Weapon Bay

Module

Weapon Unit

Weapon bays hold high powerful, long range integrated weapon systems.

Weapon bays are controlled by weapon stations. An NPC crewman will only operate the weapon bay connected to its weapon station. It is however possible for an avatar to control all weapon bays on the spacecraft from a captain's chair.

For most purposes, weapon bays essentially replace turrets, although it can still be wise to place turrets in key positions, because weapon bays cannot target individual creatures or vehicles, it can only target spacecraft and buildings.

The weapon must have a clear line of fire to the target. It cannot shoot through terrain or other entities. Attempting to shoot through a friendly spacecraft or building will result in friendly fire. The spacecraft cannot however hit itself.

Weapon Bay Types

The type of weapon bay can be selected in the designer, when placing a Weapon Station.

Weapon bay type can also be changed using weapon bay modules and harvester bay modules after it has been constructed.

Ballistic Weapon Bay

The ballistic weapon has (Round(Weapon Bay volume/10)+1) cannons. One heavy arms ammunition is used per cannon each shot at full power.

Ballistic projectiles can be dodged or simply miss, which makes the weapon difficult to use against a moving target. Damage depends on number of cannons used and on the ammo used, higher quality ammo will do more damage.

Projectile Stats

Cannon Shells:

• Muzzle velocity: 500m/s
• Lifespan: 5 seconds
• Affected by gravity inside atmosphere

Energy Weapon Bay

The energy weapon has (Round(Weapon Bay volume/25)+1) beam projectors. Each beam projector requires an energy weapon lens in the cargo hold to fire at full power. Each shot uses some electricity per beam projector from the spacecraft's capacitor.

Damage depends number of beam projectors used and on the energy weapon lens used, higher quality energy weapon lens will do more damage.

Weapon Launcher Bay

The launcher weapon has (Round(Weapon Bay volume/90)+1) launchers. One missile/rocket is used per launcher each shot at full power.

Missiles are guided and rockets are unguided, both can be shot down by enemy turrets or dodged. Damage depends number of launchers used and on the ammo used, higher quality ammo will do more damage.

Can use small missiles, small rockets, large missiles and large rockets.

Projectile Stats

Small Missiles:

• Initial speed: 1/10th of acceleration
• Acceleration: 1000m/s/s
• Lifespan: 5 seconds

Large Missiles:

• Initial speed: 1/10th of acceleration
• Acceleration: 500m/s/s
• Lifespan: 5 seconds

Small Rockets:

• Initial speed: 1/5th of acceleration
• Acceleration: 1000m/s/s
• Lifespan: 5 seconds
• Affected by gravity inside atmosphere

Large Rockets:

• Initial speed: 1/5th of acceleration
• Acceleration: 500m/s/s
• Lifespan: 5 seconds
• Affected by gravity inside atmosphere

Weapon Deployment Bay

The deployment weapon has (Round(Weapon Bay volume/100)+1) ejector racks. One bomb is used per ejector rack each shot at full power. Damage depends on the ammo used, higher quality ammo will do more damage.

Bombs are dropped from the spacecraft with no momentum and are simply affected by gravity. Mostly only useful while in orbit over an enemy city.

AI crew will not use this weapon type.

Projectile Stats

Bombs:

• Initial speed: 0
• Acceleration: by gravity
• Lifespan: 15 seconds
• Affected by gravity anywhere.

Tractor Beam Bay

Tractor beams are special types of weapons that are used to push, pull and hold other ships, like a tractor towing a car. The fire button is a yellow T button on the fire control console.

Tractor beams transfer FTL capability to the attached vessel, such as towing the target through a wormhole or in warp even if the target doesn't have its own FTL Drive.

They require that the shields on the target vessel be down.

They steadily consume power while active, the same as if the tractor bay was a gravity drive. The range and power of the tractor beam is determined by the bay's quality and volume.

When attempting to hold or slow down an enemy ship, the tractor beam will slow the target's acceleration by the amount of tractor volume, as if that volume was instead manuever drive being removed from the target ship. In addition, the target's mass affects its final acceleration. The design analysis shows numbers for a target of your equal mass. For example, on an extremely heavy ship, 2m/s² of tractor power may still be enough to completely overpower and freeze a light target ship's acceleration. This is because more manuever drive volume is needed to move heavier ships, so that same amount of tractor volume can massively overpower the lighter target's manuever drives.

Through testing, it appears that the same amount of volume allocated to the tractor bay will provide approximately double the tractor force than it would acceleration if it was allocated to manuever drives instead. This was tested using the same mass.

A white beam will extend towards the target, and a pulsating bubble will appear around the target while the beam is active.

Related patch notes

Update 2016-09-15: Tractor Beam Tractor Beam Tractor beam bay module now works. Here are the details. Target must be a spacecraft. Nothing else can be towed with a tractor beam. Target must not be moored. Target must have shields down. If any shield side is down to 2 or less energy, the target can be grabbed with a tractor beam. (Same test for blocked transporter.) Raising shields on target disconnects the tractor beam. Tractor beam is operated at fire control console. Select a target. Attach and detach the tractor beam by pressing the yellow T button. Tractor beam has a range at which it can attach to targets. Once attached, the target is held at a safe distance from the towing vessel. It can be pulled or pushed with the beam, so I suppose it is both a presser and an attractor beam, a.k.a. tractor. It seemed wrong to separate the two. Tractor beam uses a burst of power to fire, to attach to the target. A light blue bar under the capacitor level bar shows amount of capacitor consumed when fired. Tractor beam always fires at maximum power setting. Tractor beam consumes power steadily while on, roughly equivalent to running the same number of gravity drive units as tractor bay units. Target's maneuver acceleration is reduced by the amount of acceleration that would be achieved by attaching maneuver drive units to the target, equal to the number of tractor bay units, at the tech level of the tractor beam. The resulting acceleration is affected by the mass of the target. Design analysis shows this value for a target of your equal mass. If tractor power exceeds maneuver acceleration of the target, they can barely move. This has not been tested. Target can be towed through a wormhole. Target does not have to have a wormhole drive. Target can be towed at light speed or warp speed to deadhead to other systems. AI no longer shoots tractor beam at enemy as if it were a weapon. The ability to scrap ships for parts and technology is on my short list. I didn't have time to do it in this update.

Harvester Bay

Harvester bays use the same system as weapon bays. They are essentially the same thing, but separated here on the wiki for convenience.

This means that any weapon bay can be turned into a harvester bay as easily as the changing of weapon types.

Harvester bays are selected the same way weapon bays are, in the designer or using harvester bay modules