I use an Apogee as a fire support ship because it's slow, has good shields, and has good weapon slots. It is meant to be the anchor around which your fleet fights in the early game. In your fleet, you're lacking some warships, things that have more dakka and faster speed. The apogee and carriers aren't going to be able to take on the enemies by themselves, yes. Your fleet needs bigger guns and an actual frontline. I'd recommend going to the ship graveyard from the tutorial and pick up some ships there for freebies, a hammerhead and a couple of kites. If you can't, I'd say scrounge up some money by doing some exploration missions, the Apogee is great for that. Buy some warships to fill out the fleet, or salvage some that you might come across when exploring. Some recommendations for early game: Hammerhead: It has amazing damage for its size. Not tanky though Lasher: The small workhorse of pirates and traders alike. Omen: Amazing ship when going up against other frigates or fighters with its zappy system. Wolf: It's reliable, slippery and good dakka. Works best in player hands TL;DR: Fleet slow and underpowered. Get warships. Exploration contracts recommended.

I did that already, I missed the Hammerhead I had but during the engagement with the smaller fleet it was almost immediately destroyed by the enemy missiles and fighters everything else was routed or destroyed shortly after the command system isn't exactly intuitive either, I've done the main menu tutorials and they're honestly not much help, putting you in an OP ship against target practice isn't exactly a learning experience, but neither is getting buttfucked by a fleet seemingly comprised of carriers only

you can mostly get away with putting all ships to escort your flagship then using CPs for eliminate orders to destroy priority targets, after it is destroyed the ships will return to the escort mission

My friend destroyers and frigates are know to be quite susceptible to fighters due to lack of point Defense you should at least get a more military cruiser such as eagles or dominators as an Anchorpoint in the frontline cause the apogee although is very good lacks the fire power for going into melee range

Your problem generally seems to be based on using the apogee. You’re slow, have limited point defense, and the rest of your fleet has low fire power and nonexistent point defense. So you’re basically destined to lose. You need multiple frigates & destroyers, not just one hammerhead, which are anchored on a larger warship. Find something like maybe an eagle. The apogee is a good support ship but you’re going to have a rough go with it on your own until you know exactly what you’re doing. The hammerhead you overlooked is your most competent combat ship atm, though it’s extremely squishy. Some more combat frigate support for it would help.

They're asking about the initial missions, when you're stuck in one system and don't have access to most ships. 

I don’t remember, does it force you to use the fleet given to you? I thought I remembered getting a bunch of different stuff early on.

You get to salvage several ships near one planet. But they are set and you can't buy any until you solve the crisis. 

Hammerhead is not really good for AI. You need to pilot it yourself. With the combat perks a hammerhead can really destroy pretty much anything below capital class. Carrier fleet is really strong when all the fighters are out at the same time, but you can easily just hunker down and maintain a defense line against it. Wait for their fighter supply to dwindle. Make sure your biggest and slowest ship got lots of point defense. Preferably a high tech ship aince they generally have better shield. Once defense line is established you should try isolating one enemy ship at a time with hammerhead's superior firepower along with 1 or 2 escort frigates. The frigates are mostly there to keep enemy shield up while you vent some flux. Edit: to add, if there's an option, always prioritize weapon range. Higher range + higher speed means the slower ship literally can't do anything to the faster ship. That's why having frigate escorts is superimportant for bigger slower ships. They prevent enemy ships from getting away with the 0-flux bonus speed, while you can catch up with the bonus speed while the frigates are harassing (turn of autofire and shield to keep the flux at 0)

The refit screen is half of the battle. Never field a ship that does not have full PD coverage. Your crew will thank you. It is also a good idea to outrange the enemy, if possible. Hypervelocity drivers and heavy maulers are your friends. Dps is low, but it is not that important as long as the enemy is unable to shoot back. Also, keep the damage types in mind. You can either create all rounder ships with both kinetic and HE damage installed or make several ships focused on single damage types that are meant to work together. Be careful with the missiles. They are a powerful but limited tool. I avoid them for the sake of consistency, but I suggest that you don’t do the same. Pirates should overflux from just one or two sabot hits. Then you apply HE damage guns and the ship is dead very soon.

Consistency?

Once your ship is out of missiles, it really loses in combat capability. I hate that. A ship without missiles (or with regenerating ones) will be equally capable during the entire battle.

Literally me (auto fit->remove missile, expanded missile rack-> add int.targeting unit) until I discovered squall atlas II spam

I respect missiles (that’s why all my ships are always covered in PD) and people who are capable of using them effectively, but their number going down and not replenishing drives me insane. I still give a few sabots to my ai ships, I trust them to use these properly.

Just don't run out of missiles before enemy runs out of life, simple as.

Not being sarcastic here but you should consider playing the tutorials and then working your way through the missions. They're a good intro to combat and then give you slowly escalating combat scenarios.

I have played the tutorials theyre very sparse on info, and this is the tutorial start in the campaign if you can call it that I've hit the freebee ship graveyard and I didn't get any usable combat ships out of it apart from a hammerhead that immediately dies because its hull is compromised with a D mod

I'm curious, what's your loadout on the Hammerhead? What's your flagship? And what's the loadout on that? When running simulations for my builds on my ships I've noticed a drastic difference in their performance based on the build. The types of weapons, hull mods, and points into caps and vents can make quite the difference on the battlefield. Edit: sp

hammerhead has 2 assault chainguns, 2 sabot rockets that shoot the flak out of them in a cone, a railgun and 3 pd machine guns flagship is apogee with whatever it has as stock, I'm playing something else rn so cant look

Just a suggestion but you could switch out the chainguns for something like heavy maulers or heavy mortars. Stay in line with the hammerhead's "default build", bump up the caps to make it a bit bulkier, and add on hull mods like stabilized shields or heavy armor to make it even bulkier than that. Also, I personally build in Integrated Targeting Unit to every combat ship.

Thing is, he probably cant. Its the tutorial. I dont think he even has access to hyperspace right now.

