Munitions Technician

• Access: Delivery Office, Munitions, MO office
• Additional Access: N/A
• Difficulty: Easy
• Supervisors: Munitions Officer
• Duties: Load weapons, operate weapons that require direct control
• Quote: “Power Beam at 999 Terawatts and ready to fire!”

You are a Munitions Technician. You wanted to be in charge of the big guns, but the Munitions Officer position was already taken. Or maybe you actually like working on weapons that can reduce people to their component atoms. Either way, your primary job is to load and sometimes operate the assorted weaponry available to your ship.

Bare minimum requirements: Load the guns without blowing yourself or the entire weapons array up.

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. Loading them is a common Munitions Tech assignment.
• 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. Munitions Techs often work here.
• 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. The more powder that is used, the faster the resulting projectile. A Munitions Tech is often expected to man each NAC.
• 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 Munitions 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. They frequently require reloading.
• Automated Missile System. This is a set of missile 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. They occasionally require reloading.
• 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. This is operated by the Requisitions Officer.
• 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 and fire without waiting for chargeups. Munitions Techs seldom work directly on this weapon.
• 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. Munitions Techs seldom work directly on this weapon.
• 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 ways. 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. Munitions Techs usually leave the relevant work here to engineers.
• 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. Munitions Techs are responsible for installing system upgrades and more cannons.

Depending on your particular assignment from the Munitions Officer, you may be tasked with serving any of these weapons, particularly if they aren't operated by the Weapons Officer or other crew; your most common task will be to reload a weapon.

The NAC Cannons are your primary responsibility, so let's dive into a quick how-to guide to loading and unloading:

• Open the NAC cannon's breech. You will receive a pop-up warning if a round is already in the breech, and a second pop-up warning if the round in question is an armed artillery shell. Assuming the breech is empty, continue on, otherwise, skip ahead to Unloading the NAC.
• Use the NAC Munitions Console in the office and select a round.
• Turn on the conveyor belt and wait for the round to move itself onto the loading tray.
• Use a multitool on artillery shells to toggle the arming mechanism. If the lights are flashing, the round is armed.
• You can disarm a round if it's outside the NAC cannon by using a multitool again.
• Load the gunpowder bays. The more gunpowder (or other similar explosive) you use, the faster your deck guns will fire, enabling near instantaneous high-accuracy hits if properly prepared.
• Close the NAC cannon's breech.
• Congratulations, the NAC is now loaded. Once there is a projectile in the NAC, your weapon is ready to fire.

• Sometimes you have to unload the NAC – say, when your enemy no longer has shields and you just popped a shield-breaker into the cannon, or when you have to rebuild the cannon after combat damage. Follow these steps properly and you won't be the person who accidentally blew up the Munitions Bay.
• Turn off the NAC loading mechanism's conveyor. This will prevent you from inadvertently reloading the round you extract.
• Go to the NAC Cannon's maintenance console and select Disarm Round if there is an artillery shell loaded. The round will be toggled, allowing you to safely continue.
• Open the breech.
• If the maintenance console was disabled or damaged, then use a multitool to manually disarm the NAC artillery shell, if necessary. If you don't have one, you -can- safely extract a live round from the breech, but -any- hard impact will set a NAC round off and probably kill you in the process, so it is HIGHLY advised that you disarm the round with a multitool before proceeding.
• Once the round is disarmed, use the extractor to slide the round out of the breech and onto the conveyor.
• Pull the round off of the conveyor to safely remove it. (Pushing will drop the round on the ground, which will not endear you to the rest of the team, especially if it explodes.)
• If nothing has exploded, congratulations! You have successfully removed a NAC round. Just remember to always pull artillery shells in particular, especially if live, as things will go very badly should it be treated too roughly.

• The NAC Cannons require machine oil in order to keep the cannon firing smoothly. Machine oil will automatically be dispensed when the breech is opened (so don't be a jerk and mess with the breech to use up all the oil.) It also uses a larger amount of machine oil to lubricate the barrel after the weapon fires. Each deck gun can take ten liters of machine oil when empty, and will be in a random state at round start, so be prepared to top up if it looks low. An insufficiently lubricated barrel may jam with unfortunate consequences, up to and including the entire cannon blowing up in your face, so try to avoid that.
• A NAC Cannon gradually requires recalibration after each shot to assure that the magnetic coils propel the shell safely out of the barrel at high velocity, and not, for example, into the side of the ship. This requires occasional calibration. Simply open the NAC's access panel, and use the multitool on the actuator unit to reset its calibration settings. Or if you happen to own a Personal AI, you can ask it to perform direct calibrations that will temporarily give NAC attacks a boost in accuracy (at the cost of waiting for the pAI to complete a short minigame.) Close the access panel when finished.
• Occasionally, after a great deal of use, the actuator will wear out altogether. To correct this, you have to use a wrench to unsecure the burned-out actuator, a prybar to remove it, place a new one in the socket and wrench it back into place. If you don't have a spare actuator, carry the burned-out one to R&D and ask them to make you a working one. They should be able to replace it with a functional version, though its quality will depend on their tech skills and how well they analyze it. Actuators start out “Optimal” at round start, and decline to “Standard”, “Sub-Optimal”, and “Dangerous” as they degrade in quality.

There are many different types of ammunition you'll be using, some of which are listed here:

Your Munitions Officer should tell you what to load, but if nobody is giving specific orders, an HE round is generally a safe option. Just don't forget that your ammunition reserves are limited, and don't be afraid to ask!

