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Weapons fall into 5 general categories:
- Main weapons:
- Primary
- Guns (forward-facing weapons on S, M and L ships)
- Secondary
- Launchers (forward-facing weapons on S and M ships)
- Gun Turrets (available on M, L and XL ships)
- Missile Turrets (available on L and XL ships)
- Defence Drones (deployable from some M, L and XL ships)
Primary and secondary Main 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.
Main Weapon Aiming
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(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.
Main Weapon Aiming
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(Missiles)
Player-controlled (forward-facing), secondary launchers equipped with dumbfire missiles will fire at the cursor's position. When equipped with homing missiles, secondary launchers use a missile lock HUD marker to automatically try and lock on to the playership's target. Secondary launchers are fired with the "L" key.
Main Weapon Firegroups
Under Ship Information, "Weapon Configuration", Weapon (i.e. S Pulse Laser Mk1), there are 2 sets of 4 boxes. These are labeled Primary and Secondary (see above).
Those four boxes are where you can setup the main weapon's Primary and Secondary Firegroups. You can put a weapon into all 8 firegroups if you wish.
The firegroups are toggled using Hotkeys:
- Change Primary Firegroup: 1/2/3/4
- Change Secondary Firegroup 5/6/7/8
Main 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).
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When ships are in a squad or fleet, they can also fly in formations. The command order menu of the leader, does allow selection of the currently used formation.