Fight
History has always been written by the victor and great treasures await those willing to take them by force. Whether it is defending player owned traders from marauding pirates or galactic conquest there will always be plenty of reasons to be armed and dangerous.
Combat
Ships armed with frontal weapons, turrets and Defense Drones can attack other ships to deal damage to them. Shields will absorb damage taken until they are depleted, but will start to recharge after not having taken damage for a period of time. Some shields protect ship hulls, whilst others can protect nearby ship systems on larger ships.
Individual surface elements on Large and Extra Large 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; 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).
The player is free to customise the turret loadouts of all ships, and the main weapons of Small and Medium Ships (see the Weapon Configuration part of the Ship Interactions Menu). This allows the player to tailor the roles of ships, or sub-sections of ships, for specific roles (eg. high damage long range or accurate short range weapons). 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.
Weapon Aiming
When the player-assist 'target target' mode is enabled within game settings (default = on), player-controlled primary weapons (foward-facing guns) will automatically aim at a leading point to allow projectiles to intercept the position the target is flying towards. The same approach is taken automoatically by ship-controlled turrets.
Player-controlled, dumbfire secondary weapons (foward-facing missile launchers on Small and Medium ships), and primary weapons when player-assist mode is not enabled, wil fire at the cursor's position. Turrets will automatically fire at targets prioritising certain targets based on the mode they are set to.
Turret Settings
Turrets on Large and Extra Large ships:
- Depending on model, there may be many (e.g. 15 on an Odysseus)
- They follow Defensive rules of engagement
- They will fire on targets that hit their ship
- They will fire on targets that hit ships in their Wing
Turrets on Medium ships:
- Depending on model, there may be 2-4
- Thier rules of engagement can be customised:
- Turret offline
: Will not take any action - Turret online
: Will 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
- Attack Enemies
- Turret offline
Loot
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.
Claiming Smaller Ships
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, <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 abandoned ship and then right click it to order a Marine onboard the player ship to go and claim the craft using a boarding pod (<playership> crew must have at least 1 marine assigned to use this option); the Marine will become 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..
Marines will cause damage to onboard systems while boarding, so expect losses of (eg) weps, shields etc on <target> once claimed via marine. Personal <player> boarding via 'hacking' the signal leak may not cause (as much) damage..[needs further testing to establish what skills required to minimise remote & personal dmg to which systems - Snafu]
Capturing Larger Ships
Large and XL ships 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.
Ships which are in such a squad or fleet can still receive and execute explicit player orders. These orders would overwrite their current behaviour to follow their "boss" for their duration. This way a player can use any ship for a trade run or overwrite their targets during a battle.
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.
Sector Control
Administrative Centre modules, when completedat a player station, 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. 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.