Description
Hybrid ships, or colloquially 'Doritos', are encountered as a random Event encountered during a dive. Not much is known about these ships, who is piloting them, where they come from, who constructed them, or what their intents are. Hybrid ships are roughly triangular in shape, with a cylindrical fuselage at one side, and a Singularity Core reactor and main engine on the other side.
Behaviour
When the players' Astrogator picks up the signal for the Hybrid, there is a'real' transponder code and ship name attached; and as such, the default IFF state is 'yellow' or unknown. When the Hybrid comes close to your ship, a random crewmember will take note and make a comment, depending on their agenda. If no crew with the following agenda is onboard, then nothing will be said:
| Agenda | Line |
|---|---|
| Cat Lover | What the hell is that? |
| Hacker | This doesn't match any signature I know of. |
| Missing Child | Is that a civilian transponder? |
| Ex-Anarchist | Watch it. I know <ship name> and this looks nothing like it. |
| Singer | Careful. This doesn't sound right. |
The Hybrid ship will typically burn in fast and hot towards the player, many times rotating wildly. This high rotational behaviour *can* be an indicator that the new contact is a Hybrid, although other vessels sometimes exhibit this behaviour, also. The Hybrid will come to a relative stop 300-500 metres from the player, and begin circling for a moment. After some time, the Hybrid will begin attacking the player with a microwave emitter, which causes issues with some HUDs.
Hybrids appear to disengage with the player, and flee, given enough damage. Unconfirmed accounts from Ringas indicate that two fully charged strikes on the reactor core with the SPC Gungir should cause RUD, or rapid unscheduled disassembly.
Items
On destruction, the Hybrid does NOT release a lifepod or Quantum Computer, but rather a Singularity Core. This mysterious artifact exhibits strange behaviour, both attracting and repelling matter simultaneously / alternately. Out of the 'poles' of this contained singularity, spatial distortion may be observed, which is high energy radiation. This radiation plays havoc with electrical systems of the player ship, causing the same failures as microwave emitters. If the player does succeed in obtaining this prize, they can expect 1,000,000 E$ back on Enceladus Prime