Ship Combat Primer

### Battle basics

Ship battles occur when either you initiate them upon being in range of a "Hostile ship" (ship scanning must be turned on at the ship bridge or AI pilot), or if you decide to attack a trade ship (which will increase your notoriety and thus make you a target for other ships), or when a random enemy ship targets you.

Once you enter into battle, several things will change in the interface and your capabilities. One is that you will get three new indicators on your ship's screen, showing heat, energy, and relative positions of the ships. Another is that a little red ship icon will appear next to your colonists at the top of the screen, on which you can click to see the enemy ship (assuming you have advanced sensors installed). Another is that all of your shuttles and other means of leaving the ship area will *only* go to or from the enemy ship during battle — you cannot send anybody down to the planet, or to some other space location, while you are in battle.

During battle, you and the enemy will typically fire weapons at each other, attempting to overwhelm each other's shields and destroy key parts of your ships. You or the enemy may also change your distance between one another, putting different weapons in or out of range, or even, at the extremes, allowing you or the enemy to flee the battle.

A ship battle ends when either:

1. A ship escapes battle (either you or the enemy)
2. A ship has all of its AI pilots and ship bridges destroyed
3. Either you or the enemy has hacked the other's AI pilot or ship bridge (by boarding the other's ship)

In the first case, the ship battle mode will exit completely. In the second case, if your enemy is the one who is defeated, you will have the option to leave their ship (ending battle mode) or, if you have a salvage bay, salvage their ship (which will end battle mode and allow you to take some pieces of their ship on a screen similar to a trading screen).

If you have hacked an enemy's ship and taken control of it, you can do anything to the ship you would do to any other ship you controlled (like deconstruct it). You may also "capture" the ship, which moves it to your own ship screen (allowing you to either merge it with your existing ship, or destruct it more thoroughly). You may also salvage or abandon the ship, but if you do so while there are any colonists still on their ship screen, they will die.

### Battle distance

One of the most important things to keep in mind in battle is maintaining the required distance between ships. To do this, any ship - from a small single-seat shuttle to a heavily armored dreadnought - must have a high thrust-to-weight ratio, because the distance at which the battle takes place is determined by the ship with a higher ratio.

Due to the different effective ranges of different types of weapons, maintaining the distance at which the player's ship's weapons are most effective is one of the keys to victory. So, if your ship relies entirely on railguns, while the enemy has mainly lasers - if you have a higher thrust-to-weight ratio, you can even turn off the shields (when the torpedoes run out) and calmly shoot at it from a safe distance. But if his thrust-weight ratio is greater, he can either escape or come within range of a laser shot, where the railgun is ineffective - and it will be very painful to you.

### Heat, Radiators, and Shields

When a ship battle begins, the screen will display two meters: "Heat" and "Energy." Heat is the heat capacity of the ship's heatsinks. "Energy" is the stored energy (in Wd) that the ship has available for using in weapons.

Heat management is especially important to ship combat, because radiators cannot function when under the protection of a shield's field. So all of the things that normally generate heat — like operating a reactor — will continue to generate heat, and instead of being radiated away, these will be moved to heatsinks where they will then vent into a room, heating up the room. In a sense, available heat reserve can be named as a ship's health points.

More importantly, there are things in battle that generate large amounts of extra heat. Firing weapons is one of these — all weapons generate some amount of heat when operating. More crucial, though, is that shields generate heat when they absorb fire. So part of the goal of a ship battle is to a) make sure you own shields are not overwhelmed by heat problems (because this will shut them down, leaving you vulnerable), and b) trying to overload your enemy's shields' heat capacities (so you can then destroy the enemy).

There are essentially three different ways to deal with the problem of heat in battle.

One is to avoid it altogether by not using shields, and just having very thick walls (e.g., multiple layers of hull). Basic ship hull is very strong (1000 hit points), so this is not as crazy as it might sound, though under the barrage of a capital ship with many weapons, this is not going to work out very well over time. And parts of your ship, such as the engines and exposed radiators, are particularly vulnerable.

The other is to have shields, and to switch between having them up and down depending on the timing of the enemy's attacks. If the battle is a short one, this isn't a big problem: if you can kill them before your heat gets too high, at worst you might have to deal with some fires in your heat sink rooms (firefoam poppers are very helpful here), which can be fixed once the battle is over. For a longer battle, the heat in those rooms will become a real issue, but switching off your shields after a volley of fire has been received will give the radiators a chance to vent some of that heat. (You can, during the battle, look at an enemy's weapons to see when they will next be able to fire.)

The final, which requires a very large and expensive ship, is to have shields on the perimeter of the ship that safely protect the entire length of the ship, but do not cover some area within the ship's center. In that unshielded center part (which is nonetheless protected from external fire by the shields on the edges), you can have a bank of (ideally Advanced or Archotech) radiators that vent into a central vacuum "hole" in the ship. If these radiators are not covered by any shield's field, they will operate as normal, cooling the room they are in. This can be a very effective way to vent ship heat during battle.

