How to play guide for Mothergunship

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This is the **How to play guide for *Mothergunship***.

## Welcome to the Resistance, Recruit!

The human race has been overrun by alien invaders and it's up to you to put a stop to them, one ship at a time.

In Mothergunship, you will be tasked with boarding enemy ships, fighting your way through a series of rooms and reaching the self destruct button which every ship comes equipped with.

Along the way, you'll be harassed by an assortment of killer robots out to stop you - thankfully you've got an endless supply of mechanized battle suits to lay waste to the metal menace that stands in your way.

The enemy has also made the fatal mistake of loading their ships full of gun parts which you can use to assemble devastating weapons!

## Building Guns - Basics

Since Mothergunship offers a tutorial on how to assemble guns, this section will be reserved for more commonsense advice, tips and strategies to help build more effective firearms.

### Connectors

These are the bread and butter of larger, more complex weapons - while you can strap a gun barrel directly to your suit, this leaves you with no free attachment points to expand said gun. This may be useful at the start of a mission in which you can bring very little with you, but you'll inevitably need to build something bigger than that if you want to survive. To do that, you will NEED some number of Connectors - these give you more attachment points with which you can attach additional gun Barrels, Caps which enhance said gun Barrels, or even more Connectors for even BIGGER guns!

Every Connector lists in its name how many attachment points it provides - a Connector 3-Triangle, for example, will take up one attachment point itself, but provide three more in return.

Different Connectors can better serve different roles - while the Connector 5-Box might look like the best by pure numbers, it may not be as effective as a 3-Arm, 3-Oval, or 3-Triangle if Barrels are what you're looking to attach.

The 3-Box and 5-Box, for example, are useful for connecting several Caps to one Barrel.

The 3-Triangle, 3-Arm, 2-Oval and 3-Oval are all good for attaching multiple Barrels to your gun.

The 2-Solid and 2-Long can be handy at extending barrels and giving your gun more breathing room to attach bigger parts.

The 3-L Connector may seem awkward to use at first, since attaching it a forward-facing point (like the one on your suit's arm), but can be quite useful at converting an unused non-forward slot, like those on a Connector 5-Box, into a forward slot for another Barrel, and also provides two additional attachment points which can be used for further extending your gun, or attaching two Caps.

Some basic math can help you figure out the maximum number of Barrels and Caps you can plausibly attach to your weapon - this can be helpful if you have a plan in mind but don't know exactly how to construct it.

During missions - Connectors can often be found in shops and cost 1 Coin each.

**Tip:** If the barrels of your guns are intruding too much into your field of view, you can use a Connector like the Connector 3-Arm to extend your gun away from you to the side. There's almost no limit to how far offscreen you can build your weapon, so it can be useful to take advantage of this if you find your Barrels too distracting.

### Barrels

These are where the bullets come from, the real meat of your weapons, and most certainly need to pointed **away** from you - make sure all Barrels are facing forwards or you cannot attach them. This is important when planning where to place Connectors - it may be useful to have a bunch of attachment points facing up, down, backwards, or to the sides for Caps, but you'll need some facing forwards if you want so much as a single Barrel on your gun.

Some Barrels are small, some are massive, some are long and some are wide - the shapes of each Barrel can make it quite difficult for it to play well with other Barrels. Some Barrels will be quite difficult to combine with others simply due to sheer size and shape, while others can be so small that they'll easily slip into whatever spare slots are free.

Each Barrel also requires Energy to fire - more Barrels invariably means a higher Energy consumption rate, which will be discussed later.

Each Barrel also comes in several tiers of rarity - from Common to Legendary. While higher-tier weapons are generally more powerful in nearly every aspect - they also consume more energy to use. This means you'll often need to balance quality and quantity, though quantity comes with the inherent cost of requiring several Connectors to facilitate.

You most certainly *can* slap every Barrel you come across onto your gun and fire half a dozen Chainguns at once - just don't expect to fire that gun for very *long.*

Gun building strategy will be discussed more in length later.

### Caps

If Connectors are the bread and Barrels are the meat - Caps are the toppings and condiments of the gun sandwich we're putting together.

Caps provide a passive buff to the gun they're attached to, sometimes at the cost of a debuff. Most Caps also add to the associated gun's energy cost, so keep that in mind.

One Cap on a single Barrel is, in many cases, less efficient than simply having two Barrels - at least when it comes to raw damage output. This is especially true when drawbacks are taken into account. Where Caps start to become effective is when their effects are applied to multiple Barrels.

For example, a Rare-tier Multishot Addon adds a whopping 8.0 e/s to the gun it's attached to - this is as much as an entire extra Rare-Tier gun. If attached to a Railgun, that Barrel will be doing double-duty, damagewise, but it might be better to simply have two Railgun Barrels instead. But if attached to a gun with *two* Railgun Barrels, it suddenly does twice as much, making it the equivalent of four Barrels!

