Many basic techniques are covered by the Tutorial above. This section primarily deals with advanced techniques and alternative strategies.

On this page:

5.1 Fast flight
5.2 Remote piloting
5.3 Battlecruiser or Interceptors...?
5.4 Battlecruiser combat
5.5 Destroying capital ships
5.6 Interceptor combat
5.7 Starstation attack
5.8 Ground attack
5.9 Mining
5.10 Trading
5.11 Salvage
5.12 Crew
5.13 Advancing time
5.14 Upgrades

5.1 Fast flight

There are times when it is useful to be able to break the 'speed limit'. R_wilco's method involves accelerating until maximum regular speed is reached (around 2000), selecting VTOL by pressing Caps Lock, then push forwards on the stick. Deselect VTOL, and repeat. Gradually the speed increases. "I got the BC up to 50,000 KPS once. Slowing down is a big problem. You can do the trick backwards, which barely works, you can turn the ship around a lot to lose momentum, or you can just wait until you are within range of a space station, and hit ALT+D to dock." Docking works regardless of your speed.

Borg12 writes: "A better way to go real fast is to set the autopilot to go somewhere distant, wait till you go fast enough, shut off the autopilot, then point the ship toward your destination." Rico Jansen explains: "Your ship is preparing to hyperjump. But then you abort the procedure and the ship stays in the same state (speed)." Although some speed is lost as a result of turning, this is negligible.

5.2 Remote piloting

There are several ways to remote pilot a support craft between locations. The use of waypoints and 'Fly To' style commands is covered in the Tutorial above. Rico Jansen notes that the Navitron can be accessed from shuttles, even though they do not technically have a Navitron (ALT+N does not function). Instead, Switch To the shuttle, then either access the roster (ALT+R) and then select Navitron from the Galcom menu, or enter Tacops and select Nav from the Command Palette. Locations selected in the Navitron in this way are automatically read by the shuttle as a series of jumps.

5.3 Battlecruiser or Interceptors...?

Ronvatar writes: "I've been taking on every enemy ship I find just with the battlecruiser. Turrets and Vagrants kick arse." One advantage of deploying missiles from fighters is you can dive-bomb larger ships with greater precision. Multiple missile delivery at point-blank range can cause far more damage than missiles launched at separately at range.

From Scharmers: "Your BC is distressingly fragile. You can almost bet that while you are out gallivanting in your fighter in a nice dogfight thousands of clicks from base, six other enemy battlecruisers are going to warp in around your battlecruiser and pound it to pieces."

R_wilco comments: "It does seem like fighters are a little pointless. But there are some things fighters can do that capital ships can't. For one, they can easily outrun capital ships, and do a whole lot of damage while the PTA turrets are STILL locking on. Also, it's better to have fighters attack planetary targets because the BC is hard to control in a planet's atmosphere." Spuzzum writes: "Fighters I reserve for suppressing enemy incursions involving a carrier. While concentrating on 'removing' a Stormcarrier, I can't deal with its fighters too well."

There are several important disadvantages to fighting with interceptors. They take far fewer hits to destroy: Indeed, if one is very (un)lucky they can be destroyed in a single ram. Early in the game your fighter pilots are not particularly capable, so anything complex requires you to switch to the interceptor and pilot it yourself, leaving your other more valuable assets with AI based command. The biggest long term problem is a lack of firepower - once missiles have been used, laser fire takes longer to destroy a target than PTA/IOD fire.

5.4 Battlecruiser combat

As with any space simulation game, the first rule of combat is keep moving. Specifically, enemy ships have a hard time targeting you if you are not only moving but also changing your speed and/or direction slightly as you move. This does not necessarily make it harder for you to hit the enemy - you should be able to plan and respond to the new positions faster than the enemy AI can: While the enemy is still deciding how to change its attack plan, you can be happily attacking it, and by the time the enemy has worked out a new attack plan, you will have changed position again. Many techniques involve the use of afterburners or retrorockets. For example, set the throttle at one level and occasionally fire retrorockets when you need to make a sudden change in speed, or are about to be outflanked by another craft. Retrorockets are preferable to any other technique because they invariably place the target back in front of your battlecruiser, where your IOD fire hit them.

