Special Weapons

Introduction
X-Bomber
Dai-X Fighters
Dai-X

Introduction

This is Prof Hagan. I'm here to talk you through the special weapons that will be available to you during your missions.

Availability

There are two sets of 10 special weapons available: one for X-Bomber and one Dai-X. These weapons are introduced and upgraded gradually as the game progresses and are available, starting in the levels shown below:

Weapon	Mk 1	Mk 2	Mk 3
■ Yellow, ■ Blue, ■ Orange	1	6	11
■ Green	2	7	12
■ Aqua	3	7	12
■ Red	4	8	12
■ Grey	5	8	13
■ Purple		9	13
■ Magenta		10	13
■ Lime			14

Resource Management

Some special weapons consume their own ammunition, rather than consuming your ship's weapons energy.
These weapons are useful if you want to divert your weapons energy to your shields.
Alternatively, you can hold this type of special weapon in reserve, in case your weapons energy runs out.

Other special weapons draw power from X-Bomber or Dai-X's internal weapons energy, meaning that they never run out of their own ammo but can deprive your other weapons that they might need to fire, later on.

If a special weapon has its own ammunition, the amount provided is shown to the right of the heading.

X-Bomber

■ Yellow - ADEN Cannons 6,000,000

The ADEN cannon pod contains 4 x 90mm, 8-barrel rotary gauss cannons that fire depleted-uranium penetrators.
The cannons draw from a 6,000,000 round magazine, sufficient for nearly 70 seconds of continuous fire.
The weapon is good for shredding multiple targets at once, but is only marginally effective against larger targets.

Upgrades, comprising armour-piercing and hybrid high-explosive rounds, are planned to substantially increase effectiveness against larger enemies.

Ultimately, the ADEN cannons are oversized Gatling guns and require a short period to spin up before firing.

■ Blue - Guided Missiles 250 / 500 / 1000

The Star Arrow missile system tracks any threat identified by X-Bomber's main computer via infrared and LIDAR. Each fire-and-forget, high-agility missile has a powerful anti-ship warhead.

This weapon will be improved with a 500-missile magazine: firing through twin launchers, for a 50% increase in firing rate. The number of targets that can be tracked simultaneously will also be doubled.

Eventually, the Star Arrow missile system will be replaced with the Hydra micro-missile system, which is currently under development. These missiles are significantly smaller but inflict almost as much damage, allowing for a 1,000-missile magazine. This system can also track and even larger number of targets simultaneously.

■ Orange - Rotator spread gun E

This pulse weapon features an oscillating muzzle with four diverging barrels, which are offset at 45' from the forward direction of the ship. Two barrels fire at any given time to release a diverging, cyclical pattern of fire that covers a wide area.
The weapon also fires behind the ship between brief cool-down intervals.

Planned upgrades to the weapon include increases in firing rate and muzzle velocity as well as allowing simultaneous fire with other ship's weapons when the rotator spread gun is unselected.

■ Green - Plasma Cannons E

Plasma weapons were once reserved for use on space stations and planetary defence arrays, due to their high maintenance demands and power requirements. This miniaturised dual plasma cannon discharges over 5 shots per second per barrel. The weapon can blast through the toughest targets but has a steady energy consumption.
The weapon requires a short pause between volleys to prevent overheating

An improved, multi-stage helium-3 pulse cooling system is planned to allow indefinite periods of uninterrupted, sustained fire.

■ Aqua - Scalar Mass Driver E / 50 / 75

The scalar mass driver fires a 6-metre-long, cylindrical neutronium munition at multiples of lightspeed using scalar energy. 
The weapon has a 1 metre deviation over a range of 100,000 militons, making it the most accurate weapon in existence. 

Initially, the weapon needs to charge before firing, building up a full charge in 2 seconds.
The scalar energy charge is built up by drawing power from X-Bomber's internal weapons energy.
Hold 'Fire 1' (default: Z) to charge and then release Fire 1 to fire.

