Turning your side to the enemy becomes the manoeuvre in heavy-ship combat.
Every weapon fires only inside the sector its hull allows. The cone that was already drawn on the hangar silhouette now genuinely rules: a frigate with a target glued to its stern cannot empty all six slots into it.
Two numbers, and everything else falls out
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Half-arc of each slot | ±55° |
| Axis of the bow slot | −45° |
| Fan between slots on the same side | 10° |
From those, the three properties we wanted appear on their own, with no special rules:
- The front is always covered: the two bow slots cross the axis by 10°.
- Abeam, that whole side fires, with 10° of margin either way.
- The stern stays blind, and that is a big ship’s weakness.
| Class | Slots | Whole side on target | Stern blind spot |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gunship | 4 | 0° – 95° | 125° |
| Corvette · Frigate | 6 | 25° – 95° | 105° |
| Cruiser · Capital | 8 | 35° – 95° | 85° |
The arc was first tried at ±40°, and with it the “whole side on target” window landed on the bow quarter: turning side-on was the worst move, exactly the opposite of what a ship with broadside batteries asks for.
The stern blind spot is a cone, not a wedge
Measuring the sector only on the ship’s plane left an ugly gap: anyone flying over you from behind fell outside every slot, even with no hull between you. The arc now opens with elevation.
| Attacker elevation | Frigate blind spot | Cruiser blind spot |
|---|---|---|
| 0° | 105° | 85° |
| 30° | 75° | 55° |
| 45° | 35° | 15° |
| ≥ 60° | 0° | 0° |
The stern is still the weak point, but you have to attack it from the ship’s own plane. A fighter can’t hover over the engines and be safe.
The target panel shows how many slots cover it (“4/6 on target”), in amber when it isn’t all of them. Without that counter the cone is invisible and all you see is that “it isn’t doing damage”.
Fighters are deliberately exempt: their weapons still fire at the crosshair.
Salvo
Slots carrying the same weapon at the same level fire together. Two launchers send two missiles at once and send two more after reloading. The beat belongs to the group, not to each gun: a slot that comes on target late — because you’re turning the ship, which is the heavy-ship manoeuvre — joins the next salvo instead of drifting out of step forever.
And the order to fire is immediate: you give it and the first shot leaves, on any heading, without that pause that made you wonder whether the ship had heard you.
Scatter cannon
Point defence is gone and the scatter cannon takes its place. The old one was a perfect aura: it drained any missile inside a radius, always, in every direction, and was never once visible on screen.
The new one is a slot weapon like the rest:
- It shares the same cone. Coverage isn’t programmed: it emerges from how many you mount and where.
- It damages anything with health inside the cone, not just missiles.
- Damage falls off with distance and adds up where two cones overlap.
- Against hulls it does far less: closing in hurts, but a fighter can still make passes.
- It can’t be dodged — it’s a zone, not a shot — though armour still reduces it.
- Custodians carry it too when their profile says so.
- You switch it on and off by hand (G by default, remappable), with its own chip on the pilot panel.
And fighter missiles can now be shot down. They used to be immune, so a heavy bristling with scatter cannons still ate the most common missiles in the game.
Also
- Reorganised HUD: a single pilot panel top-left with name, hull, armour, evasion, the four resources and your War Points. Radar and FPS on the right. The bottom edge is left to chat and the experience bar.
- The hangar silhouette draws the real slots on the ship, in their physical position, numbered and with each one’s cone coloured by weapon type. It used to be a grid of identical boxes that all said “Weapon”.
- Fullscreen by default, with the resolution ladder in Settings › General and instant application. The window uses the whole screen and the experience bar is fully visible.
- Your ship no longer freezes when you open chat or the settings: it stops obeying, but keeps its heading and speed. In an online game the world keeps moving around you, so freezing means becoming a stationary target.