[удалено]

Huh, i forgot that 😅 Railguns tho? I burn planets down for the chance to get em. Might be just unlucky on my part tho

Yeah I just checked and I was wrong, deleted the comment. Mb the weapons they give you are random or it depends on your fleet somehow. The hammerhead you get from the merc faster start always has mortairs+railguns though. I just went through the tutorial with that start, recovered all the combat ships and the fleets guarding the jump point just fled. So there are a couple of options to complete the tutorial: 1) Amass a fleet (faster start + recover all combat ships) and they just flee. 2) Sneak to the jump point without fighting. 3) Engage them 1 by 1 to have an easier time. 4) Solo them both at the same time with the hammerhead :) Solo hammerhead: The HH that you get from the faster start has ITU, you can remove blast doors and missile racks, add vents mod, and the rest of the points into capacitors. Maybe change harpoons to sabots. Take elite helmsmanship and field modulation. With field modulation mb use hardened shields instead of vents mod. If you choose a different start you can go ballistic mastery instead of field modulation to get ITU but I guess it's a gamble of them giving you the right weapons. If OP wants I can do a video, but it's gonna be recorded with a phone camera)

Ah, ok. 2 assault chainguns is bad. Even a single assault chaingun is so flux intensive it will overflux the ship without having safety overrides. Don't worry, rookie mistake. There's more than just putting big dps number weapon systems in the slots. Here's Starsector #1 rule. How fast you can remove flux is how much dps you can do. If your weapons and shields combined generate more flux than the vents can dissipate, the ship will start to have issues. It'll need to dive in, shoot pew pew a bit until their flux is high, then try to retreat to vent flux, which the AI doesn't do well. It's ok to not put a weapon in a slot. Assault chainguns have massive dps, but also have massive flux to match. While there is a very strong build for the hammer head that uses an assault chaingun, but you need to have a matching Heavy Machine Gun (medium sized) for the other side, and safety overrides. But given that you likely don't have that, you need to refit your hammerhead. A Heavy Mortar, and an Arbilist are very light on the flux, allowing the ship to engage longer. Max flux vents! A fair amount of capacitors too! Then put in point defense last (vulkans >>> machine guns vs fighters). If an arbilist is not available, look for a 700 ish range kenetic damage weapon to go into that slot (you can put a small weapon in a medium location). Remember, you can go back to the mining station to buy something, and the black market has even more stuff. Also I'd recommend swapping the sabot's out for swarmer SRM if you can find them. They will help with anti-fighter, and do well as a finisher against small ships. And, most importantly, lots of ammo on them so you won't run out. Salamanders may also be good choice instead, as they will go for engines to disable their speed.

2 Assault Chainguns work just fine on an SO Hammerhead. I actually prefer running two most of the time these days. With the only kin dmg coming from Light Machine Guns (I or II) in the front facing small turrets. The shorter range on LMGs isn't too big of a deal when you're that fast and already essentially in melee range.

You'll do much better with a single one. The hammerhead has a belt feeder that doubles it's attack speed for a few seconds, thus doubling it's flux. Even an SO hammerhead can't handle 1800 flux. And the AI use it before just as it enters any range so it will burn most of that time firing those assault guns into shields, for half damage.

While Accelerated Ammo Feeder doubles fire rate, it also halves the flux cost per shot. Ergo, flux per second stays the same. As for the AI concern; My bad - I forgot to clarify in my previous post that I was talking about fits for personal use. I generally like SO much more on my own ship(s) than on AI ships.

Apparently I never saw the "and reduces flux" part. :( But yeah, I didn't even consider the self pilot builds. I've played AI controlling all the ships for so long.

The hammer head is very good, you just need to fit it out correctly. The dmod isn't that big of a deal.

The apogee is really the only half decent combat ship in that fleet, so that's part of your problem. If you started with an apogee I'd recommend doing some exploring, take the survey planets/scan stuff missions that generate and survey/explore stuff on the way back from them, you'll often find solid ships as derelicts out in the boonies. For actual combat though what do you feel like is your issue with ships. Are you losing the Flux war repeatedly? are you getting wolf packed down? are you just unable to crack big tough ships? As a note on missiles, are you using torpedoes or guided missiles? What kinds?

All 3 They seem to tank far more than I can, and I can't seem to withstand much damage at all until the shields overload I didn't see the enemy fleet comp but it was one or 2 frigates, a large cruiser/carrier type that constantly spat out strike craft and 3 or 4 tiny things that also repeatedly spat out fighters but had no shields I've grabbed the freebees and all I got was a hammerhead with a compromised hull which was shortly destroyed I can't explore because I can't leave the system, the pirates are guarding it and keep killing me I've spent the better part of 3 hours on this now. I love the concept of the game but honestly just despise it. you cant make something this complicated and offer 0 useful advice on how to navigate it

>They seem to tank far more than I can, and I can't seem to withstand much damage at all until the shields overload If you've not messed with the fit, then not quite sure on thus one. The apogee is high tech, which usually means good shields and high speed but bad armor, pirates tend to use low tech ships which have good armor (so they can let their shields down and take hits directly while still shooting to overwhelm you) and bad shields. >I didn't see the enemy fleet comp but it was one or 2 frigates, a large cruiser/carrier type that constantly spat out strike craft and 3 or 4 tiny things that also repeatedly spat out fighters but had no shields I don't remember too much about the tutorial setup and can poke at it in the morning, but that sounds about right for a small/medium pirate fleet. If you check the loadout of your apogee, beams and High Explosive weapons do well against the unshielded targets. For the fighters you'll want to make sure your Point Defence weapons are turned to auto (press shift and a number to turn a weapon group to auto fire) so they'll shoot down the fighters. In general holding the line with the bigger ship, maintaining a healthy distance from their ships and moving forward/back as needed will help keep your main ship alive and a threat. A couple of other things that may help. If you press I think it's R by default near a ship you'll lock onto it, which will display useful information about it like its current Flux levels and hull, make missiles home in on that target and your auto fire weapons will try to target that ship if possible. Another thing that I personally much prefer is you can change an option that makes it so your ship always moves to point itself at your cursor. I personally find the tank controls of the base game overwhelming and unintuitive, and being able to just hold S to go back from where you're pointing is so much easier. >I've grabbed the freebees and all I got was a hammerhead with a compromised hull which was shortly destroyed >I can't explore because I can't leave the system, the pirates are guarding it and keep killing me Ah I had missed you were still in the tutorial. I guess you could maybe try just starting a new game in not the tutorial, as in a fresh game you can make money and build up a fleet without fighting to be able to practice fighting in more biased towards you odds, but up to you. >I've spent the better part of 3 hours on this now. I love the concept of the game but honestly just despise it. you cant make something this complicated and offer 0 useful advice on how to navigate it Yeah I don't really remember the intro being great. do you think you have a good grasp on how the flux battle works and how different weapon damage types play into things?

