Combat tips?

Hi there,

I have just started playing this cool game. But the combat part is getting frustrating. The Storm Petrol seems like a pretty crappy ship, because I keep getting blasted in what seems the first missile hit from enemies. It only takes seconds! !

Probably I am flying this ship wrong, but I have read over all this website's combat tips, but none of them relate to actually "flying" and "fighting" the craft. The docs from the game itself are not that great either.

Is anyone out there able to describe for me what to do? Like...

- Do you fly with joystick and throttle? And is this the best way to fight your ship?
- Do you have the thrusters coded to a button on your throttle or something for quicker reactions?
- How much do you use the thrusters when you fight?
- Do the ships you fly in require constant upgrade of shields to fight properly, or are the stock shields fine?
- Upon engaging in combat, do you need to turn shields on or something (coz I keep getting blasted within a few seconds).

Thanks for your help, LD.

---

Flying The Friendly Skies

---

Hi Ditty. The Storm Petrel is an older, poorly-equipped, fragile craft. It really does not take much abuse before going boom.

Throughout the game you will be offered upgrades and better systems when completing a mission. In addition, the trade screen, once you are out of Act 0, will allow you to gain even more tech.

The best way to fly is one hand on the joystick and the other on the thrust override keys (W A S D). That way, when a missile nears, you can hit either A or D to move sideways and avoid it.

Use thrusters everytime you fight. In EoC, if you're sitting still, you're a sitting duck. With the thrust override keys, you can vary your speed and direction... try not to fly in straight lines when in combat; the AI can target that easily. Duck and weave.

You should not have to turn anything on upon going into combat. It's all on by default.

The Storm Petrel is manueverable as hell, but is usually destroyed with one good hit. Use this to your advantage. After Act 0, you'll get the tug, which is a good, solid platform for piracy.

No confusion; just wrong or right ... Only Solutions

Thx Shane! Your a champion. [^]

Another question for you. Do you use a throttle for your rig? Do you think programming a hat for WASD keystrokes on the throttle is a good idea? Or is this not necessary?

LD.

---

Flying The Friendly Skies

---

I set the thrust override controls to my hat switch before, but later took them off; the diagonals would mess things up (my joystick would interpret a upper-right as forward thrust override then right thrust override... a real mess).

What I finally decided on was setting the "," and "." keys to the left and right hat switch directions, "y" to the top key, and "r" to the bottom. It makes cycling targets much quicker.

I never really use the throttle in combat. It's something I'll use to start an approach to a station, or when I'm just flying around, but in combat I use WASD keys.

No confusion; just wrong or right ... Only Solutions

Personally, I fly with one hand on the joystick and one hand on the TRI controls. But yeah, in the first mission, as soon as the challenge cutscene ends, I hit full engine power and activate thrusters, once I've gotten a few clicks between me and the analbeads, I turn around, full power the weapons, fire off a couple of missiles and the, once in range, unload the Quad-Lights until they're out of power. Wash, rince, repeat.

Have a look at this tactical guide posted aeons ago by one of the developers -- there's some handy tips in there.

You also need to learn to use the 'Parias bootlegger' if you haven't already: double-tap 'L' for momentary engagement of your LDS drive, and you'll be doing 1km/s on your current heading, regardless of your previous velocity. This is really cheap, but it works.

For other exploits, experiment with LDSi missiles. They detonate conventional misiles in their (huge) blast radius, which can be handy, particularly on escort missions. They also reset the velocity of their target instantly to zero on impact, even if it wasn't in LDS -- you can use this to your advantage when fleeing, pursuing, or just wanting to cause a megafreighter pile-up and giggle.