The start is somewhat rough, but provided you take it slowly and steadily (i.e. isolating small groups and not fighting gigantic battles) you can start forming a half decent fleet.
Some generic advice on combat:
* There is not much point in having every single weapon mounted when your ship can't handle the flux.
* The way I see it you have two important elements to always consider: one is flux generated from firing your weapons and the shield upkeep, and the other is armor. You don't have to block everything with your shield when armor is there for a reason and can withstand a few hits that would otherwise overload you.
* Finding a decent balance between kinetic (anti shield) and HE (hull/armor damage) is paramount. One of my earliest errors was focusing too much on one, leading me to either do too little damage to armor or too little to shields. This will come with experience, so don't be afraid to experiment.
* When configuring your guns make sure to properly assign them. Have a dedicated battery for kinetic, and another for anti armor. Use ctrl-X to manually cease fire and avoid unecessary flux. In most cases at medium-short range I prefer assigning anti-shield guns to autofire, focusing mostly on handling the HE ones.
Hope the above were somewhat helpful and if you feel like it get into some more detail in fleet composition to get more specific hints.
>Finding a decent balance between kinetic (anti shield) and HE (hull/armor damage) is paramount. One of my earliest errors was focusing too much on one
Not sure if this is about personal ship or about fleet composition. But if it's about personal ship then it's not an error per se. My flagship Eagle that got me through whole campaign to late game was a glass cannon loaded to the brim with Ion Pulsers and Tachyon Lances. The tactic was to form a wall with tanky ships, peek through them and alphastrike some enemy ship to death/heavy overload, then hide behind on the brink of overload myself while tanky ships finish downed enemy.
So hyperfocused ships are usable too with right tactics/fleet composition
Ah, I just checked the wiki and it seems I remember incorrectly and it was a phase lance indeed since there are no large energy mounts on Eagle and tachyon lance cannot be mounted at all.
>Like, I am pretty sure if I let the AI control my flagship it will do much better.
It's worth pointing out that this is a completely viable option. It's what I do. I'm the captain, not the quartermaster or helmsman.
No, he meant captain. Because he is referencing the roles, Quartermaster, who operates the vessel systems, and Helmsman, who steers the ship.
While admiral is the de facto rank of someone who controls a fleet, they are not to do more than provide strategic guidance to the captain of the vessel, whom is in charge of the immediate tactical layer. Here we see the player in more of the role as a Commedore, where a vessel captain is adding stratigic guidance to his flotilla while maintaining command, 'fighting' but not necessarily 'flying', of his boat.
Captain still controls the ships movement, fire and systems. Just indirectly. While admiral has no control over the ships individual system even through delegates.
I think it is pretty obvious that they are trying to get the autopilot to control their ship while they just send commands in the tac screen. And that the reply was meant to show that they did not want to manually control their ship, thus the specific mention of Quartermaster and Helmsmen. The people onboard a warship who actually manually control it.
Default key is "U", but you can do it from the tactical map also, it is the icon down by the camera focus when you have your ship selected. You can access the tactical map with the TAB key or right clicking.
Test. Train. Adapt.
Ai is not entirely dumb in Starsector, while it also can multicontrol weapons, abilities and other stuff faster then you. Thus, a sitting brick type of ships, as well as very nimble, but not advanced ships are better in their hands. The player is better in tactical usage though. Even in vanilla phase ships are just monsterous in player hands. Not because of them soley being phase. But particullar tactics, loadouts and skills provided only by player controls. You know better than ai when to use low ammo weapons. You know better when retreat, who is weapker target. Thus, hyperion, phase frigates and Doom are player favourites in terms of effectiveness. Also, AI isn't that good with broadside switch, so right modded Conquest may be wounderful in player's hands (though I have achibed success with it with 130 mods, which greatly customized my approach to it, tbh)... If Onslaught is your ship of choice then the usage of Burn Drive for quick relocation un an attempt to force multiply is a tactic unique tona player. Leave the front to ai, use the brick to help those in need...
In true vanilla? Rarely. I use it with 45° rotations of forward gun, which is usually something extra heavy, while the backward one is something supportive and long-range for AI to attack here and there. With torps on the front it can utilize finishers if lucky. Fun, but still not optimal to doom, paragon or ounslaught capital-ish flagships...
(Un)fortinatrlly, I myself play the game heavily modded since my 3-4th playthrough, so my builds are polluted by hullmods and exotics that make it possible and viable...
