Until now a drone at the bases and a cruiser in the Crucible made the same decisions: pick the nearest target, orbit, shoot. The difference between one map and the next was how long they lasted. From today the difference is how they fight.
Four schools of flying
An enemy’s level no longer tells you only how tough it is: it also tells you how well it flies. Next to the level, the marker now reads Veteran or Elite when you’re facing one of the two top bands.
| School | Where it flies | How it fights |
|---|---|---|
| Automaton | Both home bases | Shoots where you are, takes a moment to open fire, never runs. It’s there to learn on |
| Recruit | Zeta System and Earendel | The combat you already know, unchanged |
| Veteran | Alcyone Veil | They call each other in, share targets, and attack from above and below |
| Elite | The Crucible | They surround you in shifts, finish off the weakest and don’t let you leave |
The entry front stays as it was. Zeta System and Earendel are where you learn to fly and they have not been made harder: the only thing that changed there is their aim, and it changed in your favour.
Manoeuvring finally works
They used to hit you just the same whether you sat still or crossed at full speed. Now the shot gets harder for them the faster you cross their line of fire, and each school corrects for that difficulty better than the one below:
| Crossing at… | Automaton | Recruit | Veteran | Elite |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| stationary | 99% | 99% | 99% | 99% |
| 60 u/s | 33% | 84% | 97% | 97% |
| 100 u/s | 21% | 64% | 85% | 97% |
| 140 u/s | 16% | 49% | 74% | 97% |
Sitting still is still the worst idea in the game: nobody misses a stationary target.
When there’s more than one
A stray hit no longer makes them switch targets. They now remember who is actually hurting them, and taking a target off a squadmate means clearly beating them for it, not clipping it once from range. That means a heavy can hold the fire and keep it: soaking damage is a job, and it shows.
From the Alcyone Veil upwards, whoever takes damage calls their camp and everyone nearby comes in. And in the Crucible they don’t all shoot at once: some engage, others hold outside weapons range and relieve whoever is worn down, they go for the most damaged of the group, they sync their missiles into a single salvo, and if one of them runs another cuts across your nose to end the chase. Chasing the wounded one isn’t free either: it runs towards its own and burns hard to get there.
Fighters shake missiles off
A fighter with training breaks sideways when a missile comes in and has a little better than an even chance of breaking the lock; the missile flies straight on and burns out. It can do that once every 8 seconds, so two missiles back to back catch it with nothing left. Ships of the line don’t break — they turn far too slowly — and answer with the scatter cannon instead. Fighters dodge, heavies shoot down.
Two more things in combat
The lock cannon charges when the shot lands. The trace takes as long as it takes to cross the gap — around two seconds at 700 units — and the damage lands right there, not before. Point blank it’s instant; at maximum range your target has that much time to die by someone else’s hand.
Guided rounds let go of the target on arrival and fly straight on from the hull, instead of circling around it.
