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[Rift]

I went back and did most of the training missions, until I started getting irritated by the way the right mouse button both fired missiles and caused the ship to spin, with no way to unbind them (I couldn't find anything in the keys that could make it spin, the J key did nothing at all, and only one thing had joy 2 bound to it - but I tried unbinding joy 2 from the secondary weapon fire function, but it continued to both rotate the ship and fire when I pressed RMB without holding it down for more than a quarter second or so).

You may need to disable joysticks and/or the controls underneath it in the controls menu. Not sure. It may be treating your mouse as if its a joystick for that one button.

I figured out what was going on (somewhat) - what it's showing is a velocity which is measured relative to the target (or nav point). So when I'm flying past something in a straight line, it will drop to 0 as I pass it even though my speed has not changed at all. And then it will continue to drop.

Yea the number on the right of your hud is distance/speed to navpoint. The number on the left is your real speed... [relative to the sector axis anyway]

[Anvilfolk]

Alt-tabbing out of the game makes it misbehave. You essentially can't alt-tab. After you do, it's hard impossible to reach the bottom of the screen like someone else was saying and you'll also get the ship going all over the place with mouse control.


I just got promoted to Lt. Commander and got myself assigned to a Destroyer squadron. I'm sad that whatever position you are at, you're never an underling... I'd like to start as a wingman. Right now I'm commanding the 60th Destroyer squadron from the Gerson without having flown any DDs before.

Anyways, was alone in a sector, engaged an enemy fleet of 2xDD and 2xFF, and absolutely ripped them apart. Actually, my DD underling did that. For some reason, my ship isn't firing properly sometimes. Anyway, after a few patrols I figured the system had been wiped clean, so I quantum'd to Solus, where things are happening. I'm savescumming a bit so I don't loose ships and actually learn how to play the game. After that, I'll probably start trying some ironman campaigns.


I'd never gotten so much into this game as lately. Some quick tips:
- Do the tutorials. Boring, but you'll get quite a bit out of them.
- To stop, press Shift-Z. That will reduce your acceleration to 0. Press Shift-Z again, and you'll retro-thrust to get to 0 speed. This takes a long time in bigger ships.
- SRM stands for Short Range Missile, MRM for Medium Range Missile, AGM for Air-to-Ground Missile, ASM Air-to-Ship Missile, RKT for rockets. Change your weapons package according to your mission.
- The game is a lot about fire-and-forget. Aim at a target, send a missile, lock on someone else, fire another missile, and so forth.
- As a fighter/bomber, keep away from targets. Engage using missiles, take them down, and disengage (unless you have massive tactical superiority). If you get too close you don't have any shields and even a few shots can seriously damage you.



Capital ship combat has a lot of potential, especially as the carrier warfare ends up being very similar to WW2 carrier warfare, which I love. However, I'm finding DD vs DD combat a little strange. You just pour laser fire, that for some reason appears to bypass shields, then throw torps at then, which also seem to bypass shields. A couple of torps and the ship's gone down. Sometimes they shoot them down, sometimes they don't, and it's unclear what affects this. I can't see any ship subsystems that specifically take down torps, so I'm at a loss as to what to target. Any ideas?

[Rift]

there are actually quite a few weapons that can target torpedos/missiles... bascially any of those railgun/guns/pdb's(possibly some of those 'weapon-primary's too.. not sure), they do however, have firing arcs depending on where they are on your ship [and can be damaged]. you can 'target' missiles/torpedos with shift-y i think, although it also 'auto-targets' them on defence/auto, or when your XO is in charge.
I believe the shields reduce damage done overall by lasers[but not necessarily to 0, they also might do more damage the closer you are], i also suspect but cannot prove that shields help protect subsystems from laserfire that are not on the outside of the ship.

[Robsoie]

- As a fighter/bomber, keep away from targets. Engage using missiles, take them down, and disengage (unless you have massive tactical superiority). If you get too close you don't have any shields and even a few shots can seriously damage you.