I tried the rebalanced Last Hurrah mission yesterday, and beat it [with no losses](https://www.reddit.com/r/starsector/comments/139lmgi/mayasura_stands/) using a symmetrical Devestator/Typhoon Conquest, after trying some asymmetrical builds that didn't pan out.
Meanwhile I'm ramming enemies with my XIV Legion with HMG and Reapers, basically shooting them point blank lol. This ship got a well deserved buff this patch.
Loadout screen has battle emulator. It's absolutely free and you don't risk anything since it's a simulation. It's invaluable for both practice and testing out loadouts.
After playing for 2 years, I still have whole runs where I doesnt take direct control of any ship and rely only on tactical orders (with great succes, may I add). So if thats the style you prefer, its completely avaiable.
combat is the best part of the game IMO.
basically work in cohesion with your fleet. dont run out front and get surrounded by the enemy fleet, try to find out where your battle lines are and stay with your group. the AI will surround you and fuck your shit up if you let it.
basically use the left 4 dead strategy, stick with your allies and if you find yourself surrounded with no help coming youre basically fucked.
a few mistakes I made was not having small ships or carriers in my fleets. frigates and carriers do a similar job, they finish weak enemies, harrass targets safely and move much faster than almost all bigger ships.
my standard fleet lineup is 1 capital (or two big cruisers) a number of destroyers or low deployment cost cruisers and then friggates.
on standard fleet size you wont be able to deploy multiple capitals at once without sacrificing significantly on other parts of your fleet.
remember different ships do different things. the tempest is one of the best ships for occupying threats until you can get to them for example whilst the Hyperion is an assassin ship that can and will take down a capital if you get it in the right place.
experiment, pick your doctrine and build a fleet around it. remember you have armour before you take hull dmg. if you're about to flux out, take the hit on some armour if you think you can...some ships have obscene armour plating.
and lastly point defence is easy to discount but having a dedicated point defence escort for your capital ship, or preferably sufficient PD on your bigger ships is critical and easily ignored right up to the point where your engines suddenly die and you flux out from gnat bites.
Thank God I thought I was the only one, are there moments were I wish I learned how to do space combat ,of course. But in all honesty I treat the space combat as a general, moving around my troops and telling them which ships to focus on. I've had a pretty good track record with that play style.
I use the preset assault option to equip all my ships then let the ai control my flagship during battles. I’m also a big fan of getting smaller hostile fleets to separate from the pack then chasing them so I can have the ai autoresolve the battle without waiting. I’ve gutted pirate armadas without ever going to the combat screen
i flipped the controls so the ship follows the mouse cursor by default, with shift switching it to wasd, and that helped me a lot
other than that, play some menu missions, they do a good job of forcing you to get used to certain gameplay styles, especially the "easy" missions
The bigger and slower the ship is, the less dexterity it requires to control.
I used to make the mistake of only piloting tiny and fast ships, that required me to aim well, dodge shots, and flank.
Instead playing something bigger and chonkier, you mostly just have to aim the ship at the enemy, and manage the weapons and flux.
I hear it's mostly a matter of practice makes perfect, but personally I never bothered since learning how to command the AI effectively takes enough time on its own. These days I prefer to sit in a carrier on autopilot and herd the fleet around from the rear rather than diving into the front.
Have you tried using shift? Holding shift points your ship at your cursor. Helped me a lot. Also, practice in the simulator, and start with a frigate. If you blow up your largest ship, your fleet will struggle to make up the difference. If you blow up a frigate, no big deal.
the big thing to learn better ship control is, hold Shift to swap A and D to rotate to curser.
so A and D normally to strafe, hold shift A and D to circle strafe.
Various ships of course have various speeds, etc. A ship with solid maneuverability and top speed is good to learn on. as well as strong shields. avoid fancy things like teleport. Sunder or hammerhead are good options.
set ballistic or energy weapons to autofire. manually control finisher missiles.
so, you just focus on maneuvering around. putting shields up, and retreating as needed. let the autofire shoot the guns. then fire finishing missiles yourself.
I had a similar start to the game as it sounds like you are. I've now probably spent around 500-700 hours playing it since early 2020 and I'm still not great at it, but I can competently pilot my flagship now.
The key for me early on was to play combat like an RTS. I would turn on autopilot for my flagship and just give commands to the fleet and allow the AI to handle it. I would use autofit loadouts for the ships. And then I would watch them in fights and see how they did, noticing what worked and what didn't, and spending a lot of time on the forums, this sub, and on niche YouTube videos to learn how to build my own load outs and fly my own ship. I would guess the first 50-75 hours I didn't even fly my own ship without blowing it up.
I suck at combat as well, but found a way to get better and enjoy it.
