Show Media Item - Emperor Darth Balls, Your Chariot Awaits!Emperor Darth Balls, Your Chariot Awaits!
Friday, March 31, 2017
With the rise of Emperor Darth Balls in the Nu Year 0069, the Cyborg focused their technical resources on development of a new weapon. Building on the power of their chunnel technology, they found a way to not only warp through vast distances of space, but through time itself. The Lorean Class Temporal Lance was born. The maiden voyage launched several Nu years ago, with the goal coordinating the emergence of its journey through time with the Emperor's retirement... but time travel is a tricky and inexact science, and it arrived, well, a little late.
But now it is here and available to Cyborg commanders for use in campaign games! The specs:
Name: Lorean Class Temporal Lance
Tech: 7
Mass: 325
Fuel: 360
Cargo: 200
Crew: 489
Engines: 2
Beams: 8
Torps: 6
Bays: 0
Cloak: No
MC: 1280
Dur: 184
Trit: 20
Moly: 590
Adv: 35
Special Ability:
Temporal Lance - Can open a rift in the fabric of space, projecting itself and ships traveling with it forward through time and space. When activated, ships traveling in a temporal lance will disappear from the map, to reappear at a different location turns in the future.
Details:
The temporal lance is in many ways similar to a chunnel operation, only performed with a warp speed above 0. Fuel usage, requirements for ships that can be used as targets, and limits on which ally and enemy ships get to ride along are all identical to a normal chunnel. The interface offers a "Temporal Lance" button which will allow you to choose from a list of target ships. A ship performing a temporal lance operation cannot move or use the intercept mission or the temporal lance will fail. While the Lorean cannot perform a regular chunnel, it can be used as a target ship for those that can.
When activated, the Lorean and all ships traveling with it will disappear into the fabric of space-time and be removed from the map entirely (They will still be included in the scores). They will remain absent from the game for 10+ turns depending on the warp speed set, and travel anywhere from 10 to over 800 ly past the target ship, allowing them to be launched deep into enemy territory. As mentioned, time travel is tricky, and the exact turn and location of their return will not be known, though approximations are given in the interface. Additionally, the re-emergence of a temporal lance creates a huge influx of energy that is detectable to all races in the system and will be reported at least 1 turn before the fleet reappears.
As the ships disappear from the game, it is possible that the number of ships falls below the ship limit (perhaps quite significantly), allowing new builds to occur. In terms of host order, the temporal lance operations occur immediately after the second Loki decloak phase, so after all other movement, but before combat or the second ship building phase.
As with a chunnel, ships emerging from a temporal lance operation will have their shields down, and launching a temporal lance from or into a debris disk will destroy all the traveling ships.