This weapon is an 80-metre long sniper rifle and is extremely effective against large enemies but extremely limited in its effectiveness against large numbers of small targets.

The SMD is being upgraded to add a magazine of 50 disposable scalar energy cells to propel the neutronium munitions, which will allow semi-automatic fire, rather than having to charge the weapon before firing.
Miniaturisation of the firing mechanism will allow the magazine size to be increased to accommodate 75 rounds.

The v1 version of the SMD doesn't run out of ammunition, to offset the fact that the weapon takes time to charge, and consumes the ship's weapons energy in order to do so.
The special weapon ammo counter is used to indicate the weapon's charge level.

In versions 2 and 3, once the 50 or 75 power cells respectively are depleted, the weapon is discarded.

■ Red - EM Napalm 3000 / 4500

The electromagnetic napalm dispenser works on a similar principal to laser torpedoes but lacks a collimating mechanism, and therefore engulfs a wider area, dissipating after a shorter distance. 

The weapon has a variable forcefield projector, which receives instructions from X-Bomber's flight computer.
This in turn, manipulates the napalm stream, allowing it to snake and curve in accordance with X-Bomber's movement.

The EM napalm causes impacted targets to continue to disintegrate: even in space, inflicting further damage, even once they're no longer directly exposed to the napalm stream.

The EM napalm is a supercharged exotic matter plasma, stored in electromagnetic suspension.
The weapon is supplied with a 3,000 litre fuel supply; sufficient for 60 seconds of operation.

The fuel containment system is being miniaturised and reinforced to allow the weapon to be accompanied by a 4,500 litre supply; sufficient for 90 seconds of operation.

In the original X Bomber TV series, the "laser torpedo" weapons are referred to as "EM napalm".
This, along with the napalm cannon from Descent³, which was a great addition to that game, made me want to create this weapon. The ability to steer the beam back-and-forth with the movement of the ship makes it really fun to use.

■ Grey - Converging Laser Torpedoes

X-Bomber's original laser torpedo system was modified in order to comply with the EDF's non-aggression treaty and defence pact signed with the Simetran government.

Originally, the system fired four laser torpedo streams; one from each of X-Bomber's wingtip weapons pods, that converged ahead of the ship.
A single, powerful laser torpedo blast was projected forward from the point where the four beams converged that created a very large fireball when it impacted a target.

This configuration was regarded by EDF's new allies as too devastating to be equipped during peacetime.
Therefore the weapon was modified to fire four individual, parallel streams directly ahead. This reduced the combined output of the weapon by over 20% but makes the weapon more effective against crowds of small targets since the weapon's field of fire is significantly wider.

Now that war with the Imperial Alliance has flared up again, the Simetra Defence Directorate were quick to agree to us reverting the system back to its original configuration.

This special weapon pack allows the laser torpedoes to be fired in their original mode.
The pack contains a microcomputer that re-installs the firmware and emitter control algorithms necessary to restore the weapon to its original configuration.
It also includes an additional power source that allows the system to be fired in converging mode for short periods of time without consuming any of the ship's internal weapons energy.

Once this power external reserve is depleted, the weapon will rapidly consume X-Bomber's weapons energy.
The external reserve replenishes quickly, however, when the weapon is either selected but not firing, or when another weapon is selected.

A new weapon designed to replace this system; the Positron Blaster, is currently in development.

■ Purple - Gunboys 6 / 8

These stationary sentry drones track targets and open fire on them with two laser machineguns that extend from behind slide-out side panels, whenever enemies are detected. 
The gunboys are heavily armoured for their size and hold a lethal surprise of 6 guided plasma missiles, which are released in the event that a gunboy is destroyed.

The gunboy container tube holds 6 units, which can be deployed anywhere by pressing 'Fire 1' (default: Z).

The gunboys will be upgraded with larger calibre pulse guns to make them more effective against larger targets.
An extended container is in production, which will contain 8 gunboy units.

Eventually, the gunboys' onboard power supplies will be augmented to power anti-ship pulse cannons.

