acm
http://okim.nickersonm.com/sots/manual.html
this mod was primarily intended to replace older human ship models with new ones, but during development many other things were changed and added. The mod ended up as a major conversion mod that not only replaces human models, but changes their style of play, introduces a whole new techtree, adds tons of new weapons, sections and effects!
energy lance weapons
energy lances or cutters or lancer as they are also called are low-powered cheap weapons that are based on energy cutters commonly used in mining operations. Weaponised versions are instant-fire short range beam weapons with high recharge rate.
Light energy lance. This weapon is a small sized beamer that has a very good targetting speed and recharge rate making it ideal at dealing with enemy drones, gunships and even some of the light hommer weapons.
Energy lance. Heavier version of the light energy lance weapon. It has larger energy capacitors and advance emitter that can generate a more powerful beam. Weapon targetting speed allows this weapon to act as a secondary pd weapon effectively protecting it amainst missiles and even some torpedoes.
Heavy energy lance. Large sized energy lance weapon. Has increased damage and range, but lacks targetting speed of its smaller cousins.
Lancer. The largest weapon of all energy lances. This weapon requires heavy beam mounts to be used.
emitter weapons
emitters or lightning guns as they are also called fires intense bolts of electricity that have an abbility to bounce off the target and hit nearby objects.
Light emitter. Light emitter weapon that fires low-powered "lightning bolts" at its targets. Bolts have enough power to "jump" between few targets which makes light emitters a good secondary pd weapon. This weapon is especially good at fighting drones and other small targets.
Emitter. Medium emitter weapon that fires moderate-powered "lightning bolts" at its targets. Bolts have enough power to "jump" between several targets which makes emitters a good secondary pd weapon. This weapon is especially good at fighting drones and other small targets.
Heavy emitter. Larger emitter weapon that fires high-powered "lightning bolts" at its targets. Bolts have enough power to "jump" between large numbers of targets. This weapon is especially good at fighting destroyers and dence packs of enemy ships, however it has low abbilities to target smaller ships.
Thunderbolt emitter. Super heavy emitter weapon that fires extremely high-powered "lightning bolt" at its target. Bolt is desighed to strike a single target, but in some cases it can bounce off and hit another nearby target.
Thunderstorm emitter. Siege class emitter weapon that creates deadly lightning storms when it contacts atmosphere of a planet. The power of the bolt is so immence that it can easily fight dreadnaughts and other large ships. The bolt is primaritly desighed to combat single targets, but sometimes a several other targets can be caught by it resulting in devastating effect to all of them.
Laser weapons
lasers are medium range instant fire beam weapons that start from a weapon for a large mount and then advances in both ways - to the larger and heavier versions and to the smaller and more compact versions.
laser cannon. This is a large beam weapon with average damage, range and rate of fire. The first among laser to be available for development.
Light laser cannon. This is a compact version of laser cannon that deals less damage than its larger cousin, but it is compensated by an ability to put these weapons on medium mounts. Llc can act like a secondary pd weapon.
Heavy laser cannon. This is a heavy beam weapon that uses laser technologies. Quite deadly when used in masses, but have some major drawbacks one of each is being an instant fire. It requires some additional attention and micromanagement in order to aim hlcs at their targets with maximum effect.
Assault laser. A large super-heavy turreted weapon that is based over its predecessor the heavy laser cannon. An ability to target enemies in wider arc of fire than of a fixed weapon makes this weapon a deadly addition to your cr and dn arsenal.
Siege laser. The largest of lasers, the father of lasers!. A single shot from this enormous weapon can cut a huge hole in enemy dns. This weapon is mainly being used on vary large ships such as siege dns and doomstars or mounted on specialized sattelites. Siege weapons deal extreme damage to planetary population.
Point-defence laser. This is the only beam weapon entirely dedicated to protections of the ship from enemy seekers, drones and other such threats.
plasma weapons
plasma weapons fire slow moving balls that contain overheated plasma. These plasmoids are very effective at medium ranges after which they begin to lose their damage potential as fields containing plasma dessipates releasing portions of plasma into space. These weapons are also a bit inaccurate, but damage per shot compensates this issue fairly.