And keeping away from capital ships is a must, in Starshatter you don't want to get any close to any enemy capital ship when you're in your fighter, their anti fighter weaponry will obliterate any fighter/bomber in a few seconds.

Wanting to attack an enemy capital ship is really a case in which as soon as you're in range for your missiles, shoot them all and immediately get away as fast as you can, only then you have some chances of surviving their firepower.

[Blaze]

Whee, just scored my first destroyer kill. The original mission was to kill a frigate, but it never showed up on my patrol lane. So I went after this random DD that just wandered along.

I emptied my ASMs into it at maximum range, which brought it pretty close to death and disabled most of its turrets. Allowing me to finish it off with my guns.

Ironically, I'm now a Lt. Commander who got put in command of a destroyer.

One thing I've learned is that damage dealt to enemies (and allies) is persistant. So attacking a large target(s) can require multiple sorties. So when attacking bases, it may be prudent to destroy its defenses first and then return to reload.

[Rift]

I wasn't sure before, but i can confirm now, if a fighter from a carrier dies, its gone indefinitely, not just in repairs.

[Robsoie]

Something to keep in mind as i'm replaying a campaign now, be very, very and very cautious with the SHIFT+N (Autonav) when having wingmen in formation.

It's not really funny in atmospheric flight to get a "mayday mayday" and exploding because your AI wingman decided to fly right into your fighter while the autonav was trying to turn around while badly aiming at the nav point.

Maybe linked to more realistic flight mode i guess that may be more puzzling the AI computations

[Android]

So awesome that this game is freeware now, its p good.

[zombat]

Oh nice.

Got a big box with the game somewhere, never did get round to getting past the fighter stage.

[Sergius]

PTW, i may get this when I get back from trip.

[Android]

Anyone know why sometimes when I try to land my fighter on a carrier, the docking thing doesnt trigger and I either end up crashing into the back of the hanger or having to abandon the mission with little/no points?

[Rift]

"docking" is achieved by being like.. fairly slow and in this 'zone' near the front of the docking bay, center-ish, a bit off to one side. In particular, aim at the blue X when your coming in, and make sure your slow near the entrance. It's really annoying until you do it once or twice and get used to it.

[Blaze]

I think the default is "Easy Docking" which means you're supposed to be floating in the center of the hanger. Trying to dock on the floor doesn't trigger it and you just crash on the ground. 

You can switch the settings and see if it works. I just aim at the X when docking now.

I think I've got the hang of this now; missiles are still a bit of a crapshot but I've got 120+ kills by the end of Operation Highland and am now a Commander with two medals. A Flight Medal and Operation Highland Medal.

[Akura]

It's fun, but a little buggy. Moving the mouse to the bottom of the screen causes it to lose focus for some reason, and I also have the problem with docking. The carrier tutorial is a little buggy too. One of the fighters I sent out, then called back, crashed into the carrier. Good job, pilot . I guess it was their flight tutorial too.

You can get around the docking problem by pressing Escape and select "End Mission and Accept Results". You won't get points for docking(if ever?) but the fighter isn't lost from the fleet roster.

However, I'm finding DD vs DD combat a little strange. You just pour laser fire, that for some reason appears to bypass shields, then throw torps at then, which also seem to bypass shields. A couple of torps and the ship's gone down. Sometimes they shoot them down, sometimes they don't, and it's unclear what affects this. I can't see any ship subsystems that specifically take down torps, so I'm at a loss as to what to target. Any ideas?

According to the manual, shields aren't that great for stopping physical weapons(torpedoes, missles, etc). Range and luck probably are the main factors for shooting down torpedoes. PDB(point-defence batteries) are primarily responsible for taking down torpedoes, but you can also set them to engage normal targets automatically(bye-bye fighters if they get close enough).

[deoloth]

Ah, I remember this game. I got it when it originally came out. First time I ever did a jump to another system in a capital I popped out right on top of a enemy fleet.

I wasn't sure before, but i can confirm now, if a fighter from a carrier dies, its gone indefinitely, not just in repairs.

Campaigns have limited ship numbers, outside of special events restocking them, what is lost is lost for good if I recall fully.