User:Grabowski

Syndicate Crew
SYNDIE MAJOOOOR
Information
Access	SSV Babylon
Additional Access	More areas of the Babylon, depending on your job
Difficulty	Hard
Supervisors	The Syndicate
Rank	Missing (???)
Duties	Try to defeat the Nanotrasen crew
Guides	A crash course in FTL-ing; this page

War has changed. The syndicate ships are no longer AI controled bumbling idiots. Instead, they are crewed by players, just as smart as you are. Oh the horror!

Thats right! In this gamemode, you will be facing off against syndie ships crewed by players. Well, one syndie ship. Before we begin, it should be mentioned that this mode is in Secret rotation. For the gamemode to have a chance of being rolled, there must be at least 40 players ready roundstart and at least 20 must have their Syndicate crew preference set to yes. So, the big thing here is that around half of the players start the round as syndicate crew aboard the SSV Nebuchadenezzer Babylon. They have a ship just like the NT crew, and must race to either kill them or take over the galaxy.

How to join the dark side?

So, if you want to play as the syndicate crew, you have to get on the server before the round begins to have the possibility of being chosen. This is because they are selected like normal antagonists. Then, once you are on, you have to go to Player Preferences screen and find the Syndicate Crew option. Next to it there should be "Autofill". Click it to select which syndie job you want to get (I will explain them later). Leaving it on Autofill will just put you in a role that is not filled by others. You will also have to go into Game Preferences and set Syndicate Crew to yes. After that, all you have to do is hope and wait. When the round begins, half of all players who have readied up, and set their preferences will become syndie scum crew.

Late-joining players cannot join the syndicate side.

System Control

The race for the galaxy is on. To become the one and only ruler of the stars, you will have to capture Stay Systems. While the basis is the same for both the NT and the Syndie side, there is a small difference.
All Nanotrassen crews have to do is fly into a system, and kill any enemy forces in there. After a system is clear - the "XY fleet has been defeated" message shows up - an allied NT fleet will fly in, and take control of the system.
For the syndies, it is a bit different. They have to jump in and kill everything too, but after that is done they won't get an allied fleet immediately. Instead, they will have to activate a special Lighthouse Beacon. That is located in a secure room of their ship, and will send out a signal to other Syndicate fleets. After it has been activated a fleet will arrive in approximately 5 minutes. Than the system will count as taken over.

Okay, but how can we win this war?

You got a taste for blood, employee? Good. Now, let me tell you how we will win this conflict

Destruction Victory

This is the most straight-forward way to a major victory. All you have to do is destroy the enemy playership. Simple, right?

Point Victory

The other way to win is to gather more points than the enemy. How do you gain points? In two ways.

• One is capturing systems, as detailed above. Every captured system grants you 50 points.
  
• Another way is to defeat enemy fleets. This will give you - the winning side - 25 points, while taking away 25 from the losers.
  

Whichever side can get 1000 points first wins. Interestingly, if the pirates reach 1000 points, the Syndicate will win a minor victory.

Timeout Victory

If noone reaches 1000 points by 2 and a half hours,than whoever has the more points will be victorius

Tie

And last and certainly least, is the tie. You've somehow managed to both get the same amount of points as the Tortuga Raiders and now nothing has changed. Thanks a lot guys! Everything you did was pointless and you've all just wasted eachother's time, including mine!

You are ready!

Congratulations! If you have read this far, you know how this gamemode works. Below is a detailed explanation of Syndicate roles, along with tips and tricks. If you dont have the time right now, worry not, as you now know enough to grasp how this gamemode works. If you wish to play as a syndie, do read on.

---

Meet the (Syndicate) Team!

Captain

Syndicate Captain
"Bring us closer, I want to hit them with my sword!"
Information
Access	Syndicate, Syndicate Engineering, Syndicate Armoury, Syndicate Requisitions, Syndicate Heads
Additional Access	N/A
Difficulty	Hard
Supervisors	The Syndicate
Rank	Captain (CPT)
Duties	Command the Syndicate ship, order the Bridge Officers to fly into a black hole.
Guides	A crash course in FTL-ing; this page

As the Captain of the ship it is your job to lead the crew of the Syndicate vessel. It is very much similar to being a Nanotrasen Captain and requires you to behave as such.
On the ship you are the highest ranking officer, though the Strategist is technically your superior. You should try to follow advice the Strategist gives and discuss tactics before making any rash decisions.
What to do:

• Call in on the radio and establish your authority determine if you have people in the impüortant slots (the ones listed on this page)
  • Promote normal crew if you dont
• Discuss a plan with the Bridge Staff and the Strategist
• Talk with the Marine Sergant on who and when to send aboard the NSV
• Ensure that there are enough technicians to setup and maintain the reactor AND operate the guns.

