Equipment

Equipment consists of items that the player can use to upgrade the ships in their possession. Each ship type requires a different array of equipment, and outside of modding, cannot equip incompatible types of equipment. For example, a Shuttle cannot be equipped with a Destroyer engine, nor a Military Launcher.

## Weapons

In the game, the player will almost always be forced to defend themselves against attacks from one faction or another. Weapons are the primary means by which one can defend one's assets from attack. Weapons come in several different varieties: Lasers, Plasma Pulses, Photon Bursts, Artilleries, Mines, and Missiles. Each has a strength and a weakness.

See the Weapons page for more information on each type.

## Shields

Shields are the primary method of defense. They are divided into 6 separate segments which will take damage individually from energy and artillery weapons, and multiple when attacked by missiles, mines, or explosive artillery. When damaged, they regenerate automatically. The higher the level the shield, the more damage it can absorb. Once a shield is depleted it leaves the hull and ship components open to damage.

## Engines

Engines are used to move the player's ship. The more powerful the engine, the more energy it uses and the faster the ship will travel. This drain is usually not noticeable, but can become problematic when the ship's energy pool is depleted from recharging other ship components.

## Generators

Generators power all ships in the game, and are also standard in stations that have shields. The more advanced the generator, the more power it produces per second. Higher level generators allow one to have a higher weapon efficiency, as they take less time to recharge. Some capital ships can equip generators powerful enough to render energy drain an obsolete concern, such as the Overlord when equipped with a Generator 200 or 240, which is incapable of running out of energy.

## Capacitors

Capacitors store energy for usage. When the capacitor is below a full charge, the generator starts to recharge the capacitor to its maximum capacity. Larger capacitors hold more energy at a time, allowing for more energy to be used before a recharge is required. This can drastically increase a ships' staying power in any combat engagement. Incidentally, each weapon has an internal capacitor that needs to be recharged before it can fire again. This is noted by the recharge bar in each weapon's icon.

## Tractor Beam

Tractor beams can be used to bring cargo to a ship or to tow other vessels. It has a slight drain on the capacitor, but is usually not noticeable. When fired, a rotating blue helix connects the target and the ship. This has a range of about 125 units, and if the target moves out of that range for whatever reason, the tractor beam will disengage. Incidentally, the Hornet's top speed is faster than the speed at which the tractor beam can retrieve cargo containers, which means that if a player tries to pick up cargo while at max speed in a Hornet, it is quite possible that the tractor connection will be severed before the ship can pick it up. Tractor beams can also be disengaged due to entity collisions, such as when a ship bumps into another ship. This can be problematic when performing recovery missions if a sector is particularly crowded, as the traffic can interfere with the path of the ship being towed. While towing another ship, the ship towing will experience a drop in top speed. This drop in speed will increase as the size of the towed ship increases.

## Electronics

Electronics consist of cloaking devices. More advanced cloaking devices cloak and uncloak faster, or even allow capital ships to cloak. While cloaked or in the process of cloaking, the ship's shields are disabled, leaving the ship's hull vulnerable to direct damage. Small Cloak Mk IV can reduce damage taken while cloaking.

## Countermeasures

Countermeasure flares are used to deter missiles. More advanced countermeasure launchers reload faster. Countermeasures are a must for smaller ships due to the missile's high damage output.

## Mines

Mines are used to inflict damage to stationary or slow-moving targets. They are most effective at short range. While using mines, the player must be careful not to remain in the blast radius, or else risk being damaged by their own attack.