From Pan: "I usually ignore the speed setting completely and manoeuvre with afterburners alone. With afterburner-back, you can keep the most nimble of fighters in front of your battlecruiser - and that's where they die. The reverse it true, too. Stay anywhere BUT in front of a Stormcarrier."

Spuzzum writes: "Align yourself perpendicular to the flight path of an inbound enemy ship. Then, hold the afterburner until you reach your normal top speed, then hold the retros until you reach normal maximum reverse speed, and vice versa, going back and forth. Enemies stand almost no chance of hitting you, all the while two of your PTAs are happily plugging away at the enemy."

Carsten Mallek writes: "Don't follow every fleeing craft in heavy battle. Be just happy that there is one enemy craft less attacking you. But try to take out enemy capital ships because you gain many experience points for them."

Pan writes: "If you need to get rid of a fighter, then you can feed it a Ralix or one or two smaller missiles. This will drop it's shields." Once fighters' shields drop to zero they will not recharge, making subsequent combat far easier. From Martin Henning: "If the enemy fighters run away when you launch from the battlecruiser at them, don't launch missiles. Hit your own retros, and reverse away from them. As they line up in pursuit, start throwing Leech mines at them." Mines aside, retro rockets can be incredibly useful when dealing with hostile craft that get too close to you. One can simply back away, exposing them to your IOD and allowing PTA to get clear shots.

Pugwash describes a method for dealing with many (30-40) hostile ships: "Set your jump target to a distant point, autopilot disengaged. Wait until the hostiles are swarming round you. Hit the autopilot when jump engines are fully charged (you also have to wait until the hostiles jump engines have charged). Before you reach your destination, select a new jump target, switch off autopilot, hit the afterburners as you approach destination and veer off sharply from flight path. Pick off the largest ship." There is a chance each time you jump that your pursuers will collide with one another, instantly destroying or severely damaging two or more hostile ships.

From Mano Faber: "In the event of an emergency you can use the probes as decoys when the battlecruiser is seriously damaged. Launch several probes, cloak and run. This will usually keep the pursuing fighters busy." Probes are constantly moving and small, making them hard to hit. Fighters will continually race after probes and very rarely manage to destroy them. AI pilots commonly regard probes as a significant threat, and so attack the probe as it is the nearest 'hostile' target.

5.5 Destroying capital ships

From Borg12: "To destroy capital ships, cloak and move within two clicks of the enemy ship. Unleash 8 or more Vagrants, then cloak and run. Be care about being rammed by cruiser." Multiple high-powered missiles, all fired at once, are apparently more effective than the same number of missiles fired individually. Cloaking is not always required. Often it is possible to get behind the enemy ship whilst the enemy is still turning to face you. Your battlecruiser should be able to soak damage from their PTA fire for a while.

Pugwash offers a variation on the cloaking strategy, useful if you want to stop the enemy ship moving, rather than simply destroy it. The method involves cloaking, with weapons and shield systems off. Once in position, tractor the enemy ship. Tractored ships cannot fire or launch anything at you. Clearly you are still very vulnerable to attacks from other ships, so this method cannot always be used.

Spuzzum writes: "My strategy for taking on enemy cruisers is simple. Set myself up on their six, power weapons to 40%-60%, and don't let up until you see the whites of their eyes as their corpses get splattered against your view-screen."