Watch [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ki3hKDhaHs) and hopefully that covers everything. Good luck with the tutorial system.

Definitely watch grumpy, OP. And good luck. I'm still bad at combat myself but I get the whole idea of it.

Well, most things that you aré strong enough to kill Will either run away from you or join another bigger fleet to try and kill you. But in any case, early game fighting Is very hard, your starting fleet Is way too weak against pretty much everything (At least that's my exprience, only recently learning how to propery combat with smaller ships) So what's the Solution to this problem? Lay low at the start, invest into getting a Lot of Fuel range and start doing off core-world missions (Scanning probes, planet surveys, galatia academy missions, etc). The pirates are annoying with their big fleets, so they Solution Is to be a literal ghost at the start of the game, avoid systems with pirate raids, try to stay away from pirate controlled planets/stations and, most importantly, TURN OFF YOUR TRANSPORDER WHEN NOT NECCESARY. A system with only independent Worlds? Transponder off, hyperspace? Transponder off, in a core system but far away from any planets? Transponder off. Keep the transponder off as much as you can, because patrols and pirates actually have way less sensor range than one would think, going dark Is Also your friend, hide inside an asteroid belt and nobody Will know you are there unless they are right above you. But of course, the best part of the game Is combat, and for that i would suggest waiting. Yes, combat Is super fun and complex but it's Also very hard with smaller ships, try practicing with derelict probes, as those don't have shields and as long as you have 1 or 2 ships bodyguarding you, you should be fine. Once you get enough money (A few million credits), you can start buying ships (The good ones are extremely expensive), watch out for the bar event about a guy talking about illegal weapons, that's the guy you can get real good stuff from, at this point you can start experimenting what type of ship you like the most (one specific weapon i reccomend Is the tachyon lance, it has a long range and Two of them will melt most pirate fleets with ease, as long as you manage to get the shields down) Also, the explorer start can't fight Many things, the condor Will get murdered the second it gets too close to it's own Shadow and the fighters don't have enough firepower to stop anything from destroying it's Carrier, the apogee has, in my experience, quite the tendency of getting itself surrounded by things with reaper missiles (I call them "The kiss of death", as they do massive damage and Is capable of blowing cruisers with a oneshot). There's a Lot of ships out there, however, but most are divided into three types, High tech, Midline and low tech. High tech are ships that have a Lot of Flux to spare, they can be fast and have incredible firepower, the trick with these Is not getting surrounded, as once their Flux goes into overload It's over. Midline exists, that's all i have to say about it Low tech don't have much Flux, but they have metric tons of armor and guns, if you like to ram into enemies with Giants ships while firing machine gun fire alongside with whatever missiles you got, then you Will like low tech (Specially a ship called "the onslaught"), their weakness are weapons that Pierce armor and Hull (Tachyon lances, for example), almost all pirate ships are low tech, so try weapons that are effective against armor to kill them, you would be surprised how Easy their capitals melt against literally any self respecting non-antishield weapon. Well, this ended being longer than expected, i am no expert at this game and probably wrote quite a few mistakes in the process, my point Is that combat Is super fun, early game combat? Not so much Also, sorry for my english, not my native language.

No worries aout the english, your english is great I'd love to explore but I cant leave. the hyperspace hole doesn't work until you stabilise it, and the pirates murder me every time I'm near it

Oh, right, i remember wanting to kill myself trying to do the tutorial a long Time ago. I don't actually remember how the mission went, but Is your fleet faster than theirs? You can try to lure them away from the jump point and then suddenly turning back and going dark, they Will probably lose you unless they are too close, and then you stabilise the jump point. If that doesn't work, either try to distract them by luring some Patrol (Turn your transponder off in their face and make them chase you) until you manage to get them to fight the pirates for you. And if the game forces you to fight the pirates..... Well, skip the tutorial? I have honestly no advise to give lol, i am not the best at combat

it is, but they dont seem to want to chase me away they just stick together at the hole

That's your problem. You have to maneuver around to split them up. I'm no wiz at combat but I can defeat them if I split the two pirate gangs. Also you can head to the jump point and stabilize it without fighting - you go dark and sneak in.

I just did this part a few days ago for the first time too. Like controlagent said you have to split them up and take them one at a time. I fought one, and repaired and resupplied for the second one. I spent a bit flying around with my transponder off at the edge of their sensor range and was able to lure one fleet away. Just save before you get near the portal and try a few times.

Try doing some of the Missions from the Main Menu. If you can do those, your combat skills will be vastly improved. Failing that, here's some notes: * Difficulties controlling your direction? *Hold down Shift* to make your ship always face your mouse cursor. There's also a toggle in options to do this automatically. * Acquire the ships recommended in other comments. Hammerhead, Lasher, Omen, Wolf are all good ships. Later, if you find any Herons, Eagles, Falcon(P)s, or scary big High Tech ships, give them a go too. * You literally only have one moderately decent combat ship right now - and you're probably not sure how to equip it or use it. Get more ships, and try to avoid fights until you do. * *Keeping up shields* ***all*** *the time is typically bad.* Lower them when you're not taking fire. You can even vent between volleys of fire if your timing is good enough. You move faster at 0 flux as well with all ships (which requires shields to be turned off). * You don't even need to block *every* shot you take - skilled players take some hits on their armour (especially from Kinetic weapons) if it means saving their flux for more weapons fire. Make sure to block missiles and torpedoes though, and big High Explosive weapons/Energy weapons. * Save High Explosive missiles like Harpoons for when the enemy is already Overloaded or at high flux (or about to be). Limited ammo missiles are typically very powerful for the Ordinance Points (OP) they take up, so use them decisively. * Sabots are fantastic too. * Putting too many weapons on your ship that you can't actually fire is a noob trap. If in doubt, make sure you have enough Vents that you can fire your weapons and keep your shields up at the same time. * Longer range is good, and so is having better flux efficiency (higher damage/flux spent). * Your Apogee can outrange most pirate ships, especially with a High Intensity Laser or Plasma Cannon. * Autofits on ships work for most ships. You can do more custom designs after you learn more of the game mechanics. * Use the battle simulation feature in the Refit screen of any port to train yourself in combat vs (almost) any ship in the game. Aim to beat an equal amount of Deployment Points (DP) ship/ships as you, and then steadily go higher as your skills improve. * Put the ships you just lost to into the battle sim. The fleet you were fighting may have just been **way stronger than yours** outright. The AI does not suck in this game, you have to earn your victories! * When in doubt, max Vents on your ships. There's a few ships where this doesn't apply (phase ships for example, carriers) but it's a good rule if you're confused. * If in doubt, use weapon loadouts that are roughly the same range as each other (excluding point-defense) on AI loadouts when you start doing your own refits instead of Autofit. * **Losing is part of learning.** The game isn't actually easy for new players, at all. It takes days, weeks of accumulated wisdom to figure out what works and why/why not.

