Ships

### Overview

There are five classes of combat ships. None of these offer any cargo space, but they can carry one passenger or one prisoner.

* Interceptors
* Fighters
* Heavy Fighters
* Gunboats
* Bombers

There are two classes of transport ships, although there are minimal differences between the two classes. Transport ships are generally ineffective in combat.

If you have a free version of the game, one ship from each class is locked unless you buy it with real-world money. Those ships aren't necessary at all. This isn't a pay-to-win game.

Each ship has only two speeds, the normal speed and the boost speed. There are no retro-rockets or other braking system. The normal speed is automatically adjusted when a target is locked. The ship's speeds have no effect on long-distance travel via the map.

The ships you'll encounter, whether hostile or friendly, are totally different ship types. For example, a Class III Interceptor is nothing like any of the interceptors you can buy.

### Who's flying?

As the game goes on, you'll probably start collecting additional combat ships. You can only fly one ship at a time, and the others in your squadron will be controlled by AI. You'll find that most combat ships are relatively ineffective when AI is piloting them. A few ships (mostly fighter class) are fairly good when flown by AI, but other ships would be better when you're flying.

When buying a new ship, keep in mind whether you're buying it for yourself or as an additional member of your squadron.

As noted on the Combat AI page, information about how well various ships will perform when controlled by AI is based on limited experience and even guesswork. Don't take it as gospel, and if you encounter different results, feel free to update this Wiki accordingly.

### Stat Upgrades

All of the ships have the same stat upgrades available. Each stat can be increased by three levels.

* Hull armor. When the armor is gone, your ship is destroyed.
* Energy shield. Shielding against energy weapons. See below.
* Battle speed. This is the straight-line speed when not using boost.
* Turn speed. The maximum rate of turn. Slow turning can make it difficult or impossible to target nimble attackers.
* Booster. Straight-line speed when the booster is being used.
* Weapon generator. Number of seconds of reserve power for energy weapons. Grayed out if no energy weapons are fitted.

The list prices (before skill level discounts) of the three levels are 100, 200, and 400 credits. A full stat upgrade is therefore 700 credits (490 with maximum skill level discount), and upgrading all stats lists at 4200 credits unless no weapon generator is present. These prices are the same for all ships.

### Energy shields

All available ships have an energy shield system included.

This is *not* like the shields found in many other games. Energy shields are effective *only* against energy weapons (plasma, ion, and laser). Despite that limitation, they're still very useful because most of the small combat ships you'll encounter don't have anything except energy weapons.

Energy shields won't impede solid objects like bullets, rockets, and missiles. Level IV and level V gunboats can fire bullets, and capital ships and large civilian vessels can have a range of non-energy weapons. The game usually provides a puff of dark gray smoke to indicate impact by non-energy weaponry.

Energy shields won't protect against collisions with other ships or against allisions with stations, asteroids, structures, terrain, debris, and the like. Be careful when locked onto an enemy ship to not let it drag you into an asteroid or part of a space station or a larger ship. The "auto avoid collisions" option can reduce that hazard but won't entirely eliminate it.

Similarly, energy shields won't protect against micrometeoroids. When docking by hand, it's not unusual to encounter a micrometeoroid that damages your ship. Fortunately, the amount of damage is small. The only way to avoid that hazard is to use auto-docking.

Energy shields aren't effective *at all* when operating in an atmosphere. Every shot an enemy lands will damage your ship, so you need to be very careful.

### Energy routing

There are three subsystems that require continuous recharging. You can control how the available energy is distributed between the shields, weapons, and boosters. There's no point in routing any power to the shields when fighting in atmosphere rather than space. There's no point in routing any power to the weapons if you don't have any energy weapons, or if you aren't planning to heavily use the ones you have. Frequent changes to energy routing can make a big difference when you're in a tough battle.

All three subsystems recharge more slowly the farther they've been drained. If the shields become completely drained, they're disabled until they've recharged to 50%. It's fairly important to keep the subsystems charged up as much as possible.

### Related pages

* Shipyards
* Interceptors
* Fighters
* Heavy Fighters
* Gunboats
* Bombers
* Transports
* Premium Ships