The Phase Cannon Array is fairly easy to use and operate – the Weapons Officer should be able to handle firing it – but in the event you are called upon to upgrade, maintain, or repair it, there are a few things to know:

• Each Phase Cannon requires a Phase Cannon Circuitboard, a Phase Cannon Beam Assembly, four micro-lasers, and four capacitors.
• The better the replaceable parts you use, the more powerful that particular Phase Cannon is.
• Damage to the Phase Cannon Array may destroy any of these parts, requiring replacement for that particular Phase Cannon to be usable. Each Phase Cannon must be repaired separately.
• More Phase Cannons means more work to repair if things break or break down, but means far more firepower available to your ship. Can you manage an array of sixteen fully maximized Phase Cannons?
• A single, unoptimized Phase Cannon has a damage of 8 per shot. Each upgrade to microlasers increases damage by 2 (all four Tier-2 microlasers results in a damage of 16 per shot), but burns more power. Upgraded capacitors allow the Phase Cannon to get more shots per burst (2 at Tier 2, etc).
• Done visualizing your cannon array as the sword that slices through shields and ships? Good, now get ready to wait until you actually get those parts, and always try to keep at least one set of parts in reserve for inevitable damage, wear and tear.
• Over time, the Phase Cannon may incur damage through no fault of your own as part of wear and tear when used. If you have time on your hands and nobody's shooting at you, you can prevent this by removing and then re-adding the eight component parts (the microlasers and capacitors). If Engineering will provide you with an RPED or BRPED, you can do this even faster.
• The Phase Cannon shows “Optimal” condition when it has been recently serviced, and “Standard” after it has been used in combat. At some point (semi-random), it will become “Sub-Optimal”, which is your warning that a part may break when the cannon is used; if the weapon becomes “Dangerous”, then there is also a small chance that the entire cannon will fall apart (breaking the Circuit Board or Beam Assembly, which will also have to be replaced and cannot be fixed with the RPED or its variants.)
• The Phase Cannon Array won't fire while the maintenance hatch is open, so do your necessary repairs quickly!
• In emergencies, if the link to the Bridge is cut or the Weapons Officer is unavailable, Phase Cannons can be operated directly by control consoles.

The Power Beam is basically the most powerful, and often the slowest-to-charge, weapon in your arsenal. The good news is that you don't need to upgrade it to make it more destructive. Instead, you can upgrade it to make it more efficient with the awesome power you plan to feed into it.

• The Power Beam can fire at up to 999 TW, which is unlikely to be achieved on most ships, but in practice, you only need to generate that much power for one second, which means that you will use up to 275,000 KW-h per shot. As the local SMESes only store 5 MW before upgrades, the cannon will usually operate on much lower power unless the engines are working overtime.
• The Power Beam consists of four component machines - the Power Beam Control Chamber, Power Beam Aft Assembly, Power Beam Center Console, and Power Beam Forward Assembly, with each piece requiring an important component, a framework, and some bits and pieces that make it work.
• You will note that each of these pieces includes six capacitors, as well as a circuit board and an assembly unit (and a monitor on the center console). These capacitors control the effective 'time to fire' of the weapon; the power loss is instantaneous, and with 24 default capacitors, it takes 120 seconds to cooldown and become usable again after a shot. Replacing them all with the best capacitors available will allow it to fire again immediately after the shot.
• Like any weapon, the Power Beam can gradually lose efficiency with usage; unlike most weapons, this generally doesn't make the weapon entirely unusable, merely diminishing its returns when fired until the assembly is recalibrated. The Center Console allows a worker to recalibrate the Power Beam back to default settings, and a personal AI can calibrate the Power Beam to optimal settings to maintain efficiency longer than usual.
• Unlike most weapons, the Power Beam otherwise requires little long-term maintenance, although if Engineering isn't too busy you might ask them to visit and upgrade the two SMESes that are connected to the Power Beam so that they can store more power from the grid. Tell them to upgrade the SMESes for the other weapons, while they're at it.
• Out of combat, your Power Beam can also be used to recharge Microwave Power Stations, assuming your Weapons Officer and Helm Officer are working together. Microwave Power Stations pay your ship money for the amount of power you send them, so this can be a very nice way of increasing the ship budget as long as the Power Beam's efficiency is maximized.

As a Munitions Technician, you are going to be listening to your Munitions Officer, who in turn is going to be in contact with the Weapons Officer or Command regarding what weapons to ready. Listen to their orders and do what they say; in the absence of the Munitions Officer, listen to their superiors and make them aware of any difficulties in the Munitions Bay (especially combat damage) so that they can call Engineering to assist.

• The NAC cannon is -loud-. If you don't have a bowmans' headset, there are earmuffs in the office.
• Wearing a bombsuit, found in the Level 4 EOD closet in the office, will mean if you get hit with an explosion or eject a live round into your face, you won't be gibbed and can thus be cloned.
• Setting off a live shell is a surefire way to get lynched at best and banned at worst.
• If you are the only Munitions Technician, focus on the NAC cannon during combat, and on maintaining it and the other weapons when not in combat.

“By day I load the biggest gun you'll ever see. By night I use a smaller one to carry out my wetwork.”

You are responsible for the defensive capabilities of the ship; this means that you also have access to MAC rounds, as well as experimental rounds produced by the R&D department and the massive amounts of power used to charge the Power Beam. The only big risk is that your fellow Technicians and the Munitions Officer will notice if you decide to start converting MAC rounds into a bomb, or start wiring a power sink into the Power Beam's supply wiring, or abandon your post to go chase the Clown in the middle of a firefight. You do have the advantage of not being required unless there's ship to ship combat going on (or perhaps ship-to-planet combat, if the natives are exceptionally restless), and you have a good excuse for visiting most of the departments to pick up parts or ammunition for your very big guns.