A fleet of Robo-Freighters on its way to its way to the Beta Ceti system reported entering an uncharted field of asteroids. Each ship carries a cargo of battle droids to reinforce the outworld defenses.
Two distress beacons have been recovered. Similar messages were stored on each. The ships had been bombarded by a powerful radionic beam from one of the asteroids.
All of the robots on the ships, including those in storage, became hyper-active. The crews report attacks by droids, isolating them on the bridge. They cannot reach the shuttle and can hold out for only a couple more hours.
Since these beacons were recovered two days ago, we can only fear the worst.
Some of the fleet was last seen headed for enemy space. In enemy hands the droids can be used against our forces.
Docking would be impossible but we can beam aboard a prototype Influence Device.
The 001 Influence Device consists of a helmet, which, when placed over a robot's control unit can halt the normal activities of that robot for a short time. The helmet has its own power supply and powers the robot itself, at an upgraded capability. The helmet also uses an energy cloak for protection of the host.
The helmet is fitted with twin lasers mounted in a turret. These are low powered and have a slow recycle rate.
Most of the device's resources are channeled towards holding control of the host robot, as it attempts to resume its 'normal' operations.
It is therefore necessary to change the host robot often to prevent the device from burning out. Transfer to a new robot requires the device to drain its host of energy in order to take it over. Failure to achieve transfer results in the device being a free agent once more.
An influence device can transmit only certain data, namely its own location and the location of other rbots in visual range. This data is merged with known ship layouts at your C64 remote terminal.
Additional information about the ships and robots may be obtained by accessing the ship's computer at a console. A small-scale plan of the whole deck is available, as well as a side elevation of the ship.
Robots are represented on-screen as a symbol showing a three-digit number. The first digit shown is the important one, the class of the robot. It denotes the strength also.
To find out more about any given robot, use the robot enquiry system at a console. Only data about units of a lower class than your current host is available, since it is the host's security clearance that is used to access the console.