An Emergency Purge Port can also vent heat during battle, using silver as a medium for doing so. Many enemy capital ships have several of these, and this can "reset" their heat capacity until they run out of silver for them.

**Stored energy**

In order for all weapons *except* Cannon turrets to fire, they will need energy reserves. Reactors only provide energy; they do not store it. So on top of having reactors, you will need ship capacitors or capacitor arrays, which will store the energy provided by the reactors. These store lots of energy (like batteries, but are immune to the "Zzzt" event, fortunately) that will quickly be drained as you fire your weapons multiple times. Different weapons require different amounts of energy to fire. A small railgun turret, for example, will require 60 Wd every shot. So with a standard, fully-charged ship capacitor (which holds 1000 Wd), that weapon can fire 16 times.

Ship capacitors store 1000 Wd, and the larger capacitor arrays store 10,000 Wd. The larger arrays are a little cheaper in Advanced Components than the equivalent number of smaller capacitors, and take up less space.

If you run out of stored energy during a battle, you can fire only using Cannon turrets. Similarly, if you destroy enough of an enemy's capacitors and they fire enough of their weapons, they can get into a state where they cannot fire. The same will happen with the destruction of reactors, but a bit later. Energy management is the second cornerstone of an effective warship. Almost always, if a ship battle drags on, the one with more stored energy wins.

### Running away

Both you and the enemy have the ability to run away from battle. If your ships are far-enough apart, an option will appear for you to exit the battle. Similarly if an enemy flees all the way outside of the range of the railguns, the battle will end. Different ships have different speeds of fleeing, depending on their ship-to-thrust ratios. Both you and the enemy may try to close the distance between ships by moving closer, either preventing them from fleeing or putting them in range of your shorter-range weapons, like lasers. A very small, light enemy will be able to flee before a railgun volley arrives, if you are not accelerating towards it. If either you or the enemy loses all of their engines, they will not be able to move or flee battle. So if you are trying to destroy or capture an enemy that seems inclined to flee, you will want to target their engines first.

### Targeting the enemy

Each weapon you build can be manually targeted at a specific place on the enemy ship. They can also be told to hold their fire. The ability of a weapon to fire depends on whether it has enough stored energy to fire (for all weapons except Cannon turrets), and if it is at the appropriate range to the ship. The small indicator showing relative ship position which loads when battle begins shows the two ships and has small, colored triangles indicating the range of various weapons. The blue triangle at the far right shows the range of railguns, which is essentially unlimited, though their accuracy decreases as they get closer. The green triangle shows the limit of plasma turrets, and the red triangle shows the limit of lasers and cannon turrets.

### **Ship weapons**

**Laser Turret**

Laser turrets are short-range weapons that are very accurate and very powerful. Regular-sized laser turrets can be put into Point Defense Mode to target incoming torpedos. Large laser turrets pound the enemy with lasers and are very good at destroying pieces of hull. The main downside to laser turrets is their range requires you to be very close to the enemy, which not only can burn a lot of fuel (especially if they are retreating, and your ship is heavy), but puts you in range of all of the enemy's weapons as well!

**Plasma Turret**

Plasma turrets are medium-range weapons that deliver a burst of fire that, when it hits an enemy ship, explodes. As a result, accuracy is not that important: a lot of plasma will produce a lot of explosions. It is very easy to go overkill with plasma turrets: beware if you are trying to capture an enemy ship intact, because you can inadvertently destroy the whole thing very easily.

**Railgun Turret**

Railguns are long-range weapons that shoot bursts of fire that each can damage a small area. They can be very accurate at long range, but lose accuracy (to the point of being capable of missing smaller ships entirely) at shorter distances. The range of railguns makes them very useful as stand-off weapons: with a lot of railguns, you don't need to get too close to the enemy, and can try and destroy first their shields, and then their long-range weapons, from a distance. If you destroy an enemy's railguns, torpedos, and rocket engines, then you can, at your leisure, bombard them with further railgun fire without a risk that they can fight back, and so lower your shields.

**Torpedos**

Torpedos are expendable ordnance similar to mortar fire, and come in similar varieties: high explosive, EMP, and antigrain. Unlike the other weapons mentioned, they need to be manually loaded by colonists into torpedo bays, one at a time. Larger torpedo bays can hold multiple torpedos, allowing for a huge initial salvo. Torpedos can deliver a lot of damage to enemy ships, and heat to enemy hulls, but they are vulnerable to any Point Defense weapons (lasers and cannons) that the enemy has. Torpedos travel much slower than other weapons, and can be seen on the ship location indicator as slow triangles.

**Cannons**

Cannons use no energy and create only a little heat, firing kinetic rounds made of uranium. Like ground-based security cannons, they require being refueled with uranium periodically to work. They only operate at short distances (the same range as lasers). The smallest cannon turrets can be used in Point Defense Mode. The larger cannon turrets, especially the largest one, can produce devastating damage against ship hulls, even Archotech hulls.

**Spinal Weapons**

Spinal Weapons are multipart capital ship weapons that can be one of several types: Laser, Plasma, Railgun, Psychic Flayer, or Disassembler. The type of Spinal Barrel (the weapon "head") determines what kind of weapon it is.