Plasma cannon and plasma-burst cannon. These two are similar in function. Both weapons fire the same type of plasmoids with a very little difference in accuracy, damage and range characteristics. Plasma-burst cannon hurls three plasmoids in rapid sucession making it a good choice against larger enemy ships where large size of target will ensure direct hits.
Plasma blast cannon. This large mount weapon hurls a very unstable plasmoid at enemy target. Special systems incorporated into this weapon frame can pre-calculate estimated target`s position to ensure that tis slow moving plasmoid detonates near its target. The resulting explosion can damage multiple objects in its reach. Not that this weapon produces a very unstable plasmoid that will detonate by slightless fluctuation of magnetic field. This means that this weapon can be effectively stopped by any type of shield including deflectors\disruptors.
Plasma sppitter. This projector mounted weapon "spitts" large number of small plasmoids towards the target in a very rapid succession. The resulting "spray" is devastating against tightly packed ships or fast moving targets.
Plasma beam. This heavy beam weapon generates a stream of super heated plasma that deals great damage to enemy ships. This weapon can be used as a projector mounted version without additional research.
Plasma annihilator. A siege class weapon that fires a very large plasmoid. This plasmoid acts like the one that plasma blast cannon has, with the only difference that plasma unleashed upon explosion can meld down whole cruisers and even some drednaughts. Against planets the effect of this weapon is even more devastating resulting in catastrophic damage to planet quality and billions of deaths of population.
Polaryzed plasmatics. This upgrade cancels the effect of dissipation of all plasmoid launching weapons (except plasma annihilator) by encapsulating plasma inside a stable field. This field also allows a weapon to accelerate plasmoids to greater speeds resulting in increased accuracy. In addition the field always collapses at the point it touches the surface of the target resulting in a focused stream of plasma melting through armor and structure of the target. Shielded plasma weapons (or polaryzed as they are also called sometimes) penetrate any type of armor with ease making it a very good choice against hiver and tarka heavily armored ships (these weapons ignore hp bonuses that ships get for ballistic upgrades or in other words deal damage multiplyed by armor bonus).
fusion weapons
fusion weapons are similar to plasma weapons with the only main difference that instead of plasma these weapons use more powerful fusion reaction. These weapons have distinctive yellow-orange colour and consist mainly of beam class weapons.
Fusion blaster. This is a small energy-based weapon that fires orange-blue bolt that contains a tiny fusion reaction within it. Weapons accuracy and speed are quite low, but its damage is comparable to plasma cannon! Fusion blaster wil have great difficulties targetting fast moving enemies.
Fusion beam. A beam class large weapon that fires pulsating streams of fusion energy.
Heavy fusion beam. A heavy beam class weapon that fires pulsating streams of fusion energy. This weapon is very powerful, but its fixed mounting neams that it will have difficulties targetting fast and small ships. However you can place it on projector mount if you have researched super-heavy turrets.
Mauler device. The most deadliest of all fusion weapons. This super-heavy turreted weapon fires a huge bolt inside which a powerful and unstable fusion reaction is taking place. The shot detonates when it reaches its target vaporizing it and all nearby ships in a huge fusion explosion.
Stellar converter. This is the most descructive and expensive weapon in acm. It can be mounted only on a siege dreadnaught, doomstar or special platform. The stream of extreamly powerful fusion energy this weapon produces melts down dreadnaughts, doomstars and even small planetoids is one shot!
phased weapons
phased weapons are late fusion/early am energy/fusion weapons.
Phased blaster. A small weapon that fires bursts of phased energy. Very accurate and very deadly.
Phaser. A medium sized beam weapon that has good rate of fire and damage.
Particle weapons
particle weapons have some very specific properties. First of all all of the particle weapons are shield piercing (do not confuse particle weapons with neutron and ion. Although being in the same weapon group they differ greatly. Desintegrator beam have no such properties).