Caps should typically be treated as Multipliers, especially in the case of Caps which increase Damage output, Fire Rate, or add Multishot. These are best applied to guns with multiple Barrels whenever possible.

Other Caps, such as the Gravity/Antigravity Generators, Precision Module, Pressure Booster, or Ricochet Mod which do not primarily enhance damage output can be useful at making some Barrels more functional - enhancing effective range, helping more projectiles hit their target, and so on - these may be awkward to attach to more complex guns, as their effects may synergize well with one Barrel, but be detrimental to another.

## Building Guns - Advanced

So you've picked up a fair share of gear - what should you do with it?

It might seem daunting at first, when a mission asks you to pack along up to 9 parts of your choice. What should you bring? What should you build?

The answer to these questions is almost entirely up to your personal preference, but here are some things to consider.

### Bring a Few Connectors

You can pack as many Barrels as you want, but you can only equip two of them if you don't bring some Connectors. Starting with a Connector 3-Triangle is a good way to attach several small/medium Barrels at once, while a Connector 5-Box is a good start if you intend to attach several Caps to your gun. Give yourself room to grow, especially on longer missions. Avoid building yourself into a corner.

For missions that only provide three gear slots, you should typically pack two Barrels and one Connector. If you feel like gambling, you can pack two Barrels and a strong Cap - you won't be able to use the Cap until you find a Shop with a Connector, as well as at least 1 Coin to buy it, but that's almost a guarantee to happen eventually. If you don't mind using your fist, you can pack one Barrel, one Connector and a strong or otherwise useful Cap - for example a Grenade Launcher, Barrel Barrel, Oblivigun and a Pressure Booster.

If you have more slots to work with, consider bringing the parts to assemble one powerful gun, plus an offhand Barrel for the other.

### Different Guns for Different Roles

Mothergunship can throw a variety of threats your way - though they typically fall into several different categories. You've likely experienced a few of these situations yourself:

* Many, stationary Basic Turrets
* A few, stationary Megaturrets
* Swarms of ground-based Staplehounds
* Swarms of flying enemies, such as Twerps, Spinbots, BombBots and Gnats
* Large, slow-moving targets, like Houseflies and AT-Shotguns

You should typically plan guns to cover each others' bases - if your guns are doing approximately the same thing, consider merging them into one, or converting your second gun into something that better covers the weaknesses of the first.

In short, build two *different* guns!

Group Barrels together if they share a common role with one another - it may be useful to combine a Barrel like the Triangle Chaingun with a Rapid Blaster or something similar - both are rapid-fire, but the Triangle Chaingun has a deadzone in the center, and the Rapid Blaster typically needs to be aimed directly at the target. But both guns are short to medium range, rapid fire weapons and can be useful at crowd control or building up damage on a larger target.

For short range weapons, consider Flamethrowers, Fist Barrels, Shotguns, Shrapnel Launchers and the like - assemble a gun that is lethal at point blank range so you can hit and run targets that have large blindspots or that chase you quickly.

For long range weapons, it can be useful to mix Railguns, Lasers, Lightning Rods, and even Rail-Shotguns - consider building these guns to be as effective at obliterating the target in one shot - it doesn't matter if it consumes a chunk of energy to fire if the target is dead. Multishot Addons can stack up hefty damage multipliers.

**Tip:** Guns regenerate energy fairly quickly when they're not in use - this is especially the case with weapons which have very low rates of fire. Never hold the trigger down when you don't have to and you'll find that even if you build guns into energy hogs, they'll remain quite energy efficient so long as you only fire when you need to.

For crowd control, you can use explosive weapons like the Rocket Launcher, Heavy-Rockets, Oblivigun, Grenade Launcher and even the Rolling Lava. These Barrels often excel at obliterating masses of small targets, but are rarely as effective at dealing high DPS - this puts them in an awkward spot, as they won't combine very well with other Barrels, even each other, since they'll have fairly different firing arcs or projectile speeds. You might find their projectiles going to waste if one projectile wipes everything out. It can be useful to either double up these Barrels with copies of themselves or simply invest several Caps on one Barrel, even if it's inefficient, energy-wise.

Once you've worked out what sort of guns you're using, should you find that one is far more situational that the other, consider equipping your more frequently used gun with a Load Balancer Cap to make better use of your energy supply.

## Finding Secrets

Nearly every room, sometimes including the starting room, contains one or more Secrets. These are typically a patch of wall which glows with a faint blue glow when you approach them. The Secret Detection perk increases the distance from which this glow is visible and can be massively useful as every normal Secret contains one of three Upgrade Chips - Health++, Energy++ and Jump++. As you progress through a mission, these Chips will help keep you alive, or even help you reach more Secrets! Always keep an eye out - some can be very tricky to find, while others may simply be in easy to reach locations.

Some Secrets are hidden out in the open in very difficult to reach locations - these typically contain an Upgrade Chip, though a few locations may contain a crowd of Hugbots - these adorable little robots will drop a heap of rewards, including Health pickups, Money, and Upgrade Chips when you brutally murder them. You monster.