From David Slothouber: "The tactic that really works for me against cruisers and carriers is to get close and slow down to speed setting 3 or 4. At that speed it's much easier to aim and get a lock. I usually use the afterburner to move around or to get out of trouble if the shields start to drop to rapidly. Your missile are most effective at a range off about 5 to 10 km cause the quicker they get to the target the more damage they do. Make sure you use missiles with ATL or ATL/V tracking logic. These are the 'fire and forget' type of missiles, basically these missiles hunt their target down without you having to keep the target locked. Forget about CTL missiles, leave them for your ICs."

On cloaked ships, Eclipse writes: "If you think one is following you or may be in the area, see if any fighters jump to a part of empty space when they are damaged. Drop mines in the area and shoot like crazy." If the cloaked ship is a carrier, injured hostile ships may attempt to escape to it. So instead of destroying hostile fighters, let them escape and follow them. The point at which the escaping fighters disappear is the location of the cloaked carrier. Once you have the approximate location, random IOD fire tends to hit the cloaked ship, momentarily highlighting it.

5.6 Interceptor combat

AI controlled interceptors invariably attack head on. When fighting interceptor-to-interceptor, one tactic is to let the hostile interceptors come towards you, and use retrorockets to keep them at about 2 clicks distance. This generally ensures they never get close enough to you to do any damage - critically they never bump into you. Since they are always heading towards you, you should be able to fire at them with a reasonable level of accuracy. Your occasional application of retrorockets makes it hard for them to target you accurately, and helps avoid missiles and any other attackers.

An alternative approach from Steve Schacher involves drifting just to one side of the target, and using a broadside attack: "I wait until the ship comes out of hyperspace and then switch off the autopilot. I then match speed with the target ship and try to keep it on my side as I slowly circle around it."

Interceptors can be used to destroy capital ships. The secret is to find the blind spot on a capital ship - normally a point very close to the ship, often at the rear. Get into position rapidly, before enemy PTA systems have a chance to lock on. Although capital ships move, they tend not to move very rapidly, so it is possible to maintain such a position and inflict damage with missiles and laser fire. The main problem is deal with other craft that are also trying to attack you.

When issuing orders to AI controlled interceptors, it helps not to give precisely the same order to more than one interceptor. If several interceptors have the same order, there is a chance they will all conduct the same flight plan at the same time. This has disastrous results, because all your interceptors end up either getting in one another's way or colliding - very often inflicting more damage on one another than on the enemy.

Consider assigning one interceptor to do something, and another interceptor to escort the first. If the first gets engaged, the second interceptor will respond.

Interceptor pilots can be gagged, but you may miss important messages. Rico Jansen has a way to keep interceptor pilots busy without their constant chatter: "Throw out a crab mine once in a while when things get quiet in your area and put them on mine sweeping for the time being. Be careful. These things can bite hard. ... Why Crab mines? Well, they don't bite your BC when you launch them when your BC has forward velocity. Leeches are a pain - you have to go into VTOL flight-mode to launch them unharmed."

5.7 Starstation attack

There are two main approaches to capturing or destroying stations. The first involves methodical destruction of all the station's assets (craft and missiles), followed by a final assault on the station. The alternative method involves cloaking to evade the majority of the station's defenses, and attacking the station directly. Both benefit from an upgraded battlecruiser, particularly upgraded shields.

Seacow writes: "When entering the star-system I draw attention from the stations fighters. I battle them a while (rather far away form the station) and when there are no fighters left I make some circles around the station so it blows away as many missiles as possible. Now the station's only defense is its IOD. I lay myself in PTA distance and fires with the IOD (80% intensity). When the station release its bursts of IOD I just changes my course and/or speed by moving up or down and using retro rockets. The IOD will miss." Pan notes that IOD is effective against stations as far away as 50 clicks. While stations can also fire back, if you move occasionally that should not be a problem. Stations move slowly (orbiting the planet), so IOD fired at extreme range can still be effective against them.

