Combat Screen

Combat Screen
When you have arrived at a Pirate Hideout and hit the BIG RED ‘Clear Hideout’ button, you are placed in the local vicinity of the hideout, and your quest is to destroy as many of the Pirates as you can. There is a finite number of them, and eventually they will decide to bug out, and the Hideout will disband.

You do NOT have to stay, and at this point in time, you may exit combat whenever you wish. This is during the initial Alpha Stage and will be built on as we develop combat. Currently, I’m calling this Combat Alpha. It’s functional and leaves us with lots of options to add. So leave when it’s time and don’t get ganked by multiple enemies only to lose that last section of Hull.

The main combat screen looks like the screen below:

The generated Pirates are based on the local Law level. So, starting areas in Law Level 15 and 14 levels will spawn easy-to-kill ships. The deeper the law level, the more challenging it will get. You will generally spawn centre screen the bad guys will be assembled on the screen at random locations.

You can see down the left-hand side that this ship has two weapon mounts, and I was sensible enough to load my combat guns, one in each slot. You can use mining lasers, but they have a very poor range and an even worse damage value. If combat with mining lasers is your thing, don’t let us stop you.

The next image shows that I clicked on two separate ships. As I only have two weapons fitted, I can only target a maximum of two ships at one time. Of course, I could have clicked on the same ship twice and locked both weapons on the same ship!

You’ll note my weapons both say ‘Out of range’  – By hovering over each weapon, a Green circle will be drawn around my ship. This is the weapons range. You can also see the Range number shown on the weapon.

If you miss-clicked or wish to change targets, simply click the Red X for the weapon you wish to change targets and then re-click the target you want.

The next image is the two ships in the top target boxes. This enables me to see what their stats are. After all, just because the ship ‘looks’ harmless doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a large shield and carry a big gun!

You can also see from the image that we are displaying each ship’s resistance to various weapon damage types. In this initial Early Alpha, we are displaying it, but have not turned it on. As we start to do damage to the ships, you will see these stats degrade. Once you breach their Hull (the green line), they will explode.

Movement
Moving around the map is simply a case of clicking a grid cell. Your ship will move automatically. You can change your mind if you so wish and re-click. You cannot be in the same cell as another enemy ship, and I would not suggest getting that close.

You CANNOT fire whilst moving, so you need to come to a full stop to fire, nothing stopping you moving after find though -sitting like a fat Duck is not suggested!

So you chose a target, moved in Range! Great, half the battle, so to speak. I have retargeted the Iron Bandit with both of my Duel Pulse lasers and moved within range, and both of my weapons now have a RED Fire Button.

So what happens, lets see whall we.

As you can see with my current weapons, he was an easy kill. He hardly got a shot off. Things to keep in mind.

1: He may move if his weapons are not in range of you.
2: He will fire back given half a chance
3: Keep an eye not only on his health but more importantly yours!

Allegiance