SPACE TRADERS FLIGHT TRAINING MANUAL

Interplanetary Travel

In-Flight Combat

Combat Protocol
Not all ships in deep space, even small fighters, are pirates. Most ships will respond to hostile action with hostile action. If you attack a police ship or trade in contraband goods (see Trading), your legal status will be changed to OFFENDER, or even higher, if you destroy pirate ships, or Thargoid invaders, (or asteroids) you will receive a bounty payment. If you shoot at the Coriolis space station, its own defensive ships (Viper class fighters) will attack you.

	You must be prepared to outwit your enemies tactically. Speed of reaction will not in itself always be enough.
Maneuvering The Cobra tradeship is fast, and has a very tight turning circle (though lass tight at full speed); is an ideal combat ship against small packs of enemy vessels. It will outrun many attack craft by speed alone, but it will not outrun a missile. Spinning, fast-slow, and duck-and-weave maneuvers are very effective against the larger, less maneuverable ships when they attack. A sudden decrease in speed followed by a tight 180° turn and an increase in velocity will often give you a big advantage over pursuing enemy craft. Signs Of Danger if you cannot make an interspace quick jump J towards the planet, there is a ship in the vicinity, it could be dangerous. If the status screen, during flight, shows YELLOW or RED, prepare to engage in combat.

Flashing streaks on any screen mean laser fire is coming in.

Laser fire striking the defensive shields makes a light screeching sound. Listen for laser fire striking the hull direct. Through damaged screens it makes a low, screeching sound. DANGER.

An incoming missile be detected, tracked, and a warning message flashed on main screen. Some star pilots are braver than others and pirate ships may break off and run in the face of stiff resistance. Some appear to know no fear - in particular Thargoid vessels, whose captains have had their fear glands surgically removed.

Likely Enemies
Lone-wolf traders - such as Cobra pilots - are constantly at risk from other Spacefaring types. An understanding of other loners, packhunters and bounty killers is essential.

Bounty Hunters

Unless you have achieved FUGITIVE status, and especially if you are highly ranked as a combater as well as being a criminal, bounty hunters will not bother a ship as insignificant as a Cobra Mk 3.

		In fact, many bounty hunters favor Cobra trade-ships as they make an excellent disguise. But the real killers star ride in the sleek, and highly efficient, Fer-de-Lance Lightspeeder, in which they live for months at a time. Bounty hunters can always be found outside Orbit Space, especially around worlds classified as 'dangerous'. They are invariable of combat rating: DEADLY or ELITE. Bounty hunters rarely identify themselves to passing ships, and if pestered too closely will usually kill.
		A Zorgan-Petterson Group (Zee Pee Gee) designed vessel favored by well-heeled bounty hunters and freewheeling business corporations, the Fer-de-Lance is a sophisticated craft capable of trading, combat, and leisure function.
		Pirate Vessels There are several ways of identifying a space-going ship as 'pirate-occupied', and this is essential since pirates and renegades will take any ship for their purpose, from a Worm to a massive Python. Pirates exist everywhere in the galaxy, but cluster mainly around unstable GalCop worlds, especially worlds run on a feudal or anarchic system.


	A 'shark-teeth' design personalizes this Python Class Deep Space Cruiser, which probably belongs to a galactic freebooter or pirate.

Click on the Python for a larger image

Small ships hovering very distant from a planet are pirates. Large ships accompanied by a mixture of small fighter types are pirates. Ships which refuse to acknowledge identification are pirates. Around worlds run by autocracies, or clans, pirates will very often have been paid to leave trade ships alone. Piracy is a huge, and complex, business, and any life-respecting trader will learn the tell-tale signs of pirate presence.

Police

In a Co-operative of Worlds as complex as the 2040 planets of the GalCop, the police can be as menacing as they can be helpful. The typical police vessel is a Viper GH Class Pulseship, which is very fast, and very maneuverable. They are on constant standby on every Coriolis and Dodec space station, and will attack - a pirate, or a fugitive trader - within seconds. They do not make arrests, they destroy. There are different police departments serving different purposes narcotics, space-drunkenness, psychotic shooting, piracy, slave trading etc. - but all have small fleets of these very fast Viper patrol craft.


The Viper police ship is a highly manoeuverable short-range 'hunter-killer'.		A clear picture of a Mamba Class Fighter, the pirate's answer to the Viper police ship. Fast and maneuverable, it is large enough to carry two homing missiles and ten tonnes of cargo.

Thargoid Invasion Ships and Thargons The Thargoids are humankinds deadly enemy, and throughout the 8 galaxies there are at least 50 war zones between humanity and Thargoid. This highly technologically advanced insectoid race is also at war with 17 other space-going life-forms. All Thargoid combaters are ruthless in combat and some may be comparable with élite status human combat pilots. Though most of the Thargoid Space Fleet is currently engaged by the Galactic Navy in InterGalactic Space, a few of the smaller battle ships make occasional destructor-raids into human space. These ships are extremely fast for their size and invariably have anti-missile (ECM) Systems. Additionally, most Thargoid battle ships carry several small, remote-controlled 'thargons', killer-craft each equipped with a single, but highly advanced, pulse-laser. The Galactic Navy are developing their own deep-space RemCraft, and pay a large bounty for any thargon craft that are brought to them. (N.B. Bounty on Thargoid invasion craft destroyed is very high. Thargoid battle-cruisers believed to be able to 'hover' in Witch-Space (hyperspace) and destroy through-coming craft).
Other Space Types Rock Hermits Pirates, aging bounty hunters, or planetary outcasts, who create a living space out of asteroids. They usually choose large asteroids, and set up signal beacons to warn off miners. GalCop Law protects Rock Hermits, but since most of the asteroid is hollowed-out, there is little advantage to be gained by 'mining' them anyway. Generation Ships Before the development of the WS Thru-Space drive, in all its various forms, interstellar travel occurred in large, self-sustaining environment ship - Generation Ships - most of which have now been logged and their progress monitored. There are more than seventy thousand of these immense vessels plowing their way through the galaxy, some of them in their 30th generation. The penalty for interference with such a vessel is marooning.
Space Dredgers These immense factory ships are to be found whenever there has been a war, or a Thargoid invasion, or a natural catastrophe. More than forty miles long, the dredgers are a life-form to themselves. The Dredgers are huge cities in space, feeding off debris and ruination. Heavily armed, and with fleets of reconditioned fighter ships, they are to be avoided at all costs.