The Laser, Plasma, and Railgun spinal weapons act as very large versions of the standard weapons. The damage of the spinal weapon depends on how many spinal amplifiers are installed behind the barrel. A Spinal Capacitor must be attached at the back of the gun. The in-game text says that the power requirements of the weapon scale with the number of amplifiers, as does its heat output. A spinal laser can be extremely devastating at close ranges, cutting entire lines of destruction through ships. As with regular weapons, you do not have the ability to specify what angle it will approach a forced target, so it can be hard to plan precision attacks accurately.

The Psychic Flayer is emits a green laser, but has the same range as railguns. It requires much more energy to fire than any other weapons (over 10X more than the plasma spinal weapon). It is stopped by shields like all other weapons. If it hits a ship without shields, however, it will cause psychic damage to any people on board who are within its (fairly large) area of effect, causing them to become incapacitated. It also appears to occasionally destroy floors (this may be a bug). Psychic Flayer Barrels can only be built with a Psychic Flayer Core, which is a possible gift given by the Archospore after researching Psychic Weaponry, and as such, very late-game.

The Disassembler barrel shoots disassembler mechanites which slowly dissolve matter, in a manner similar to fire. It requires a Mechanite Disassembler Core to build, which is another possible gift given by the Archospore after researching Mechanite Disassembly. Disassemblers look like purple fire, and slowly break down whatever they are touching, and spread to nearby cells. This takes some time, but can be very difficult to stop if it gets out of control. Colonists (and enemies) can "extinguish" these mechanites as with fire.

All spinal weapons except the Psychic Flayer will destroy anything buildings put in front of their barrels when they fire, so they require a clear path to the end of the map unless you want to add some holes to your ship.

**Point Defense mode**

Laser turrets and Cannon turrets (small versions of each) can be put into Point Defense Mode. This means that instead of targeting the enemy ship directly, they will be "on call" to automatically target any incoming torpedos as they get within range. Each one appears to target (and destroy) one torpedo for every cycle it can fire. A large capital ship might launch a dozen or more torpedos on its first volley. Any torpedos not destroyed in this way will impact the ship shields, or the ship itself if there are no shields (or if the shields are down).

### Boarding and defending against boarding

Some enemy ships have the capability to launch marines at your ship, using Personal Shuttles or regular Shuttles. These marines will be likely wearing Heavy EVA suits and carrying large weapons, and be intent on destroying your ship (they primarily focus on destroying weapons first). To defend against these, your colonists will likely need Heavy EVA suits and weapons as well, and you can place the same kinds of turret weapons you use to defend a planetary base on the edges of your ship. These weapons can also be placed on Hardpoints, which effectively increase their hitpoints by 3000. If you can destroy the enemy's shuttles with your ship-based weapons before they launch, you can prevent this problem altogether. Note that if you are in a ship battle and get the message that "your drop pods have arrived" — those are probably the enemy!

You can also send shuttles to enemy ships, no matter what distance your ship is from theirs. Enemy ships are frequently protected by anti-personnel cannons around their ship, but also often have significant gaps in their coverage that you can take advantage of by careful placement of your shuttle(s). Your colonists, when they emerge from a shuttle, will not be drafted by default, and so will wander off to eat or pray or whatever (and get shot) if you don't immediately draft them.

When boarding an enemy ship, most enemy soldiers who are not engaged in some specific task (like loading torpedos or manning the bridge) will likely try to come and attack your colonists. Some ships contain significant numbers of well-armed enemies, and they are sometimes smart enough to approach you from multiple angles if you are guarding only one door.

To enter an enemy ship, you may need to blast a hole in the hull first, as many do not have airlocks leading outside. Once inside the ship, airlocks can be opened by either destroying them with forced attacks, breaching them (which uses the Construction skill to open the door after a few seconds), or hacking them (which uses the Intellectual skill to open the door after a few seconds). In both cases, if there are enemy soldiers on board, expect them to come very quickly to the door you are working on. It is often more profitable to stop hacking/breaching a door and to just kill whatever enemy has just opened it, and let their corpse hold the door open. If you fail a door hack, you will have to use another method to open it, because you cannot repeat it.

The goal of boarding a ship is to take control of the ship. To do this you will have to fight your way to a bridge or an AI pilot core. Once there, you can have a colonist hack their way into control of it by selecting a colonist and right-clicking on the bridge or core. This uses the Intellectual skill, and can fail, wasting time (but you can do it again). Once the hack is successful, you will get a message that the battle is over and the ship is secure. Beware: while that means all of the ship parts are now treated as yours (including outside turrets!), if there are any enemy colonists on either your or the enemy's map, they will still be hostile.

Note that if the enemy ship escapes while you have colonists on the map, they will be lost forever. If you Salvage or Abandon a captured enemy ship while your colonists are on the map, they will be lost forever. If you have colonists on the actual ship itself while you Capture it, they will be transported to your home map with the rest of the ship, but any who were not on board the ship will be still on the map and require a shuttle ride back before you Abandon or Salvage the remaining pieces of the ship.