Moon Breakers is not for everyone. First of all let's make that clear.

It is, at its peak, an intense space "dog fighter" / shooter with a steep learning curve. This is also what makes it so damn fun, that it is one of those rare games where unlocking everything gets you only so far - this is a game about skill.

But also because of this, regrettably, many players don't stick around for too long or find themselves unable to progress or just aren't interested in learning about the game. The controls and game mechanics are not well explained, leading to a skill-gap in many areas. I hope to address some of that...

As of right now this guide is still a work in progress, I'll be updating it almost daily with more sections and info. Any suggestions / corrections / feedback, feel free to drop me a line or comment here.

The controls are based on WASD. W/S controls the throttle. A/D roll the ship. Mouse wheel can also control throttle.

The mouse cursor's on-screen position controls the ship's rotation in every other aspect. This is both a blessing and a curse, but more on this later. For now just know that the mouse controls your left-right and up-down rotation.

Space Bar activates afterburners for a significant speed boost. These consume a special fuel which slowly regenerates when not being used.

Left Mouse Button fires the primary weapon. This will differ from ship to ship, but often will be a machine gun or some sort of cannon.

Right Mouse Button fires the secondary weapon. Most times this will be a rocket / missile / torpedo, which are contact-explosives.

F key zooms in on the area in the center of the screen while it is held down.

R key reverses the camera and shows what's behind you. It is still possible to fly "normally" while doing this, though difficult.

The Left / Right keys show the camera to the left and right respectively, much like reverse cam. Page up / Page down do the same for above / below. These are rarely used so don't worry too much.

TAB shows the scoreboard - it does not update statistics until you let go of TAB. Use this to check scores, and which ships people are flying, how many on each team (and in-game) and so on.

F2 shows the current game mode, in case you weren't paying attention. Sometimes this can be through no fault of your own - the lobby doesn't wait forever for everyone to ready-up, and in the heat of veto-spamming the map or game mode it can feel like a lucky dip.

Enter is used for team chat. Shift + Enter (it has a red background) for global chat that every team can see. Note - you cannot see new chat messages while you're typing.

Also be careful when typing _, -, = or +. This is because either of those keys changes graphics quality. Don't ask, I didn't design it. Just press + if you typed - or _, or - if you typed a + or =. This can also happen if someone types a chat message as you're typing yours. What these keys (+ and -) do is change the graphics quality (low, med, high).

If you live long enough and have something to show for it, you will find yourself with a bounty label - this means anyone claiming your kill gets a point bonus. Points count towards draws to settle them, if the match objective hasn't been met by either side. The specifics of when a bounty is placed on you is supposed to vary with game mode, as does scoring. However the thresholds and amounts for bounties are the same for each game mode currently - if you earn 500 points in a single life, you gain a 250 bounty; 800 points gets you a 500 point bounty, and 1500 points in a single life earns you the big 1000 point shoot me sign.

If you want to keep an eye on scores, TAB shows all the information you need to know about the match. You can also press TAB for the few seconds after the match ends, before everyone is returned to the lobby.

When (not if) you die, you will have a chance to select another ship from the hangar (of whatever you've unlocked). You can, but probably shouldn't, purchase upgrades mid-match. Once selected, players respawn in waves every 15 seconds or so. Sometimes you might get lucky and the respawn timer is nearly refreshed, other times you just miss out and have to wait a little longer.

Say what you like but spawn camping is sometimes a legitimate tactic in this game, usually because it's only accessible after turrets have been dealt with and even then only during Search and Destroy. Even if you find yourself spawn camped, it's not over - players are not allowed to sit perfectly still (10% is the lowest thrust setting), so they will not be able to camp in the traditional sense of the term and will be forced to give up their position now and then, offering opportunities to regroup and retaliate.

The ship will point in whatever direction you are aiming, so in many respects you have to be mindful that if you want to aim somewhere other than straight ahead, you will also start turning in that direction as well. You will notice that the mouse left-right movements also roll the ship, not just cause it to turn left and right... Note that unlike your typical flight sim (space or terrestrial), pitch is typically slower than rolling and yawing despite being easier to turn with.

To turn left for example, you need to find a sweet spot with the mouse in the left side of your game screen, while holding D (roll right) to counter the roll caused by the mouse. At the extreme, A and D keys don't add too much to your roll; the mouse can induce more roll than the keys can, but that's not to say you don't need those keys either. I strongly suggest trying out things as basic as simple turns to get some intuition for how the mouse affects where you fly.