Strategist

Syndicate Strategist
"I'll tell the Admiralty about this!!"
Information
Access	Syndicate, Syndicate Engineering, Syndicate Armoury, Syndicate Requisitions, Syndicate Heads
Additional Access	N/A
Difficulty	Very Hard
Supervisors	The Syndicate
Duties	Assist and advise the Captain, tell everyone you're the captain's superior.
Guides	A crash course in FTL-ing

The Strategist is a Syndicate Admiral assigned to help the Captain win the conflict. This does mean you are technically the Captain's superior, however you are still expected to follow the Captain's orders much like an Executive Officer on a Nanotrasen ship would. The most important part of your job is thinking of and sharing possible strategies that could benefit the crew and it's ability to triumph in combat.

The lighthouse beacon

This machine - marked with Red - are the ace up your stylish sleeve. This allows you to send out a beacon which lets an allied Syndicate fleet jump in, and claim it as your own. This is the only way you can capture systems and gain points as the syndies. Thus it is very important that someone toggles it as often as possible. And that someone is you. Or the Captain, but they will most likely have other problems to worry about. So, whenever your ship jumps into a system, you will have to come down here, and activate the beacon. The beacon does take around 5 minutes to activate, so you will have to survive for at least that time, but if you can manage that, an allied fleet will be here to steal your thunder help you out.

Of course, timing is very important here. Calling the fleet in AFTER you beat the enemies is good, but it wastes a lot of time. However, calling it in BEFORE you defeat the enemy, or even just as you jump in risks the fleet dying, and you losing 25 points, while the enemy gains 25 points. Calling it in AS YOU ARE LOSING may not save you, because the fleet may be too late. So knowing your strength, and especially the enemy's weakness is very important in this job.


Tips for coming up with the best strategy:

• Your allied fleets are a bit stronger then the NT ones, so they can buy you more time. Emphasis on can
  
• Your ship is smaller and more manuverable than the NSV, so you may have a chance of slipping by NT fleets, and going into their backlines.
  
• The Lighthouse beacon has a cooldown and takes time to call in a fleet.
  
• Because the Beacon has a cooldown, you can't just zip around the sector and capture systems, while the NSV is still charging their FTL
  
• You can buy Universal Encryption keys from req, which will allow you to listen in on NT comms, and tell which system they are in.
  
• The beacon calls in a random syndicate fleet, but not any syndicate fleet. You cannot spawn in an Armada, or an Earthbuster fleet.
  

Requisitions Officer

Syndicate Requisitions Officer
"Who stole the budget card!?"
Information
Access	Syndicate, Syndicate Requisitions, Syndicate Heads
Additional Access	N/A
Difficulty	Hard
Supervisors	Captain, Strategist, The Syndicate
Duties	Manage the requisitions department, waste all of the telecrystals on cigarettes.
Guides	Guide to Cargo

The Requisitions Officer is in charge of Requisitions, as one would expect. Requisitions is responsible for managing and ordering supplies and ammo much like the Quartermaster and Master At Arms.
As the Requsisitions Officer you start with an uplink and telecrystals. You also manage the distribution of money and telecrystals among the crew, and it is advised that you communicate with the Marine Sergeant and Captain before spending anything on things that aren't needed. Use your requisitions console and supply beacons to purchase steal supplies from central command.
Because you start the round with relatively little cash or telecrystals you have to do missions for the syndicate stations to earn more.

Marine Sergeant

Syndicate Marine Sergeant
"The makarov's are NOT reshaped glocks! How many times do I have to tell you this!?"
Information
Access	Syndicate, Syndicate Armoury, Syndicate Heads
Additional Access	N/A
Difficulty	Medium
Supervisors	Captain, Strategist, The Syndicate
Duties	Manage the distribution of guns among the crew, organize boarding parties, get yelled at for not boarding every ship you find.
Guides	Syndicate Drop Trooper

The Marine Sergeant is the commander of the Marines and also the defacto Head of Security on the ship. They are in charge of managing boarding parties and defending the ship from Nanotrasen boarding parties and also have the keys to the Armoury.
Many tips and tricks from playing as a Boarder are useful here:

• Hit them where it hurts! Attack the CIC, the Reactor, Medbay.
• Use your numbers to your advantage!
  • Send a few troopers to distract the enemy, while others sabotage.
• Teleport bread bombs onto the NSV
• Tap into your Nukie memories, and use some dirty tricks from there.
  

