I find it hard to destroy enemy ships

[Dustreaper]

I don't realy know which weapons are good and what there range it because mostly the ship keeps turning and not shooting.

[Cypher]

if they have shields, use lasers.. the ship will approach within range and fire.
- Select a subsystem so it focuses on that and destoys it, i usually start with shields then engines then weapons.
- No shields, hit attack Hull and it will just pound the ship to dust...

I never worried about range on this game since the ship will move into range when you give it the attack order.

[Dustreaper]

I'm using something called shieldbubble or something it wil damage the shields alot then i got 1 laser and 2 gattling guns to damage hull but sometimes they just won't fire. en esc key doesn't work anymore after alt tabbing

[Cypher]

Hmmm... not experienced this before... Have you tried mnually targetting? If you go to the "hand symbol" (next to the "spanner" for repairs), select the weapon and then target the ship (from the list on the right of the screen) and see if that forces them to fire...

[Mazryonh]

What kind of stance are your ships set to? This sounds more like a bug arising from the game interacting poorly with your hardware--ships normally defend themselves well in this game.

[Dustreaper]

Hostile if i don't have to send my commando's and scanning is a problem to because sometime my shield won't lower so i have to do it manuely and for a while i did't knew how .

[FAButzke]

I can confirm this behavior. Actually this is something that happened to me long before the Steam version. I left he computer running for 10 minutes and the enemy ship was still there, circling mine, both firing at each other. The enemy ship was hitting me but not enough to bring my shields down. My ship (Angelwing) sometimes fired sometimes didn't (3 lasers: 2 heavy 1 light). Most of the time the few shots that my ship fired did not hit the enemy ship and when they did, it took so long to fire another shot that the enemy just repaired the damaged subsystem. I bet I could leave the computer for years and that would still be happening upon my return.

I noticed the same behavior with allied ships. That first escort mission where all the transports are pulled out of subspace and you have a NPC ship "helping" you. Sometimes he fights, sometimes he doesn't. He just goes straight into the enemies and take a pounding before even firing a shot. (making the mission all that much harder).

I never figured what causes this but I finished the game nonetheless. Mostly by saving reloading until the game decided to "work" properly.

[Murphy's Law]

after the escort mission i started using shield damaging bubble thing had 2 of them and 2 hull damaging guns and 1 laser using this tactics worked with me till the end depleting shield then destroying the hull. same with the other ships you get i used the same except for sparta i think its called which has the datascanner and avalanche which is a missile frigate/heavy arty :)

manually targetting works when ships are in range and in the correct firing arc.... however it depends on the type of weapon generator you have AND power generators on the ship as you need to increase the power to the weapons on the power control. example on mission of disabling the lost escort ship i had all lasers and the raptors couldnt get through my shields and i was disabling their 3 ships with my laser in different directions. hope this helped :D

[Sonic Boomer]

Originally posted by FAButzke:

I can confirm this behavior. Actually this is something that happened to me long before the Steam version. I left he computer running for 10 minutes and the enemy ship was still there, circling mine, both firing at each other. The enemy ship was hitting me but not enough to bring my shields down. My ship (Angelwing) sometimes fired sometimes didn't (3 lasers: 2 heavy 1 light). Most of the time the few shots that my ship fired did not hit the enemy ship and when they did, it took so long to fire another shot that the enemy just repaired the damaged subsystem. I bet I could leave the computer for years and that would still be happening upon my return.

I noticed the same behavior with allied ships. That first escort mission where all the transports are pulled out of subspace and you have a NPC ship "helping" you. Sometimes he fights, sometimes he doesn't. He just goes straight into the enemies and take a pounding before even firing a shot. (making the mission all that much harder).

I never figured what causes this but I finished the game nonetheless. Mostly by saving reloading until the game decided to "work" properly.

perhaps they were out of power to keep shooting?

[Dustreaper]

Nope everything is full and some were running on 200% to test it i tryed 100% on all changed nothing.

[retroquark]

It's not like it's a toggle. But when ships have ECM turned on, they prioritize protecting exposed systems from the closest ships. You also turn the ship in the same way, even if it means breaking firing lines. So if you're going in close and want to destroy a specific sub-system, disable your ecm, or override with focused behavior. In the same way, if you cripple the ecm on the fast ships, they can't avoid the locks as easily.

