The AEGIS weapon system with crew assistance can target incoming missiles from beyond energy weapons range and engage them with a mosquito missile configured as a "counter-missile". Any incoming missile beyond your ship's minimum counter-missile engagement range determined to be a threat (see above) will be engaged with a counter-missile. Your minimum counter-missile engagement range depends on the size of your ship. For an M3 (Argon Nova only) it is only 500m. For an M6 it is 750m. For TL it is 1km, and for M1/M2s, it is 2.5 km. Missiles that are not a threat will not be engaged at all in order to conserve counter-missile ammunition.


This "Additional Ship Commands" menu command will first ask you to select the type of missile you wish to use. Enter a "1" for the Mosquito Missile, or a "2" for the Wasp Missile. After you have selected, the following will occor:

Mosquito Missile:
Scans for and targets every enemy ship within 42km. A single Mosquito missile will be launched at each target. The intention with this is to "issue challenge" to enemy ships. When attacked, enemy ships tend to come to you. This is an effective way of clearing a sphere 43km in radius around your ship.

NOTE: Capital ships tend to have turrets set on missile defense. You can be virtually assured that no single mosquito missile will hit an enemy capital ship.

Wasp Missile:
When the Wasp missile is selected, all light (M5) fighters within 22km will be scanned for and targeted. If it is a Khaak M5, then a single Wasp missile will be fired at it. If it is any other M5, a pair of Wasps will be fired. An effective way of destroying almost an entire Khaak cluster at long range.

All the above commands need one or more "crew" members to operate in the form of "Military Personnel". The number of crew memebers you need depends on the type of ship you have:

• M3 (Argon Nova) - one crew member
• TS/TP - two crew members
• M6 - three crew members per turret
• TL (non-Teladi) - five crew members per turret
• TL (Teladi Albatross) - fifteen crew members per turret
• M1 - Twenty (as "support" crew) plus five crew members per turret
• M2 - thirty (as "support crew") plus ten crew members per turret

The cost for crew members depends on whether or not they are active (ie: whether or not you have turret commands running). Inactive crew cost 100cr per person per hour as their salary. Active crew cost 1500cr per person per hour to pay for operations, materials, maintenance, and infrastructure. You are only charged for the number of crew used in turrets running a Gunnery Crew command. In the case of ships with support crew, however, as soon as even one turret is active, all the support crew become active as well.

The AEGIS Weapon System, while increasing the combat efficiency of your gunnery crew, also increases the costs for active crew by another 3000cr per person per hour.

The minimum number of crew to run one turret on an M1 is 25, on an M2 is 40 (one turret's crew plus the support crew). You will be able to start using Gunnery Crew to operate your turrets as soon as you obtain the necesary minimum crew. No additional crew are required for the Missile Defense or Missile Assault commands, and running them does not activate your support crew for the purpose of calculating costs. However, if you are in an M1 or M2, you do need to at least have the required number of support crew to use the commands.


There will be passenger transports flying through Argon space carrying Military Personnel. Follow them. Once they land, some of their passengers will be available as the "Military Personnel" ware on the station. You can then buy (hire) them.

Players with an Equipment Dock will have the option of purchasing a report from the Argon navy's merchant marine liason office. Select the command console on your equipment dock, and hit <ENTER> on an empty slot to pull up a list of commands. You will see the command "Order a Military Personnel Transport Report". Select this, and after docking 25000 credits from your cash, the Argon Navy will cheerfully send you a report on the locations of all the currently flying military transports.

One last thing to remember - these personnel are in great demand. And while the Argon navy allows you to hire them, they still are navy personnel. If you have more crew on a ship than that ship can use, you may find they dwindle in numbers. You are allowed a small number on a ship over and above what it can employ. Remember, these are real people - not crates of weapons or cargo. You can't hoard 'crew' for later use.


What effect will installing this plugin have on AI ships?
All M1 and M2 ships owned by the Argon, Teladi, Boron, Xenon, and Khaak will be running upgraded turret commands after installing this plugin. This plugin will make them harder to defeat.
The Argon, Boron, and Teladi ships run the upgraded commands due to the story of how they were developed. The Split and Paranid, being gnerally antagonistic towards the Argon, do not get the upgrades. The Xenon and Khaak get the upgraded commands as an out-of-character update, simply to make them more of a challenge.

Will this plugin change out-of-sector combat?
No. The game engine suspends all turret tasks when a ship is out-of-sector. The Gunnery Crews commands are completely useless for out-of-sector combat. They give you in-sector benefits only. As such, you don't need to use the Gunnery Crews commands on patrol ships. Just ships you will be taking with you into battle.

TelCat is a catapult-launching-device for your M1 carrier. Your fighters will no longer need to go through the normal docking/launch procedure. They will be cast directly into space using the Goner transporter and retrieved in the same way, or if installed use a docking computer to return.
But TelCat is more. You can form up squadrons and your fighter will be equipped with ammo and missiles. The launched ships will attack your targets and it is possible for the first time that the carrier is stronger than any Destroyer could be.
This is no miracle. One carrier with -say- 100 Novas aboard provides an incredible battle strength. 300 Guns, 7500MW Shields, 500 Hornets ...without even counting the carrier.


