Iron ass

Overview

An 'Iron-ass' is a trade ship or fighter kitted out to be a battle ship. The traditional Iron-ass will be equipped with military lasers, a full quota of missiles and all the defensive and offensive equipmemt normally available on the market.

The term Iron-ass is only correctly applied to fully-specified 'core' ships, or OXP ships which are well balanced within the game.

For example a Cobra Mk III fitted with Military lasers, ECM, Fuel Injection, Shield Boosters and Military Shield Enhancers, and either an Extra-energy or Naval Energy unit would be considered an Iron-ass.

None of the built-in NPCs (non-player characters) will have this level of equipment, so in the normal game an Iron-ass Cobra (as above) will be the toughest ship around. As this gives the player a distinct advantage, some OXPs are designed to bring the NPCs in line by making some of them Iron-asses as well.

Iron Ass ships are generally flown by very experienced pilots, often ranking Dangerous or above.

Many OXP ships are far superior to the core ships in terms of speed, weaponry and cargo capacity, but these ships are not Iron-asses. They are normally refered to as uber-ships and because they can significantly unbalance the game their use should be considered carefully.