Weapons and Shields

### Weapon systems

Your ship can have as many as four weapon systems: two front-firing systems (primary and secondary), a weapon launcher, and automated point-defense turrets. The primary, secondary, and launcher systems each have their own firing button. The turrets normally operate fully automatically, but can be controlled manually in the Rear Gun view, in which case the primary system's button is used.

### Energy weapons

Energy weapons are very popular. Essentially all of the fighting ships you'll come up against will be using energy weapons.

* Advantage: they don't use ammunition. There's never a need to return to base to reload them and to pay for ammunition.
* Limitation: they're effectively blocked by energy shields, which are present on almost all fighting ships except the smallest enemy interceptors.
* Limitation: their effectiveness diminishes rapidly with distance, requiring that the attacker come in close to its target.
* Limitation: they can temporarily run short of energy if fired for too long in a short time. Furthermore, the farther their energy is drained, the slower they recharge.
* Limitation: their effectiveness doesn't scale with added weapons. Doubling the number of cannons will only increase damage rating by about 50%.

There are three types of energy weapons:

* Plasma cannons are effective against shields and against unshielded targets. They're the "standard" for weaponry. They're only available as primary weapons.
* Ion cannons are very effective against shields, but weak against unshielded targets. They're only available as secondary weapons.
* Laser cannons are very effective against unshielded targets, but weak against shields. They're often paired with ion cannons to help with shielded targets. They're only available as primary weapons.

Plasma and laser cannons are only available as primary weapons. Some ships come from the factory with a non-energy weapon (usually a chaingun or 40mm cannon) as the primary weapon. If plasma or laser cannons are mounted on the hardpoint for one of those ships, they become the primary weapon and the "factory standard" primary weapon is moved to the secondary position.

### Energy shields

Energy shields automatically absorb hits from energy weapons, but offer no protection at all against bullets, rockets, or collisions.

Energy shields are almost universal. All of the ships available to you have energy shields as standard equipment, and the only enemy fighting ship that doesn't have them is the Class I Interceptor.

Energy shields are always turned on. There is no "off" switch. However, they can become exhausted and require recharging. The farther they're drained, the slower they recharge.

If they become fully exhausted, energy shields are non-functional until they've recharged to 50%. This has an important effect on combat tactics: in the usual combat situation, where you're using energy weapons to attack a shielded target, your first goal is to completely exhaust its shields so that the target is unshielded for a while. It also means that if you're under attack, you should try to disengage before your shields get pounded down to zero, and stay well clear of any action while your shields are non-functional and recovering.

Energy shields aren't effective in an atmosphere. They're worthless in an aerial battle and you should disable their recharging in that situation.

### Non-energy weapons and ammunition

Non-energy weapons have limited ammo that you'll have to pay to reload, but they have a big advantage in not being affected by energy shields. Most of them also do considerably more damage per hit than energy weapons do, and they can deliver that damage at any range you can lock the target at. Furthermore, they don't require any energy from the ship. There's a lot to like about non-energy weapons, at least until you run out of ammo in the middle of a battle.

Ammo counts shown are total number of rounds. For example, if you have 2x 40mm cannons and the HUD shows 100 rounds, that's 50 shots at two rounds each time.

All weapons that require ammunition offer a variety of ammunition loads. The weapons come already loaded with the cheapest ammo, but it doesn't cost much to have them reloaded with harder-hitting ammo. When you later reload the weapons at a station, the ground crew will automatically reload them with the ammo you'd chosen.

The normal loads for launched weapons (rockets, missiles, and torpedoes) are guided. Although they're "fire and forget," you do need to lock a target before you launch the weapon or it'll go ballistic and be wasted. Rockets and missiles offer a target-seeking option that can be fired "blind." This allows you to attack from a distance where you can't lock the target, but you don't have much control over which target will be selected. Missiles and torpedoes offer a target-seeking cluster option with multiple (smaller) warheads. There is no indication in your HUD if you've loaded target-seeking weapons or not, so you'll need to remember that for each ship.

### Plasma turrets

Plasma turrets are point-defense installations that automatically attack targets of opportunity. Being energy weapons, they have limited range. They're always mounted on the top side of the ship and cannot shoot downward except when the ship is turning. A few installations can shoot forward at a locked-on target, but most can't. Plasma turrets can be manually aimed and fired in the Rear Gun view.

### Related pages

* Weapons
* Energy Weapons
* Guns
* Homing Weapons