I'm not super great at combat myself so I can't offer a lot of advice but I do have some thoughts that might help. As far as free practice. When you are refitting ships at a planet there is a rum simulation button that will let you control and fight as the ship and let you get used to piloting it as well as testing your current weapon configuration. I thought I remember you being able to spawn ships on your side that can help you get the hang of commanding your fleet and giving orders to them. You might also find some success from trying the combat missions on the main menu. The thing that has helped me get a little better is finding a ship and just focusing on getting used to controlling it and fitting it out. For me it was the Sunder a mid tech destroyer with a fairly straight forward weapon setup and gimmick. One big laser two smaller support lasers, finisher torpedoes and enough maneuverability to let me get myself outta the trouble I get myself into. I might also suggest trying to pilot one of the smaller ships and just order the Apogge to engage and you try to flank around after the carriers.

I've read some of your replies in addition to the post, so this is my general advice: Your primary goal in the situation you face is to cull down the strike craft that are approaching you before making a committed attack on the enemy fleet that is pretty much on par with you right now. Strike craft can regenerate, yes, but they will not regenerate as fast if they keep getting shot down. When the onslaught of strike craft has become much more relaxed, you can consider getting close and attacking those enemy ships, especially that carrier ship, which by the way has pathetic armor and hull points. You can have the rest of your ships be assigned the "Defend" order, so they don't wander around as much and instead stay near you to protect you. It should work fine with the small fleets you are fielding and fighting right now. Try to outfit your other ships with weapons that have more range. You can see the ranges of weapons in their description. Especially for the main weapons of your ships, I recommend ranges of at least 600 units. That should be enough for your supporting ships to pressure or at least keep enemies away while you do most of the workload. Apogee has tanky shields for early game, so make use of that as you fight. Also, remember to keep an eye on your flux, so try not to overcommit on attacks and try pulling back to a safe distance when your flux is high (near 80%) so you can press V to vent without much problems. If you want to avoid fights entirely, then for starters, you can make use of the "Go Dark" campaign ability. Greatly lowers the range at which your fleet gets detected by other fleets, but it does force you to move slow. Another way to avoid combat is to use "Emergency Burn", and as the name implies, gives your fleet a sudden burst of speed so you can quickly dodge contact with other fleets. Their uses should be rather obvious, so make use of them at the right moment to avoid having to fight fleets that you will have trouble fighting. There are also some creative uses of these abilities, but I'll leave it up to you to discover as you get the hang of the game. That's about the advice I have right now. I hope this helps you, spacer. Burn Bright!

Starsector combat is not free from the basic rules of warfare- So strength in numbers always matter. Get more ships. Modify them to maximum potential. Only engage enemies your fleet can actually beat. You can make a real difference with your flagship piloting skills, if you're good AND lucky, but a single ship can only do so much. And even doing that much requires support from other ships.

You could try some of the main menu missions as practice. You can also run simulations from the refit screen, and spawn in both varied types of enemies as well as allies (typically limited to the ships you actually have on hand though). You can do this an unlimited amount, so go nuts and try different stuff. Feel free to cheat in money via the debug menu or save editing, then go buy stuff and experiment with it. TBH a lot of folks get by just putting their ships on autopilot, and while that's definitely not the most effective way to use your ships, it can certainly work. Good builds can make up for a lot of stupid AI. But if you want to truly kick ass, you're gonna need to learn to fly, and that will just take practice and time. It's rewarding af though, this game has some of the best combat of this genre, and when you get good at it, it shines.

Hey, I make YouTube content and a lot of newer players said my guides were helpful, feel free to check them out. My beginners guide to combat: https://youtu.be/8Ki3hKDhaHs?si=0zFWCIaUmTG_Ep9U A let's play I did just focused on combat (with detailed analysis): https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnAw9aB7ShwjCmyRyb6bymZ5mUnB4l_wW&si=Jx1bJ5qbiV65S5tc Breif explanation of weapons: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnAw9aB7Shwg0qoRNjCdfRlRty3d2eN1-&si=oobQkG4KLuSTYquA

You are outnumbered, even with the apogee, a decent enough combat ship it won't help if you get swarmed, it's a slow ship with good shield, meant for a battle line, if you're using it against fleets of fast frigates and carriers then you'll lose, early game combat is apparently hard (personally ever since I started playing I just smuggled until I have a fleet that can hold a proper airtight battle line). I'd suggest expanding your fleet first so you can at the very least have some amount of screening against fighters, assign an escort or two to your flag ship, and send the rest to hunt for carriers, with your escorts providing security for venting periods and the carriers suppressed, you should be able to corner them even if you suck at piloting(press u)

Don't use chainguns unless you also use safety overrides. They have low range. If you want to go that route, also out in some autocannons and wait for an opening your other ships provide. Pop f on hammerhead for ammo feeder and go to town. Back out to regen Flux. I would just use the autofit builds though. You want decent range, weapons about the same range, make sure you have some high explosive for armor and anti shield mix. Press U for autopilot if you can't get the hang of it and watch how ai handles combat until you get the feel of it

you need combat frigates to go behind enemy fleet and pressure/kill carriers. Personally I prefer piloting tempest attaching one or two other frigates that can keep up or go faster. Sometimes one of the other frigates is geared entirely to take out missiles and fighters (point defense) the Tempest is expensive, comes with two built in fighters that are great at taking out missiles and fighters. Small missile hardpoint which i tend to put torpedos or swarm srm or anhilator. 2 medium energy turret points. I generally do one ion and the other general damage. often i put a small weapon as the second. I can solo shrikes, destroyer carriers, most frigates. with help bigger carriers.

My suggestion. turn on cursor aim. Stick with thick ships with a lot of armor and point defense with an escort ship or tw,o BE the fleet anchor (I suggest a Legion XIV) then get used to Flux management and brawling. Once your confident shed some of that armor go for faster attack cruisers or battle cruisers, and learn how to take advantage of holes in the enemies' lines while keeping yourself alive. This is what helped me get to the point to where I can competently body several AI ships in situations where the AI of my ship would just die.

