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Weapons fall into 5 general categories:
- Primary guns (forward-facing weapons present on S, M and L ships)
- Seconary Secondary launchers (forward-facing weapons present facing weapons on S and M and M ships)
- Gun Turrets (equipable to some available on M, L and XL ships)
- Missile Turrets (equipable to some M, Turrets (available on L and XL ships)
- Defense Drones (equipable to deployable from some M, L and XL ships)
Primary and secondary weapons are controlled by the player when captaining their ship. Turrets are controlled by Service Personnel, and Defence Drones will deploy automatically to protect their mothership.
Weapon heat
When primary guns are fired they generate heat, which the ship must dissipate in order maintain combat efficiency. When multiple weapons are fitted and used simultaneously, larger amounts of heat are accumulated and it takes the ship longer to dissipate it. The impact of firing multiple guns is visualised by the heat bar to the right of each weapon icon on the HUD (see images below).
When shooting for short periods of time, heat build-up usually isn't an issue, and primary guns DPS is the "Burst Weapon Output" listed in the ship purchase/upgrade menus. When fired for longer, especially when several are fired together, heat can force primary guns to shutdown temporarily. When firing over long periods leading to overheating (and weapon shutdowns), primary guns DPS is reduced to the "Sustained Weapon Output" (please note that at this time, the ship purchase/upgrade menus lists incorrect sustained MW values).
Minor heat buildup (short bar is short)
Heavy Heat buildup (bar is long, and orange)
Overheated (bar is red, and weapons have shutdown)
Weapon Aiming - guns
The game settings contain an option called player-assist 'target target' mode (enabled by default). When enabled, player-controlled primary guns will automatically fire at a leading point to intercept the position the target is flying towards. The same approach is taken automatically by ship-controlled gun turrets. When 'target target' mode is not enabled, or when manually aiming, main guns will fire at the cursor's position.
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