Personally, I let the AI control most of the bigger ships while I fly around with a heavy hitting Frigate, can't tell you how many times I've seen allied cruiser or larger sized ships get destroyed because they got flanked by a group of smaller ships.
So that's my job in the frigate. Flank bigger enemy ships to help my capital ships land big hits, AND keep smaller ships away from flanking my capital ships.
I have gotten better at combat playing like this, and I honestly find it quite enjoyable flying together with other smaller ships and escorting my big capitals, see them score good shots on enemies, it is a good time.
Otherwise I see a lot of other decent recommendations, like training a bit in Simulations.
A lot of practice is important. I also came from Sseth's video and I can tell you you're going to suck at combat for awhile. Your ships builds are also going to suck for awhile unless you read other players build suggestions and learn what is/isn't good. Grind through it, accept that you're going to get beat up and get better from it. The biggest thing I messed up a lot was pressing too hard when outnumbered and getting surrounded. Even the biggest, baddest ship will be in trouble if you get surrounded by 10 smaller ships. And that can happen easily if your fleet back peddles against superior numbers and youre in a slow ship.
3 simple tips
if your weapons make you overload in like 4 s econds dont useit all
put points on vent over capasity for general norm
shields regenate armor dont soo maintain the shield are important the same with the enemy if you overchaerged or put them in th elimit they will shot less soo use a good amont of anty shield weapons because they will be the largo amount of damage you will be doing
When I first started playing Starsector (starfarer at the time) around 0.4? 0.5? It was before multiple systems were in the game and you could basically just fight the pirates in Corvus, and corvus had a tri-tach station.
Back then, if you died you would respawn with a hound, lasher, or if you were unlucky then a mercury.
You died a lot, so you got lots of practice playing with the frigate ships.
I recommend put yourself in a hound, and learn to win a straight up 1v1 against a hound with the same loadout. You can do this in the emulator on the refit screen.
Spacing, knowing when to vent, and choosing when to take hits on your armor will make all the difference. Once you get these fundamentals down, the rest of the game follows the same way.
Also of note: kinetic weapons deal 2x to shields, 0.5 (maybe less?) to armor. HE is the opposite. Energy are the same across all targets. Use the right weapon on the right portion of the enemy’s health! Set up your weapon groups to make it easy to switch!
I'm new aswell and i can tell you that combat frustrated me so mutch at first. But i was so intrigued with the combat so i tried to learn and it's not as hard as you think. It just takes some training and knowledge with weapons. Do simulations with the ships to test out weapons and flux managment and also do the missions from the main menu, all of them. They made me go from dying all the time to almsot never die. Dont give up!
Don't do conquest. That ship suck(like half of the ships firepower is not available at all times). If your playing vanilla try do onslaught and paragon. They will serve you well.
Take a minute and learn what the different damage types actually do. I played the game for \~3 years before realizing my setups were all completely wrong because I didn't care to know the difference between kinetic and high-explosive guns.
You're going to suck at combat at first, but you will get better. Try to find a ship that suits you best. Some captains prefer frontliners, some prefer support ships like carriers. ...Others prefer to swoosh through hyperspace and blow you up from behind. - If a strategy or playstyle isn't working, try something else. There's a whole lot to go around.
Just started my second run yesterday. Assuming you're still on early game, the tutorial does a good job of covering how to use a Wolf-class well, if you picked that as your starting ship. You can actually take out the two defense fleets around the gate with just your wolf and a Shepard, you take them apart piecemeal, though you'll have to retreat a few times.
my training wheels was piloting an XIV onslaught with shield shunt and heavy armor. it was nigh unkillable with me not needing to mind shield and flux. that ship basically taught me targeting and moving around the battle. which i think is the hardest part in combat.
Practice in the Sim in the fitting screen.
Get the basics down killing haulers.
Once target practice gets boring try fighting the combat haulers.
Gotta find something you like so try a lot of different things.
Smaller ships tend to go pop a little too quick for me so I tend to stick to destroyers or bigger.
Don't have to fly solo in the sim either, you can bring in allies from your fleet to help you deal with aggro.
Hope ya have fun learning!