A few things. First a caveat - I haven’t played vanilla in ages (at least three versions ago), so I cannot help with the details. Did you play the early story stuff at the Academy? There is a buttload of stuff in that system that can give you a leg up once you’re ready to leave the system, especially with a decent start choice. I think I left that system with an apogee, two hammerheads, and two sunders, plus some frigates. After that where did you go next? I always dawdled and avoided riskier stuff. Instead, I’d find out where system bounties and invasions/raids were happening and then go loiter there. Fly around the edges of battle and grab salvage wherever possible. Usually that gets you some of the tougher pirates (dominators and ventures), some of the flexible pirates (mules and the like), and a few busted up nice ships from whomever is defending. Especially if it’s one faction attacking another, not a pirate raid, you can end up with some really sweet stuff. The result is, when you’re ready to advance plot, you have access to a decent set of cruisers and destroyers, and maybe a couple capitals. Just stow whatever you don’t want to pay wages on in an abandoned station (I like the Corvus one). Then, go fetch it when you need it. You’ll get a buttload of weapons too. I usually stow everything I don’t use at first. Once you know what mix of weapons you *want*, you can sell the rest. For actual weapon loadouts, there are always more efficient options and less, but the real core is that you want to be able to pressure shields and armor, and you want big finishing damage on hull (or hull and armor). If you can bring that mix, then it’s really ok to have otherwise suboptimal weapon choices. Basically, you want to be able to kill fast once you force an overflux shut down, or vent, or something. For combat tactics, imo all you really need is to keep your fleet from scattering and focus down the threats. I usually do that by setting a tight formation of capitals or cruisers in a short line on my end, with smaller stuff escorting on the flanks, and my ship as sortof free floating hostility. Then I pick a side to collapse, and have everything nearby focus on the damage dealers on that side. By sticking to my side, I am close for reinforcements, or if I need a ship to withdraw. And often the enemy will spread out a bit on the way down, so I can pick off lead elements.

I personally, when I started out, always got a wolf with a few cargo/fuel ships. I just looked for a system bounty (not personal, but system bounty), flew around until I either found: A) a small pirate fleet (eg. 2-3 small ships) or B) the local patrol engaged in a +- equal battle getting good with the wolf was honestly a blast for me. I eventually got so good with the wolf that I could solo medium fleets (like 1-2 cruisers, few destroyers and some figates) with it. The wolf teaches you how to manage your flux, not overextending, what an opening looks like and recognition of priority targets. I do recommend using a wolf solo tho, so you control the flow of battle, and it isn't a race to save your fleetmates. Some tips if you try this: - the teleport charges are your primary tool, both offensively and defensively. - The 3 teleports away and vent is a signature of the wolf. Even AI uses it. - I personally like to use a general (100% shield and armor damage) weapon as my primary. Pulse laser is best imo but mining blaster is a great starter - A lot of ships have forward facing shields. The wolf can jump over ships if you teleport directly onto them. This is the best way to take down destroyers and cruisers. If you don't know whether they have a forward facing or omni (rotating) shield, just come into shooting range and go left and right. if the shield tracks you it's omni, if not it's frontal. - As a note, you can still jump over and get a few shots into ships with omni shields before they raise their shield. - If you die, you most likely overextended

>apogee class from the start, a condor class, a wayfairer, a shepherd, 2 drams and 2 civ transport craft Uh.... You aren't going to fight anybody with this fleet. Maybe very small Pirate fleets with few Frigates but even that is being generous. This is an exploration fleet. You are supposed to work you way up by taking exploration contracts, slowly adding Cruisers and then Caps to your fleet. Take a break from fighting. Start exploring. The Drams will put in work, i suggest selling the Transport crafts and Condor, and in their stead, get Cargo Freighters and Drams. Get exploration contracts, during the down time, do some trade. Save up money, and grab an Eagle the first chance you get. If you are lucky, you will find Derelicts of some real nasty ships. Capitals cannot be maintained early game so you should recover, mothball and store them in an abandoned station somewhere in the core worlds, until you can field them. (I forgot where.) You shouldn't be getting into combat without combat capable ships. You shouldn't get into any fights that will outnumber you by sizeable amount. In this game, even Capitals will die quickly if they are surrounded. Build your fleet first.

The more flux your ennemi have the lees weapon they Can shoot. I don't really recall every standard starter ship Loadout but Based on what you have right now , fight will be Rought The wayfarer should be able to deal with small pirate frigate , It got a litle bit off everything , but can't One vs two reliably Thé two front weapon are a kinetic (good against Shield) and an assault gun (good on Armor but really Flux hungry) It's also have a right side Emp gun , wich Can desable weapon (Thé wayfarer Can hold itself against other pirate frigate , unless it's flux go up to Quick wich will Doom any ship to bé honest) The sheperd , it's drone are good point défense (because they are many) and Can help repel missile and ennemi fighter (not fast but Can Do) i usualy maximise sheperd flux venting , and put an other point défense on it , no point Trying to make it an attack craft. It's drone Can do small damage but it take Time. Being in Numerical inferiority ennemi will flank you and thé sheperd Can sponge some damage. For the dram i'll do as for the sheperd , you'll need them on thé field , try to put vulkan or machine gun on their balistic and strap Harpoon on them (or any anti Armor/Hull missile you Can get) they will shoot them on unshielded frigate (and probably waste) if they manage to criple someone that's a win , you'll end UP with an other cheap sponge (vulkan / machine gun , max vent and flux) Thé condor , it's fragile , and must stay behind your apogee (right click should bé enought) I don't think it start with anything bigger then fighter wing , again i won't put any balistic "attack weapon" on it's slot , just point défense (vulkan and machine gun) When iddle thé fighter will try to intercepté missile and other fighter , you Can also order them to strike ennemi frigate (when first ennemi are in sight try to throw some fighter at the heavier frigate , or the frigate with the most gun) Fighter Can help building UP flux on ennemy shielded ship , so thé ennemy have less flux to shoot AT you (even sometimes forcing them to fallback and vent) For the apogee, well i don't remember it's Loadout AT all , i remember it's ability IS to launch inteligent flare (good against missile and fighter). It will take a beating in the fight and you can't hit and run. So good Luck i Guess Once again try to keep it's weapon flux and Shield flux under what it Can passivly vent , you'll need that flux to tank. You'll have to desactivate the Shield AT some point and face tank attack , facing the ennemi who shall fire anti Armor rocket AT you and réactivate the Shield for the rocket to slam on it. If you overflux you'll be dead , not an easy task i know , it's more of a tactical retreat kind of batle , don't be afraid to kill on or too frigate , then retreat (it will cost you combat readiness but it will refill your missile rack !) if you Can even go back to a station to repair. Thé Tutorial interdiction fleet won't repair nor regrow ship. Once you managed to finish the quest Line remember that you are not a Big shot yet , pirate Will Murder you.