Borg12 has a slightly different method of attacking the station: "Go within 300 clicks of the station. Designate it with all 8 missiles in the FATAL. Use the autopilot to fly toward the station until the speed reaches 10,000, then shut the autopilot off. Coast toward the side of the station, letting the missiles launch. Coast 300 clicks away from the station and repeat. You will be moving too fast for the station to hit with its IODs. When the station's armor reaches 3000, fly over it, point the ship toward the station, and 'fine damage' it with the IOD until you can capture it." The v2.0 tips file suggests 'lobbing' mines at the station as a means of attacking it, which may work in a similar way.

An alternative is to get very close. All stations have blind spots - points that they cannot fire their IOD weapons at. Finding a station's blind spot is something of an art. Normally it helps to approach the station so that it looks as thin as possible. The blind spot is very often between the 'top' and 'bottom' of the station when one is facing it from such a position.

On cloaking, Urza writes: "Turn on the cloak before entering the system, then, close up to the station, about 25 clicks. Cut the throttle to nothing. Then de-cloak and start pummelling the station with your IOD (and Vagrant missiles if you can afford them). Keep your PTA and EMD on to disrupt fighters and missiles. While doing this, keep an eye on your shields. If your shields are running low, hit the retro rockets, backing away until your shields recharge. Then hit the afterburners, closing the range. Repeat until station is crippled." There are many variations on this approach. Jaguar suggests getting within about 7 clicks and firing volleys of Vagrant missiles before re-cloaking and moving to a new position. The aim is to attack the station without it launching significant numbers of fighters or missiles. Care has to be taken with any cloak-based approach, since radiation levels can become critical before you have had a chance to complete the attack.

The v2.0 tips file refers to the possibility of starving a station of supplies by attacking all ships that attempt to reach the station: "Simply suppress all NPCs from entering the region and eventually the station's stores will be depleted enough for you to attempt a capture." In my experience, 'eventually' transpires to be a very long time, so how useful this tactic might be is questionable.

There are pros and cons to capturing or destroying a station. Capturing is harder to do because you must wait for the station to issue an SOS. SpcFX also notes that only a battlecruiser may capture a station, but it is theoretically possible to destroy a station using just an interceptor. Menchise writes: "When you destroy a starstation, starbase, or an orbital defense system, it's rebuilt over time. I recommend capturing the station instead of destroying it. When you capture the station, Raiders from other regions will try to recapture or destroy it, so you'll need to stick around for the repairs."

Captured stations can be useful if you have Fleet Command and Control and have been able to capture the station with the majority of its assets remaining. Cloaking strategies are favoured when attempting to capture station assets in this way, because the station can often be captured with most of its craft and missiles. This either makes it easier to defend, or allows its fleet to be stripped and used against another target.

5.8 Ground attack

Before attacking hostile ground targets with troops you should attack certain buildings and craft from the air. SpacePhish suggest dividing your interceptors into two groups - one Combat Air Patrol group and one Strike group: "Launch your Combat Air Patrol group. Switch to one of fighters. Once you get planet-side, turn on your EMD. Stay away from the Surface-to-Air Missile sites. Take out few enemy fighters if you want. Now switch back to the battlecruiser then launch your strike group. It's important you take control. I recommend flying one striking the planetary force and let the other one take care the SAMs." SpacePhish suggests setting the laser charge at 70% and dive bombing targets: "Get some altitude, then turn around, line up, fire your missiles but do not fire you lasers (some times you laser can destroy your own missiles). After you run out of the missiles then go back and finish them off with you lasers."

Ausraider2 writes: "Sometimes the Hyperdines would have absolutely no effect, or they would drop the buildings' armour to zero and then no matter how many Hyperdines or anything else I fired at it, it wouldn't go away." Carl Burning comments: "Try taking out the shield generator. But if you are having trouble with bases, then just nuke them. They won't mind on earth as long as it is an enemy base, not a friendly." Use of 'nukes' (OTS weapons) can be an effective start to a ground attack, or indeed eliminate the need for any other form of ground attack. Gomez writes: "I found this neat device known as an OTS Missile. Specifically, the Bugnor. Terran/Insurgents on Earth? Not any more..."