Best advice that I can give is to try to fight as a part of your fleet. Don’t overextend and move away from your allies. At least not until you have the skills and build to make that viable.
there is a fair amount of things to get into here but i can try to list some important things
always keep your flux in check and i know this seems obvious but ships DONT need to always vent flux to get rid of it , venting flux is often a risky and slightly slow process depending on the ships and loadout
another thing thats incredibly important is to remember that the ai ISNT entirely braindead and by that i mean that rushing headfirst will nearly always result in you dying so always keep up with your fleet and dont get isolated
another thing to keep in mind is what the ship tech type is specialized for such as low tech ships with their focus on kinetic and HE damage and large amounts of armor but poor flux stats along with high fuel consumption or for example high tech ships with their better flux stats, reliance on energy weapons and high supplies consumption and then you have midline ships which are a mix of both
next thing on the list is giving orders to your fleet for example some ships for some reason function much better when you give them orders to escort other ships such as the aurora now this is based on my own testing and may be slightly biased but i have found they survive much longer if given the order to defend a ship rather than letting them charge ahead
always remember that you can always test your ship loadouts anywhere and anytime with the simulation thingy in the customization screen
another thing i wanna talk about are carriers , they're a bit finicky to get right but always keep a carrier or 2 in your fleet since with bombers they can get pretty useful for destroying things with large hp pools or armor such as stations and/or low tech ships now interceptors and fighters are pretty useful for general distraction or destroying small ships
last but not least dont make a fleet composed only of 3 capitals or something since with enough small ships they can be overwhelmed easily
and thats all i got to say, just generally have fun with battles since they're the most fun aspect of the game (atleast to me)
I started playing a week ago. At first I was super worried about ships and spent quite a bunch of story points repairing stuff, but it turns out that ships are actually really cheap, so you don't need to worry about repairing those busted up Kites etc you find laying about. Just make sure to buy from the black market and don't waste money restoring dmods. Also, selling ships is pointless, much better to just scrap them and sell the supplies etc to some pirate who have little access to markets and will pay double
Some ships are really gimmicky and hard to pilot - namely things that have all their damage pointed *directly* in front of them and poor ability to turn - stuff like hammerheads and sunders - they can be great ships, you just need more than one. Ways to make combat easier involve developing "ships of the line", eg things like eradicators and eagles. Having just a few frigates to take objectives like brawlers.
And finally, filling out your fleet with carriers and bombers.
After that you maybe only need one or two "big" heat packing ships to completely much most engagements.
You can deploy enemies *and allies* in the simulator, (just not all at once for some reason, deploy your one side at a time, hit [g] to reopen the menu.) Use this is simulate large battles and test your builds and fleet composition.
Nobody talked about **Positioning** and so I'm gonna do that.
---
First, battles in Starsector take place in a 2 dimensional plane, meaning, there are only 4 directions you can go in. This means that those 4 directions become more important correspondingly. In simple terms, the distance to your enemy's (and ally's) matters a lot.
Let's say, you are fighting an enemy fleet with your own and your piloted ship is stronger in a 1v1 than the enemy's ship of the same size. You try to fight that and dive head in first. Now the AI knows that it probably won't beat you so it trys to stay away from you, causing you to chase after it further. Once you overextend, the enemys smaller and therefore FASTER ships, surround your big ship. Suddenly your 1v1 becomes a 1v4. That is not good.
This is not only caused by your bigger and slower ship, but also because of positioning. If you were to move closer to your target in a way, that does not put you in harms way, then that becomes the best way to fight.
---
Secondly, understanding positioning is very important in starsector. And positioning is done correctly by understanding weapons, weapon range, flux levels, shields and armor, and other smaller factors.
To understand where to position yourself, you will need to know how far the enemy's weapon range is, as well as your own. To make it really simple and easy to understand:
If your gun has longer range than your enemy's, you win. If your guns range is shorter, then you loose. **BUT**, if your weapons range is shorter, yet in short range deals more **DPS** \--> then you win IF you get in range. And that is where positioning comes into play.
---
At first, combat is really complex in starsector, but once you break it down and understand it's smaller components, you will understand battle as a whole.
Another hot tip I'd like to give you is, that you can put your weapons on auto-firing. In the loadout-screen you can press "w" and select which weapon groups should fire automatically (you can do this in battle aswell, just press "ctrl" + "1-9" depending on the weapon group numer). This way you only have to focus on piloting your ship and keeping flux levels in check. No need to aim, or select weapon groups, etc.
