Bridge Staff
| Bridge Staff | |
|---|---|
 "CHARGE THE FTL DRIVE GODDAMNIT" | |
| Information | |
| Access | Bridge |
| Additional Access | Maintenance, Engineering |
| Difficulty | Medium |
| Supervisors | Executive Officer |
| Rank | Sergeant (SGT) |
| Duties | Pilot the ship, Miss all your shots, Never know when to pull back from a fight, Get the ship boarded by Syndicate. Somehow survive when CIC gets bombed. |
| Guides | Guide to enemy types, Guide to using the FTL console |
Your primary task aboard your assigned vessel is to operate the systems that the engineers and munitions techs maintain and feed. These include piloting the ship and operating most of the weapons through two consoles in CIC - the Flight Control Console and the Tactical Systems Console. Use Ctrl + Scroll Wheel to zoom out when viewing the overmap through these consoles.
The DRADIS
This is effectively the ship's radar, a medium-range sensor suit that can identify targets at short range and see them coming from a fairly long range. Multiple individuals can use the DRADIS at any given time and it is a requirement to effectively pilot the ship or aim the guns. Before using any console, click on the DRADIS console to bring up the radar, then click on the console you wish to use.
The Flight Control Console
The operator of this console is responsible for flying the ship. It's fairly straightforward, but there are some keys you need to know. In general, avoid getting hit if possible, try to dodge torpedoes, and avoid boarding vessels while remaining within sight of the enemy for your gunner.
The C toggles whether the ship follows the mouse. When you first click the console, the ship will strive to point its nose towards your mouse. Hit space to toggle this behavior, which can be useful for not ruining your orientation just because you needed to click out of the window for a moment.
W and S control the throttle, and A and D move the ship left and right. Remember, the ship retains momentum once it starts moving; you need to compensate or brake to slow down or stop.
The Alt key is a sort of parking brake. Hitting it toggles the brake, which will make the ship come to a complete stop and stay there. Do not leave the parking break on while jumping into a hot zone. The chances that you remember to turn it off in those first few seconds of dodging torpedoes are very much not 100%. The deaths of so many innocent men weigh upon my soul.
The Shift Key activates a boost, which is primarily useful for dodging particularly nasty torpedoes or evading enemy boarding vessels.
Q and E activate a rotational drift, which is useful for pulling sick drifts turning very quickly, and in a short distance. This can also help to evade torpedos and less maneuverable ships.
The X key toggles inertial assistance. Disabling this allows you to strafe, and it's more useful for large titan class battleships such as the Pegasus.
If your vessel is equipped with Coaxial Railguns, use Left Click to fire a Railgun round straight out of the nose of the ship. This can be very useful for finishing off crafts that have become stationary. This weapon is quite powerful and can fire in rapid succession, but must reloaded by munitions regularly.
Bear in mind that as the pilot, it's your duty to minimize losses by evading incoming fire and assisting the flyboys where needed. If the ATC reports that a pilot has ran out of fuel, you can help out by flying over the stranded fighter's flight path so it can dock.
The Tactical Console
The gunnery console is a little more straightforward, but it pays to have munitions tech experience. Knowing the rough ammo capacity of different weapons can be useful, but the names themselves are fairly informative. Hit the Space key to switch between weapons. Being on this console will also give you a readout on the remaining ammo (in percentages) of the ships weapons, including those you can't fire from this console, as well as the ship's armor and structural integrity.
Your weapons include:
Torpedoes – Click in a direction to fire a Torpedo. Torpedoes deal a significant amount of damage with a short travel time that may require a small amount of leading. Additionally, nuclear warheads can be loaded to deal a massive amount of damage but are difficult to acquire. Torpedo tubes also do not possess much ammo capacity, being limited to only a few torpedo tubes with a long loading time.
Point Defense Cannon – An automatic rapid-fire turret that consumes a massive amount of ammo. Click in a direction and hold down to fire a stream of bullets useful for hitting fast moving fighters and heavily damaging larger ships if close enough. These are crucial for shooting down torpedoes before they can impact the ship.
The Magnetic Accelerator (MAC) – A heavy-duty piercing shot that deals incredible damage. Click and hold to aim the laser sight and release to fire a shot. The MAC only has one shot before it must reload, so make your shots count and coordinate with munitions.
Flak – Automatic anti-aircraft guns that will fire with no input from you, creating a barrier between nearby ships. Flak can destroy incoming torpedoes and deal serious damage to enemy interceptors and bombers.
You will also have a readout of the Gauss and Railgun turrets, however these are not under your control. Gauss cannons are controlled directly by Munitions Technicians while the coaxial railgun is controlled by the helm officer (see above).
In addition, while it might be obvious, it is worth noting that different ships have different weapon loadouts, and as such, different playstyles.
The FTL Console
This console controls the ship's long-range movement. It will provide you a map of various star systems that the ship can navigate to, as well as the ship's current location and how charged the FTL drive is. In order to make a jump, the drive must be 100% spooled up, which takes about a minute. If it isn't spooling at all, yell at engineering. As one might expect, this console doesn't need a dedicated crewmember; the pilot usually takes care of the job. However, in combat scenarios where the ship is fleeing, it might be neccesary for another member of the bridge crew to operate the FTL console while the pilot runs evasive maneuvers.
When Not In Combat
When you're not in combat, your second job comes in: Being the captain's whipping boy. During FTL jumps and while waiting for engineering to get its shit together, feel free to go make a run to the nearby cigarette vendor to sate the crippling nicotine addiction that you've adopted in order to retain your sanity while working this close to the captain. And remember, memeing with the captain is an important job. No matter how flagrantly he's abandoning his duty to throw stupid parties, your answer should always be "Yes, dear sir."