The ships have a sort of autopilot that keeps the ship going in the direction you're aiming, more or less. If the ships make a turn too sudden for this autopilot to keep up with, the ship will "drift" sideways (and even backwards if you turn fast enough) until the excess momentum is cancelled out - much like you'd expect a car to drift around corners in movies. At first this seems like a nuisance but with patience and practice you will find that just like for cars, this sort of drifting allows for tighter turns and downright strafing runs! For best effect, boost to pick up speed and then turn sharply.

Be wary of your boost fuel - it is your lifeline and escape. Think of it as high gear - you should use it to gain a lot of speed, but excepting a few ships, you will rapidly burn through the fuel trying to use it as a stronger thrust, such as to make those tight turns even tighter. Risky, and potentially rewarding, but more often than not you really want to save boost for speed and for evasion, and sometimes for manoeuvring. For best effect "feather it" (tap and wait, and wait, and tap and wait, and wait, etc).

This quick video should help visualise this wall of text, if only a little bit - pay close attention to where the reticule is, how it affects the ship's direction and momentum, how little boost fuel is being consumed due to conservative tapping of spacebar and how the ship will drift for some time even if it turns sideways (because of the low acceleration-to-speed of the F-3 in this situation).

On the bottom left, you have a speed indicator and a boost fuel indicator. On the bottom right, there is a weapon-heat indicator and a secondary-weapon-ready icon (red/green rocket). At the bottom of the screen you can find your shield level readout.

Enemies appear in red but can appear white or orange - orange enemies are dealing damage to you, while white enemies have received damage from you. I should say "enemy" because the white and orange colors only ever appear on one ship at a time. If the ship you're damaging is also the ship dealing damage to you, it will just appear white. Near each player indicator is a readout of how far away they are - invaluable information for aiming purposes, and coordination in general. If a player has a bounty, this will appear as a yellow triangle near their indicator.

Player indicators appear as white, faint triangles when the enemy is farther than 3km away and the distance readout disappears beyond 4km. The indicators will not show for a player that isn't in your line of sight, so you can't know where someone is without actually seeing them. That doesn't stop you from seeing the trails of players if they're hiding, but if they're farther than 2km even their trails won't be visible to you.

If a player is in your line if sight, but isn't in the direction the camera is facing, the indicator will still be there - sitting on the edge of the screen, in the rough direction you'd need to turn in order to find that player. This allows you to, for example, be aware of enemies from all sides even if you're not facing all of them at the same time. Because of the range of beam weapons is almost 2km, be wary if you see any enemies in the edge of your screen especially if you suspect beamers are prowling - if you can see them, they can see you, and if they can see you there's only 1,060m of space left before they can take a large bite out of your shields.

If you have any missiles following you, they will appear as a dull-orange/brown colored indicator similar to that of a player, with distance labelled and a missile icon. Similarly if there are any enemy torpedoes around, you will see a yellow warning icon (with distance too).

So you know how to fly and can find the trigger... There's still much to learn, Grasshopper.

Every ship has a shield, which if depleted results in a tasty fireball. If you can avoid damage for a short while (varies with each ship) the shield will slowly repair itself. Contact with other ships, or solid objects, results in damage so do be careful in tight spaces. Ramming is not considered a "legitimate" means of dealing damage but if you want to do that... know that it's a double-edged sword with no kill credit. As for kill credit, it works like this - there can be one person assisting a kill and one person claiming the kill. You can claim a kill if you land the last shot on your enemy, or if within 30 seconds of doing so your enemy dies due to any reason other than player damage (ramming isn't considered player damage).

Remember, you're in a space dogfighter game... Consider if you fire a gun in space at a target that's stationary relative to you, it shouldn't matter whether you and the target are moving relative to everything else or not - momentum is inherited for projectiles, you could say. Not so in this game - whatever weapon you fire, it will fly in a straight line exactly where the ship was looking at the time you pulled the trigger, even if you're moving.

You might think this makes little difference, but it has the effect of augmenting weapon range... If you fire at someone flying at you, and you're at near standstill, by the time your bullets travel their allowed distance your enemy would have moved even closer - if you started firing just before an enemy entered your weapon's range this way, you will hit them. Conversely for chases - if you're trying to chase someone down who's running from you, shoot from even closer than you normally would.

It also means that you have to compensate for your enemy's movements if you want to land damage. Fire where your enemy will be, not where they are. Despite what you might think, all of the weapons in this game have travel time and projectile speed (even beams), so this applies universally. Although, of course, you need to compensate a lot less for beams than say, machine gun.

