Munitions Officer

• Access: Delivery Office, Munitions Bay, MO Office, Hangar Bay, Flight Deck, Air Traffic Control
• Additional Access: Maintenance
• Difficulty: Hard
• Supervisors: Captain, Commander, Executive Officer
• Duties: Make sure the weapons are topped up with ammo and ready for combat, make sure your technicians aren't being idiots with highly dangerous weapons, harass Ordnance Technicians to produce more ordnance, keep the Flight Leader and Air Traffic Controller happy.
• Quote: “All crew to the Gauss guns, we've got hostiles!”

You are a Munitions Officer, the one in charge of the ship's defenses. This boils down to the various weaponry of the ship as well as the fighter craft used to defend it. Your primary domain is the Munitions Bay and Munitions Office, where you can coordinate the loading of weapons and the launching of fightercraft, respectively. Your locker includes a spare jumpsuit, a Bomb Disposal Suit, and a copy of the Military department budget card (please use it to buy ammunition and such, Requisitions will hate you for eating its budget otherwise.)

Not all of the ship's extensive arsenal is positioned in the Munitions Bay. The ship has many defensive weapons available to it, although not all ships may fully utilize all weapon systems.

Bare minimum requirements: Keep the weapons in serviceable condition, make sure your Technicians are doing their jobs.

In case you need a refresher on weapon safety, here are the weapons you're responsible for:

• Point Defense Cannons. These fire at incoming projectiles and fightercraft at short range in the direction the cannon is installed. These cannons fire from ammo boxes, which can be easily reloaded, and will burn through ammunition rapidly.
• Railguns. These big mass accelerators launch 400mm teflon-coated tungsten slugs, using them to punch very large holes in ships. They require frequent maintenance to keep their innards lubricated, but the ammunition can be manufactured with relative ease.
• Naval Artillery Cannons. These deck guns fire cannonballs, artillery shells, or AP shells using bags of gunpowder to increase their launch speed. They aren't as fast as railguns, and use a lot of gunpowder or similar material.
• Gauss Guns. These weapons fire using the same principles as the railguns, but trade massive damage for rapid fire and the ability to hold more ammunition at any given moment. They are commonly made available to the public during emergencies to assist in the ship's defense, freeing up Weapon Technicians to focus on the bigger guns.
• Torpedo Tubes. These tubes launch torpedoes; either probe torpedoes to gather scientific information on wormholes, black holes, and other phenomena; cargo torpedoes to rapidly drop supplies to another ship or station; photon torpedoes that irradiate and fry crew in a flash of high-energy photons; and thermonuclear torpedoes that will utterly wreck a ship. Do not get these confused, and make sure to be clear with the Bridge on what is presently loaded.
• Automated Missle System. This is a set of missle tubes slaved to a computer, which can be set to Anti-Ship mode, in which case they will automatically fire at ships, and Countermeasure, in which case they will fire at incoming ballistics and fightercraft.
• Orbital Cannon. If you want to nuke it from orbit, first you need an orbital drop cannon to make it count. This impressive cannon has its own options for ammunition, all of which are bad news for anything under the business end.
• Power Transmission Laser. The Power Transmission Laser is usually used to pick up some extra cash by topping off the power supply of local ships, stations, or planets with a Receptor Dish. However, it can also be turned into a devastating weapon simply by taking the normal safeties off. It has two SMESes that each hold 5 MW and can fire one damaging shot per SMES, although a wily engineer can boost the power in the grid to make it inflict greater damage.
• Bluespace Artillery. The BSA is a devastating weapon with near-unlimited range that is only limited in targeting by GPS beacons. It is utterly terrifying to most ships, and charges relatively quickly. The trouble is getting the GPS tracker to the target in the first place.
• Superliminal Bluespace Artillery. The Superliminal BSA is a massive machine which can accelerate a bolt of concentrated quark-gluon plasma to superliminal speeds, tearing clean through targets and annihilating everything in its path. It was developed from Bluespace Artillery cannons acquired in questionably legal way. You set the incoming power, and it charges up for a shot, informing you when it's ready to fire. The blasts do not require a targeting beacon to hit their target, making this a superior form of BSA in all respects except charging time.
• Phase Cannons: This array of phase cannons is your bread and butter for fighting other ships, using field-jacketed plasma to tear into enemy ships at medium range. They are capable of modest point defense at range but are best suited to damage enemy ships.

