Combat Tactics

### Engaging enemy fighting ships

Combat against the most common enemy craft is pretty simple. The main thing is you need to lock onto your target, because you need to have your weapon swivel to lead the target.

Self-targeting weapons like the "8" and "9" series rockets and missiles, and the swarm torpedoes don't require a lock-on. They can be fired from a considerable distance.

Plasma turrets don't require a lock-on unless you're using them in Rear Gun view.

Enemy fighting ships are typically deployed in groups and waves. There usually are 1-3 groups of ships within a skirmish. Each group has ships all of the same type, and sends them in waves. A group usually has 4 ships in the first wave. When you finish the last ship in the current wave of a group, it sends a new wave in. The last wave or two of a group often have fewer than four ships in them.

Most of the fighting ships aren't particularly dangerous, despite the pilot's whining every time your ship takes even the slightest hit. Battling the small fry is mainly just a matter of wiping out wave after wave.

### Special issues against bombers and gunboats

Bombers can be a bit more dangerous because when you're locked onto one it'll sometimes drag you into the path of another. The resulting collision causes significant damage to your ship but surprisingly little damage to the ship that hit you. Be wary about staying locked onto a bomber when others are around.

Gunboats also will ram you on occasion, but they usually prefer a head-on collision. Locking on to any ship that's heading toward you is a collision hazard, but especially so with gunboats.

Gunboats are dangerous. Even the lower-level gunboats are quite aggressive. The Class IV and Class V gunboats are serious hazards to your survival.

Gunboats tend to cover each other by traveling in pairs. Gunboats without partners are a bit easier to deal with.

The higher-level gunboats have plasma turrets that will rotate to shoot backward at you. If you stay locked on for long enough, the lock-on will drag you right up behind the gunboat and the plasma turrets will start pounding your ship. Be prepared to break the lock and dive away if your shields start taking significant damage. Diving is the best escape because the turrets are on top of the gunboats and can't shoot downward.

Gunboat shields take a long time to regenerate once you knock them down, which works in your favor. If you're using energy weapons against a gunboat, be prepared to make multiple attack runs to take its shields down, then more attack runs to destroy the unshielded gunboat.

Non-energy weapons can be very useful against a gunboat because you don't need to bring the target's shields down first. A gunboat of your own with its 40mm cannon is particularly useful for making quick work of an enemy gunboat, and the railgun on a MK-2 Brutus is even more devastating.

### Engaging cargo ships (Syndicate cargo run)

Taking down a cargo ship is fairly easy, even with the simplest ship and weapons. You'll need to destroy all of its engines, plus any defensive weapons on top. Whether you start with taking out the engines or the defensive weapons is up to you.

### Engaging capital ships

Capital ships come in a variety of sizes from the Corvette up to the Dreadnought. The same general principles apply, though.

You need to destroy enough of the ship's defenses that it blows up. Most of the time, that means *all* of its defenses. It's possible to take out a capital ship using any kind of combat ships, but the heavy punch of missiles and torpedoes is the most effective tool. If you've got a railgun, that's good, too.

Approaching the target ship from behind will give you more time to spot a target point, and your breakaway will provide quicker separation. Sometimes you need to approach from the side to pick off a side turret, in which case a breakaway toward the back and then away will help with separation. Approaching a capital ship head-on is rarely a good idea.

Only a few capital ships have turrets mounted on their underside (the destroyer has one bottom turret and the cruiser has two), so diving can help escape from their weapons. The bottom turrets are usually single plasma turrets, so they're not very dangerous.