When you run into a combat situation, if you master the ships, you can save a lot of money and headaches by using cheap ships against them. Using the computer/computer autobattle, some of the following would be nearly impossible, but for a good human player you can probably win against the big guns with relative ease. For example (some spoilers because these are races you have to fight during the storyline):
vs. Ur-Quan
Almost any fast ship with a decent ranged weapon is an Ur-Quan killer. Just stay away from its big guns and you’ll be safe. Aside from the obvious quick ships like Pkunk, Spathi, or Supox which can destroy its fighters and plink them with speed or from afar or both, you can try the Earthling Cruiser. You won’t win if you start close to them, but if you can gravity whip using a planet and hit it with missiles, it’s not too difficult. Plus, the Ur-Quan won’t send any fighters after you due to your point-defense lasers
vs. Yehat
There’s a trick I use against some ships which involves letting the enemy chase you and then you matching their direction and velocity from just outside their weapon range. Start by going directly left or right, you can also use up and down but I find that the Y-axis seems to be shorter than the X-axis, giving you less room to work.
Anyways, when you’re moving in a perfectly straight light either left or right, with the Yehat still following you, turn around 180 degrees and tap the accelerator until your speed and the Yehat’s match (with some ships, you can’t match their speed, so just slow down just enough so that the Yehat slowly catches up to you).
When you’ve matched its speed, make sure its directly behind you. From there, assuming no stray asteroid collisions, you can simply hold the fire button down and poke the Yehat to death. This works great with Spathi, Syreen, Shofixti, Orz, Supox, Utwig, Thraddash, and other Yehat ships, because their weapons are either not that powerful, or not fast/numerous enough to get through the Yehat’s shields. But its pretty safe if you do it this way. Btw, it works with a Yehat vs. Yehat because since the other ship is chasing you, your weapons will have slightly greater range
vs. Slylandro
You can kinda zerg this guy down with a combination of point-defense lasers and nukes using the Earthling, or one completely safe way is to get the probe to follow a Spathi ship. At about medium distance, the probe will oscillate back and forth instead of catching up to the Spathi while you shoot at it with butt missiles
vs. Kohr-Ah
Kohr-Ahs, like their cousin Ur-Quans, can be defeated by a skilled Spathi pilot. Stay. Its funny but the flight patterns of the Spathi used to defeat both of these ships are essentially identical. Fly away from them at medium distance, get them to chase you, then zig zag back and forth so you stay at the max range of your butt missiles. Make sure no fighers flank you vs. the green Ur-Quan, and make sure you don’t move ahead too fast against the black Kohr-Ah so that their spinning disks disappear by the time you wrap around battle map
There’s a few other weird inconsistencies with the computer that make it vulnerable to certain ships. You’d never guess it, but advanced Arilou computer ships are pretty weak against Mycons. Try to stay at max distance or gravity whip yourself. The Arilou will take potshots at your ball of energy but usually get hit with it.
Computer Chmmrs are idiotically easy if you use the Thraddash and destroy all their satellites using the afterburner. The reason is that a human would simply turtle and stay in place, but the computer will chase you and run into the flames.
Computer Shofixtis are pretty much always going to suicide in battle. No shield protects against their explosion, so always go in with a ship capable of hitting them with long distance attacks. You’ll almost never be able to destroy them close combat, they will blow up before you get the final hit
If you fire while cloaked in an Irlwrath ship, you will always decloak facing the enemy ship. Also in super melee, VUX ships start their battles very close to the enemy, so that is the best way to kill them or hit them with limpets
). I’m not seeing any armor options, but it sounds like (from what I’m reading here), that I will change ships throughout the course of the game?