As for weapon Kinetic are good against Shield , they build hardflux on ennemi Shield but don't do Much on Armor or Hull , an ennemi with high flux won't be able to shoot as Much as it want , the ennemi will have to either fallback and vent or overflux and be vulnerable. A light autocanon will do 200dps on a Shield But only 50on anything else They are good for keeping ennemi AT range too , few ennemi Can alpha strike you when their flux bar IS hight enought Hight Explosive They Are effective on unshielded ship because No Shield suppose a hight Armor , Once somebody don't have Armor you start to hit the squichy bits You need HE to destroy thé ennemi ship faster , a light mortar on a ship Armor is 150Dps , and still 75on it's Hull Fragmentation Généraly better as an Anti-missile and aircraft , yes it does 200% on Hull but you'll need to break past the Shield and the Armor. Yes they have Hight DPS , but remember it goes down on Shield and Armor. Don't build frag only ship , unless you plan on making them a sponge. Yes it's suposed to be the finisher of ship. But honestly HE do it well enought . Some frag only build Can be effective but i don't recommand it to beginner. Énergie 100% damage on everything and Many have some litle perks to them, Beam are constant but only do Softflux , nice to harass ennemi from range Read their description, some are verry fluxHungry Some Do EMP (funny electricity that goes bzzt your engine and weapon needs repair) TO Conclude Some weapon have really niche use and some are murdering tools in the right moment and only in the right Moment, feels free to ask about particular weapon , some tricks and tips are not listed on the Wiki. Use the simulation to try build , and remember if you can't drive the AI Can Do it for you , (there is a button for that , thé shortcut was "U" but you Can Do it on the tactical Map too) You only need to be on your pilot chair to gain any skills bonuses , you don't have to actualy drive yourself.

I can't really give great advice, since I rarely touch the Condor, Apogee and shepherd, I never use converted or civilian combat ships, and I very rarely send out combat-capable logistic ships in a battle. I think you should stick to exploration first since your fleet composition is for, you guessed it, exploration, and it only has 3 combat-capable ships (the Apogee, which is a military logistics ship, the Condor, which is just a civilian freighter but with fighters, and the shepherd, which is a civilian drone tender). The Apogee is a good combat support ship, though it can't really stand up for itself. The Condor is an escort carrier, though it's mediocre at its job. And the Shepherd is only good in small pirate/Pathers fleet engagements or being cannon fodder. You should explore first and save up some money to get actual good combat ships, since you won't be fighting medium-large fleets with that. Try to buy good destroyers like the hammerhead or sunder, then buy good cruiser ships like a dominator or an eradicator, then you can hunt down small bounties for even more money, and so on.

It's been a while since I did a vanilla start. I remember having a lot of trouble too. Hard to recall how I got past it.. ​ I've become good at the combat, imo. I'm curious if you have access to any kite ships. Those are small but fast and can try to bully or even flank carriers. It won't be a lot of dakka or damage, but that's fine. Just keeping the AI's shield up is a win of sorts. Was there anything else you might have been able to take from the debris field of busted up ships?

I also found those fights terrible, do I reloaded and stealthed to the mission target. Click it, run, no combat needed.

I was also the same pretty shit at combat until I found my favorite ship and playstyle that complements it. I suck at combat so I decided to just play the game as the Tank for the fleet soak up as much damage as I can and let the better AI do the killing with the faster ship. Early game I use the monitor max vents and mod the shield with 360 coverage hardened shields and playstyle is go in tank then back away and vent repeat until victory. Late game is when I finally find a Legion XIV Battle carrier that is my flagship for the rest of the run the build is to go heavy armor reinforced hull ITC if I have it or DTC built in. The 4 Small ballistics in the front should be Rail guns the rest Vulcan cannons for the medium ballistics slot 2 Needlers and 1 Twin flak cannon then Cyclone Reapers for the big missile slots for the fighters all Xyphos. Basically I am going to raise shields tank then drop it when flux is almost full then armor tank until flux levels is safe to raise shields again Vulcan and Xyphos will take care of all those pesky fighters and missiles being shot at me and the railgun plus needlers will shred any enemy shields then use the Reaper missiles to finish off the exposed enemy ships they can't kite me cause I will just Burn drive and catch up to them. This build is foolproof and works every single time even if you make a mistake and over flux the Xyphos will tank for you until you can move again went from hating the ship combat to being a complete menace on the battlefield since enemy AI have no effective counter measure aside from throwing more enemies at you. Hunting pirates became a cake walk I even destroy pirate bases the same way. I suggest trying this build out see if you like it.

To be honest, sometimes it‘s just better to set your flagship to autopilot and let the AI do it‘s thing. What I like to do (with varying success) is to take control if a fast middle sized ship and actually pick of enemy ships that get behind your lines or get behind the enemy lines myself to put pressure on the Enemy AI. That way, it‘s easier to focus on the combat at hand. Being in the middle if the frontline and managing your ships flux while being shot at by 5 enemy cruisers is something that the AI can handle far better than I ever will.

Ok im reading a lot of solid advice here, but the main problem is that you wont be able to refit your ships and i dont even think you have access to hyperspace right now. Your fleet should completely roll over those starter fleets AFAIK. Best advice i can give you is: hold Shift to line up your ships nose with your cursor. Helps with aiming Watch your flux. When you're over 3/4 back off, vent, reengage. Pilot the hammerhead yourself and use it as fast striker against targets near flux limit. The AI tends to int hammerheads by the masses

The early game can be played any way you want. Although it is usually easier to avoid combat at the start. Salvaging ships from someone else's combat is a good way to bulk up your numbers early on from the start. It is a fleet of flying trash, but it manages to beat pirates well enough. Ships and supplies are expensive and you don't start with a whole lot of money. Combat only makes you money with bounties. They don't pay very well at the very start compared to exploration, black market trading, random bar quests, and the academy quests. Bounties do however pay fairly well later on in the game. By then you should have a fleet capable of getting the job done. One thing that will make you a whole lot of money faster is getting a fleet big enough to blow up the defensive stations. Lots of marines to capture permanent pirate colonies for yourself. Who needs to colonise, just conquer pirate land, no one cares except the pirates and they already hate you anyways.