Although interceptors are the only truly combat capable craft you have for planetary attacks, Korono Lakeela notes: "You can do the crazy man's ground invasion and bring the old girl [battlecruiser] down to the planet and bring her over the target and lay waste to it with your heavy guns." You won't be able to target anything, but PTA and 'random' IOD fire can be quite effective. You cannot land your battlecruiser on the ground, however Pan suggests you can land the battlecruiser in the sea without adverse effect.

From Apollon: "Hop into an ATV and take out the SAMs. You get around 100 EPs for each building you destroy." An alternative is to deploy marines. When unloading troops from a shuttle, the troops may bump into the shuttle - it's a bug, possibly related to not landing on flat ground. Even if you are engaged in ground operations, you can still use your support craft, as Tac writes: "Nothing beats tractoring enemy marines with your shuttle and dropping them from high altitudes >:) ."

It is not thought to be possible to capture starbases, however if you have the rank of Supreme Commander you can order existing Terran/Military assets found on planets, notably launch fighters from launch-pads and ground units from HQs and bunkers (from Mano Faber/Andrew Vogel). On attempting to capture starbases, Ausraider2 writes: "I'd gotten the base name to turn grey on the CVD (still no SOS) and tried docking the interceptor then, but no luck." This probably relates to the need to capture things using the battlecruiser and the inability to dock a battlecruiser with a starbase.

There are few strategic advantages of owning or destroying ground based units and infrastructure, except perhaps to stop odd hostile planetary bases launching fighters to conduct operations in space. Attacks against space based infrastructure have more strategic value. Ground operations remain as an add-on - something to do when you want some extra experience or want to try something slightly different.

5.9 Mining

Jerold Keenan writes: "As soon as I start a character, I send my shuttles down to earth and drop off the mining drones, call my shuttles back and then go out searching for some cannon fodder. Once you've been seriously hurt go back to Galcom HQ and repair." By the time repairs have been completed, the drones will have started to fill up. You can recover them and sell their minerals. Hugo Pinheiro notes: "This works much better on the Moon because there is less fleet activity. And you know they won't go after your drones or you when you are loading or unloading." I have personally never had any problems with hostile forces attacking my mining drones on Earth, but the Moon is certainly quieter than Earth, so it may be easier to recover drones there.

There may not be any relationship between where you place a mining drone and what minerals it recovers - it seems random to me. Indeed, some discoveries are slightly odd, like Pearls on the Moon. John writes: "I've noticed areas when I mine that contain certain elements kind ...maybe wrong. Like one area there was more Iridium than anything else. Another area was void of any good minerals."

Mano Faber and Andrew Vogel suggest deploying your mining drones near a starbase and leaving a shuttle close: "When the mining drone is filled you just retrieve it with the shuttle and dock at the local starbase." This saves some time travelling to and from the location you deployed the drones, but means leaving a shuttle on the surface throughout. It is perhaps the only time a starbase would be used in preference to a space based star station.

5.10 Trading

The maths behind trading is shown in How are trade prices calculated? above. Most trading strategies involve initially selling spare parts to raise trading capital, finding at least one profitable route/cargo at the start of the game, and then rapidly making large sums of money from it. Once the basic concepts behind trading are understood (differences between stations based on their production speciality and inflation rate), trading is a very easy way to make money. Since there are no obvious strategic reasons to trade beside making money, most players cease trading after the first day, having already made considerable amounts of money. Most of the specific routes mentioned below are intended to be used during the first day of play. If you are trading at other times you will find the same general techniques apply, but the specific examples given may not be the best way to make money.

The most basic form of inflation based trading is explained by Charles Lindsey: "Fly to a station with an inflation rate. Sell some parts and junk to get starting capital. Go back to Galcom where inflation is 0% at start of game. Buy more junk. Repeat. If you watch your station specialties you can get a bit more."