This quick vid shows how if you keep the reticule steady, even if the ship is turning, you will aim in a very wide arc. To hit moving targets you will need to adjust the speed of your turning and the direction you're aiming, so the bullets follow them accordingly.


If you've played FPS games, you may have to drill this in before aiming will make sense - the reticule on screen is actually something like 800m-1km in front of the ship, it is not a point-and-click sort of aiming mechanic... When you shoot, bullets and rockets fly from the ship towards the reticule's position (1km away). If you want to hit objects that are point blank near your ship, you have to ensure the ship is facing the right way - if you try to keep the reticule over a nearby target, you will find yourself missing every shot, so instead you need to ignore the reticule at close range and simply point your ship's front in the desired direction of mayhem. Incidentally for weapons that reach beyond 1km, you will need to aim with the top half of the reticule due to the camera angle being above your own ship rather than directly behind it. Indeed at max range for beams I aim with the tip of the reticule, more or less.

Don't worry if all this range-finding business seems complicated, if so the best advice I can offer is: pay attention to the distance of your enemies when you fire, and observe where your bullets go. It's rather intuitive once you try it and see this in action rather than reading about it, I promise. One of the simple things about moon breakers is how to tell if you're landing hits - it literally works on the concept that if you see your own bullets make contact, they will hit and deal damage (even if this is delayed due to latency, the feedback is immediate). Conversely you might find yourself taking damage despite seeing yourself dodge gunfire... More on this later on.

Sooner or later you will run into turrets, those pesky automated defence things on carriers. Carriers have a total of 16 machine gun turrets on the outside (3 above/below/front/back + 2 on both sides) and 4 beam turrets on the inside (covering the side, rear and front entrances). You can't do anything about the beam turrets, they're there to prevent spawn camping, but the 16 machine gun turrets are fair game. From hereon it's assumed Turret refers to the machine gun turrets, the beam turrets cannot reach much farther than the areas just outside the entrances to the carrier.

Turrets have a really long range (a bit under 3km from the turret, or 3.1km away from carrier), and they aim entirely on the premise that you will fly in a straight line - as long as you don't do that, you're 95% safe from turrets, even at slow speeds and especially at a distance. Turrets will prioritise rockets and missiles over players and players over torpedoes. This is why rockets are otherwise known as turret bait, because the rocket is effectively immune to turret fire and is a magnet for them. Turrets have a lot of armoring to them, highly advised is any weapon that scales its damage - cannons and rockets, of course.

Best tactic is to hit and run the turrets at a distance, but if you're feeling up for it, orbiting the turrets in such a way that you can fire on them as you travel (drifting around them, in other words). DO NOT fly directly at turrets. There is never a good time to do that in general, you always, always want to be firing while on the move to somewhere else - a better firing position or a safer one.

If possible you will want to keep your own turrets alive as long as you can, they don't respawn once gone and make for an effective deterrent.

With exception of beam weapons, you should consider yourself quite safe at range. But then so is your enemy.

Ideally, you want to use the time-tested principle of "get behind your enemy and shoot them from as close as possible". Closing the distance is easy, and if you avoid linear motions (flying in straight lines or at uniform speeds) you will survive to the next steps 95% of the time - getting behind your opponent.

To do this, you will need to learn to drift tokyo style in space like a pro... Remember, drifting is entirely about picking up speed in one direction, giving you time to pick a new direction to aim and fly at. If you keep turning while drifting, you will be able to (with some ships) to circle around your target while facing them the entire time!

Drifting isn't limited to evading and aiming, as you will see, you can use drifting to steer in pretty much any direction you feel like. Just remember that whever you point your ship, you will accelerate in that direction, and acceleration is good; hitting an accelerating target is almost impossible.


Take note of what my opponent did and what I did...

I took my time getting in close, focusing on keeping him in sight as much as possible, while drifting away and around him. My motions were minimal and deliberate, just enough to get out of the way, but not with quite enough force or speed to open up sufficient distance to be rushed or aimed at.

On the other hand, my opponent tried to fly at me, using up his boost and leaving his back open since by the time he's shooting at me I'm already half-way to circling around to his rear. And in the end, this delay proved fatal in allowing me enough time to patiently aim and unload a burst. You can see that I could have comfortably opened fire much much earlier with the same outcome.

This is one of those games where your position and motion are about 90% of any victory; it pays off most to be defensive with your flying and agressive with your aiming. This next vid is a bit longer, demonstrating only the basics I've described above (combined with a lot of experience and practice) - I'm not doing anything I haven't already described (excepting rocket remote detonation), the rest I assure you is limited only by your imagination and circumstance.