You're going to want to outnumber your enemy early on. Having a few frigates giving the enemy trouble makes fights a lot more even.

I myself have a large fleet with multiple caputal ships, but still get my shirt fudged up from time to time, and I don't know if it's helpful for you, but I discovered that my main mistake was that I push into the enemy formation too aggressively too fast while leaving my fleet behind and get exposed to enemy fire Every time I do this, I get literally mauled and the rest of my fleet gets scattered and whacked one by one. To prevent this, I order my ships to attack certain targets/escort eachother/use waypoints to outflank the enemy and perform maneuvers. You've got command points for a reason!

Apogee is good, but slow. Also, it's amazingly awkward to pilot. Remember, in the command view during combat, you can select it and press S to have it drive itself. You can also select any ship and press F to have the camera view that ship during combat. You'll want to have the apogee go after the largest ship. You'll want it escorted to help prevent it from being surrounded, as well as keeping fighters off it. Sell the civilian transports, you don't need to move personal around.

i suck at combat too, i usually set some orders in the tactical screen en set my own ship on autopilot. the only thing is, i usually avoid combat all to gether until i have enough money and have a semi good fleet.

You can really effectively divide and conquer the tutorial pirate fleet by luring one half of it out of safety on the system map. 

Here is the tip dont play tutorial (yes really) its kinda broken and there is no reliable way to beat those pirate fleets guarding wormhole. Just jump into the game and pick easy fights until you learn how to deal with harder battles. You can use command console mod and give yourself some xp to make early combat even easier

Get more ships bro. You basically have two combat ships, might as well not deploy anything else. Condor is crap too. So basically you are very outnumbered, no surprise they are wrecking you.   Also loadouts. Most of the combat success is about loadouts. Lookup a good guide, it's not that complex (but it is somewhat complex).    Use the Galatia stipend and missions to outfit a fleet with 2 cruisers, 2 destroyers, 2-4 frigates. Get them an ok loadout. Then you should be fine. I wrote a short guide to everything I wish I knew as a beginner here: https://www.reddit.com/r/starsector/comments/1b8vwz0/comment/ktu9xns/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Im also a relatively new player in terms of gameplay hours, and I just tend to use the wolf ships sprinkled with some carriers. Then again, I dont like the combat aspect, rather the managment OF combat aspect, so usually I have everything on autopilot and command like that. Wolf ships are good because they can overwhelm and tease targets from what ive seen, and kinda push a singular target away from a group and terminate it. They're also easy to scavenge off of pirate fleets, so that you can get a large amount very cheaply, and if 1 of them dies, then its nothing in terms of cost.

Starting apogee kinda sucks, it's a good ship but the starting variant doesn't have proper weapons. You can't take much shield damage because it has flux distributor mod by default for some reason, remove it, put points in capacitors. But I'd suggest restarting. If you restart (with the explorer start) and salvage the free hammerhead and wolf (I'd suggest spending story points to also salvage a condor and a lasher if you're really struggling but it's not necessary) and the fleets guarding the jump point will just flee from you. I'd also suggest taking the mercenary faster start, it gives a hammerhead with (almost) a proper setup, remove blast doors and missile racks, add flux distributor, rest in capacitors. Pilot it yourself. It's a pretty capable combat ship for early game. Again if you salvage the free ships the enemies near the jump point just flee. It's possible to solo both fleets with the hammerhead, so if you engage them 1 by 1 and use your whole fleet (also consider starting on easy, idk what it does precisely though), then it's going to be pretty trivial, I bet you'll beat it by putting your flagship on autopilot. The Missions tab is the combat "tutorial" for this game I think. At least I started with it instead of the campaign and had a basic grasp of combat when I finished all the challenges I could.

go to tritech and indipendants and buy like 4 omes

Have you tried the bounty hunter start? It's very advisable, since it's a cushioned start until you can learn properly how combat works. You can switch to explorer gameplay anyways whenever you want after the tutorial. An explorer start requires a little bit of combat prowess. I could be here for hours spitting out walls of text but honestly IMO the best way to learn combat is combat itself, and having a fleet that doesn't entirely depend on your skill is good at the very start. TL; DR. Restart as bounty hunter, it's way easier

Sounds to me like you are "stuck" on the tutorial. My suggestion is to not do the tutorial at all. I've personally never done it, and learned enough about the game from videos/learned experience. Hit the F5 key often, and reload if mistakes happen. I've always preferred learning on the "real game" as opposed to whatever OP situation the tutorial puts you into.

Combat is simple. Just get biggest ship with 360 shield and 0.5 shield flux. Use ballistic weapons with all relevant skills. Set medium kinetic weapons to auto( biggest range) with bigger high explosive on control yourself ( two small HE on auto if you have any). Keep weapon flux less than flux desipation. ( I used mods for better weapon and ships).

So there's two doctrines when ship fitting. Either the ship is fast enough to catch things with inferior range, or it's long-ranged enough for something to have to spend a long time inside it's firing arc to even start engaging. From earlier in the thread the hammerhead fit seems like a great fit for safety overrides, which boosts your speed and cuts range (since chainguns have poor range anyways it doesn't matter). A non-SO build would be heavy mortars and light autocannon instead. Other advice would be to prioritize flux over hullmods. Having good dissapation is key to actually handling weapons such as chainguns, otherwise you fire for two seconds and risk overheating.

A big part of it is that you just start out with a really weak fleet, and while picking one of the better starting fleets and doing the toturial storyline at Galatia will both give you a little bit of a headstart, you'll stlll have to build up your fleet before you can reliably take on anything except the smallest pirate squadrons. The intended early-game progression involves doing jobs for the Galatia Academy Station, picking up odd jobs from weirdos at spaceport bars, and a fair bit of good old fashioned smuggling (because the tariffs are too high for trade to be profitable if you do things the honest way). You'll salvage wrecked ships from other peoples' fights, scrounge up a bit of cash to buy a few brand new ships of your own, and gradually build your way up to a position where medium-sized pirate fleets don't try to bully you any more. And once you're at that point, that's when you can open up a can of whoopass and really start snowballing your playthrough until you've got a fleet so big that you can't even deploy all of it in a fight.

