A TOUR OF THE DREADNAUGHT

You command the Commonwealth Navy corvette class Starship, the 'Dreadnaught'. Your ship is made up of the main ship structure centered around its Universal Docking collar atop the Lower Saucer, with the Engine Section and the Waste Heat Array to the aft, and the NSO-401 seperatable Command Module acting as the bridge to the fore. Two Weapons pylons hang to port and starboard, and the upper saucer is actually two Accommodation Modules, which have thrusters and can act as shuttles or life boats, clustered around the Docking collar and fitting flush.

The saucer shape of the main structure comes from the main ship power source, the 1.85GW rated collider ring. Liquefied fusion premix is injected into the ring through the main injector assembly. The particle stream is progressively accelerated by thirty six accelerator cells. The accelerated particles are shot into the reaction chamber where they impact on the reaction surface, spongiform neutronium. Fusion takes place in the reactor surface to release high energy plasma. This process yields two usable forms of energy for the ship, Plasma for thruster propulsion, and electrical energy. There is a Reserve Anti-Matter subsystem to provide emergency power for a brief time, in cases where the collider ring is damaged and being repaired.

Propulsion

There are three different propulsion systems on the Dreadnaught: Thrusters, the Linear Displacement Drive System (LDS), and the Capsule Drive System. The thrusters are the main form of propulsion. A grid, fed by the collider reactor, delivers high speed plasma to thruster vents. This provides both translation and rotation with a high degree of maneuverability, and 6 G acceleration in a straight line.

Thrusters are used for combat and close distance manoeuvering, such as docking and such. The LDS system is a near light speed drive that works on the principle of linear displacement. Basically, the system displaces matter in its influence, a small distance at the speed of light. This is repeated millions of times a second, effectively allowing near light speeds to be obtained rapidly (like you were pulling many thousands of G's of acceleration). Acceleration is in the Z-axis only, and thrusters are used for course correction. Combat systems do not function when using this system. LDS is perfect for inter-system navigation, canceling acceleration in a direction, and disengaging from combat.

The Capsule Drive System is what gives the Dreadnaught it's interstellar capability, and allows it to be called a 'Starship' (a vessel that can travel to another star). The drive surrounds the ship with a small bubble or capsule that is independent of main time-space. The capsule can reintegrated with time-space at another point, without passing though main time-space. The procedure can only take place at a suitable Lagrange point in the current star system. A Lagrange point is a coordinate in the system where all the conflicting gravitational forces are mutually canceled out.

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The Bridge

The Commonwealth Navy uses a common command module (NSO-401) as the bridge for it's space combatants. A crew of four populate four workstations, from which every function of the ship and be controlled and monitored. The player is the commander of the ship, and thus plays one of the crew members, but in practice the player jumps between these stations depending on the situation. You can perform at least rudimentary helm functions at any station, the primary difference being the 'cockpit' frame and addition controls for each main ship function, Navigation (NAV), Combat (WEP), Engineering (EG), and Command (CMD).

Nav Workstation

The Dreadnaught main navigation functions are accessible and displayed at the NAV workstation. This is the actual 'cockpit' of the craft. The pilot has a view out the forward viewport, with HUD symbology projected on the surface. This HUD display is common in all the workstations except engineering, which has no external view. Symbology is comprehensive, very military and about as complex as in some current air combat sims. This includes things like current target box displaying range, damage, and contact name. There is also a nice multi function display for target camera, power gird adjustment display and a 3D contact 'radar'. Historical contrails are displayed for contacts also.

The cockpit layout is a 2D frame with various clickable controls and displays. The autopilot functions are very complete. Select a target and the following functions are available: approach, formate, dock, match velocity (very handy for combat), and stop. One of the common console feature for every station except engineering is the Contact Registry.

The Contact Registry lists all sensor contacts according to the filter setting (waypoint, vessel, inert, weapons, and distance). Each contact fills one slot in the list with contact designation, name (or 'unknown'), side, and range. The list is sorted by range (closest first). Selecting a target for navigation or combat is done with this list. Hitting F1 drops the cockpit art, leaving the HUD and a few of the cockpit displays, but not all. You can then go to the various outside (wow) views. There is also a director that automatically switches from view to view, tracking and stationary.

WEP Workstation

The weapons workstation mimics many of the functions of the helm, but has specialized displays and controls for ship-to-ship or ship-to-structure combat. The view is of a console this time, with the contact list and such on the right side. The default view is a unique 'padlock' view. This keeps the target centered in the display, with a wireframe render of your ship in the foreground. A rather interesting approach, this takes a little getting used to but it's very useful once you do. A standard forward looking viewpoint, like the pilot's, is also available as is a full screen toggle for both.

There is a good set of targeting command shortcuts on the keyboard, and system sub-targeting can done also using the cannon in auto-aim. The main offensive and defensive systems for the Dreadnaught are Particle Beam cannon, various missiles, shields, and ECM flares. Throughout the game you receive better versions and more varieties of most of these systems. Cannons are useful within ten, and more useful within five kilometers or closer, to the target. They can be set to auto aim, or to manually aim with a higher fire rate. Missiles are self guiding and require little lock time and have a longer range, but still within tens of kilometers is best if you want a hit (they can be spoofed).

Go to Part III