You can also get something that allows your ship to turn more quickly, so your lasers can get into firing positions more easily. All the placement of weapons as well can be tricky because of this - having lasers collected around the bow will increase the potential to get one and a half of the two pairs to fire all the time, for example.

[Ghrathryn]

Ship aiming AI can be a bit off at times, but one thing to note is the weapon classes, since they do play a role. Shells or energy weapons are anti-shield, and shields can regen fairly quickly at times, with enough energy income. Railguns/mass are hull killers, you don't start using them until your enemy's hull is exposed. Lasers are device killers, making them basically useless for actually destroying a ship. They will eventually, but it will take ages, their job is to punch through shields and make it easier for you by taking out enemy ship weapons, shield generators, engines and such.

The other issue that the game has is that most of the weapon batteries are arrayed in such a way that your railguns in the first battery might be ventral fore and dorsal aft on the ship, so the ship will both try to protect systems so the crew can repair them and bring weapons into range without understanding how things work. Each ship can have up to 8 batteries of up to 8 individual weapons, though I think the only ones that do are the AA lasers, only 1 gun per battery can be live at once, even with 200% charge.

For an example loadout (ripped from a walkthrough), here's the Angelwing:

2x Energy Shell,
2x Sliver Gatling Gun,
1x Uranium Gatling Gun,
2x Laser Ring Flak System,
2x Electron Cells,
2x Spark Fighters
2x L2 Fusion Support Generator

With this set up it has 2 flaks, which I believe are the only 8 'gun' batteries, 3 gatling guns (2 guns per battery) and 2 energy shells (2 guns each) for a total of ten guns scattered along the hull. Most weapons have a refire rate which will last as long as they're 100% power, at 200% they're better, but it drains reserves in the electron cells (batteries). In the fight in this mission there's roughly 5 enemy ships and only 4 guns will be really viable until the shields fall (at which point you need to designate to attack the hull, which was an annoying design choice) and even then only the two closest to the target will fire, though with 200% power, the energy shells will switch to the nearest shielded target while the gatling guns hammer the targetted ship.

If you're having trouble in a mission with killing ships rather than 'mission killing' (disabling) them, it might be a point to switch weapon loads, provided you're not in a ghost mission, though you only have the ghost ships and can only disable. Also ship facing plays a role, just as you can only fire guns closest to a target, you can also only pop devices if you've a line of fire. Hostile ships will spin to prevent their devices being destroyed and it's quicker to spin in place than orbit to keep a line on the target, so they might not be able to see their target and are maneuovring to shoot it while you're seeing them doing little.

[Hawk Firestorm]

There are 2 basic approaches you either knock down their shields with nrg shells etc then destroy them with armour weps, or use lasers and knock out their modules, shields etc.

[pking35]

Dont overlook the power of fighters and bombers on subsystems. If they dont have many phalanx guns up it can be very effective to target the shield generator with fighters or bombers and take them out that way. I generally found having more energy shells and ensuring maximum number of anti-shield weapons against a single ship until the shield collapses. Once it collapses keeping just 1 or 2 anti-shield weapons on it should be enough to keep it down usually.

The best results come if you use the manual control rather than the quick F-key anti-shield/anti-armor settings.

If you still cant do it, try taking out the ships engines especially if it has a combat drive as that makes them spin about and so makes it very hard to target subsystems but the drives are easy targets to hit

[Tevu]

There is a strange bug i think is related to the difficulty level. Itried to play easiest difficulty and after couple missions my weapns started to be totally useless.
Scoured all the manuals and info and hints but nothing worked. My weapons did like minimum damage while enemies did normal damage with same weapons.
Since the game might have been "pirated" *krhm* i bought the real game, but totally same bug.

Easiest settings seems to change into hardest setting or something and after the bug happens, all the setting are experiencing same bug.

Dont know how to fix.

[Santyaga]

Originally posted by Silver Knight:

en esc key doesn't work anymore after alt tabbing

Although it has been more than 1.5 year I'll answer that: if Esc key stops working just hit Alt button in-game :). Something with window focus, I guess