Occasionally, RnD may have new ammunition types for you to use, or weapons to put into the Phase Cannon Array that are not, strictly speaking, Phase Cannons. Some of these, like the EMPulse Blaster Array, are more useful against specific targets or areas. Don't be afraid to experiment! There's even an entire space that looks like another big weapon might fit in it, for the truly daring experimenters.

As a Munitions Officer, your chain of command is slightly odd: While your immediate superior is technically the Head of Personnel, you're most likely going to be taking orders from the Weapons Officer or the Captain. You and the Weapons Officer are at the same level on the Chain of Command - neither one of you outranks the other. However, it's a good idea to listen to them when they tell you what type of ammo to load because they're better-equipped to make informed decisions about what ammo would be most effective - but if they ask for you to allow them into the Munitions Bay, for example, you are not required to honor that request. If in doubt, ask the Head of Personnel for advice.

Besides all of this dazzling array of weapons, you also have the honor of making sure your fighter pilots keep the fighters maintained and topped up. You'll need Tyrosene to fuel the fighters (which comes from Chemistry and Cargo, although there's a lot in the starting Tyrosene tanks and more in the Shuttle Bay), and Missiles and Torpedos to rearm them. You'll also need spare components to build and upgrade your fighters, which your pilots can print from the munitions lathe.

Occasionally, a fighter pilot may ask you for better components. These can be printed from the munitions lathe after they are researched, and your pilots can install these themselves onto fighters after removing the old components.

Eventually, due to battle damage, a fighter will be lost. When this happens, the pilot's gonna need a new fighter. The Guide to Fighters has the instructions for making a new one, however you will need research before the components can be fabricated.

Usually, the Air Traffic Controller will be controlling the fighters as they engage the enemy. However, should there be threats on or near the ship, you can choose to disable the fighter safeties, allowing them to engage those threats. Fighter weapons are quite effective against threats on and about the ship, however torpedos are also quite effective at destroying the ship itself. Fighters also can't fly inside the ship, limiting them to providing fire support from the edges of the vessel.

• Your starting sunglasses offer welding protection.
• All munitions helmets offer both welding and hearing protection. You can wear one, but you'd have to sacrifice your hat.
• The Hazard Vest can store items in it. But so can your jacket, which is much more stylish.
• Science often starts with warheads for Probe Torpedos. If you ask them for these, they might remember wormholes exist.
• A variety of things can be loaded into Cargo torpedos. This includes Cyborgs and Mechs.
• Although ECM torpedos might seem useless at first glance, loading one first in a volley of torps can often distract enemy PDCs for long enough for another, bigger torp to slip through.
• New ship weapons can often be crammed into small spaces, as long as you can fit a console in as well. You still have to be able to get next to the sprite to reload it, though.
• Should the Munitions budget run low, most of the other departments often don't use theirs. If people complain about their salaries, tell them they're being paid in not getting nuked.

“I wrapped a nuclear round in a package once and stuffed it into the mail system. The guy who keeps reading my mail isn't there anymore. Neither is anyone else.”

On the plus side, you are in charge of the deadliest technology available to NovusCorp employees bar none. On the minus side, you're generally stuck in Munitions, though you can run into the Bridge and take over if the Weapons Officer has gone missing again. You have the power to cause massive damage to the ship and its personnel, but seldom will your objectives really justify the attempt. However, it's very much worth noting that a remote signaler is one of the assemblies that can be wired on to a torpedo, if you feel like a department is no longer needed.