Your officers have some powerful abilities on away missions, but they've been slacking when it comes to the harsh realities of deadly space combat.
Well no more!
Now each division has 4 activated skills to use in space, whether for offense, defense, movement, diplomacy, or information. Even the often-suggested (and just as often denied) "Planetary Bombardment" is now an option. Check it out!
CURIOSITY DIVISION (Blue)
- Shields Up! : Removes shield cooldown and instantly restores them to half strength (but not above).
- Interference Burst : All adjacent ships lose 50% of their max shields. If they are already below 50%, this will drop their shields completely.
- Firing Solution : Your shots this turn ignore the target's evasion and point defense.
- Sensor Attunement : Your ship has +2 sensor range and +5 planet scanning for 20 turns.
COMBAT DIVISION (Red)
- Another Volley : Clears cooldown timers on all weapons.
- PD Reboot : Instantly restores your point defense to its maximum value and removes the PD recharge cooldown.
- Ion Tracker : For 20 turns, all entities beyond visual range will be shown as red dots on the sector map.
- Orbital Bombardment : Fire ship weapons at a planet, causing damage and weakening life forms on the surface.
SYSTEMS DIVISION (Yellow)
- Emergency Repairs : Immediately removes cooldown from engines and sensors. Restores hull up to your ship's base hull (does not repair armor).
- All She's Got : Doubles your effective speed for 10 turns. When this period expires, engines will be on cooldown for 3 turns, leaving you temporarily stranded.
- Target Engines : Your next shot will knock out the target's engines for 5 turns.
- Maximum Evasion : Your evasion becomes 75 for 3 turns, greatly reducing damage from enemy cannons and missiles.
SOCIAL DIVISION (Green)
- Truce : All ships within visual range will stop attacking for 5 turns, unless fired upon. Does not work on Narcratu.
- Distress Call : Calls allies. If you have friends in this sector (rep 60+), several may come. If not, it may take time for one to warp in.
- Sensor Ghost : Creates a temporary copy of your ship. Anyone attacking you this turn will target the decoy instead.
- False Evidence : You provide false information that pits 2 ships against each other. May not work against closely-aligned factions, or ships already hostile to you.
ENVIRONMENTAL DIVISION (Purple)
- Deep Scanning : For 20 turns, you can see (but not shoot) beyond terrain that would normally block sensors, like nebula, stars, and planets.
- Vapor Screen : Release large quanitites of gas and water vapor into space, creating temporary sight-blocking clouds around your ship.
- Emergency Warp : An escape maneuver that uses your warp drive in an unintended way: to jump randomly within a sector. Adds your warp drive's normal cooldown time plus an additional 50.
- Go Dark : Makes your ship invisible until you move, shoot, or are detected by an enemy that is actively looking for you. You must be in sight blocking terrain like nebula or over a planet.
I understand you might be concerned about becoming too powerful... fear not! These skills have cooldowns of 500 turns, so even if you're willing to exhaust large quantities of cyber-gel, you're not going to be spamming "another volley!". They're more like panic buttons.