The Arms Dealer
An Arms Dealer's sole interest is the selling of arms. To be specific, ships. The Arms Dealer's special ability is to convert metal stores into ships aboard their fleets which act as orbital industrial complexes. Once built, the ships are automatically delivered to the home fleets of their happy customers.
In any given turn, an Arms Dealer can convert some or all of the metal in the cargo hold of their fleet into a number of new ships on the ground, and the metal is consumed in this process. During the turn that the Arms Dealer is building, they may not fire or move the fleet. The newly-built ships may not fire in the turn they are built either. The metal must already have been loaded onto the fleet on some previous turn.
In order to deliver product to customers, Arms Dealers have developed special drive engines that allow their fleets to fly through up to 4 consecutive worlds in a single turn (instead of the standard 3). Furthermore, like Traders, their fleets can carry extra metal; up to 3 units of metal per ship. On the other hand, Arms Dealers are terrible fighters--their weapons fire at 1/4 the strength of standard weapons, and when fired upon, an Arms Dealer's ship will take double the standard amount of damage.
- Every ship created requires that the Arms Dealer fleet contains 1 ship and 2 metal at the beginning of the turn. The metal is consumed in the process.
- Fleets may move through up to 4 worlds in one turn.
- Fleets may carry up to 3 metal per ship.
- Fleets fire 1/4 shot per ship; overloaded ships cannot fire.
- Fleets take twice the damage when shot, e.g. 1 shot destroys 1 ship (or 2 loaded with metal). Damage from ambush fire is also twice as heavy, so that 1 P-ship can destroy 2 fleet ships in ambush.
- The Arms Dealer receives 11 points per ship created on a world they own, and 22 points per ship created on a world owned by another player.