The Primary fire (as well as secondary fire on cobra) will shoot some sort of projectile bullet. These are the bread and butter of dealing damage, and as such the guns are something worth knowing about in order to be an effective fighter pilot.

The weakest and most common type of gun is the machine gun. It spews short, white bullets forth, in streams of 2, 3 or even 4 linked guns, up to a range of around 800-900m. The bullets individually don't do a lot of damage, so to use machine guns effectively you need to be able to direct as many of the bullets as you can onto your opponent. Far too many people underestimate the amount of damage that machine guns can do provided they don't miss, to the point where it legitimately looks suspicious as to how quickly your enemies melt to these guns.

Next is the "fast" cannon, found on many of the heavier ships. Cannons have scaling damage (machine guns do not), and peak range of a bit over 1500m. Cannon shells don't fly much faster than machine gun bullets, so while the extra range is nice, it's also easier to miss and give away yourself as a threat as well as where you're shooting from. Cannons work wonders against slow or large targets (and small targets, eagle-eye) and are a big boy gun. You can always tell when one's nearby by it's distinct DOOF DOOF sounds (when you shoot them, it sounds more like a handgun).

The big brother to the fast cannon, found only on the stingray heavy fighter, is the "heavy" cannon. This peice of hardware fires grapefruits with the force of a typical rocket, and can shred turrets and bombers (and indeed other heavy fighters) to bits quite quickly. It's a bit farther ranged than the fast cannon, but the stingray is a separate beast to master at any rate with it's other unique qualities.

Last but certainly not least is the beam cannon. It doesn't have nearly as much scaling damage as the fast or heavy cannons, but it does do a solid 400 damage (enough to one-hit a sidewinder, two-hit light fighters, and 3-hit almost everything else except bombers). The beam cannon is fast at an insane 3.5km/s, and lances out to nearly 2km when fully upgraded. But the fun doesn't stop there - if you can manage it, at close ranges it's just as deadly and far easier to aim as there's basically no chance of dodging it.

Except for the Cobra, all ships have a rocket, missile or torpedo as their alternate fire.

Rockets do a lot of damage proportional to how healthy the target is, and have a reasonably large remote detonation radius (200m), and while they cannot be destroyed they can still absorb hits from gunfire but otherwise they just fly straight for 1.2-1.4 km. Ships with faster rocket launch rates can't remote detonate as far, because the same button is used to launch and remote detonate a rocket. Ships with multiple rockets (krait) will only remote detonate one of the rockets.

Next on the list are missiles - slightly weaker in raw damage compared to a rocket, and vulnerable (any damage will destroy the missile), but this is the cost of the missile having a lock-on feature. Aim the camera so that your target is in the center circle area, and when you see the red lock-on visuals home in, fire away. Missiles are not perfect however, they can turn quickly but they still have a finite turning speed; they can be evaded with good timing by flying into their turning arc (where they can't turn sharply enough to reach you). Evading missiles is rather hard to do on command so the best defence is to just not give your enemies the chance to keep you in sight - use the asteroids and even the carriers to hide yourself. If the worst happened and you couldn't find cover in time, not to worry - missiles aren't smart, they aim right at you with no regard for what's in the way.

And of course there's torpedoes. Think of them as anti-carrier rockets, in most respects they are. However they also share missiles' vulnerability, in addition to having an arm fuse before they can deal damage - the first 4-5 seconds or so a torpedo is useless, even if it hits. Torpedoes are the only weapon that can damage carriers, period (anymore mind you, those were fun times when 3 X99's could take out a carrier in just minutes). It means bombers are a must for carrier assault games where doing so is the goal. However if a torpedo impacts an enemy ship, or it's remote detonated, it generates a fantastic 500m radius fireball that deals heavy damage to enemy ships (but not the carrier this way).

There is a slight difference between the regular torpedoes (Rhino and Bison) and advanced (other bombers) - advanced torpedoes fly and arm 20% faster, fly for 10% longer, but only do 75% of the usual damage to players. The damage to carriers is the same as far as I've tested. The pros and cons of this are deeper than the weapon itself and has to do with which ships it's available on, so it will be covered in more depth there.

Plain and simple. First team to 70* kills wins, or whichever team has the higher score at the end of the match if time runs out. Spawn camping is particularly effective late into the game, but not without its risks and flaws. However I will say that spawn camping a small sized team is a bit cheap and at this stage risks losing yet more players, imo.

You earn 100 points for a kill or assist, and 50 points per turret kill.

* or was it 75? been so long since a game went that far.

