Tactics & Strategy | Advanced Play Guide | Advanced Ship Configuration

Warning! Advanced play guide (**spoiler**)
Don’t read on unless you are stuck, this section contains many spoilers for the game and explains just about everything in detail. Resist!

Each zone is progressively more difficult and therefore it’s important to have the right ship for the job. Following are some examples that work well in the appropriate zone without being too expensive in resources.

ZONE 1

Zone one is just about possible with the Runabout although you would be using the escape pod quite a lot throughout the course of the zone. The Prowler is a much better bet; here we have outfitted her with twin level1 blasters and twin rockets. No equipment had to be researched to create this ship; most of the parts are already available in stores (once the tutorial is finished). The centre window contains the all important mass, power and full power readings. The right hand figures always indicate what the ship is comfortably capable of and the left hand figure shows what we actually need with the current configuration.

The power indicator shows how much energy the ship draws when we aren’t boosting or firing weapons. As you can see, it is perfectly balanced at 15 of 15. The full power indicator shows how much energy the ship draws when all weapons are firing and with all batteries charged. With a rating at 27 of 21 we can see that the batteries wont last long at full power with all weapons and engines running.

The engine is rated at mass 49, but as you can see we are running with a mass of 45, it’s just enough so the ship should still be very responsive.

ZONE 1-2

When coming to the end of a zone or at the start of a new zone you can often find yourself with a dilemma. The new zone is much harder yet the old zone is low on resources, certainly not enough for a completely new hull and a full set of newly upgraded equipment to match.

In this situation you could try building a ‘tank’ fighter, the idea being to upgrade your weapons and then overload an existing hull. Don’t try this unless you have one or two well-balanced fighters standing by as backups.

Here we can see we are carrying a full load of level2 blasters all assigned to weapon group 1 so they can be fired with a single button press. The ship isn’t capable of sustaining power so two batteries have been fitted. This will mean engines and weapons will be available most of the time, but when the batteries are fully drained there will be problems. The hull is so overloaded the ship will be very sluggish, slow to accelerate and decelerate.

The best way of accessing this ship’s firepower is to stand your ground giving maximum power to shields, batteries and weapons (keep the engines off). Even without moving you will only be able to maintain fire for a short time so you better hope the enemies don’t attack in excessive numbers. A good tactic with a ship like this is to keep the Aegis with you so if things get too much you can fall back and let the enemy taste both your guns.

ZONE 2-3

Here we have upgraded to the Avenger class hull, this is a real warship with four level2 lasers and two drones. Effectively we now have 6 weapons assigned to a single fire button, very powerful. This configuration is so massive and so much energy is needed we have had to go for level2 engines and generators. These items are so large there is no room for a level1 gravity beam, but that’s ok as there are plenty of spare pods so a level2 gravity beam fits nicely.

Even a level2 generator can’t supply enough power with all weapons firing, therefore we have fitted two batteries which should allow for quite long bursts of fire.

ZONE 4-5

The ultimate fighter, plenty of power and very manoeuvrable, obviously the main advantage is the excessive weaponry. There are six weapon pods here fitted with level4 particle weapons, it doesn’t get any better. Two drones add a low power laser to each side of the hull. Secondary fire is being used for Nova Bombs, which can be placed anywhere. If anything gets past the main guns secondary fire can be used to activate the nova bombs. In the above example four have been assign to secondary fire, so you will get 4 simultaneous blasts per press. True heroes only.