Rocket (dNetHack)

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Name	rocket
Appearance	firework
Damage vs. small	2d12+4
Damage vs. large	2d20+4
To-hit bonus	+0
Weapon skill	firearms
Size	one-handed
Base price	450 zm (+10/positive enchant)
Weight	20
Material	silver

For the ammunition in SLASH'EM and its derivatives, see rocket (SLASH'EM).

A rocket is a type of weapon that appears in dNetHack, notdNetHack, and notnotdNetHack. The rocket is a small futuristic projectile that uses the firearms skill, and is designed as ammunition for rocket launchers and the BFG. It has a default material of silver, and appears as a "firework" when unidentified (not to be confused with the contents of explosive carts).

Generation

Anachrononauts (including Androids) start each game with knowledge of the rocket's unidentified appearance.

Rockets are not randomly generated, though they can be found in bones and can only be wished for by Tourists.

Three stacks of rockets are randomly placed on the locate level of the Anachrononaut quest and Android quest at level creation, and another stack of rockets is randomly placed on the goal level for each quest.

Deep ones and deeper ones generated in the future (i.e. the Anachrononaut quest and Android quest) have an effective ¹⁄₃₆ chance of being generated with a rocket launcher and a stack of rockets as ammo.

An Anachrononaut or Tourist can convert loadstones and stacks of 10 or more silver bullets into rockets by applying a bullet fabber and feeding them into the device, with one rocket produced per 10 silver bullets—object properties on the silver bullets or loadstones are lost in the process, though enchantment and beatitude for silver bullets are retained.

Invoking The Annulus in BFG form can create 3–8 rockets of the same beatitude as the artifact.

Only Undead Hunters can create a rocket by manual smithing if they know the item's appearance.

Description

As firearms ammunition, rockets must be fired or "thrown" from an appropriate launcher (i.e. a rocket launcher or BFG) to deal their actual base damage, which is 2d12+4 blunt damage against small monsters and 2d20+4 blunt damage against large ones. Properly-fired rockets will always explode whether they hit their target or not and deal 3d8 base fire damage to any monsters caught in the explosion, with larger monsters taking increased explosive damage. A BFG can fire 2 rockets per shot at Basic skill or lower in firearms, which increases to 2–4 rockets at Expert skill, while rocket launchers will always fire only 1 rocket. The range of a fired rocket is 20 squares for a rocket launcher, or 100 squares for a BFG.

An Anachrononaut or Tourist can convert rockets into stacks of 10 silver bullets by applying a bullet fabber and feeding them into the device: object properties on the rockets are lost in the process, though enchantment and beatitude are retained.

Strategy

Rockets deal a respectable amount of damage, but are a lot more limited in both range and rate of fire when fired from rocket launchers. They are best utilized with the BFG form of The Annulus for Anachrononauts and Androids, while Tourists can wish for a regular BFG to shoot them with.

The biggest drawback of using rockets is their relatively high weight of 20 aum adding up, limiting the amount that most character builds will likely be able to carry without becoming encumbered: a good method for dealing with the weight of rockets is to carry a stack of silver bullets (not regular bullets made of silver) along with a bullet fabber to convert them into rockets as necessary. For heroes that want to maximize weight efficiency, they can smelt a stack of rockets into mithril via The Silver Flame, then feed them into the bullet fabber—this will produce silver bullets made of mithril and further decrease their weight to 1 aum per two bullets, which can then be converted via fabber into rockets of the default material. Smelting silver bullets directly will not work for this, since they will become regular bullets made of mithril and cannot be converted into rockets.

Origin

In military terminology, a rocket is a self-propelled, unguided or guided, weapon-system powered by a rocket engine. Rockets differ from missiles primarily by lacking an active guidance system; early missiles became known as "guided rockets" or "guided missiles". Some rockets were developed as unguided systems and later upgraded to guided versions, like the GMLRS, and these generally retain the term "rocket" instead of becoming "missiles"; many multiple rocket launcher systems fall into the latter category. Rockets or missiles that travel underwater, like the VA-111 Shkval, are known as "torpedoes", whatever their propulsion system.

Though used primarily as medium and long-range artillery systems, historically rockets have also seen considerable use as air-to-surface weapons, some use as air-to-air weapons, and even (in a few cases) as surface-to-air devices. Examples of modern surface-to-surface rocket systems include the Soviet BM-27 Uragan and the American M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System.