Syndicate CAG

Syndicate CAG
"Stop doing test flights during combat!"
Information
Access	Syndicate, Syndicate Heads
Additional Access	N/A
Difficulty	Medium
Supervisors	Captain, Strategist, The Syndicate
Duties	Command the fighter pilots, steal a fighter and do a one-man boarding mission.
Guides	Guide to Fighters

The CAG, or Commander Air Group, is the Syndicate equivalent of a Flight Leader in that they lead the fighter pilots. The key difference is that the CAG also takes the role of an ATC and thus stays shipside to relay information to the pilots and assist in their repairs and refuelings.

Syndicate Technician

Syndicate Technician
"Don't touch that dial!!"
Information
Access	Syndicate, Syndicate Engineering
Additional Access	N/A
Difficulty	Medium
Supervisors	Captain, Strategist, The Syndicate
Duties	Keep the reactor running, cause chernobyl 52, tell the Captain yelling "It just works" won't repair the hull.
Guides	Guide to the Supermatter;Guide to the Nuclear Reactor;Guide to Munitions

The Syndicate Technicians are the engineers and Munitions Technicians of the ship. It is their responsibility to start the reactor and keep the ship powered. They are also the ones who operate the ship's weapons and yell at the Requisitions Officer for not buying enough torp parts.

Munitions

The first part of your job is to load the weaponry. Altough each weapon is different, they are quiet easy once you learnt them. The NACs are massive cannons, consisting of a multitile base and a weapon frame, on the upper deck. To fire, they must have some propellant (mostly gunpowder bags) and a round (or cannonshot) inserted. Here is how you can load them:

• Insert powder bags to the Powder Loading Gate
• Click "Load Powder" on the console.
  • Note: These steps can be repeated any number of times. The more powder, the faster will be the shot.
• Arm the projectile wit a multitool.
• Click and drag the projectile into the Payload Gate
• Click "Load Shot" and "Chamber Shot" on the console
  

The Torpedo Tubes are much simpler to load:

• Drag a torpedo next to the tube on a Munitions Trolley
• Click and drag the torpedo to the Tube
• Click "Payload Loaded" and "Payload Chambered" on the nearby Munitions Computer
  

The VLS tubes can be reloaded simply by:

• Put two missles on top of them, which will then fall into the tube
• Click "Payload Loaded" and "Payload Chambered" on the nearby Munitions Computer
  

The 50 cals are quiet fast too:

• Go to the actual turret, and load a box of 50 cal rounds.
  

Altough not a weapon itself, you should also know how to utilise the Missle Factory. It is the shorter conveyor belt, surrended by the autowrenches and autowelders and such.

• Go to the machines painted red, named "Part Applicator"
• Add in the parts of the ordenance you want to make
  • The main difference between Torpedos and Missles is that Torpedos use Torpedo warhead, while Missles use Standard guided munitions warheads and that they have different prebuilt frames
  • Pay attention to add the parts in in the right order. The fist machine should have the Propulsion systems, then the second the Guidance, then the IFF cards and then the Warheads
  • If you mess something up, just use your ID on the machines to empty them
• Once all avaible parts are insterted, place the prebuilt frames on the first conveyor belt, and start the belt using the nearby switch.
  

Engineering

The second part of your job is managing the power on the ship. This is - of course - not an easy job, but most of the time you will have a more experienced engineer to look up to. This job also includes spooling the FTL drive, and magaing the Armor pumps.