One (or more) M1-class carrier
- The carrier must have an installed Transporter Device (Goner)
- The carrier must have fighters on board (M3, M4, M5)
- One Transporter Device must be installed in every fighter. For your convenience, there is a command to automatically equip all of your fighters with transporter devices (see: TelCat: Install Fleet)
- Fight Command Software MK2 must be installed in every fighter (dont forget to buy this when you buy your fighters).
- Optional: one or more TS class freighters with your carrier set as homebase (ths is needed for the auto-rearm-feature)

TelCat consists of 3 secondary instructions.

• *** Start "Install Fleet"
  Simply press ENTER
  This command will give every fighter on board (without goggles) the carrier as homebase. It activates the tail gun (Nova - rocket def, or gunnery crew if 1 personal aboard). It rearms the fighter with 10*mass driver ammo, 5 of the strongest attack missiles available plus 5 mosquitoes. It also checks, if your fighter is fully armed and shielded, it does not check the strength of the weapons or shields, only that they are available. If a fighter is missing any required equipment a short BEEP sounds and a message is registered in the personal log. TelCat can rename your ships, can transfer the launch commands from the carrier to every fighter onboard and it can send out your fighter(s) to buy the docking computer or transporter device.
  Warning! Hornets are expensive. It might not look it at first sight, however 150 fighters with 5 hornets each is a lot of money (7.5 million)
  
  
• *** Overview of commands and Status:
  help or status (all commands are case-sensitive - "HELP" is invalid)
  
  
• *** Auto-Rearm
  r0 (off), r1 (on), rm (manually - only in "Install Fleet", not be4 the catapult start).
  re (external - like r1, but the script expects another script to resupply the carrier with missiles and ammo)
  Standard: off
  
  
• *** Auto-Rename
  n0 (off), n1 (on)
  Standard: off
  The name reads: Name of the carrier + hunter class + number
  
  
• *** Damage-Control (hull)
  d0, d25, d50, d75, d100
  Standard: off (d0)
  The number represents % acceptable hull damage. Fighter with hull below this number will not launch, or will be called back to the carrier if you enter -1 (minus one) when initiating the DOCK command.
  Note: d0 launches every fighter and calls back fighter with less than 25%.
  
  
• *** Launch Missile Probability from carrier to fighter
  l0 (off), l1 (on)
  Standard: off
  If this command is on, every fighter will get the same launch missile probability as set in the homecarrier, every time you execute "Install Fleet".
  
  
• *** Store ware on stock
  store
  Everytime "store" is entered into the console, TelCat will count through every missile in every docked TS with homebase THIScarrier - like the rearm script does. But then the found amount will be stored in local variables. This is used as orientation for external resuppy scripts, so they know what is needed. Value in variable minus rockets onboard.
  
  
• *** Any wrong input will result in a helpscreen in your log.

Player ships are recognized by installed video enhancement goggles. They will not be readied for battle, nor launched, unless you give them the carrier as homebase manually.

If the Goner Temple is your target while executing this command, every fighter without a Transporter-Device will go and buy one and then return home. Since the carrier AND every fighter needs one...this command can come in handy.

Same procedure as before, if you want to equip your fighters with a docking computer.
Note: If you do not have the money to cover the costs of either the transporter device or the docking computer your fighter will return without it.

If a shipyard is your target while executing this command, every damaged fighter will dock and wait. After you have repaired them, you can call them back via station broadcast.

Any missiles or ammo for the auto-rearm feature must be stored in one or more TS with homebase "THIS carrier" which is/are docked in "THIS carrier"! Any TS will do, any number will be ok, as long as they are docked in their homebase-carrier.
The cargohold of the carrier will NOT be checked for equipment!


You can specify a class and a number.

*** If you enter 0, every fighter will launch.

*** If you enter 40, 40 mixed fighter will launch.

*** If you enter 3040, 40 M3 will launch -> also 50+amount for M5 and 40+amount for M4.

The fighters will form up as a fighter wing. Target an m6, launch 16 fighters - bingo = M6 with 16 fighter wing. If no target is selected, the fighters will join YOUR ship, as long as you are in the same Sector with the carrier. If you are OOS they will escort the carrier.
Note: If you target an enemy ship, they will form a fighter wing attack and then form up with your ship.


Same number code as LAUNCH. So 5020 calls 20 M5 back.

You can also call via your target. Target one of your TS and only TS will dock (if the carrier is their homebase).
In addition if you want to call back some of your fighter wing; say 6 M4s, target an M4 and enter 6.

Enter -1 to call back damaged fighters. (depends on the setting of the TelCat-Damage control, but will at least always call fighters below 25% hull).

Enter -2 to call back every fighter with shields below 50%.

Fighter equipped with one will use it & will have a tactical advantage in case their homebase carrier is destroyed.
In order they try:

• a. Re-assign to another player M1 in sector.
  
• b. Escape to a friendly station within 2 sectors.
  
• c. At least leave the current sector.
  
• d. If all else fails Banzai - they attack anything that is 'red'.

Fighters without a docking computer will not have this advantage.