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DarkSpace Academy - Basic Flight Control - Combat |
Drafell
Grand Admiral
Mythica
Joined: May 30, 2003
Posts: 2449
From: United Kingdom
|  Posted: 2005-12-13 12:39
This is intended to give newer players the basic in's and out of actual combat and damaging the enemy. If you havent already, I recommend you read the DarkSpace Academy - Basic Flight Control - Damage Avoidance thread before this, as I will be assuming that you already know the basics on not getting hit.
Rule One: Do not use the Space Bar
- Wait, you think I am crazy? Space bar fires all your weapons! How can you not use it?
The major issue here is that firing all the weapons at once drains your energy rapidly. It also means that you are firing weapons which are not going to hit anything. If you are shooting a target that is about 400 gu away from you, and it is using even the most basic evasion tactics, the chances are that your torpedoes will not hit, your missiles will not hit, and most of your cannon shots will miss too. You are just wasting torpedoes and missiles attempting to shoot the enemy.
The only weapons you should be trying to use at this range are really the Cannons (Rail Guns, Particle Cannons. Psi Cannons etc).
Anything else has little chance of hittng anything smaller than a cruiser.
So use the number keys assigned to each weapon. You can even right click a weapon and press a number to assign it to a new group.
Rule Two: Choose your targets
- Do not just aim for the closest ship. Find one that you have a reasonable chance of hitting, and that you can keep occupied. Even if you aren't doing a great deal of damage, the fact that they are being shot at means they need to concentrate on avoiding you, and not shooting your team mates.
You can ignore scouts and frigates to a large extent. They are annoying, but not very deadly (unless I am flying them  ).
Rule Three: Stagger your fire
- Most people tend to just shoot all of a weapon type at once. This is generally not a good idea as it is very easy to avoid a short burst of fire.
You have two options here; you can manulaly click the mouse on each weapon to initially trigger and stagger them in this way, and then 'mash' the assigned number key to keep sustaining the fire - or you divinde your cannons into smaller groups and assign each small group to a different number, and press them in sequence.
The key here is to keep up a constant stream of fire, rather than the usual short bursts. It is much harder to avoid cannons which are firing in this manner and requires the target to keep evading constantly, rather than jsut doing one small turn to avoid the current barrage.
Rule Four: Detonate your weapons
- In Rule One I said not to fire any other weapons (torps/missiles) because they miss most of the time. This is not really true. Using these weapons effectively, however, is an aquired skilsl and takes a lot of practise.
The key with torpedoes and missiles is to detonate them when near the target. Both of these weapon types have fairly large blast radii.
Detonating weapons is easy, just press Shift+(numkey). Shift + Space works, but this detonates everything at once, and also toggles your point defence, so I advise against it.
When the weapons are getting near the target, press the shift + numkey to detonate the warheads and the splash damage should still hit. With IT missiles this is lethal. With torpedoes its the difference between winning and losing a battle. It's important to only fire one volley at a time and wait for them to get near and detonate before firing another, as again you are wasting ammunition (and energy).
Rule Five: Get close and concentrate on one area
- Get as close as you can without making yourself an easy target. Shooting at an enemy from too far away is making life hard work. Keep close and try to keep hitting the same location. This means you have to do some maneuvering to make sure you keep on the target, as they sure as hell will be trying thier hardest to protect that location (this is on top of evading thier fire). If you are close, it makes life so much harder for them to avoid your shots.
Usually the best location to aim for is the rear of the enemy ships, as they tend to have few weapons capable of firing back at you, and on some ships there is even less armor here.
The exception to this is in using long range weapons like missiles as there is no need to get close. here you should be relying on detonating the weapons to deal the damage.
Rule Six: Know your range
- It is very important that you know the effective range of all your weapons and when best to use them.
For close range you can use beams, but these are only effective at very close ranges. You really dont want to be shooting targets that are further than 100gu away as the damage output is superceeded by normal cannons. They might guarantee a hit, but you are just wasting energy.
For close to medium range (100-400gu) you can use torpedoes. But its very important that you know how to detonate them.
For medium range use Cannons. Medium extends anywhere from 200-800gu. At over 500gu then you will experience a lot of trouble with hitting anything, although streaming your fire does help a lot.
For longer ranges use Missiles. Long range is from between 500-2000gu, again it is very important to detonate these weapons than relying on them actually hitting.
Most effective ships will specialise in doing one thing well, either short, medium or long range. Hybrid builds do work, but they are a lot more difficult to play well, and generally not as effective.
These are the basics. Feel free to comment with your own tips.
[ This Message was edited by: Drafell on 2005-12-13 14:10 ]
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It's gone now, no longer here...Yet still I see, and still I fear.rnrn
rnrn
DarkSpace Developer - Retired
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