Setting up the reactor
This here is the Stormdrive. It is an advanced nuclear reactor, utilising plasma and magnetic constriction. You need to pump in gases which are then used to generate power. The reactor then pushes Nucleium out on the other side. Now - just like any other engine - it is a bit more complicated. Complicated enough that I don't have enough space to describe it here. However, there is a guide for it

Setting the Armor Pumps

These are the Armor Plating Nano-repair Pumps, one for each quadrant of the ship armor. They are linked to a Well in the middle, which manages the resources and power used to repair the ship. They require a lot of power, around 1 MW, and even more resources, so you better get the Miners ready.
Setting them up goes like this:

• Insert as many resources as possible into the Well
• Set which material you want to use for repairing.
  • Their quality improves logically, so Ferrotitanium is worse than Duranium for example
  • You cant change this after starting the Well without shutting them down, so be careful
• Set the power intake to as high as you can.
  • The Armor pumps at maximum can eat 1 MW, which - if all goes well - shouldn't be hard for a Stormdrive to achive. So you can just max the bar and be done with it.
• If all is ready, press RR processing so it turns green.
• Now go to the Armour pumps, and configure them so that they repair the armor and hull
  • The Well only has 100% of capacity, which is shared across all the Pumps. So if you would set all the Pumps to 25% hull and 25% armor, they would require 200% capacity from the Well. This is sustainable for a short amount of time, but not for long.
  • From the above point, if you dont want to micro-manage the pumps during battle, just set them to a good balanced percentage, like 18% armor and 7% hull.
    

Spooling the FTL

Do I really have to tell you this? Oh well. Do not worry, it is veeery easy. Just go to the FTL drive, click on the little dial in the middle and put in a number greater than 0. Then just leave it be. Do this as fast as possible after every jump, and the Bridge Staff will like you.

Bridge Staff

Syndicate Bridge Staff
"Spool the FTL!"
Information
Access	Syndicate, Syndicate Heads
Additional Access	N/A
Difficulty	Medium
Supervisors	Captain, Strategist, The Syndicate
Rank	Missing (???)
Duties	Pilot the main ship, ask the cook to make more cake.
Guides	A crash course in FTL-ing;Guide to munitons;Guide to piloting the ship

Syndicate Bridge Staff have the same dynamic as normal Bridge Staff, just for the Syndicate ship. They pilot it using the Helm Computer and man the guns using the Tactical Console.

For anyone wishing to control the ship, take a look here, or take a glance at this short rundown.

• The Helm console:
  • W and S control the thrust
  • A and D can turn the ship left and right, altough slowly.
  • C toggles laser guided movement. If it is on, the ship will follow your mouse cursor. If it is off, the ship will follow an arrow, which is visible on top of the sprite. This arrow can be rotated with Q and E
  • Shift gives you a short boost.
  • Alt toggles the handbrakes
  • X toggles inertia assistance. This slows down the ship, when W is not held down.
• The TAC console
  • Space switches which weapon you are using
  • Click anywhere to fire the currently selected weapon
• Your weapons include
  • Naval Artillery cannons, which can fire devastating projectiles, but their ammo are costly and hard to properly handle
  • Torpedo tubes fire projectiles that track after enemies, but can be easily shot down

Tips:

• Your ship is faster and smaller than the NSV. Use this to your advantage
• Your ship has a Stealth Field, which is capable of making the ship nigh-invisible.^{(Unless they removed it when updating to Newnitions)}
• Using the above two, you are more that capable of doing hit-and-runs.
• One dirty trick is jumping to the system with the NSV in it, then stalling for long enough to activate the Lighthouse Beacon.
• Always coordinate with the Strategist and the Captain. It is their job to make you the best strategy to follow.

SyndiClown

Syndicate Clown
"You're all stupid. See they're gonna be looking for army guys."
Information
Access	Syndicate
Additional Access	N/A
Difficulty	Easy
Supervisors	Captain, Strategist, Marine Sergeant, The Syndicate
Duties	Laugh at the crew Make the crew laugh, be the ultimate boarder.

Tips

- As the Requisitions Officer you can link supply pod beacons to the DRADIS to tell traders where to ship your stuff. Use a multitool on the DRADIS to switch back to default drop points. ESSENTIAL for buying fighters!
- The Syndicate is Pirating Nanotrasen's research, and vice versa. Both parties will have access to the same researched techs!

Nanotrasen

So you're part of the Nanotrasen crew and Whiterapids has given your ship the all-clear to wipe out the syndicate. This means your ship will be assisted by Nanotrasen fleets during the game as you will be the agressors of the conflict this time (in contrary to the normal gamemode where the Syndicate are attacking Nanotrasen).

Command

When playing as the Commanding Officer (Captain, Executive Officer or other heads of Staff) of the NSV you will have to command the ship to the best of your ability, as one could expect. Though some measures may need to be taken to ensure the ship is ready for combat as soon as possible. As stated before you are now in control of the attacking faction and because of this it is recommended to take more aggressive actions, such as leaving for combat early and promoting non-essential personnel to more supportive jobs.