Turning your side to the enemy becomes the manoeuvre in heavy-ship combat. Until now it wasn’t: the firing cone was drawn on the hangar silhouette and the turrets swung respecting it, but it was never checked when firing. A frigate with a target glued to its stern emptied 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 used to be ±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 had an ugly flaw: anyone flying over you from behind fell outside every slot, even with no hull between you. Now the arc 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 no longer hover over the engines and be safe.
The target panel now 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.
A delay that really was our fault disappeared along the way: giving the attack order and nothing happening for four tenths of a second. The first shot now leaves in 0.02 s on any heading.
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.
- NPCs 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 used to hang 29 px below the taskbar and swallow the whole experience bar.
- 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 freezing is worse than a pause — the server keeps simulating and you became a stationary target.