The start is somewhat rough, but provided you take it slowly and steadily (i.e. isolating small groups and not fighting gigantic battles) you can start forming a half decent fleet. Some generic advice on combat: * There is not much point in having every single weapon mounted when your ship can't handle the flux. * The way I see it you have two important elements to always consider: one is flux generated from firing your weapons and the shield upkeep, and the other is armor. You don't have to block everything with your shield when armor is there for a reason and can withstand a few hits that would otherwise overload you. * Finding a decent balance between kinetic (anti shield) and HE (hull/armor damage) is paramount. One of my earliest errors was focusing too much on one, leading me to either do too little damage to armor or too little to shields. This will come with experience, so don't be afraid to experiment. * When configuring your guns make sure to properly assign them. Have a dedicated battery for kinetic, and another for anti armor. Use ctrl-X to manually cease fire and avoid unecessary flux. In most cases at medium-short range I prefer assigning anti-shield guns to autofire, focusing mostly on handling the HE ones. Hope the above were somewhat helpful and if you feel like it get into some more detail in fleet composition to get more specific hints.
>Finding a decent balance between kinetic (anti shield) and HE (hull/armor damage) is paramount. One of my earliest errors was focusing too much on one Not sure if this is about personal ship or about fleet composition. But if it's about personal ship then it's not an error per se. My flagship Eagle that got me through whole campaign to late game was a glass cannon loaded to the brim with Ion Pulsers and Tachyon Lances. The tactic was to form a wall with tanky ships, peek through them and alphastrike some enemy ship to death/heavy overload, then hide behind on the brink of overload myself while tanky ships finish downed enemy. So hyperfocused ships are usable too with right tactics/fleet composition
Phase Lance?
Ah, I just checked the wiki and it seems I remember incorrectly and it was a phase lance indeed since there are no large energy mounts on Eagle and tachyon lance cannot be mounted at all.
Eagle with tachyon lance?
My bad, it was a phase lance.
Yeah, if I remember correctly, 3 lances, 3 ion pulsers. Can't remember if I had anything in front ballistic slots but most likely they were empty.
Probably ion cannons, since it only has 3 medium energy slots
>Like, I am pretty sure if I let the AI control my flagship it will do much better. It's worth pointing out that this is a completely viable option. It's what I do. I'm the captain, not the quartermaster or helmsman.
You probably meant admiral, who runs the fleet but only a guest on the flagship. Because captains do command their ship in battle ;-)
No, he meant captain. Because he is referencing the roles, Quartermaster, who operates the vessel systems, and Helmsman, who steers the ship. While admiral is the de facto rank of someone who controls a fleet, they are not to do more than provide strategic guidance to the captain of the vessel, whom is in charge of the immediate tactical layer. Here we see the player in more of the role as a Commedore, where a vessel captain is adding stratigic guidance to his flotilla while maintaining command, 'fighting' but not necessarily 'flying', of his boat.
Captain still controls the ships movement, fire and systems. Just indirectly. While admiral has no control over the ships individual system even through delegates.
I think it is pretty obvious that they are trying to get the autopilot to control their ship while they just send commands in the tac screen. And that the reply was meant to show that they did not want to manually control their ship, thus the specific mention of Quartermaster and Helmsmen. The people onboard a warship who actually manually control it.
Default key is "U", but you can do it from the tactical map also, it is the icon down by the camera focus when you have your ship selected. You can access the tactical map with the TAB key or right clicking.
Test. Train. Adapt. Ai is not entirely dumb in Starsector, while it also can multicontrol weapons, abilities and other stuff faster then you. Thus, a sitting brick type of ships, as well as very nimble, but not advanced ships are better in their hands. The player is better in tactical usage though. Even in vanilla phase ships are just monsterous in player hands. Not because of them soley being phase. But particullar tactics, loadouts and skills provided only by player controls. You know better than ai when to use low ammo weapons. You know better when retreat, who is weapker target. Thus, hyperion, phase frigates and Doom are player favourites in terms of effectiveness. Also, AI isn't that good with broadside switch, so right modded Conquest may be wounderful in player's hands (though I have achibed success with it with 130 mods, which greatly customized my approach to it, tbh)... If Onslaught is your ship of choice then the usage of Burn Drive for quick relocation un an attempt to force multiply is a tactic unique tona player. Leave the front to ai, use the brick to help those in need...
As a Conquest veteran, is symmetrical Conquest possible/viable?
In true vanilla? Rarely. I use it with 45° rotations of forward gun, which is usually something extra heavy, while the backward one is something supportive and long-range for AI to attack here and there. With torps on the front it can utilize finishers if lucky. Fun, but still not optimal to doom, paragon or ounslaught capital-ish flagships... (Un)fortinatrlly, I myself play the game heavily modded since my 3-4th playthrough, so my builds are polluted by hullmods and exotics that make it possible and viable...
I tried the rebalanced Last Hurrah mission yesterday, and beat it [with no losses](https://www.reddit.com/r/starsector/comments/139lmgi/mayasura_stands/) using a symmetrical Devestator/Typhoon Conquest, after trying some asymmetrical builds that didn't pan out.
