Teach me to Broadside [and Other Things]

[Breidr]

Game is great, I love it, especially the soundtrack! It feels good just cruising around space, no pressure, doing things as I see fit. It's funny how I haven't really advanced the story because I keep taking missions from stations, which take me to other stations, where I take on more missions, but is that really a bad thing?

During this time, I have relied solely on my turrets and I'm probably missing out on a lot by doing so. I have equipped my ship with a flak cannon as well, but it seems to just shoot off in random directions. Good thing is I can use it while controlling turrets. Don't know if it's actually hit anything yet though.

So I have 3 weapons: My broadside lasers, my two turrets, and the flak cannon. How can I but these three things together in combat, rather than just using one?

I think most of my trouble comes from having to switch between turrets and broadsides, and the timing in the switch is clunky for me when I can just lock and fire with my turrets. I just fire the flak cannons when I "think" I can hit something.

I still find it amazing that I can clear red threats with just my turrets, I wonder what I can do once I put it all together.

[Bomoo]

You line up parallel to the other ship, and you shoot guns.

By the way, your turrets will fire by themselves when you're in broadside mode. Not so your broadsides when you're in turret mode.

[Breidr]

So I can treat my turrets as fire and forget once I lock a target and focus on broadsides? I thought I had to choose. It seemed like only my beta turret would operate itself.

Good to know.

[Elldrytch]

Yes, for the most part you shouldn't need to switch to turrets unless you're mining. You can assign AI logic to the turrets like "fire at fighters" or "shoot my locked target" though unfortunately if you do that it doesn't fire at things unless it meets requirements so, it's not "fire at fighters unless there aren't any and then fire at whatever" it's just "fire at fighters and if there isn't any do nothing". Logic can be assigned while in space in the menu.

For the most part I just end up leaving my AI at "fire at everything" except for things that need more guidance (like missile and beam turrets) in which case I set them to "fire at locked".

The biggest thing missing from the broadsides tutorial has to be about the aim/homing capacity. If you just fire your broadsides they're going to blast off randomly into oblivion. Even if you hit your aim button it's still going to blast off into oblivion. You need to hold down the aim button and watch as the cone starts to shrink towards a line. Once the lines start to contract the central band, your shots will track towards the target. If you keep holding it it will eventually go gold and this is "max aim" and they'll basically home on the target (barring really fast/maneuverable things like fighters).

So pretty much don't worry about your turrets, let them do their thing. Setup your broadsides and hold down the button to charge/aim them. You should be good to go.

The flak secondaries you're talking about have limited damage on fighters, for the most part they're just good for missile spam and sometimes mines (though I usually use broadsides to clear out mines)

[Breidr]

Tutorials... I forgot the game had those, doh. Thanks for the help guys, I should do better now! :)

[Nagittchi]

Easiest way I've found to broadside combat was have flaks as secondary, line up broadsides, hold down flaks to clean up any missiles/fighters coming my way and stay lined up with him. Everytime they charge their beams I turn on my deflectors to absorb it. never fails.

[Breidr]

Thanks for the tip!