The object of this game mode is, as you might expect, to destroy the enemy carrier. For this you will need bombers eventually, if not immediately. However every game mode boils down to a defence + offence strategy, more or less. In this case you want some teammates to stay with your carrier to defend it, and others to assault the enemy's, but of course less conventional things like rushing or stalemating also work given the right circumstances.

Players doing any defending need to keep their carrier's turrets alive as long as possible, while focusing on any torpedoes that the enemy tries to throw at your own carrier. It's possible to destroy the carrier without even scratching a turret - whether you find those 5 or 6 blind spots in the turrets' layout on the carrier, or use yourself as a meat shield to save your torpedoes from the turrets.

Once the turrets are gone, bombers get a free pass (if no one chases them around) at the carrier from whichever side is now turret-free. What turrets do is force the bombers to approach the carrier from specific angles, or not at all. Once you lose that defence however, be prepared for bomber attacks from every angle.

The carrier needs 15 armed torpedoes to collide with it to be destroyed. Generally you will want to get yourself a bomber that has advanced torpedoes, which are faster and that translates to less time to shoot them down by the enemy.

With a full server there is a second level of attack / defence meta (countering enemy defenders, defending your own defenders, assaulting enemy's defenders, etc) but it warrants its own writeup (if interested can refer you to it) and unfortunately doesn't come into effect without at least 4 people per team.

If neither carrier is destroyed by the time the match ends, the higher-scoring team wins (not the least-damaged carrier's team).

Points are earned by player kills and assists (25 per), by turret kills (150 per), by taking out enemy torpedoes (100 per), or by hitting the enemy carrier with a torpedo (200 per). More points are earned for actually destroying the carrier but since doing so makes the scoring irrelevant to the outcome, it's just for personal glory. If you must know, 300 points.

The classic game mode with a few things to note, as every game does this a bit differently. If you haven't ever seen such a game mode, it's quite simple - find the enemy flag sitting on a special platform on the outside of their carrier, fly into it to pick it up, and then fly back to the same spot on your own carrier to "capture" it. First to 10 captures wins. Easy right?

Now for the subtleties... First, you are weighed down by the flag (it's a large canister of He3, the game's prime resource), and accelerate slower as a result. Your throttle is also limited to 90% while carrying, but as long as you don't adjust the throttle at all it will stay at 100% if it was already there. You don't need to worry about your own flag in order to score for your team, as long as the enemy flag is carried back to your carrier (ha), it will count. Some games require that your own flag hasn't yet left it's starting point in order to score, this is not one of those games. Nor can you return your flag that's been dropped by a downed enemy.

A dropped flag will hang around in space for a little while before it's icon starts flashing and soon after automatically returning to its home. Players should aim to collect a dropped flag, as it saves flying all the way to the enemy again. On the defending side, if you managed to chase down a flag carrier, you will want to stay near the flag until it auto-returns as it will attract enemy players like flies to, well, you know where I'm going with this... If another player so much as touches the flag, the return timer resets, so expect suicidal players aiming to inch the flag closer or just to keep it from returning.

Scoring - you earn 150 points for taking the initiative and stealing the flag, 100 points for picking up the flag in space, 50 for kills against non-flag carriers or assists in general, 75 for killing the flag carrier, 25 for returning the flag (even though the game doesn't allow you to, just further proof it's unfinished), 200 for capturing the flag, and 25 per turret destroyed.

The guns in this game generate heat upon firing - this heat must be dissipated, or the ship becomes too hot for the guns to fire anymore. Recall the indicator for heat and secondary weapon availability in the bottom right of the screen. This area will display the percentage of heat accumulated.

Rockets, torpedoes and missiles do not generate heat, however their firing rate (and quantity) varies with each ship. The total heat capacity and dissipation rate can be seen in the ship stats in the hangar. Different ships have varying capacity and dissipation rates, making some ships better than others at sustained fire. In general, the highest heat capacity can be found in heavy fighters, then medium, then light, and lastly bombers. While bombers do carry the same machine guns and cannons as fighters, they cannot fire them for nearly as long as fighters can since, as you might guess, the bombers carry guns for defense rather than offense - which isn't to say you can't but they aren't as effective as this.

Generally, the slower-firing a weapon is, the more heat it generates per shot. Machine guns generate little heat but despite this it can build up quite quickly. Cannons fall into the middle ground, allowing for 10-20 shots before having to cool off. The heavy cannon is more limited than the fast cannon, firing a bit slower but generating a fair bit more heat per shot. Beam cannons naturally generate the most heat of all, limiting those ships to just one or two beam shots before having to cool off.

