Day 3 (Fighting and Upgrading)

Day 3 and more missions ahead. I tried buying and selling a few commodities but to be honest they weren't really worth it. A few grand and it fills your cargo, which you could easily fill while on a mission, and you don't have to pay for that.

I of course had a tractor beam at this point and did some exploring, found a huge asteroid I could actually fly INTO, but there was nothing of interest. I could mine but how dull is that? Easy but boring money, I'm here to play a game not watch number tick up. More interesting picking up the cargo of destroyed ships.

Yeah, destroyed ships. After accumulating lots of money I bought a class 3 cannon and tried some fighting missions. Without using IDS and with all the experience I'd got from racing, I was able to destroy a few ships. Change direction often and when the little circle appears next to the enemy ship, start shooting until he's out of range. You can also shoot down missiles when they get close enough, save your countermeasures for when you don't have time. Don't fly straight at him since his cannons don't seem to predict as well and keep him in your sights, you can generally get out of it without even needing shields, at least at this stage in the game. No doubt it'll get more difficult but that's the point eh!

I haven't bothered with missiles yet, they seem to cost a fair bit and are a limited use weapon. I'll stick to my one-time-payment cannon. Also bought a laser a few missions in and found that it fires in addition to the cannon and doesn't actually consume any more energy! It's nearly guaranteed to hit the target too so worth picking up, but it's useless outside combat.

Now there are letters associated with weapons - Y for laser, Y, C and R for cannons, and Y, R and S for missiles. After much digging and many days of testing, lots of asking people and a bit of research I have finally come to the conclusion of these stats:

Y - Yeild - Raw damage. Why this is called Yield I don't know.
C -  Cycle - How fast the weapon fires (so far only applicable to cannons)
R - Range - I got told a lot this was fire rate. I can confirm that is rubbish, it's range, C is fire rate.
S - Speed - Only applies to Missiles it seems.

So when picking a weapon you want low C and high Y and R values. High S as well for missile if you feel so inclined to go that route. At least you would if you had much choice! It seems we're limited to classes of weapons. I think I found a class 3 cannon on the planet Sapphire which allowed me to win many a battle but it comes at the cost of range for some reason. Down from 700 to 600! It was worth it for the extra damage though.

If you find yourself doing lots of fighting, it is also worth upgrading your shield by selling your existing and buying a better one if available. The difference is usually small so doesn't cost much overall. A better Fulcron drive will get you further in warp too but I'm yet to fully work out the limits of each class. Oh well, not like it's expensive.

Day 3 ends here as I only had part of the afternoon and work the next day. One thing about this game is it is a HUGE timewaster - takes about five minutes just to land on a planet due to finding the bloody city and getting through the atmosphere under 1500m/s. Oh well, t'was fun.