The Narwhal

WH4-L8 Narwhal

The WH4-L8 'Narwhal' is a tiny patrol sub intended to be operated by a single person. Conceptualized as a support vessel for the larger Humpback, the cost of making such a small vessel capable of engaging in combat alongside the Humpback led to the project being scrapped. Only a handful of the initial prototypes remain, but those that do exist are well equipped and heavily armed.

The Narwhal is a sub intended to be played solo with no AI crewmates. To help with this, it includes a combined control scheme allowing the sub to be fully controlled by one person in combat, and has tweaked parameters that give it above average strength for its size.

NOTE: This sub is not balanced for vanilla. The intent is that being a solo player will reduce how effective it can be to more in line with vanilla, but your mileage may vary.

Stats:

• Class: Attack

• Tier: 3*

• Cost: 9800 mk

• Recommended Crew: 1

• Horizontal Speed: 36km/h

• Vertical Speed: -19km/h up, 20km/h down

• Size: 10x5 m

• Cargo Capacity: 4 crates + 6 large lockers

• Armaments: 2x Double Pulse Laser

*While the tier is technically 3, its performance might fall a bit short of the tier. Setting the tier to 3 was done to allow for the sub to have the max crush depth upgrades without requiring that a solo player either play as a mechanic or temporarily recruit one for the upgrade talents.

Features:

• Combined Gun/Nav Control: The primary feature for the sub is the ability to both pilot the sub and man the guns from the same periscope. While operating the periscope, holding left mouse will pilot the sub in the direction of the cursor, and double clicking then holding will fire the guns for as long as you hold, switching back to navigation control when you release. The guns you're controlling (and viewing the outside from) will switch automatically if you aim far enough to the top right or bottom left. When the guns are firing or nothing is being held, the ship will set the desired velocity to a factor of the current velocity, which is configurable by the terminal. The default settings will have the sub continue in the direction it's moving while firing, and apply brakes when left mouse isn't held. NOTE: This system is toggleable via the switch to the left of the nav console. When toggled off, the periscope will keep the automatic swapping, but will otherwise function as a normal gun periscope.

• Double Pulse Lasers: Both of the guns are (non-swappable) double pulse lasers, i.e. two stacked pulse lasers with a delay of 0.625 between them. The result is a pulse laser with double the firerate of a normal pulse laser, akin to a double coilgun. The power consumption per laser is reduced, but the overall consumption is still higher than a single pulse laser. These guns have good coverage due to the fact that they need to give visibility for steering as well, and so have only have small blind spots to the top left and bottom right of the sub.

• Full Fabricator Suite: Under the bed is a full set of deconstructor, fabricator, and medical fabricator. Power to these devices can be toggled via a switch under the status monitor.

• Reinforced Hull: The hull pieces have higher than normal HP values, in order to make up for the small size making flooding immediately catastrophic. The darker pieces of the hull have a base of 300 HP (compared to 200 in vanilla), while the ballast tank parts have 250 HP base.

• Sweeping Searchlights: To aid with peripheral vision, the sub has two searchlights which will slowly sweep across a roughly 180 arc above and below the sub. The lights can be toggled via a switch under the status monitor.

Feedback is welcome, especially about the control system. I may not necessarily address them since this is mostly a sub for my own use, but I'll fix what I can.