However, an exception to this rule is having multiple of the same gun on one ship - the firing rate is proportionate to how many linked guns the ship has. 2 guns will have double the effective firing rate of 1, and generate heat proportionately faster.

Especially now that the game is down to just one server, it's important to understand how this game deals with latency in order to be able to dodge and accurately time the remote detonation of rockets despite ping (to name just two examples).

For reference, I'm in Australia; I experience 200 ms to 300 ms latency at US game servers and Moon Breakers is no exception. Despite this, it hasn't made it impossible for me to react as quickly as a local player could. However achieving this takes an understanding of what is and isn't affected by latency, to what extent, and how to get around those limitations.

Players experiencing packet loss - as the game has little to no compensation or much tollerance for latency built into it like many modern games do - might start teleporting around, usually flying in straight lines and suddenly changing course, and so on. The player affected themselves can't tell this is happening but other players watching them can. This doesn't happen too often but it does happen and bears mention here, so please don't accuse players of cheating if you see this going on, they may not even be aware it's happening for them. Conversely these players when affected, might notice that turrets in particular are hitting them repeatedly despite their best efforts to dodge.

Aiming guns should not be an issue in this regard. As mentioned before, if you can see your bullets / projectiles hitting something, the damage is already on its way to the target and the game will reflect this soon after. At the same time, you will see that damage done to you arrives with a delay, whether being shot or colliding with something. It does make mutual kills quite frequent when both players are about on the same skill / accuracy level.

No... The issue in this game begins and ends with the game server being the ultimate authority on where any spawnable entity is and what it's doing. Anything that the guns shoot out does not fall into this category because of the above "if you see it hit it hit" rule (dodging gunfire isn't straightforward, you'll see soon enough how and why that is). However it does affect players, turrets and importantly, missiles, rockets and torpedoes.

You may have noticed on high ping that despite turrets looking like they're delayed in turning at you and shooting, you sometimes take damage a bit earlier than you'd think - this is because on the server, it's already happened. What you're seeing is a delayed feed of what the server says is going on. Equivalently, your position and velocity on the server are delayed proportionately to your ping, so you have to keep in mind that tracking any of these entities requires a bit of foresight and anticipation. TL;DR it just means you shouldn't rely entirely on what you see to dodge, because by then it's a bit too late.

This effect plays out a bit differently when any of these entities collide (such as ship vs ship, or ship vs missile). Excepting your own ship, every other such entity is affected by this delay, from your point of view. To dodge a missile with correct timing for instance, you have to assume it's a little closer than it actually is and you're a little bit closer to where you were than where you think you are.

This also affects the timing of rocket / torp / missile launches and remote detonations. To time rocket detonations, you have to fire earlier and detonate earlier. But since it's by the same amount, you can improve your odds of timing the remote detonation by estimating the flight time and remote detonating after that amount of time, as of firing the rocket. Eg, if i'm on 250 ping, the rocket flies at 200m/s, and my target is 300m away (let's say stationary), I'd need to take into account the firing delay when aiming and firing, but I remote detonate at exactly 300 / 200 seconds after I fire. Try to note these delays when working with rockets, it's easier to observe than being told how this works. Again, the explosion you see is in the correct place, even if the rocket seems to fly farther than that point.

However if you see other players trying to escape rockets or gunfire... Since everything else can be considered part of this "feed" from the server, you only need to consider this delay when and if it affects you - other times, what you see is what the server thinks happened: if you see someone else being hit by rockets or missiles, they really did make contact.

If it wasn't important enough to you before, these latency effects make it extremely vital to get out of your opponents sight, to the extent that you ought to be doing the chasing and not being chased. The reason is if you're chasing someone, you're chasing their (delayed) position on the server, making it much harder for them to dodge. If you do need to dodge and cannot turn the situation around, be mindful your enemy is "chasing your very long tail", and any evasive action you take will only appear to your enemy a significant fraction of a second later.

The upside is that if you can survive this harsh, delayed environment, you just might develop an ability to predict the future, if only a split second ahead.

For all the game's faults, there is one specific annoyance - the game does crash occasionally.

There have been some very rare times when the server itself became unstable and odd things happened (asteroids wouldn't spawn in right, everyone is lagging in sporadic ways). In that situation, my opinion is the server leaks memory, so this shouldn't happen anymore now that the player base has all but disappeared and consistent games with a lot of action don't happen often enough for this to be a problem.

However one specific game crash is almost consistent in its cause, contrary to what others may say, and my semi-professional opinion is that it's to do with the latency mechanics / netcode of the game. Specifically, this seems to happen most often with rocket remote detonation, but I believe this can happen in any number of situations that meet the relevant criteria.