If you buy a station's specialties, and sell to a station with a different specialty, there is additional scope for making money. Conventionally this involves buying AD items at Galcom HQ (AD specialty with 0% inflation at the start of the game) and taking them to a non-AD station with a higher inflation rate.

Simple routes are restricted to Sol, travelling between Galcom HQ and either Gazer near Pluto or Genesis near the Moon. Indenture writes: "I started to trade Deflector Arrays to Gazer in Pluto, and pick up Launch Arrays and Medibays to ferry back to Galcom HQ. I've been doing that for a couple hours now and I'm up to 35 million." Gomez comments: "I did Cloning Modules. It gets better a few jumps further, but I found that speed of gaining money, is more important than straight up profit from a longer trip." Deflector Arrays are widely considered to give the best long term profit per unit of cargo space. Some prefer to transport OTS or ODS weapons. If you are trading using your battlecruiser do not overlook the possibility of trading fuel. The absolute price and profit per unit is low, but you have a huge fuel capacity, most of which you do not need.

Higher profits can be made by seeking out stations with up to 40% inflation rates. Galcom HQ, Sol to Velari in Polaris-2 is often considered to be the best route. This involves more jumps than Sol-specific routes and passes through several hostile regions, however overall gives around a 50% profit margin in one direction. A few stations offer higher starting inflation (50%, potentially giving around a 60% profit margin on one trip), but these are too far away to be much use at the outset. Aaron Baugher writes: "I built up my money by transporting weapons and spare parts from Galcom to Alpha Centauri, Tramis. That's not the most profitable run around, but I found it to be a good balance for me between profitability, risk, and time consumed."

Aaron Baugher continues: "The down side to the economic system is that in most cases, goods at a station with a higher inflation will all have higher prices than goods at a station with lower inflation. So, I could make a high profit going from Galcom to Tramis with just about anything, but couldn't find anything much to take in the other direction. So I ended up running with an empty cargo hold half the time." Some player prefer to balance profit margins on each leg of the trade route, and so will seek to avoid inflation based differences - for example trading between Orion (Jupiter) and Gazer (Pluto), which have similar inflation rates, but different specialities. After a few runs the most important factor becomes how many of the most profitable item you can physically fit into your cargo bays. At this point the exceptionally good ratio on Deflector Arrays means that it may be best to trade a full consignment of Deflector Arrays from Galcom HQ to somewhere with a high inflation rate, even if this means there is no other profitable cargo to bring back: The total profit on Deflector Arrays is significantly higher than anything on the return journey.

Trading is most efficient when done using remote piloted shuttles. With care this allows healthy profits to be made from trading, while not forcing you to use your battlecruiser for such mundane tasks. Instructions for single-shuttle remote trading are given in the Trading part of the tutorial above. Multi-shuttle operations are possible, but in reality one shuttle should be capable to making more than enough money in an hour or two, so there is little need to have two or four shuttles running around.

5.11 Salvage

Debris fields are an easy way to find upgrades and/or make a modest profit by trading unwanted salvage. Logically, they should have a finite amount of cargo pods, however by switching to Tacops and back, or by saving the game, debris fields are automatically restocked. Derek Smart explains: "Due to memory constraints, the debris field wasn't cached. It was re-created each time you or an NPC entered it. And flushed when you left." This means that three or four shuttles can be kept busy in a debris field for as long as the battlecruiser remains there. This does not generate the same profits that trading can, but is altogether less effort. Debris fields can be swept in what would otherwise be down-time for your battlecruiser - perhaps while systems are being repaired or upgraded. Some debris fields appear to be better than others, both in terms of having a greater number of pods, higher proportion of full pods, and a higher proportion of pods with expensive items or upgrades in them. My personal preference is the debris field in Mars, Sol, but there are certain to be better fields out there. Rosko notes that Polaris was found to contain a lot of useful debris.

