Mercenary

EVENT STAFF
Mercenary	Access: Everywhere, provided you have a brick of C4 or an Emag handy Difficulty: Very Hard Supervisors: Your Employer Duties: Whatever you are paid to do. Guides: N/A

You're a ragtag hired gun, probably hired by a corporation to deal with one of their most influential and well funded corporate opponents: NanoTrasen. Together with your team you're going to help your hirer's company return to the top of the stock market and make sure NanoTrasen falls to the bottom. You're being sent to the NSB Adephagia to ensure share holders re-consider their views on the almighty NanoTrasen. Luckily the mercenaries have access to a wide range of tools to assist them on their mission. From a simple revolver to the advanced energy crossbow, you have the tools to get the job done.

Then again, maybe your mission has nothing to do with NanoTrasen at all, and the station's crew just happens to stumble into your way. The specifics of how you accomplish your goal don't actually matter, as long as your client is happy with the results. On this server mercenaries are usually an antagonist role, but not always. You should have access to the AOOC or Antagonist OOC channel, which is visible only to antagonists, admins, and ghosts; admins will likely use this to communicate things to you during the setup time to make sure everyone is on the same page.

Mission Preparation

An overview of the SAARE Typhon, with important areas marked

Congratulations, you've been chosen to fill this event role. Now the first thing you should do before launching your inevitable attack on the station or whatever else you're doing is to sit down with your fellow gunmen: under normal circumstances there may be up to eight of you, though if an admin's involved there might be more. Discuss and create a plan for your team to follow. There's no set leader of your team but you may find someone quickly take control of the situation which is perfectly okay, provided they're sensible about it.

You should spawn with a special 'Agent ID', which can be customized for disguise purposes. If you don't for some reason, or if you want a backup, there's a stack of spares on the center table.

Suiting Up

To start, you'll spawn in the barracks/dorms of the Typhon, a ship that is nominally under the employ of Stealth Assault & Recovery Enterprises, or SAARE. Here, you'll find lockers full of basic equipment, some spare IDs, food, and a set of equipment that will allow some of your team to disguise themselves as SAARE personnel should you want to try a stealthier approach (or are, in fact, actually playing SAARE personnel as part of an event). Grab your basic gear and some snacks, then head over to the opposite side of the ship, through the hangar bay and into the Armory.

The Armory is where you'll find all the super fun toys you'll need for your mission: energy guns, suppressed pistols, assault rifles, space suits, jetpacks, knives, emags, grenades, belts, tools, you name it. A little further west behind some blast doors are special Heavy Ordnance bays which - if you're very, very lucky - might be opened by an admin. You should also find a radio uplink for more special items.

If you're one of those folk who typically tend to lose things it might be a good idea to just move the armory contents onto the shuttle should you need a spare as you typically won't be coming back until the mission is done.

Selecting Your Gear

The Typhon's Armory has a wide selection of gear by default, but not enough to allow a very coherent equipment setup; you'll probably be quite versatile and able to tackle almost any threat, but each teammember will also end up fairly specialized. You'll find energy guns, laser rifles, stun guns, net guns, ion guns, suppressed pistols, stun batons, and C20R submachine guns up for grabs here, plus plenty of voidsuits and a couple of crimson hardsuit modules.

There's also the Uplink, and whatever else the admins/event runners choose to gift you with. You might also find yourself dealing with imposed restrictions (e.g. no lethal weapons!) so be ready to equip yourselves accordingly.

The suit cyclers you're provided with can also repaint your trusty red voidsuits to look like almost any other model, for disguise purposes.

Radio Uplink

The radio uplink is a remote item teleportation device which you'll find it on the armory floor. It can be used to summon various items out in the field which will aid you in your plan. However they run off tele-crystals and you have a finite amount of crystals to work with.