■ Magenta - Laser Sabre

A rotating turret emits three diverging beams that damage and reflect off enemies. The beams cause greater damage the more times they reflect.

■ Lime - Booster

The Booster docks with X-Bomber and adds two phased plasma beam cannons as well as two 24-tube rocket pods with 1,000 rockets each to its arsenal. 
The beam cannons fire only when the Booster is selected and do not consume X-Bomber's energy.
The rocket pods fire regardless of whether the Booster is selected until the rockets are depleted.
When unselected, the Booster also charges X-Bomber's shields, weapons and X-Impulse systems and repairs the armour.

The Booster can be damaged and destroyed by enemy weapons fire. As the Booster sustains damage, its cannons become less effective.

Dai-X Fighters

The Dai-X Fighters' special weapons behave differently to those of X-Bomber and Dai-X in the sense that special weapons power-ups charge the special weapon, as opposed to providing a replacement or alternative special weapon.
Therefore, the power-ups are colour-coded to the Dai-X Fighter instead; red for BrainCom, green for MainBody and blue for LegTrax.

The power-ups provide 20 units of charge in chapter 1, 30 units in chapter 2 and 45 units in chapter 3.
The fighters can hold a maximum of 1,000 units of charge and, the more charge is available, the more powerful the weapon becomes.
The trade-off is that, the higher the power level of the weapon, the higher the rate of depletion of the special weapons energy.

Each of the fighters' special weapons has 10 power levels, which are selected based on the amount of charge available, as follows:
	Charge		Power level  
	  1 -    99	 1
	100 -   199	 2
	900 - 1,000	10

To make things simple, the special weapons charge is shared across all three Dai-X Fighters.  If BrainCom has 500 units of charge, so do MainBody and LegTrax.

■ BrainCom - Spead-fire Weapons Pod

BrainCom's special weapon consists of a pair of roughly knife-shaped weapons pods that attach on either side of the ship.
Each pod contains a forward-firing, 30mm rapid-fire pulse gun, as well as 3 further beam Vulcans that fire in a diverging pattern.
This makes BrainCom highly effective at mowing down large numbers of smaller enemies.

The first power level provides for only forward-firing guns to operate, while power levels 2-4 allow the first pair of side-firing vulcans to operate at increasing levels of output.
Levels 5-7 and 8-10 allow the second and third rows of guns to fire respectively.

Mean output: 256

MainBody - Rapid-fire pulse guns 340 (mean)
- Fire up to four streams of pulse shots directly ahead.
LegTrax - Rapid-fire Spread-gun 298 (mean)
- Emits up to 5 diverging streams of fire at extremely high muzzle velocity.
- Further upgrades provide an automated, turret-mounted pulse gun.

Dai-X Special Weapons

■ Yellow - Wildfire Missiles

Two 16-tube shoulder-mounted launchers release a swarm of semi-guided missiles from a 500-round magazine.
The Wildfire missiles might not always go where planned but their high-explosive warheads make a definite impression when they get there.

■ Blue - WingBlade 60 / 75 / 90 seconds

WingBlade is an independent ship and an augmentative weapon for Dai-X. When unselected, it flies alongside the Dai-X, attacking the enemy independently.
When selected, it docks with Dai-X and fires a stream of lightning that curves and locks onto enemies that it touches.
This weapon is time-limited to 60 seconds - whether selected or unselected

■ Orange - Rapid-fire SpreadGun E

A back-pack-mounted weapon that projects two streams of pulse lasers ahead as well as four smaller calibre streams to either side at a high rate of fire.

■ Green - Plasma Grenades 1000 rounds

The plasma grenades are fired from two multi-barrel launchers on the shoulders.

The plasma grenades have no guidance or propulsion of their own.  That means a larger warhead and more shots per magazine.  The 1,000-round magazine lasts for a while.
The grenades can land practically anywhere, creating extensive damage over a wide area.
They leave behind a cloud of supercharged plasma that spreads out and damages nearby targets.
The limiting factor is its short effective range.