Particle cannon. This cannon fires bolt of overcharged particles at very long range. These particles can penetrate any kind of shield or field defences, but will be stopped by special hard shield defences. Particle cannon is a sniper weapon that has difficulties targetting enemy targets at close ranges. It should be combined with other weapons designed for close combat or be used on fast ships that can easily outrun enemies.
Pulse particle cannon. A recent addition to acm. This weapon fires three bursts of low-powered particle cannon projectiles and is designed to compensate its predecessor`s inafficiency at short ranges.
Particle accelerator cannon. This super heavy cannon consists of several particle pulse cannons combined into one weapon. Pac fires these cannons in rapid succession creating a spray of particle bolts that penetrate shields. A drawback of this powerful weapon is low accuracy of its particle cannons and short range compared to particle cannon.
Particle beam. Uses almost the same principles as particle cannon, but fires a stream of particles instead of bolts. This reduces its predecessor`s inaccuracy issues, but limits range and recharge rate a bit. This weapon has the same shield piercing capabilities as particle cannon.
Positron beam. Huge particle beam that fires a stream of positrons instead of particles used in its smaller cousins. Positrons have a greater lifespan that dramatically increases this weapon`s range. Shield penetration capabilities are also present.
Meson projector. A highly advanced version of basic particle cannon that is mounted in super heavy turrets. It fires large bolts of mesons. Mesons tend to increase their potential over time which means that all three projectiles launched by meson projector deal much greater damage at longer ranges. In addition mesons are good at penetrating shields and fields.
Desintegrator beam. A unique super heavy particle weapon that generates large stable tunnel between weapon muzzle and target ship that is used as an additional particle accelerator. It takes some time to create such tunnel, so this weapon must remain focused at its turgeted until particles are launched.
Neutron weapons
neutron weapons are a special type of particle weapons that utilizes leathal neutron particles. These weapons have greatly increased damage to planetary populations. Unlike other particle weapons neutron weapons have no shield penetration capabilities.
neutron beam. A large beam weapon that has good range, damage and fire rate. Deadly against planetary population.
Heavy neutron beam. A heavy beam weapon that has greater range and damage but slower fire rate than smaller versios of this weapon. Extremely deadly against planetary population.
Deathray. A siege-class beam weapon that is commonly used to cleanse planets of its population. This weapon can also be mounted on a siege sattelite to act as a very effective planet defence weapon. However it is a very high risk to do so as a misfired shot from this weapon that hits your planet could cause more devastation than an invasion fleet it is used to defend against.
Neutron blaster. Unlike other neutron weapons this super heavy weapon fires bolts of neutron particles at very high rate. These bolts are equally deadly against planetary population and any ships that were unlucky to be caught by weapons fire.
Ion weapons
another branch of particle weapons that shot ion particles to overcharge enemy ship`s power systems. Ions have no shield piercing capabilities, but some certain ion weapons can create a huge em explosion that can overload ships defences.
ion cannon. A very inaccurate medium sized weapon that overloads weapon recharge systems effectively disabling them for a short period.
Ion pulse cannon. A larger ion weapon that fires large bolts of charged ions. This bolts detonate in close proximity releasing massive bursts of overcharged ions that overload whole ships power systems including drives and any kind of defences.
Ion-beam accelerator. This is an ltimate ion-based particle weapon that uses combined technologies on ion accelerators, energy lance weapons and lightning emitters to produce a stable stream of accelerated overcharged ions. This beam has shorter range than other ion cannons, but it successfuly removes the main problem of all particle weapons - their bad accuracy.
Gravity manipulation weapons
this weapon class covers all gravity weapons that can be developed in magnetism tech branch. All of these weapons affect ships movements in some ways.
tractor beam. A large weapon that does no significant physical damage to its targter. Its main goal it to hold enemy ship in possition or move it to a different location. Some trained tractor beam crews take a lot of fun at catapulting enemy ships into other ships over even planets.
