Space Pirate's General Guide

Seeing that there are no guides yet, I've decided that there should be one! While I'm certainly no expert at the game, I've learned some things over hours of gameplay that I didn't know right away! I'll also be looking in the comments for further advice that I may have missed, so feel free to contribute!

NOTE: This guide is currently outdated. Quite a bit had been added since I wrote it.

Absolute Basics

(If you already have some time in the game, you may wish to skip this section)

So, you just got the game and want to know how to play? Here's what you need to know.

- Use the trackpad to switch weapons by moving your thumb around it to highlight a weapon, then click the trackpad to make the change. You can then use the button above the trackpad to switch to your previous weapon.

- Trigger to shoot! (Railgun requires you to hold the trigger to charge it, then shoot by letting go.)

- Reach over your shoulder to switch to a shield. (There is an option to make it so that this only works if you are holding a grip button, in case you find yourself switching by mistake.) You can have a shield in either/both/no hands. Using the trigger, you can unleash a pulse from your shield that pushes back drones and lasers.

- You have 3 lives, which you can see as squares by your score. Each time you get hit, you lose one. Do remember that you have to get hit in the head to lose a life, since the game doesn't track your entire body, so don't be afraid to let the lasers go under your view (where your body would be).

- By your score is a map of the area, which shows where drones are. Use this at the start of the round to prepare for where the first drone will be, and at the end of the round to find the last couple of drones before they start shooting at you.

- If lasers get close to you, everything will go into slo-mo, granting you time to dodge/block those shots.

- Near the center of every drone's face in a tiny red dot. If you shoot it, you will deal drastically increased damage and be granted a 100 point "Eyeshot" bonus. As cool as this is, consistently getting eyeshots is highly unlikely, given the size of the eye and the fast pace of the game.

Weapons

So, what weapons should you be using? Well, here's my current tier-list (from best to worst).

1. Rail Gun
2. Semi-Auto Pistol
3. Burst-Fire Laser
4. Beam
5. Full-Auto Laser

If you watch high score videos, the railgun is always usually being used. It simply destroys drones faster than the other weapons. White drones require almost no charge to be killed with one shot, and black drones can be taken out with one charged shot or two weak shots. Not easy to use, but VERY effective. UPDATE: The semi-auto is likely #1 right now, but it comes down to preference. Go find the current high score video, he uses a semi-auto.

Seemingly terrible at first, the semi-auto pistol is actually a beast of a weapon. It has no travel time for the bullets, no overheating, it can be fired as fast as you can pull the trigger, it is not affected at all by slo-mo, and it has an awesome laser sight. The laser sight allows it to be easily dual wielded, granting really amazing damage per second, even if firing at weird angles while dodging incoming lasers. An extra quality that I've found for this weapon is that it tends to score a lot of eyeshots, granting bonus points and killing drones faster. I actually find myself using this much more than the railgun lately.

You might be wondering; why is the burst-fire laser two tiers higher than the full-auto? Well, it's suprisingly that much better. It fires in bursts, but those bursts are FAST. When rapidly firing, you can put out lasers drastically faster than you can with the full-auto laser, taking out drones very quickly if you are landing most of your shots. An interesting aspect to the laser weapons is that you can actually shoot other lasers out of the air as they come at you, potentially saving yourself, or just having all of your shots hit enemy lasers instead of drones. However, this weapon still falls short to the top 2, due to its tendancy to burn through its battery and its extreme weakness against fast-moving drones that comes with firing a slow-moving projectile.

The beam is... Interesting. Its very easy to hit drones with, since you can just wave your giant pillar of death around, and you can merge two beams to make one HUGE beam that does triple damage. The beam is actually very good at "stunning" drones (hitting them and making them unable to shoot at you). However, the beam does such little damage that it just isn't very viable. It takes a LONG time to kill a single drone with the beam, and isn't even THAT powerful when you merge two beams. On top of that, the beam has a battery that depletes fairly quickly, meaning that you can't even hold the trigger for long enough to kill many drones. Perhaps it could somehow be implemented as a secondary weapon (railgun in the right hand, which you focus on using to wipe out drones, while you wave the beam around in your left hand to stun drones and keep them from firing at you), but it simply lacks the power that the top 3 weapons have.

