The Palorian Trading Network

By Mark McDonald <Scintor@aol.com>

This is a race of centaur-like merchants who travel in heavily armed convoys. Their trading ships have rear-firing weapons, including new reloading plasma-D launchers (as opposed to racks) and the blaster cannon.

Palorian Heavy Cruiser
Palorian Frigate

Background

The Palor are a race of traders who have a trade network that streaches across the galaxy. Physically, they are a centauroid race with reptilian features. They are herbivorous and have a clan based family structure. They way that they are physically built, their most powerful attack is only available when they are running away. This philosophy has been incorperated into their ship design. The most powerful shields and weapons are in the rear of the ship. Their tactics center aroung trying to get an opponent to chase them.

The structure of their civilization is radically different that that of any other race. They control only a small area around thier home world as their territory. In addition they control numerous individual planets and bases spread throughout the galaxy. From these, they trade with all known races an basically all planets. Their fleet of combat freighters is a familiar sight at any port. It is estimated that they control 30% of all known trade.

The Palor are dedicated neutrals an will hapily trade with both sides of any war. The Palor view of attackers is rather odd to everyone else's way of thinking. They will hold that ship responsible and all Palor will attack it on sight from then on until it is destroyed. They do not ever hold the government of that ship responsible and have never quite figured out what a declaration of war is.

When the Palor feel threatened, all of the trading ships in the area gather together in a fleet. This fleet then tries to go about their buisness as best as possible. This tendency has lead to many unwanted battles when a panicky base commander fires on an ``invading'' Palorian Fleet. The Palorian Fleet is probably the largest in the galaxy and could probably conquer a large empire if they had any inclination to. As is is, they seem quite content to expand their trade network without actually controlling much territory.

New Rules

The Palor use two new weapons: the
PLASMA-D LAUNCHER:

The plasma-D launcher is a fast and efficient plasma weapon developed by the Palor. It loads more quickly but has fewer options than standard plasma launchers.
Charging: The launcher takes 2 turns to load and requires 1+2 for standard or 1+4 for overload. No other combination is acceptable. The weapon can be overloaded from battery by adding 2 points of power but it must be loaded during energy allocation.

Holding: The launcher in standard mode can be held for no cost. An overloaded launcher cannot be held.

Firing: The plasma-D launcher can be fired in seeking mode or direct-fire bolt like a normal plasma torpedo launcher. When bolted, it has a +1 hit chance compared to normal plasma (shown on the chart). It cannot use EPT or shotgun functions, but see overloads below.

Overloads: When overloaded, it can fire either a plasma-F or two plasma-D's. The two plasmas can be launched at different targets, but cannot be bolted.

Destruction: The launcher is destroyed on DRONE hits.

Repair: The repair cost of the plasma-D launcher is ??.

BLASTER CANNON

Destroyed: Blaster Cannons are destroyed on TORP hits.

Repair: The repair cost of a BLST is ??.

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John H. Kim <jhkim@fnal.gov>
 Last modified: Wed Jan 14 11:52:24 CST 1998

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