■ Aqua - DRAGOON Pack 6 / 12 / 24

The 'Six-Shooter' backpack stores and launches six 'remote weapon' attack drones; each with a beam cannon, that attack the enemy independently.

■ Red - Homing Lasers 3000, E

This backpack weapon is based on the smart laser technology featured on the Simetra Defence Directorate's Sylph gunships.  
It contains a large magazine of shielded nano-robots, each of which guides a plasma beam to its target.
The weapon cycles between three diverging firing ports on either side of the backpack.
When unselected, the weapon continues to fire at a lower rate.

The weapon consumes both its own ammunition, plus Dai-X's own weapons energy in order to fire.

Grey - Point Singularity Bomb

■ Purple - Quantum Blaster

The quantum blaster consists of two beam rifles that combine to launch a fireball of quantum particles that can be charged up for increased power.

Selected
The Dai-X combines the rifles together. The weapon releases a quantum fireball with each press and release of the trigger.
The fireball can be charged exponentially by holding the trigger.
The fireball reaches maximum charge after 1.5 seconds, after which, an overload failsafe releases the blast automatically.
The blast can be released manually at any point prior to this by releasing the trigger.

The quantum blast travels through most small and medium targets. If the blast hits a target that it cannot destroy in a single hit, the fireball detonates, creating a radiating sphere that spreads out, creating heavy damage to that target and those nearby.

Unselected
The Dai-X separates the blaster into its two constituent rifles and dual-wields them independently.
Each rifle fires charged particle beams in an alternating cycle.

Technical Data
The fireball inflicts between 62.5 and 562.5 units of damage on any target, with which it collides.
If the enemy's health exceeds the amount of damage that the fireball can inflict, the fireball explodes, creating an area of splash damage that expands to 200% of the fireball's radius.
The splash damage sphere dissipates after 1 second, inflicting gradually less-and-less damage as it expands.
The total damage that the detonation can cause to any individual target ranges from 312.5 to 2812.5.

Otherwise, the fireball destroys the enemy and keeps going. This is useful if you can wait until smaller enemies are lined up behind each other.

When fired in unselected mode, the beam rifles output 300 units of damage per second.

■ Magenta - Classified

The arc sabre is a backpack-based weapon that locks onto up to four enemies at once and joins them up with a gluon plasma beam, resembling an arc of lightning.
The weapon is omnidirectional and requires no aiming.

Each target in the chain receives slightly less damage than the one before, as follows:  
	Target #	Damage per second
	1		200
	2		150
	3		100
	4		 50

If only one target is present, it receives the total 500 units of damage per second that would have been distributed out to multiple targets.

The weapon runs from its own internal power reserve; sufficient for 30 seconds of operation only.
However, this energy is only consumed when there is a target present for the weapon to engage.
If the trigger is held while no enemies are present, this consumes no resources.

This weapon is based on the weapon of the same name from the great vehicular shooter; Recoil and works in exactly the same way. One of the expansion packs for FEAR also contains a similar weapon, although I don't recall ever using it.

■ Lime - THOR - Tactical Heavy Ordnance Reinforcement

Works as a Booster for Dai-X, providing two phased plasma beam cannons as well as two guided missile launchers and two beam cannons. When not selected, THOR charges Dai-X's shields and weapons; reloads the missiles and repairs the armour.

Underwater Equipment

RFUP: Rapid-fire Underwater Penetrator

	Weapons	Countermeasure
X-Bomber	Z - RFUP - 3-directional (2000) X - Hunter torpedoes (500) C - Underwater laser x2	Auto-CIWS
Dai-X	Z - UWP x4 (2000) X - Cluster torpedoes (500) C - UPG x2	Plasma flare dispenser
BrainCom	RFUP - 5-directional, wide dispersal	ECM
MainBody	RFUP x4	Intercept
LegTrax	RFUP - 4-directional, moderate dispersal	Decoy drones

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