Graviton beam. A large weapon similar to tractor beam for its tractor effect, but having some unique properties in addition to it. Graviton beam deals damage to all sections simultaneously rather than to a section it hits.
Pulsed graviton beam. An advanced version of graviton beam that fires gravito waves in high frequency pulses. This is very harmfull for weapon turret joints as these are not designed to withstand such tremendous gravity fluctuations.
Inertial cannon. Each projectile this weapon shots consists of a contained gravitic field that slows targets acceleration rates and reduces its maximum speed. Each hit increases the effect that is slowly dissipates over time.
Heavy inertial cannon. Large vesrion of the same cannon that fires bursts of three shots of inertial fields.
Missile weapons
missile weapons were always the best way to destroy maneuverable targets at very long distances due to abbilities to track their targets. All missiles benefit from the majority of the upgrades.
Basic missiles. Basic chemical missiles are small and compact seeker weapons that can engage targets at long ranges. The drawbacks of these weapons are fragile frames of the missiles and their lack of retargetting abbility.
Advanced warheads. All missiles (except acid and nano) can be upgraded to deal greater damage by researching improved and advanced warheads. These upgrades apply automaticaly when they are researched without need to redesign ships.
Large missiles (nuke, fusion, am). Heavier missiles carrying more powerful warheads. These weapons require larger turrets to be mounted. Large missile has increased armor plating for better withstanding of pd fire. In addition it has a built in
system that automatical picks up another enemy target if its previous was destroyed.
Large missiles (acid, nanites). Heavier missiles carrying special area of effect warheads that produce clouds of acidic materiels or swarms of nanites in an area it was detonated. These weapons require larger turrets to be mounted. Large missile has increased armor plating for better withstanding of pd fire. In addition these weapons can be fired indirectly at any location. This is used to produce a defencive "wall" of acid or nanite clouds. Such missiles do not benefit from warhead upgrades.
Large missiles (kinetic, multi-warhead). Advanced heavier missiles which are desighed to evade enemy point defence fire. Multi-warhead missile detonates few hundred meters near the target splitting into several smaler warheads. These warheads move at high speed constantly rotating to make enemy pd fire less effective. Kinetic missile is launched high\low above the plane where enemy pd fire has little chances of getting a lock on it. Missile then suddenly turnes toward its target and accelerates and ultra high speed. Impact of this missile is so strong that it pushes enemy ship in opposite direction for a short distance producing additional structure damage. This missile is a very usefull tool to combat enemy fixed weapons ships as it will deny enemies a proper lock with their weapons.
Guided missiles. Basic medium-sized missiles that were given retargetting abillity. These missiles deal slightly less damage, but abillity to retarget compensates this fairly.
Dumb fire rockets. These are direct fire missile weapons that are being launched in salvoes. These missiles benefit both from neutronium rounds and warhead upgrades (except drives upgrades) as it both utilizes a solid metal cone to penetrate armor and powerful explosive warhead to deal damage to structure of the ship.
Interceptor missiles. These missiles are desighed to combat drones, droppods, assault shuttles, bio-missiles, boarding pods, mines and swarmers. They are unable to target torpedo weapons.
Mines
mines are great when you are defending your colonies againts slow moving fleets of crs or dns. Just be sure to lure your enemy into your trap and enjoy spectacular fireworks as enemy fleet gets blown to pieces by mines.
nuclear, fusion and antimatter mines. Standart mines that will slowly float towards enemy ships that passes in close proximity to them.
Leaping mine. An advanced mine that has numerous tiny thrusters. These mines will "rush" towards the emeny ship in a straight line. Leapers are slightly more difficult for point-defence weapons to lock on.
Cloaked mine. An invisible mine that can be spot only by deepscan ships. Such mines deal less damage that normal ones, but they have a very good survivability rates as its preys normaly cannon detect it.
Implosion mine. This mines generate powerful gravity field that pulls ships towards the mine. A special fusion charge installed in the mine creates a very hot plasmoid that detonates when pulled in ship touches it.
