Armaments are a very important topic of your training. Your ship includes both phasers and torpedoes. Before engaging in battle, you may wish to review tactics.
Full phasers will do 1,000 units of damage to a target next to your ship. The further away the target, the less damage from the phasers. At a distance of more than half-way across the sector, phasers are useless. However, a phaser shot is instantaneous, and always hits, even if you are pointed in the opposite direction.
To use the phasers, you must lock on to the target and fire.
in the short-range scan. If you
tap on empty space, the phasers will not lock. If you tap on the
wrong thing, for example, a star, the phasers will lock on that
item as a target. You can blow up a star or
base. This is not a good thing.
to fire. The short-range scan will show
the firing phaser. The message area (at the bottom of the window)
will show if the shot hit.
When the target moves (or you move), the phaser lock will remain until you choose a different target, or one ship flies out of the sector.
A full phaser blast uses 500 units of energy. You can change the amount of energy used (and damage done), by resetting the phaser strength with the slider. Even when the target is out of the effective range, you will still use that amount of energy to fire. You can continue to fire phasers until your energy runs out.
Photon torpedoes will do 2,000 units of damage to a target next to your ship. Again, the further away the target, the less damage they will do. Torpedoes are still effective across the entire sector, doing 1,000 units of damage. At that range, it is very easy to avoid a torpedo shot.
Torpedoes do not lock on as phasers do, and can be avoided, especially at long range. Torpedoes fire forward, that is, along your current heading.
to fire. The short-range scan
will show the torpedoes shooting across the sector. Torpedoes fly
at twice full impulse (about warp 2). The message area (at the
bottom of the window) will show whether the shot hit and what
damage it did.
Phasers depend on the energy available to the ship. With 125 units of energy left, you can fire the phasers at quarter strength.As you gain energy, your ability to fire phasers returns.
Your ship starts the game with 10 torpedoes; this is the most you will have. Your ship creates torpedoes from energy. Once your ship reaches its maximum energy (5,000 units for an Amalgamation ship, 4,000 units for a Klingette bopper), each 1000 units it gains over that will be converted into a torpedo. The extra energy is not shown. It is easiest to reload torpedoes docked at a star base.
If a star or base is between you and your target when you fire, the phaser or torpedo will hit whatever is between you. If you repeatedly hit the star or base, it will explode. Any explosion will damage your ship. The small explosion from an exploding enemy causes little or no damage. The explosion of a star base, a much larger object, will damage your ship and might throw you out of the sector. The explosion of a star will do even more damage than a base.
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