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Ships armed with weapons and turrets can shoot at other ships to deal damage to them. Shields will absorb damage taken until they are depleted, but only will start to recharge after not having taken damage for a period of time. Individual surface elements of ships can be targeted to disable them, however these may also have their own independent shielding. Once shields are depleted the ship or surface element will start taking hull damage from landed hits. If the hull 'hitpoints' of a surface element reaches 0 it is disabled until repaired while ; if the ship's hull HP reaches 0 it will blow up, destroying the ship (and if the player was on-board it will result in a Game Over).
Weapons can be sorted into groups under the Weapon Configuration part of the Ship Interactions Menu allowing Interactions Menu, allowing for the player to switch between using specific weapons (eg. high damage long range and accurate short range weapons). Primary ship weapons will automatically try to acquire the selected target ship, while secondary weapons will aim at the position the cursor is pointing [if player-assist 'target target' mode is selected - Snafu]. Turrets will automatically fire at targets prioritising certain targets based on the mode they are set to. Most ships have blind spots from which they can not attack making ideal spots for their enemies to manoeuvre into. Although an individual ship can be good at dueling opponents, superior numbers are another way to win battles.
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- Turret offline
: Will not undertake take any action - Turret online
: Will undertake take the actions below: - Attack Enemies
: Attack any hostiles - Target Target
: Will only attack the selected target if it is hostile - Defend Ship
: Returns fire on things that attacks the ship (not missiles) - Missile Defence
: Will only try to intercept incoming missiles (not ships) - [X3 'Missiles Only' mode] - Break Asteroids
: Supports mining solid materials
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Hacking or destroying ships and station storage modules will cause them to drop a proportion of their cargo for other ships to collect. Collecting wares dropped from a station is considered theft, so the station may turn hostile with any ships that do. NPC ships also have a chance to drop wares for the player inventory dependent on the type and faction of ship killed.
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During combat S and M size ships have a chance to bail leaving the ship abandoned and able to be claimed by other faction or the player. To personally claim an abandoned ship, the player <player> must spacewalk to it, and then locate and scan a signal leak. After the ship becomes player property, the player can dock with the ship and fly it away.
Alternatively select the neutral ship and then right click it to order a Marine working as crew onboard the player ship to go and claim the craft using a boarding pod. The used marine will then be placed temporarily as the Pilot of the new ship once ownership has been transferred. If you intend to keep the ship, finding at least a one-star pilot is recommended to replace that random marine.. or you could set them to 'explore' for several hours to level up their piloting skill..
Capturing Larger Ships
L and XL ships and stations need to be boarded to be captured. Boarding requires sufficient Marine crew on the playership. To prepare for boarding, the target needs to be nullified (taking out the engines, turrets and shields). To initiate boarding, select the playership and then right click the target and order Marines to board the target.
Try to keep the subsystems destroyed, and work on reducing hull levels but not to the extent that the boarding marines will destroy the ship. Once the target hull is sufficiency low to reduce boarding resistance below the boarding strength of the players forces (20 or more is good) the ship is as good as captured. If successful, a Marine can be assigned as the captain for the ship or the player can move to the ship personally.
[Multi-ship boarding is possible, using several ships to carry the necessary marines, but I've not yet experimented with it - Snafu]
Fleet Management
Ships can form hierarchical groups. A leader followed by several "wingmen", often referred to as a squad(ron), but also multiple levels deep as soon as a leader of one group itself follows instructions of another leader.
Setting up such a fleet can be done the easiest by selecting one or multiple ships which are supposed to be the followers on the map, then right clicking on the new leader. The context menu will now show ASSIGNMENT options such as the new behaviour to DEFEND this leader. Selecting this option will move all these ships into the hierarchy of this leader. A plus + symbol now appear in front of the leader ship in the OBJECT LIST as well as the PROPERTY OWNED menus at the side of the map.
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Administrative Centre modules when completed grant ownership of an unowned sector on a first come first served basis, revealing all ships and stations in the sector and imposing the illegal wares list of the owning faction. If the Administrative Centre module is destroyed, sector ownership will change over to the next faction with an Administrative Centre. Waring Warring NPC factions are constantly playing a turf war to replace the Defence Platforms of their enemy with one of their own. Once the player has acquired Blueprints for an Administrative Centre, they too can conquer entire sectors if they are willing to defend it.