Manual:Gameplay Tactics

Introduction

This page collects some of the information, tips and tricks for a better game play experience. It's a collection of intere4sting discussion points from the forums, mainly from the Gameplay Tactics Forum

Navigation

Useful key bindings:

• "A" engages the auto-pilot
• "Shift+A" engages the SPEC drive
• "HOME" matches velocity

Mass has effect on the maneuverability of your ship. Anything in your cargo hold has it's mass added to your net mass so it affects your moment of inertia. Notice the difference flying empty versus full.

Cap Ship Deliveries

When you have delivery missions to capital ships, consider this: currently the ship has no idea that you are coming so it just goes about it's business unaware of you. There are a couple of new targeting keys that you might find useful:

• "Ctrl+N" - cycles mission targets
• "Alt+N" - reverses targetting of mission target
• "Alt+0" - request docking clearance: if a neutral or friendly vessel is in SPEC, it will drop out of SPEC for 20 seconds upon a request to dock

Merchandising

Equipment Trading

Go to a station and to the shipyards. Then, go to Confed class and have a look what ships they have in. If there is a milspec dodo you are lucky. Buy one at a price of 50 000 credits, then sell each of its 8 heavy tractors at a price of 12 000-ish. Already you have made a profit and then sell the ship for a further 25 000, making an overall profit of 71 000 each time you do this. That trick can also be done with milspec Lancelots. Just make sure the base you're in sells reaper cannons.

Hijacking

This way is more exciting. You need to buy a ship with tons of hold volume, e.g. the Ox. Kit it out with auto tracking tractor beams and a cloak. Then accept bounty and defend missions were there are loads of enemy ships involved. Go out to the ships as they fly through space unaware you are there (cloak), select an enemy in front of you and decloak. Once you tractor that enemy ship in, it will automatically select each ship (if not press H repeatedly)and in less than 15 seconds you will have an entire fleet of ships in your hold which you can later sell for a hansom price.

Cargo Scooping

You can find most of the cargo after battles. Go there equipped with tractor beams and scoop it up in order to sell it.

Enslaving

Whenever you destroy something a little pod comes out called a pilot. If you beam pilots in with your tractor beam then they are counted as contraband cargo and you have to sell/dump/eject them (or you can kill them with your lazors, blast em, drop em in to the sun, sell them, even sell yourself after loosing a ship if you're short of cash, keep them as kill marks (risky), play with them..., i.e pull them around with your tractor, set them free (they turn into hitchhikers)).

Faction Standings

If you have trouble with some of the factions shoot Luddites.

Concentrate on Luddites for a while leave the pirates alone. That should start to reverse your fortunes with the Uln and the rest who have ties to the pirates. Fortunately, you can kill Uln without making anyone else angry, except Pirates, Luddites and Aera.

Once your relations with the LIHW start down the Confed start down as well.

Combat

Key Bindings

Some useful keys (Shift+KEY reverses the cycling direction):

• "T" targets just everything
• "N" circles through "natural" targets, like planets, jump points. That ships got selcted as well is not the way it should be and a bug I think.
• "U" circles through "unnatural" targets, like ships
• "H" circles through "hostile" targets, whatever they are (I forgot this one, handy if you want to engage the cap ship behind the fighters first)
• "K" cycles friendly ships, Shift+K gets nearest station, Ctrl+K gets nearest planet, Alt+K gets nearest jump point
• "P" is also quite useful, since it targets the item that is closest to your target cross, so you can "aim" at the target you want to select and then hit "P".
• "HOME" match speed with target
• "Ctrl+R" targets the nearest hostile, "Ctrl+Shift+R" targets the most dangerous (both capabilities are not in the stable 0.4.3 release, only from version 0.5.0 on)

Combat Recommendations

Learning to fight in Vega Strike is mostly just a matter of practice. You can fight well even with the Llama. Though, get yourself some upgrades before. First, try taking Bounty or Patrol or Clean Sweep missions instead of Defend. These missions will give you more time to accomplish your task. Try training in a more maneuverable fighter.

Use caution when engaging military vessels. A Llama is poorly matched against Aeran military ships, even against smallest, as their tech is quite advanced. An Andolian Goddard may kick quite a few Aeran ships' butts, but then again, it's a heavy bomber of recent manufacture. Piloting a light fighter is generally seen as much more fun than piloting a cap ship. Try the Rlaan Taizong or the Confed Dostoevsky.

At the furthest extreme, there is nothing more agile than a Dostoevsky (and the "Dosto" has it's loyal following). I usually use a heavy interceptor for anything smaller than a Goddard. Lancelot has a very good top speed, but cannot accelerate or corner nearly as fast as many other fighters.

If you still have a hard time, then you can use the settings program to slow the game down while you get the knack of it.

Upgrades

Cloaking Device

Activate it with the "C" key and be warned that certain Aera ships can sometimes see through it.

Cloaking devices are available from some Aera installations, especially fighter barracks and star fortresses. The Confed version of the cloak shows up for sale at Research Stations once in a blue moon. They are rare. I docked an Unadorned Ox and found a cloaking device (under "Experimental"), so I bought it. I have it equipped to my Uber-Llama. If you just want to fly cloaked, the Schroedinger (Scout) has a cloaking device (milspec or stock one ???)