Starshatter- I must be the worst DD commander

Milo or anyone,

Ok, I have finally got promoted to Lt. Commander and I am now in charge of a
DD. Everytime I go into battle, I am getting blown away. It seems the odds
are always against me and my squadron mates are always too far away. Any
hints? Is there any Intel on enemy ships like firepower, field of fire etc.
It would sure help to find a weakness in their tactics.

Allan

"Allan Parent" <allanp@nospam for me123 RemoveThis @charter.net> wrote in message
news:10ge9lrgd4soo50@corp.supernews.com...
> Milo or anyone,
>
> Ok, I have finally got promoted to Lt. Commander and I am now in charge of
a
> DD. Everytime I go into battle, I am getting blown away. It seems the odds
> are always against me and my squadron mates are always too far away. Any
> hints? Is there any Intel on enemy ships like firepower, field of fire
etc.
> It would sure help to find a weakness in their tactics.

The Asher class destroyer is something of a paper tiger. It's an older
series of warship that is being phased out in favor of the newer and
more solidly built Spectre class. They both have the same weapons,
but the Asher can't take the pounding that the Spectre can. Always
attack in force, and run away using your quantum drive if you get in
trouble. You can use the nav screen during the briefing to assign
navpoints to the other ships in your destroyer squadron to get the
team together before you go looking for trouble.

Remember to raise your shields to 100% before the bad guys start
shooting at you (press Shift+S). The gravity-based shields in Star-
shatter are more like the ones in classic Star Trek than they are
like those in a typical space sim. Shields at 100% power block more
than 95% of energy damage. However, all shields are more vulnerable
to the damage from missile weapons and torpedoes. Don't let the
enemy gang up on you and overload your point defense batteries
(PDBs) or you won't last very long.

As a general rule, most starships are weaker from "below" than from
"above." They tend to have more defensive turrets on upper decks
than they do on lower decks. Now that I finally fixed the aiming bug,
the defensive turrets are very effective at shooting down incoming
missiles and fighters. It used to be that you could stand off and hit
your enemies with long range torpedo shots (the PDBs couldn't
focus on fast moving shots so well, and the longer range gave the
torpedoes time to build up to maximum velocity). I haven't spent
much time in starship combat since the new patch, so some of my
own favorite tactics probably need revising.

Starships are blind directly aft, but they can also share sensor data
their with allies, so you shouldn't rely on being invisible just because
you are staring up their drive flares.

If you find that just dealing with steering and managing weapons
and sensors and shields and tactical commands is overwhelming
at first, don't be afraid to let your Executive Officer lend a hand in
running the ship. Press Shift+M and your XO will take over the
direct operation of your vessel leaving you free to concentrate on
tactics. Press F3 for the "orbit cam" and you can play the game
just like Homeworld, even to the point of issuing tactical orders to
your own ship for your XO to implement.

Hope this helps,

--milo
http://www.starshatter.com