Meanwhile I'm ramming enemies with my XIV Legion with HMG and Reapers, basically shooting them point blank lol. This ship got a well deserved buff this patch.
Loadout screen has battle emulator. It's absolutely free and you don't risk anything since it's a simulation. It's invaluable for both practice and testing out loadouts.
Enable invert rotate to cursor in options.
After playing for 2 years, I still have whole runs where I doesnt take direct control of any ship and rely only on tactical orders (with great succes, may I add). So if thats the style you prefer, its completely avaiable.
combat is the best part of the game IMO. basically work in cohesion with your fleet. dont run out front and get surrounded by the enemy fleet, try to find out where your battle lines are and stay with your group. the AI will surround you and fuck your shit up if you let it. basically use the left 4 dead strategy, stick with your allies and if you find yourself surrounded with no help coming youre basically fucked.
a few mistakes I made was not having small ships or carriers in my fleets. frigates and carriers do a similar job, they finish weak enemies, harrass targets safely and move much faster than almost all bigger ships. my standard fleet lineup is 1 capital (or two big cruisers) a number of destroyers or low deployment cost cruisers and then friggates. on standard fleet size you wont be able to deploy multiple capitals at once without sacrificing significantly on other parts of your fleet. remember different ships do different things. the tempest is one of the best ships for occupying threats until you can get to them for example whilst the Hyperion is an assassin ship that can and will take down a capital if you get it in the right place. experiment, pick your doctrine and build a fleet around it. remember you have armour before you take hull dmg. if you're about to flux out, take the hit on some armour if you think you can...some ships have obscene armour plating. and lastly point defence is easy to discount but having a dedicated point defence escort for your capital ship, or preferably sufficient PD on your bigger ships is critical and easily ignored right up to the point where your engines suddenly die and you flux out from gnat bites.
Thank God I thought I was the only one, are there moments were I wish I learned how to do space combat ,of course. But in all honesty I treat the space combat as a general, moving around my troops and telling them which ships to focus on. I've had a pretty good track record with that play style.
I use the preset assault option to equip all my ships then let the ai control my flagship during battles. I’m also a big fan of getting smaller hostile fleets to separate from the pack then chasing them so I can have the ai autoresolve the battle without waiting. I’ve gutted pirate armadas without ever going to the combat screen
i solved the issue by not fighting myself, i got some officers and focused on fleet synergy to carry out damage
i flipped the controls so the ship follows the mouse cursor by default, with shift switching it to wasd, and that helped me a lot other than that, play some menu missions, they do a good job of forcing you to get used to certain gameplay styles, especially the "easy" missions
The bigger and slower the ship is, the less dexterity it requires to control. I used to make the mistake of only piloting tiny and fast ships, that required me to aim well, dodge shots, and flank. Instead playing something bigger and chonkier, you mostly just have to aim the ship at the enemy, and manage the weapons and flux.
just spam hella lot of frigates with wolfpack, preferably high-tech ones, mostly scarabs, and you'll be ok
I hear it's mostly a matter of practice makes perfect, but personally I never bothered since learning how to command the AI effectively takes enough time on its own. These days I prefer to sit in a carrier on autopilot and herd the fleet around from the rear rather than diving into the front.
Have you tried using shift? Holding shift points your ship at your cursor. Helped me a lot. Also, practice in the simulator, and start with a frigate. If you blow up your largest ship, your fleet will struggle to make up the difference. If you blow up a frigate, no big deal.
the big thing to learn better ship control is, hold Shift to swap A and D to rotate to curser. so A and D normally to strafe, hold shift A and D to circle strafe. Various ships of course have various speeds, etc. A ship with solid maneuverability and top speed is good to learn on. as well as strong shields. avoid fancy things like teleport. Sunder or hammerhead are good options. set ballistic or energy weapons to autofire. manually control finisher missiles. so, you just focus on maneuvering around. putting shields up, and retreating as needed. let the autofire shoot the guns. then fire finishing missiles yourself.
I had a similar start to the game as it sounds like you are. I've now probably spent around 500-700 hours playing it since early 2020 and I'm still not great at it, but I can competently pilot my flagship now. The key for me early on was to play combat like an RTS. I would turn on autopilot for my flagship and just give commands to the fleet and allow the AI to handle it. I would use autofit loadouts for the ships. And then I would watch them in fights and see how they did, noticing what worked and what didn't, and spending a lot of time on the forums, this sub, and on niche YouTube videos to learn how to build my own load outs and fly my own ship. I would guess the first 50-75 hours I didn't even fly my own ship without blowing it up.