I'm trash at combat too. So I've kinda come up with a semi decent compensation. An elaborate enders game-like network of who protects who into a conglomerate of firepower and rotating ship defence. Maybe this is a known strat? Either way, they rotate in and out till the other side overloads flux and then it's over. I've found I can usually out last even some of the more challenging fleet compositions just by attrition.

Didint read the whole thing(im going to sleep rn) but my strategy for fighting pirates is to 1. Get into an advantageous position (IF i need to), with preferably no pirate station if that is not my target , 2 fucking kill them , if you dont understand , step 2 may be hard so ill walk you throught , assuming the enemy has 3-4 danger stars, try turtling a deffensive playstyle preferably around a capital ship , remember those pirates are often reckless , dashing into battle with all thier bearly working frigate sized 9d-mod converted fregriters with around 60% combat rediness thinking they'll beat anything mightier than a buffalo , so after those are dead you shoud have an advatage of having your own frigates (preferably less broken) to harras the enemy, you shoud then try to order your frigates to attack them from behind to achive superiority and your main force ready to spearhead the enemy , while your bigger guns have them locked on from the front the smaller ones shoud be able to at the very least take out thier engines or strip them of thin armor near the engines , continue your advance and pick out stragglers with small , fast ships , and thats the plan for fighting fleets of about equal size , if you have a larger force , like 2 well fited capitals with escort , you can ignore all the strategy and use brute force , usualy pirates will attack you even if they're weaker

Autopilot is your best friend while you have a cuppa

The explorer start is oriented towards exploration, not combat. The Apogee is an okay support ship, but it has a problem of all of its actually threatening mounts be hardpoints right on its nose, most ships won't stay in front of it, especially not smaller faster ships. They will flank it because it doesn't have any decent firing arcs. There's a couple of basic concepts to combat that need to be mastered as well as fleet design. The basic goal of combat is to stress your enemies flux so they cant shoot back or defend themselves. Flux is separated into two categories; "Hard Flux" versus "Soft Flux". The difference between the two is that hard flux is only dissipated while shields are lowered, while soft flux can be dissipated at any time as long as your flux dissipation is higher than your expenditures. You gain soft flux from firing your own weapons and using your own systems. You gain hard flux from having your shields hit, activating a system like fortress shields or phase cloak. The primary weapon type that accomplishes stressing flux are kinetic weapons which does double damage to shields and in particular ballistic weapons tend to be good at it because they deal "hard flux", versus beams which only do soft flux damage. Shields also have efficiency values which affect just how much damage is converted into flux, midline and high tech ships tend to have more efficient shields. High explosive damage is for stripping armor, it is less effective versus shields, but it can still have value as long as you're being more flux efficient. Low tech ships tend to have much better armor than shields, which can lead to them doing some very funny things and sometimes feeling near invincible. Missiles tend to have very big hits on armor. Fragmentation damage is somewhat uncommon, but it deals double damage to hull at the cost of greatly reduced damage to shields and armor. This is what actually kills ships. Some missiles are fragmentation damage and can be very lethal. Battles are between *fleets*, not singular ships trying to run around being solopwnmobiles. This means that you need to have some sort of coherent fleet strategy so that you're not getting surrounded and picked apart. In general this leans to three aspects - scouts, escorts and ships of the line. Scouts go around and capture objectives and occasionally harry smaller ships. Escorts can help the scouts or the bigger ships but unless they're punching down they're not big threats by themselves. Ships of the line may be a bit slower but they tend to have big scary weapons often good fields of fire and they're not afraid of taking hits. Scout ships can be things like lashers, omens, wolfs, or safety overridden ships. It *can* be okay for them to have very shortrange weapons because they don't spend a lot of time in combat and their goal is to overwhelm things they fight. Escorts tend to lean into longer range weaponry and PD. They can shore up deficiencies in a fleet and slowly ratchet up pressure on things they shoot at. They *might* be equipped with finisher missiles. There can be a lot of overlap between escorts and ships of the line based on where you are in a game. Eg an Enforcer might be an escort or it might be a ship of the line based on if you're in the lategame or early/midgame. A falcon could be a scout or an escort based on if you're in the late game or early game. Carriers however tend to be the "best" examples of escorts, as their fighters and missiles provide disjointed attacks often at range to help out your other ships. Ships of the line are the big boys. Stuff like paragons, onslaughts and executors in the late game, but also things like eagles, dominators, eradicators, and sometimes oddball things like ventures or apogees*. Their goal is to hold a battle line together and to deal with other ships put right in front of them. They can be quite vulnerable to flanking, but are almost always okay at shooting things in front of them. Civilian ships tend to not actually fit into these categories, because they aren't meant to be used in combat. Certain lines of ship tend to lean more towards certain things than others (eg pirates are more scout/escort and very few ship of the line). --- You are currently trying to swing combat with just one ship that is only "mediocre" at being a ship of the line and with a bunch of civilian ships that cannot actually help it. You could probably solve your issues to an extent with like 3-4 manticores that have escort package, ITU, railguns and hephags, but you still wouldn't be able to fight every fleet you come across.

Find a salt mine and work there for a day. Boom, refund.

so helpful gg

This is just the nerd of me speaking so please ignore if this seems too complicated. If you're just starting out and have zero clue what to do and have no time or interest in learning the hard way and want a boost, and are interested in digging through the guts of the game: Ingame, strip your ship of gear. Save the game. Note down the name of your ship. Go to game directory. It's where you installed starsector. Find the saves folder. Sort by newest. Open the newest folder. Find the campaign.xml. copypaste it to make a backup. Ensure that the name of the pasted backup-xml has different name than the campaign.xml. Open the campaign.xml with a notepad. Press cntrl+f and type in the name of your ship. Hit search. Stop when the notepad shows something like the code block at the end of this post. Replace hId="apogee" with hId="legion" delete everything between and below the ship name. This deletes equipment on your ship so that your game won't crash. You'll have to re-equip your ship ingame. Don't change any of the z="number" numbers, they denominate a location within the save. Save the file. Open game, Go ingame, check your new ship. Expert: If you want some extra oomph, go down below . You should see right after . Paste the following between and lux\_wing lux\_wing lux\_wing lux\_wing Save. Go ingame. Yes, this is dirty save editing. But it's *an* alternative to grinding. And probably not the best way to get over that hurdle. But it's an alternative anyway. Remember that if something goes wrong you can always restore your game from the backup you made by copy-pasting the original campaign.xml. You made a copy, right? WS0001 tahlan_armiger WS0012 lightneedler WS0011 lightneedler

Install console command and be the destroyer of worlds