I actually considered putting the full-auto laser above the beam, but decided to give the beam the higher tier because of how much easier it is to use, and also because the full-auto laser seems to be rendered completely useless due to the burst-fire laser. The full-auto laser is just like its burst-fire variant, except that you hold the trigger instead of bursting, and that the rate of fire is quite a lot slower. When I first started playing the game, this weapon actually felt really good, as it is easy to use. However, the damage per second is quite lackluster, the battery runs out fast enough that full-auto fire isn't even close to worth it, and it has the same weakness to fast-moving drones that the burst-fire has (except even more so, since you're throwing out less lasers).

So, at the time of this writing, the railgun and the semi-auto pistol are the only weapons worth using in the long run, with the burst-laser being much better than the bottom two. Although I placed the railgun at the top, I have honestly moved on to exclusively using the semi-auto pistol. If you have legendary skill with the railgun (I'm looking at you, players on the global leaderboard), then it seems to be the best bet. However, the semi-auto pistol is MUCH easier to use, and I theorize that it actually has more potential than the railgun. There doesn't appear to be any limit to how fast you can fire it, an advantage that can be used to shoot EXTREMELY fast. On top of that, there aren't even any negative effects on the gun when in slo-mo, while the other weapons (including the railgun) are slowed down. Because of these advantages (and the others, especially the laser sights), I spend most of my time dual-wielding semi-auto pistols, switching to a shield when needed.

Various Tips and Tricks

So, you understand the basics and have toyed with all of the weapons? On to the interesting stuff.

- You may have noticed that most drones are white, but that black drones start appearing a few waves into the game. So what makes them different? First, they have considerably more health than white drones (I believe it to be double, but am not 100% certain). Second, they have a different firing pattern, often sending huge lines of lasers towards you, rather than the small bursts that white drones fire. Third, they give more points when they are destroyed. Other than those three main facts, I suspect that they have different AI, as they don't seem to fly as close as white drones do... There are also red drones (which are slightly difficult to distinguish) that are an in-between of white and black. Lemming (who you may recognize from the global high score board) says that white drones take one battery-line charge of railgun to kill, reds take 2, and blacks take 3.

- Besides killing drones and getting as far into the waves as possible, the other way to rack up points is to get combos. So, how do combos work? It's quite simple, just keep hitting drones and your combo won't break. Although you only actually get combo bonuses when you destroy drones, simply hitting them will keep your combo from breaking.

- The shield pulse is very cool, but its usefulness is definitely questionable at times. The most useful part of the pulse is that it deflects lasers, but your shield (which you're obviously already pointing in that direction) does that anyway. Then after the pulse, all of the drones are further away and harder to hit. Not to mention that, if you choose to use a laser weapon, YOUR lasers will go off course as they pass through your own pulse. What makes the pulse worth using, then? Well, if you time it just right, you can put a pulse in the faces of a swarm of drones JUST as they fire, often resulting in a very satisfying spectacle of drones blowing themselves up, giving you bonuses for both ricochets and combos.

- Are you finding youself with too many lasers flying at you? Perhaps you need to change the way that you focus your attack. It's very easy to just start shooting at whatever drone is in front of you, but you need to remember that some drones need to take priority over others. For instance, if you have two drones in your view, and one starts charging his weapon, you should fire at him first in order to stun and interupt him. Black drones that are about to fire should also be taken more seriously than others, since they fire a lot more lasers per burst than white drones do.

- On top of focusing on currently-attacking drones, utilizing explosions to stun groups of drones should be done as well. Rather than taking out drones from one side to the other, focusing on ones that will stun many around them if you blow them up can save you from having to deal with a 4th of July lightshow flying at your face.

- The shield is an amazing tool, but it only covers you from one side. Because of this, you want to prioritize keeping either your right or your left side clear of drones. What I often do when the drones are very spread out is hold a shield to my left while ensuring that I am clear on the right. Once the right is clear, I can then turn my attention to the drones on the other side of my shield. This is much more effective than focusing your gun and shield in one direction.