First, it has to involve something like a rocket or a missile - something that's spawnable, and potentially has a very short lifetime on the server. In essence the crash happens because the game tries to interact with a spawnable entity that is no longer there on the server, or perhaps the other way around, but the essence is indeed the short lifetime combined with latency. The second component is that at least two players are involved - this crash has never happened to me when I'm alone on the server.

For example, two players spamming remote rocket detonations at eachother at close range, is a breeding ground for this problem. 99% of the time, it's a remote rocket detonation that does this, and for whatever reason either the rocket is no longer there to detonate, or whatever it damaged hasn't appeared on your game client yet.

The reason I'm sure of this is twofold. First, it does indeed happen to me when rocket remote det spam dueling with someone else. Second, if you know a thing or two about programming C++, then you'd zero in on "Pure Virtual Method Called", meaning that, most likely, some in-game entity that the game tried to work with or manipulate, wasn't "complete" or was misunderstood as to what sort of entity was being worked with / manipulated. Either an issue of timing or the data received from the game server, or both.

This is getting a mention in this guide so that you have some chance to avoid it - don't rocket remote det spam. It's mostly a safe thing to do, but do be more reserved about it if the game crashes too frequently as a result or if too many people are doing it near eachother.

Armed with dual machine guns and a rocket launcher, this is the first ship you start with along with the B-7 "Rhino" bomber.

Probably the most underrated ship in the game, it has two features that make it an exceptional dogfighter - its the choice of ship for learning to drift, and its shield recharge delay is one of the shortest in the game, and it has boost tanks better than most ships. This means you are able to shoot for longer in perpendicular-to-flight directions, and you can wear down the larger ships more easily provided you avoid sustained damage.

You will want to get close to your enemies with this ship, and abuse its flight mechanics to shoot them not just from behind but as you're dancing circles around them.

Avoid high speed head-on situations at all costs. You are at your most vulnerable if you are forced to 180, since you have to spend a lot of time, boost or both, slowing down and then speeding up again in the opposite direction. While these properties are good for drifting, it does make direct combat such as chase tactics and tilting more of a challenge.

The little brother to the F-3, this ship is faster and more responsive ship than its counterpart. This glass cannon's traits are its signature speed and boost recharge rate, combined with a rocket fire rate twice that of the F-3.

However it pays for these perks by having the weakest shields in the game, with a standard shield recharge delay. One scratch with an asteroid at high speed, or a single beam cannon lance is all it takes to go from 1000mph to space dust.

In every respect this ship should be played more agressively than the F-3. You are effectively a glass cannon, being able to spam rockets and outrun everything you can't finish off or wear down. If you do start taking damage, retreat is an option, and while your shields are brittle and yes even despite the slower-than-mamba's recharge rate, the smaller shields regenerate about as fast as F-3 once they start to regenerate.

Of course... Ideally you want to avoid all damage with this ship if you can and focus on outmaneuvering your enemy...

Of all the ships in the game, M3 would have to be my favorite to brawl with. I believe it's the slowest and has the least drift potential of any light fighter, but it makes up for this in a lot of interesting ways.

It is truly a unique ship in that it does not have rockets or missiles of any sort at all. Instead, it has a dorsal-mounted beam cannon, complimenting the standard dual machine gun that most light fighters have. Recall that beam cannons generate a lot of heat; typically ships with high-heat generating weapons have a much better time managing heat. This has flow-on effects for the machine gun.

While the heat management of this ship is designed to allow it to fire the beam cannon, it benefits the machine gun allowing it to fire for much, much longer than any other fighter. Remember that large burst dps potential of machine guns if they hit their mark reliably? The M3 multiplies that potential on this fact alone. And it doesn't stop there, because of the improved heat dissipation rate, even if you totally overheat, you can still fire the machine gun faster than other light fighters in the same situation. To compensate for this the beam cannon can't be fired as frequently as other beam ships.

Try to use boost sparingly on this ship, it's good practice for the larger, slower ships that must do the same or face a death by 1000 papercuts. Your inability to drift and relatively slow speed allow you to maneuver more accurately in tight spaces.

The drawback is that you can't make use of the machine guns and beam cannon at the same time - there isn't enough heat capacity to do both effectively save for a small burst of MG prior to firing a beam, or firing a beam first, etc. For every engagement, you need to be mindful whether you're after a one-shot all-or-nothing burst of damage with a small MG followup or preamble, or a longer, sustained stream of damage from the MGs alone.