Recommended purchases:

• Electromagnetic Card (Emag) - Allows access to all restricted areas and multiple ID locked terminals. It also breaks and tampers with many other kinds of electronics, ranging from arcade machines to the AI. Note that using it on doors is very obvious.
• Plastic Explosive (C4) - Very useful for gaining access to anywhere when subtlety is not needed.
• Agent ID - Allows you to set your character's name and job title to anything. Useful for impersonating officials. It can also copy access from other IDs. You should have plenty of these provided for free, but spares can't hurt.

Traveling

So, you're all geared up, have a plan, and are raring to go? Great! Now you'll need to head to the Bridge and figure out where you are in relation to Virgo 3B. Someone will have to go and start up the engines and fuel + power up the reactors, which are towards the rear of the ship. Once that's done, you can get flying.

The Typhon has a fairly extensive network of point defense and integrated shields (remember to power them up first, and read the sheet of paper next to them for recommended settings) so you can probably risk flying through some asteroid fields if you have to, but don't push it. Your employer won't be happy if you smash up their big expensive ship.

Once you're at or near the station, head into the forward hangar bay with the smaller landing craft and deploy. Like the Typhon, this smaller craft can fly around on the overmap independently! It can be docked to either of the Tether's wide docking arms. Make sure the engines are powered up, that all the hatches are closed using the appropriate buttons, that everyone has buckled in, and head out. You also have a pair of preset sleeper beds in the rear of the landing craft that can be used to 'freeze' captives or stabilize wounded teammates for returning to base.

If you need to cut a quick path through obstacles, you can use the O.R.B. located on the fore side of the port wing. You will need another teammate to act as a loader, as the magazine can be found in the starboard hull next to Engineering. There is an automated loading feed set up; just push a charge into the chute in the northwest corner of the room and stand back.

Firing Checklist:

• Hit the button on the table to open the firing hatch.
• Visually confirm that the hatch is open (this can be done from the loading airlock).
• Have your loader load the correct ammo type for the hazard (red for asteroids, carp, and space dust, blue for electrical storms and ion clouds).
• Aim in the direction of the hazard. Ensure the ship is adjacent before firing.
• Fire!
• Let the system cool down before trying to fire again.

If you did this correctly, the hazard will be deleted from the overmap. If you did this wrong, the whole thing probably just exploded in your face due to overheating or being blocked by the hatch, or you missed.

Note that the O.R.B. cannot be used to attack other ships or stations, only overmap hazards.

Communicating

Your headsets have an additional channel added to communicate with your fellow teammates. You can access it by using ':t' or ':h' in your message. This channel is private to your team only, thus confidential. Just make sure nobody loses a headset or else the station crew might find it and be able to listen in!

Other Stuff On The Typhon

Other important locations to note are the Medbay, Recreation, the Brig/Interrogation, the Radiator Arrays, the Mech Bay, the Teleporter, and the Captain's Quarters.

Medbay: Located 'fore' (north) of the barracks, this has everything you need to patch up wounded teammates or stop hostages from bleeding to death or dying of infections. If you have a designated 'team medic' or two, they should grab supplies from here before heading out. You can mix up all kinds of useful drugs and have access to enhanced medical supplies too!

Once your mission is complete (or in the event that you need to leave due to a sudden emergency or etc.) there are also a pair of cryo-freezers on the far end of the room that you can use to log out. Be sure to leave all your special gear behind though, so that the rest of your team can still use it.

Recreation: Located port and aft (south-west) of the Armory, the Recreation area includes a small kitchen and a pile of extra supplies that didn't fit into the Armory itself, including additional tools, headsets, clothing, and so on. If you can't find it in the Armory, check here!

Brig/Interrogation: Located 'starboard' (east) of the barracks, this area has four cells for captives and a central room with various tools and a chair for interrogations. You can either shutter the cells for privacy, or leave them open so other captives have to listen and watch you work on a prisoner. Just make sure you clean it up and don't kill prisoners by accident! Some basic cleanup and medical supplies are provided to assist in these matters.

