Welcome to Jamestown, a brilliant multiplayer bullet-hell/shmup. Today we will be covering the vanilla ships; The Beam Ship, The Gunner Ship, The Charge Ship and the Bomber Ship (I will try to cover the three DLC ships in another guide), each with their own special uses and tricks. I will do my best to cover how to play each ship, as well as any tricks or tips to playing each ship to its greatest potential. Lets get started, shall we?

The Beam Ship the first ship in the game and it is unlocked by default. The Beam Ship is relatively straight forward with its usages and has no real tricks or gimicks. Easy to use and incredibly balanced, this ship is great for beginners.

Primary Fire:
The Beam Ship's primary fire fires a spread shot of five low-damage projectiles. While lacking straight-up power, the spread allows this ship to fling a great amount of ammo over a wide area, making it ideal for hitting smaller, more spread out enemies.

Secondary Fire:
The Beam Ship's secondary is where it receives it's name. When enabled, the ship shoots out a large, high damage laser in front of it. This allows for massive damage, ideal for larger, more cumberson enemies; however, it can also be effective against large tightly clumped packs of smaller enemies as well. Its also important to remember that the beam is not instananeous and does require a bit of time to reach its full length.
Note: While holding your secondary fire with the Beam Ship, your movement spead will be hindered.

Tips:

• When fighting bosses, use both fire types to your advantage. While dodging projectiles, use the primary fire spread shot to deal damage without having to worry much about missing. While waiting for the next volley to come, use the secondary fire beam to rack in the damage.
  
• Combine the 1.5x damage multiplier of Vaunt with the secondary fire beam to create a devestatingly powerful attack against bosses.

The Gunner Ship is the second ship in the game, available for unlock after completing the first mission. It can be unlocked for 2000 ducats from the shop. The Gunner Ship can be confusing at first to understand, but upon mastery it offers many unique strategies.

Primary Fire:
The Gunner Ship's primary fire shoots a volley of small projectiles in a linear pattern, as well as a larger line of energy waves. The small projectiles deal relatively modest damage and always fire forward, while the energy waves deal great damage and their angle can be modified with the secondary fire.

Secondary Fire:
The Gunner Ship's secondary fire is less of a alternative fire type and more of a modification to the primary. While holding the secondary fire key, the energy waves produced by the primary attack will shoot in the direction the player moves. Upon releasing the secondary fire key, the enegry waves will stick to the last direction set in. While holding the secondary fire key, primary fire is automaticall enabled.

Tips:

• The Gunner Ship allows for multi-directional firing. Use this to your advantage to fight enemies from new angles, flying ahead and behind enemies instead of sitting in front of them.
  
• Once the concept of tweaking your angle is grapsed, try changing your angle to hit enemies across the screen as apposed to slugishly flying over toward them.
  
• It may be easier to control the Gunner ship with a USB mouse over keyboard, as it allows for more directional control that standard arrow keys, allowing for precise aiming of the secondary fire.

The Charge ship is the third ship in the game, available for purchase after beating the second level. The ship costs 8000 ducats in the shop. The Charge Ship is relatively straightforward to learn and can deal massive damage to large ships and piles of enemies alike.

Primary Fire:
The Charge Ship's primary fire shoots two rows of small projectiles. These projectiles fire often, but deal modest damage and lack any sort of spread. Because this ship can fire its primary and secondary fire at the same time, it is recommended to keep its primary fire going at all times in combat.

Secondary FIre:
The Charge Ship's secondary fire launches an energy orb that varies in size. The ship always automatically charges a large energy orb in front of itself, growing in size until it hits its max at about the width of the ship. Upon hitting secondary fire the orb is released, and can be released before hitting max size, although it suffers from reduced effectiveness. The orb moves relatively slow, making it ideal for tearing through a large ship, or instead for mowing through a pile of weak enemies.

Tips:

• Master the timing of the orb's recharge rate to maxium size. Be sure to constantly fire orbs once they fully charge to deal the most damage per second.
  
• The orb never breaks, no matter what stands in its way. This means it can jump enviromental hazzards and invincible enemies, making it paticularly useful in the final level and on certain challenge levels.

The Bomber Ship is the fourth and final of the vanilla ships. It is available for purchase after beating the third level and costs 12,000 ducats to unlock. The Bomber ship is perhaps one of the most damaging ships but also one of the hardest to use. With proper use, the Bomber Ship can be a massive damage hose.

Primary Fire:
The Bomber's Ship's primary fire shoots a slow stream of pellets. These pellets move at an average speed and deal poor damage to whatever they hit. The pellets have little to no use without the help of the ship's secondary fire.

Secondary Fire
The Bomber Ship's secondary fire explodes all pellets on screen. While lacking in blast radius, the damage the explosions deal is outright impressive, and can even destroy some large enemies instantly. To use the Bomber Ship with its greatest potential, be sure to always be hitting secondary fire, as forgetting to will result in a complete lack of damage output.

Tips:

• The primary fire pellets are destroyed upon contact with enemy ships. Try detonating them right before they hit an enemy, instead of after they do.
  
• Try quickly moving back and forth while using primary fire to spread out your projectiles before detonation. This is paticularly useful in destroying smaller ships, as one pellet is all you need to destroy them.
  
• The Bomber Ship gains effectiveness at close range, as its projectiles don't need to travel as far. Try flying up close to large enemy ships and mashing secondary fire to burn through their health. This is especially effective with vaunt, as you can temporarily rush in with your shield while also dealing the extra 1.5x damage.