The second of three beam ships for the game, the M10 krait is hands-down my favorite. Depending on how it's used, it can be argued that it's the single most effective overall combat ship. In saying that I need to stress that to reach that point, there is a high skill curve centered around being able to manage the rate of fire of the beam cannon, aside even aiming it.

In flight performance, it's slightly more maneuverable than the M3. It has a signature dual rocket launcher, which can yield a collosal amount of damage if both rockets hit the same target. That alone makes it a severe threat to heavy fighters and bombers, which aren't too hard to hit directly with rockets (compared to other ships at least).

On the flipside, if you struggle to aim the beam cannon, this ship will seem quite underwhelming since rockets aren't much easier to deal damage to moving targets with. Against turrets however, the 1-2 double rocket salvo can take out half of the armor just like that, so there's some use even in the worst case.

If you do learn to aim with the beam cannon reliably however, the next step is to learn the timing of firing them. You can fire 3 consecutive beams, which have a fire rate of 1.25 seconds, which is nice since that's enough damage in itself to deal with anything up to some heavy fighters. But the real key is firing about every 2.8 seconds. *fire*, *pause-and-a-touch*, *fire*, etc...

At first that seems like very little damage compared to say, the M3 unloading with machine guns. However, the power lays in the fact that 1. you can fire single beams at that pace indefinitely; 2. that you can speed up to 1.25s intervals if you have to and upon overheating, fire a touch slower (or wait just shy of 3 seconds) to return to the indefinite firing rythym; and 3. that the beam cannon has close to a 2km reach when upgraded.

You definitely want to avoid facing off against homing missile ships, especially mobile ones like the top-of-their-class missile brawlers (V-66, X99, FH-250), because you can't outrun them and unless you can hit those tiny missiles with a beam, you have only rocket remote detonation to defend against missiles. Also to avoid are other light fighters until you have some experience with aiming beams, for more or less the same reason.

If you enjoy your light fighters and want a taste of homing missile action, this is the ship for you.

In many ways it's a hardier F-3X, with superior shields, similar raw speed and acceleration, but rather standard boost tanks. In addition to, of course, a homing missile rather than a rocket launcher.

Without over-specializing or having played the game for a long time, this is indeed the best light fighter overall if we go by stats alone. It's boost tanks leave something to be desired, so against other light fighters such as the F-3X or F3, it will run out of steam a lot sooner despite its other advantages, and this quickly equalizes the situation.

As such, this is a hit and run ship through and through. You get in, do your damage and/or fire and forget a homing missile for that easy burst of secondary damage, and get out. Avoid extended conflicts; this is not a ship that will last a long time in a sustained brawl, since its speed counts for little if it can't make use of it fully once you lose boost.

The last of the beam ships in the game, and by no means the least powerful. Using the M10 as a starting point, this ship takes an opposing philosophy - dual beam cannons and a single, fast rate-of-fire rocket launcher.

The first thing to get used to is that medium ships generally aren't as maneuverable as light ships; they turn a touch slower, with slower base speeds and accelerations. You will want to avoid engaging light ships as that's near certain suicide if you don't win with the opening shot. You see, unlike the light fighter beam ships, firing two beam cannons simultaneously generates an inordinate amount of heat - so much so that the FM-25 can't fire its primary weapon more than once every 4.5 or so seconds, which can seem like a lifetime in length as your enemies pelt you with bullets and missiles between your salvos.

However, two beams fired and hitting simultaneously is itself a death sentence for anything short of one heavy fighter and bombers. All light fighters hit with two beams will pop instantly. All medium and all but two of the heavy fighters will be reduced to a fraction of their shields remaining. And anything else that survives will lose from a third to over half of its shields.

The catch is that the beams are fired spaced apart, so supposing you did aim the beams correctly, there's always the chance only one of them connects. Particularly an issue with light fighters flying directly at you, and becomes more of a problem the farther away your target is from the beams' point of convergence - roughly 1200-1400m. It's not impossible to have both beams connect at very close range or at maximum range, it's just harder and more sensitive to the orientation of your target: a side-on light fighter flying upwards on your screen might narrowly evade both beams, but for contrast, hitting a bomber or heavy fighter from above / below is unlikely to hit with just one beam.

You ought to focus on hunting heavy ships and bombers, dogfighting light ships with this is not for the faint of heart. Avoid enemies that have superior maneuverability, or better yet try to take them out at range before they can get close and avoid your beams entirely. To that end, your rocket launcher is a missile defense / last resort or finishing weapon. As a final note, especially try to avoid facing off the next medium ship...