- Don't be too defensive. Often, you'll find yourself with a lot of lasers coming at you, and your instincts scream at you to hide behind the shield. However, this can lead to the drones having time to fan out and for things to escalate to the point that even two shields can't save you. Moving out of the way of lasers without the aid of a shield is something that you just HAVE to do sometimes. Remember, even if the number of lasers looks absolutely crazy, they're all easy to dodge if they're coming from the same direction. If you want to practice not relying on a shield, try doing a dual semi-auto pistol run, as this forces you to dodge whilst also hugely rewarding you for keeping up the fire through the madness.

- Your sights will turn green if they are pointing at a drone. For most weapons, it isn't all that useful. For the railgun, however, it's a "let go of the trigger and a drone dies" indicator. If you have the railgun fully charged and your sight turns green, letting go of the trigger WILL kill something.

- Another interesting note about the sights is that they can be changed. The default sights are very cool, but you can change them to be more in line with traditional iron sights for a handgun, which I find to be much easier to use. Perhaps this is due to my experience with handguns, but I figure that it isn't just me.

- Having trouble landing shots with the railgun? While in the long run you'll want to practice instinctive aiming (firing without any kind of sights), you can start using the railgun by ALWAYS having your sights up. Fully extend your arm, line up your sights (I REALLY suggest using the 3-dot sights), and keep your sights lined up as you move your arm around. This way, all you have to do is put the dot on a drone and let go of the trigger to blow it away with the railgun, rather than having to line up your sights for every drone.

- While slo-mo exists mostly as a defensive tool, it can also be used as an offensive one. If there are black bots on the screen, I will often let myself be shot at (either dodging or blocking the shots) so that the bots go into slo-mo, making them much easier to shoot. The reason that this is especially useful for black bots is that they often go flying backwards as you shoot them all the times that it takes to kill them, making them harder to continue shooting. If you force them into slo-mo, they SLOWLY fly back, making them much easier to hit multiple times. By doing this while dual-wielding semi-auto pistols, you can tear black bots apart very quickly.

[darrellmortimore]

stupid quest i cant get past what i think is the load screen/start screen (with the space craft on), how do you actually start the game ?? no buttons or anything to press ??

[Inverse Necromancer]

@cookiecruncher It's not that you are vulnerable uptil the heart, it's that bullets have larger hurtboxes than they appear to have. When in slow-mo, the bullets have a rectange around them, and it's that rectangle that you have to avoid, so it makes it seem as if you were vulnerable to somewhere around the heart.

[LEMONKLAEYZ]

how on earth do you change the direction you are facing? when i turn in my room to face the way I want to face i have no option to recenter so i'm looking that way. this game launches facing you one direction and doesn't seem to have any obvious way to change that unless i;m missing something?

[cookiecruncher]

"Do remember that you have to get hit in the head to lose a life, since the game doesn't track your entire body, so don't be afraid to let the lasers go under your view (where your body would be)."

Yeah, this isn't correct. They can shoot you in the shoulder. In fact, if you play the demo the very first thing they train you to do is dodge while the first bot aims directly at your heart. You're vulnerable uptil the heart.

[Lchueske]

Can you update this list with the ion grenade?

[Ackarusta]

I figured it out, just needed to redo "room setup" to get my default orientation right. Thanks for the tip, cyborg, I will look into that.

[CyborgTY]

@ackarusta
You should get and use OpenVR Advanced Settings. It allows you alter many settings including rotating your game space.
https://github.com/OpenVR-Advanced-Settings/OpenVR-AdvancedSettings

[Ackarusta]

Ok, so uber-noob question here: the game field is behind me, and to play I have to turn 180 from the direction I usually face. I can't find any way to rotate the game and let me sit the way I want to. Any help?

[The Law]

@terryleematrin
The Semi-Auto is the default weapon. It has a laser sight and fires like a traditional handgun.

[terryleemartin]

I do wish for an update. The Semi-Auto is not even listed and I don't find any weapon which is actually a Semi-Auto. They all seem to be full auto as long as you hold down the trigger.