I'm anxious to find someplace that sells satellites and get a ship to start dropping my network while I trade the day away with a couple of hauler type ships. Between that and reading the thread on the SA forums I'm picking up all kinds of little tips and tricks. Watched the first 10 or 11 CdrDave videos and then queued them up again when I got started and played along through the first 4 so far. This script prevents missiles from being 'armed' until they clear a certain distance from the ship that launched them and generally prevents the scenario where ships keep dying due to their missiles getting shot down in their face during launch (annoying as hell with Xenon). Gazz's Missile Safety script has a new optional component for AP that will extend it's capability to all NPC ships. This causes NPCs to jump in additional war ships from neighboring sectors when their assets are attacked. A version of LV's Race Response Fleets system is now built into the game. In the previous games these items were useless OOS as the sim only initiated a combat round when two ships got within a relatively close distance of each other. Stationary defenses such as Orbital Weapons Platforms and Lasertowers can now engage OOS combat at relatively largish ranges and are actually used. This used to be a hardcoded formula based on the weapons nominal damage value, which poorly modeled AOE and other types of weapons and caused weapons to be better or worse relatively IS vs OOS.

All weapons have a separate OOS dps value now that is also exposed in the resource files for modders. The Out of Sector(OOS) combat has been reworked with feedback from Gazz. Other ships can use the Missile Defense Mosquito command in the new AP bonus pack like in previous games. Mosquito missiles are now officially counter-measure missiles, will always destroy a target missile on successful hit, are usable by all ships, and will be launched automatically by ships with missile turrets to defend themselves and their fleets/wings. Missiles have hull points now, and the heavier ones may need more than a single IRE blast to pop. This was based heavily on Gazz's feedback from his Missile defense Mk2 script and the missile defense command can actually hit things now. They made a new turret script system that is much smarter and can be customized in the gameplay properties. I use a belkin speedpad + mouse for X-games, and find that to be the most comfortable setup personally. The old control layout is still available with a hotkey IIRC.

The control scheme was really only effective with a joystick until they adopted the new default mouse-friendly scheme with TC. I don't have a joystick so I don't know how it plays with those, but I found it to be fun and intuitive, and the AI is relatively sharp when you get into big dogfights. A lot of people say that take issue with the fact that the game caters to a keyboard+mouse control scheme. The combat mechanics aren't any where near terrible, and I personally like them. Want to be a wing for hire and patrol the galaxy and hunt marauders? You can do that. Want to own a massive military fleet with capital ships and the like and invade an enemy empire to take over lucrative trade routes? You can do that. Want to become a pirate with 100 ships in your wing. This is the best description of the game right here. It is really just a big space sandbox that is there for you to build an empire in.

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