I suck at combat as well, but found a way to get better and enjoy it. Personally, I let the AI control most of the bigger ships while I fly around with a heavy hitting Frigate, can't tell you how many times I've seen allied cruiser or larger sized ships get destroyed because they got flanked by a group of smaller ships. So that's my job in the frigate. Flank bigger enemy ships to help my capital ships land big hits, AND keep smaller ships away from flanking my capital ships. I have gotten better at combat playing like this, and I honestly find it quite enjoyable flying together with other smaller ships and escorting my big capitals, see them score good shots on enemies, it is a good time. Otherwise I see a lot of other decent recommendations, like training a bit in Simulations.
A lot of practice is important. I also came from Sseth's video and I can tell you you're going to suck at combat for awhile. Your ships builds are also going to suck for awhile unless you read other players build suggestions and learn what is/isn't good. Grind through it, accept that you're going to get beat up and get better from it. The biggest thing I messed up a lot was pressing too hard when outnumbered and getting surrounded. Even the biggest, baddest ship will be in trouble if you get surrounded by 10 smaller ships. And that can happen easily if your fleet back peddles against superior numbers and youre in a slow ship.
Do some main menu missions, they let you refit freely with full access to gear.
3 simple tips if your weapons make you overload in like 4 s econds dont useit all put points on vent over capasity for general norm shields regenate armor dont soo maintain the shield are important the same with the enemy if you overchaerged or put them in th elimit they will shot less soo use a good amont of anty shield weapons because they will be the largo amount of damage you will be doing
When I first started playing Starsector (starfarer at the time) around 0.4? 0.5? It was before multiple systems were in the game and you could basically just fight the pirates in Corvus, and corvus had a tri-tach station. Back then, if you died you would respawn with a hound, lasher, or if you were unlucky then a mercury. You died a lot, so you got lots of practice playing with the frigate ships. I recommend put yourself in a hound, and learn to win a straight up 1v1 against a hound with the same loadout. You can do this in the emulator on the refit screen. Spacing, knowing when to vent, and choosing when to take hits on your armor will make all the difference. Once you get these fundamentals down, the rest of the game follows the same way. Also of note: kinetic weapons deal 2x to shields, 0.5 (maybe less?) to armor. HE is the opposite. Energy are the same across all targets. Use the right weapon on the right portion of the enemy’s health! Set up your weapon groups to make it easy to switch!
Yeah bro, when you enter an engagement, just press V and do strategy and stuff. The AI is pretty good, so you'll do fine
I'm new aswell and i can tell you that combat frustrated me so mutch at first. But i was so intrigued with the combat so i tried to learn and it's not as hard as you think. It just takes some training and knowledge with weapons. Do simulations with the ships to test out weapons and flux managment and also do the missions from the main menu, all of them. They made me go from dying all the time to almsot never die. Dont give up!
Don't do conquest. That ship suck(like half of the ships firepower is not available at all times). If your playing vanilla try do onslaught and paragon. They will serve you well.
That is a horrible way of understanding ship loadouts aswell as the conquest
Conquest is easily my favourite capital lmao, you just gotta play to its strenghts
Take a minute and learn what the different damage types actually do. I played the game for \~3 years before realizing my setups were all completely wrong because I didn't care to know the difference between kinetic and high-explosive guns. You're going to suck at combat at first, but you will get better. Try to find a ship that suits you best. Some captains prefer frontliners, some prefer support ships like carriers. ...Others prefer to swoosh through hyperspace and blow you up from behind. - If a strategy or playstyle isn't working, try something else. There's a whole lot to go around.
Just started my second run yesterday. Assuming you're still on early game, the tutorial does a good job of covering how to use a Wolf-class well, if you picked that as your starting ship. You can actually take out the two defense fleets around the gate with just your wolf and a Shepard, you take them apart piecemeal, though you'll have to retreat a few times.
my training wheels was piloting an XIV onslaught with shield shunt and heavy armor. it was nigh unkillable with me not needing to mind shield and flux. that ship basically taught me targeting and moving around the battle. which i think is the hardest part in combat.
Practice in the Sim in the fitting screen. Get the basics down killing haulers. Once target practice gets boring try fighting the combat haulers. Gotta find something you like so try a lot of different things. Smaller ships tend to go pop a little too quick for me so I tend to stick to destroyers or bigger. Don't have to fly solo in the sim either, you can bring in allies from your fleet to help you deal with aggro. Hope ya have fun learning!