Gravity mine. A basic gravity mine that generates very powerful gravity fields. These fields constantly pull in everything that passes in their area of effect including ships, missiles and other items.
direct fire torpedo weapons
direct fire torpedoes fire pulses of energy at their targets. Some of these weapons have unique properties such as disrupters or qvantum torpedoes. Almost all direct fire torpedoes can be equiped on super-heavy mounts (projector mounts) as double barrelled launchers. This greatly increases their chances to hit the enemy targets and increases their rate of fire considerably as ship has no longer to face the enemy in order to fire torpedoes.
Photonic torpedo. This weapon fires three fast moving balls of photonic particles at long ranges. Due to the unique nature of the photons these torpedoes can be stopped by both deflector and disruptor fields.
Proton torpedo. This weapon launches three bolts of proton particles. Proton torpedoes are designed to bypass enemy deflector fields. However they can be countered by disruptor fields that can easily dessipate protonic particles.
Mesonic torpedo. Mesonic torpedoes fire in bursts of three per salvo. This weapon has an exeptionaly long ranges (over 3500!). Unlike photonic and protonic particles mesonic particles cannot be stoped by any kind of deflector/disruptor field. In addition it bypasses any known shield defences except especially hardened shields. Note that meson particles require some time to get to their full strength, so this weapon will deal increased damage at long ranges and not as much on short distances.
Disruptor torpedo. An energy-based weapon that hurls a bolt of electrical energy. This weapon can disrupt weapons on a section that it hits by overloading their power generators.
Emp torpedo. A larger and more powerful version of common disruptor torpedo. This weapon not only capable of reloading all power systems of a ship, but also possesses a unique to direct fire torpedoes area of effect ability. This weapon can and will disable any king of field or shield defence systems by overloading an entire power generation system of the ship. Note that emp torpedo mounted in a projector turret will fire only one projectile instead of two as other direct fire torpedo weapons.
Qvantum torpedo. A special weapon that fires large projectile containing qvantums. Upon hit these qvantums are released in a massive burst that instantly burns out all types of shield systems. This weapon deals almost no damage to the hull of the ship.
Gluonic torpedo. This weapon acts much like proton torpedo, but in addition to deflector penetration ability gluonic torpedo can also circumvent energy absorbers.
Kelvenic torpedo. A high-tech torpedo weapon that distabilizes molecular structure of target ship making its armor and structure less resistant to following weapon fire. To maximize damage potential of this weapon it is reccomended to use it with heavy beams or other high-powered weapons.
guided torpedo weapons
these weapons come in variety of large missile-like torpedo systems and some rare energy-based homming torpedoes.
Nuclear, plasma, fusion and anti-matter torpedoes. These are classic homming weapons representing a large missile-like torpedo. It has a powerfull drive, advanced guidance and detection systems that allow it to seek for enemy ships and retarged to a new threat if necessary and large fuel storages to ensure that it will reach any target. Explosive warhead used in those weapons produces a directed explosion that tears apart target ship`s armor layers and structure.
Plasma, fusion and anti-matter detonating (high explosive) torpedoes. These torpedoes are using the same missile chassis as classic torpedoes. The only realy difference is in its warheads. Instead of producing a directed forward explosion these warheads detonate in a huge explosion damaging everything in its way. This weapon can be fired at specific location rather than on a ship or other space body.
Plasma, fusion, anti-matter ball torpedoes. These are high tech torpedoe weapons utilizing advanced gravity generation systems and field fenerators to create a homming ball or capsule of energy field containing plasma, fusion or am reaction withing it. This capsule is then launched at its target at high speed. Ball-torpedoes are less powerful than their missile-like equivalents, but these torpedoes cannot be shot down by any means.
Pulsar torpedo. Utilizing the same principles as ball-torpedoes this emp-type weapon fires a homming ball of disruptive energy that overloads target ship`s systems for a longer peroid of time than other emp-based torpedoes.
Races