Mech Bay: Located on the port (west) flank of the ship, behind sealed blast doors, is the Mech Bay. This room contains a single Dark Gygax assault mech along with various bits of equipment for it. It is an exceptionally powerful and deadly piece of machinery, but its use may be authorized in very special circumstances. Located down the hall and around a couple of corners is the so-called War Armory, which also contains extra gear.

Do not attempt to break into the Mech Bay or War Armory unless you want to get in big trouble.

O.R.B. and Magazine: Located on the port fore wing and starboard flank respectively, the O.R.B. and its magazine are used to displace problematic space hazards so that you can get around easier. For operation of the device, see the Traveling header above.

Teleporter: Just off the port (west) side of the bridge is the teleporter room. This can be very useful for gaining access to the station, but it's a one way trip without the boarding shuttle. Use this to (somewhat) discreetly deliver an infiltrator somewhere on the station ahead of the rest of the team's arrival.

Captain's Quarters: Opposite the Teleporter is the Mercenary Captain's room. Generally you shouldn't go in here without permission! The Mercenary Captain may be selected ahead of time by an admin/the event runner or played by an admin/event staff. You'll also find the ship's "pet", a synthetic vulpine. Almost like some kind of evil robo-Renard. Spooky, huh?

Useful information & Tips

• All fellow mercenaries have a large red S next to their player in-game, so try and avoid shooting them by mistake, especially while in disguise. Unless doing so is part of your cover story.
• Try to subvert the AI and/or cyborgs as they can easily give you away early on (which will make your life harder) but also have a lot of very useful tools and abilities (which will make your life easier). This will be very difficult given the AI is located in a very secure location, but it's not impossible if you play your cards right.
• Try to take hostages, as security and command will be more willing to listen to your demands when you have leverage. This also opens the door to negotiation roleplay and gives you a potential 'trade' for if one of your own team is captured somehow. The Typhon's brig can accomodate four hostages, and you can probably find creative ways to keep others contained... (so long as their players consent!)
• Don't be afraid to intimidate the crew a little! Just don't wordlessly murder all crew you encounter without any roleplay as it's considered very bad form and may even lead to a ban from antagonist roles in the future.
• Use the Aim Mode on your weapons to help with hostage-taking; whoever you aim at will get a big warning to comply with whatever you tell them to do, and you'll automatically shoot at them if they perform any action that isn't marked as allowed by the UI controls. This can give you time to issue demands (e.g. ordering a security officer to drop their weapon) without them being able to react and overwhelm you whilst you're typing, and if you want to actually just shoot them then you can click on them again. Just make sure your intent is set to Harm or that you have Gun Intent Safety Off so that you'll fire even on Help intent, otherwise you'll not fire even when it should be triggered! Aim mode also makes your shots more likely to hit your target.

Those Pesky Emergency Responders!

If you're not careful or cause too much havoc, the crew may call in the Emergency Response Team to deal with you. You should have slightly higher quality weapons and armor compared to the Emergency Team, but they have more equipment and it's very possible that they'll outnumber you: just as many (if not more) people enjoy playing the hero as enjoy being the villain!

Fortunately just because they've been called in doesn't mean your mission is automatically a wash. It will take them time to prepare and then get to the station, and that's precious time you can use to prepare as you see fit. If you're extra lucky, they'll spawn in a really bad location and it'll take them even longer to navigate to the station.

Either way, the useful information above still applies. Crew hostages are your best friends if you know the Emergency Team is incoming, as the Emergency Responders are supposed to minimize collateral damage and will generally want to get any hostages back alive if they absolutely can.

At the end of the day, you should avoid causing unnecessary damage or casualties yourself, as pushing too hard may result in their bigger, meaner brothers - Asset Protection - coming instead. Unlike the Emergency Responders, Asset Protection is authorized to use much deadlier hardware and far more lethal protocols in order to protect the company's assets. Even then, it's generally a good idea to avoid indiscriminate destruction and murder, as it'll likely lead to your being banned from such antagonistic positions in future.

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