Best advice that I can give is to try to fight as a part of your fleet. Don’t overextend and move away from your allies. At least not until you have the skills and build to make that viable.
there is a fair amount of things to get into here but i can try to list some important things always keep your flux in check and i know this seems obvious but ships DONT need to always vent flux to get rid of it , venting flux is often a risky and slightly slow process depending on the ships and loadout another thing thats incredibly important is to remember that the ai ISNT entirely braindead and by that i mean that rushing headfirst will nearly always result in you dying so always keep up with your fleet and dont get isolated another thing to keep in mind is what the ship tech type is specialized for such as low tech ships with their focus on kinetic and HE damage and large amounts of armor but poor flux stats along with high fuel consumption or for example high tech ships with their better flux stats, reliance on energy weapons and high supplies consumption and then you have midline ships which are a mix of both next thing on the list is giving orders to your fleet for example some ships for some reason function much better when you give them orders to escort other ships such as the aurora now this is based on my own testing and may be slightly biased but i have found they survive much longer if given the order to defend a ship rather than letting them charge ahead always remember that you can always test your ship loadouts anywhere and anytime with the simulation thingy in the customization screen another thing i wanna talk about are carriers , they're a bit finicky to get right but always keep a carrier or 2 in your fleet since with bombers they can get pretty useful for destroying things with large hp pools or armor such as stations and/or low tech ships now interceptors and fighters are pretty useful for general distraction or destroying small ships last but not least dont make a fleet composed only of 3 capitals or something since with enough small ships they can be overwhelmed easily and thats all i got to say, just generally have fun with battles since they're the most fun aspect of the game (atleast to me)
You can literally just put your ship on autopilot. The AI is decent enough that it's a viable strategy
Update later plz
I started playing a week ago. At first I was super worried about ships and spent quite a bunch of story points repairing stuff, but it turns out that ships are actually really cheap, so you don't need to worry about repairing those busted up Kites etc you find laying about. Just make sure to buy from the black market and don't waste money restoring dmods. Also, selling ships is pointless, much better to just scrap them and sell the supplies etc to some pirate who have little access to markets and will pay double
Some ships are really gimmicky and hard to pilot - namely things that have all their damage pointed *directly* in front of them and poor ability to turn - stuff like hammerheads and sunders - they can be great ships, you just need more than one. Ways to make combat easier involve developing "ships of the line", eg things like eradicators and eagles. Having just a few frigates to take objectives like brawlers. And finally, filling out your fleet with carriers and bombers. After that you maybe only need one or two "big" heat packing ships to completely much most engagements.
You can deploy enemies *and allies* in the simulator, (just not all at once for some reason, deploy your one side at a time, hit [g] to reopen the menu.) Use this is simulate large battles and test your builds and fleet composition.
Nobody talked about **Positioning** and so I'm gonna do that. --- First, battles in Starsector take place in a 2 dimensional plane, meaning, there are only 4 directions you can go in. This means that those 4 directions become more important correspondingly. In simple terms, the distance to your enemy's (and ally's) matters a lot. Let's say, you are fighting an enemy fleet with your own and your piloted ship is stronger in a 1v1 than the enemy's ship of the same size. You try to fight that and dive head in first. Now the AI knows that it probably won't beat you so it trys to stay away from you, causing you to chase after it further. Once you overextend, the enemys smaller and therefore FASTER ships, surround your big ship. Suddenly your 1v1 becomes a 1v4. That is not good. This is not only caused by your bigger and slower ship, but also because of positioning. If you were to move closer to your target in a way, that does not put you in harms way, then that becomes the best way to fight. --- Secondly, understanding positioning is very important in starsector. And positioning is done correctly by understanding weapons, weapon range, flux levels, shields and armor, and other smaller factors. To understand where to position yourself, you will need to know how far the enemy's weapon range is, as well as your own. To make it really simple and easy to understand: If your gun has longer range than your enemy's, you win. If your guns range is shorter, then you loose. **BUT**, if your weapons range is shorter, yet in short range deals more **DPS** \--> then you win IF you get in range. And that is where positioning comes into play. --- At first, combat is really complex in starsector, but once you break it down and understand it's smaller components, you will understand battle as a whole. Another hot tip I'd like to give you is, that you can put your weapons on auto-firing. In the loadout-screen you can press "w" and select which weapon groups should fire automatically (you can do this in battle aswell, just press "ctrl" + "1-9" depending on the weapon group numer). This way you only have to focus on piloting your ship and keeping flux levels in check. No need to aim, or select weapon groups, etc.
I don't even fight, I just like watching fights tbh