R_wilco comments: "If you tractor-tow an enemy ship, you can deliver it to a starstation (by docking with it) for some money." It is rarely worth going out of your way to tractor ships to safety, but often shuttles can be used to drop ships off at nearby stations, or you can drag a disabled ship to a station you are already planning to visit.

5.12 Crew

Shingen writes: "DON'T send out your pilots on combat missions until they have AT LEAST 50-75 AI, or you'll be spending a lot of time in the medibay cloning pilots. Only way I've found to increase their AI is by leaving them in AI mode for extended periods of time... I generally put them in ATVs and set them on the moon in AI mode and have them run SAD or HOLD. I let their fatigue get to around 35 or so before I bring them back aboard the battlecruiser, then send them back out, rotating the pilot/co-pilot positions. Marine AI increases when they are in 'search' mode I think, which helps a lot with getting those pesky intruders and on assault missions."

Powercow suggests: "Put your medics, flight/system engineers on 'rotas', where 1-10 are active, and 11-20 are off duty, so that when fatigues get too high you can swap rotas, and let the fresh bunch run things for a while." Ten of each on-station is also the minimum number required to keep your officers happy and prevent them from calling up additional crew. When you are expecting to see some action, call up more, even all. Not only will they be ready to act, but they will not get caught in crew quarters during battles: Crew accommodation _seems_ to be far more likely to sustain damage that areas like the Flight Deck or Operations.

There is no need to place 'injured' crewmen that are simply hungry in the Medibay - place them off-duty and they will make their way to the Galley to eat. Crew need to eat about once every 8 hours. Often after a battle you will find you have several crewmen who think they are injured. By the time they have reached the Medibay may will have been healed - possibly they have been treated by wandering (searching) Medics; possibly they were not really hurt to start with.

From Speed: "When you shut off life support, your crew goes insane, and jam themselves into whatever has air in it. I had 4-5 people in an interceptor at once." Derek Smart comments: "Once life support is compromised, they will scramble for the nearest life support system which can be any of the interceptors, shuttles or ATVs on the battlecruiser. Anyone that can't find one, will slowly die."

5.13 Advancing time

Sometimes it is useful to be able to advance time rapidly, without having to wait. For example, when waiting for mining drones to fill up or to give time for crews to rest. Cruis.in writes: "Order a shuttle to halt. Then swing your battlecruiser around, and aim at it with your IOD. Fire a couple shots [at about 50% IOD power]. Make sure not to destroy it, but damage it about half way. Order the shuttle to dock at the starstation around the planet. Then proceed to repair it. Now when you launch, you will see that the different repair times for each damages component, will have been added up, and will be added to the game clock just a few seconds after you launch." Prior to v2.09, Galcom HQ did not add a repair delay as other stations did. In v2.09 all stations add a repair related delay.

Cruis.In continues: "When everyone's tired, I do this too, but usually I have damage sustained from drunk enemy pilots hitting into my battlecruiser, touching my shining armour. I set everyone to off duty, go and repair at a station, and they've come back on-duty somewhere in between that down time and are all tired again. So what I do is I put everyone in Medibay because they can't leave there without being discharged."

Commander Zeke Stone writes: "If you ever want to quickly drop the fatigue factor of you officers and pilots, simply send them all to the medibay. Next upgrade one of your systems, for example your Nuclear Reactor. Make sure you do this near a space station, dock with the station and repair the reactor which, of course, drops to 50% when upgraded. Do this a couple more times if needed. Of course this method requires you to have some money so that you have two different Nuclear Reactors."

5.14 Upgrades

Pan writes: "Do upgrade the shields. Armor is nice if you have extra cash but it won't help you survive." Shields are also one of the cheapest upgrades - the best shield is affordable immediately if you sell some spare parts. With the increased fuel requirements in v2.09, early upgrading of engines and reactor has become important.

Most upgrades can be completed in 10-20 minutes, but if you cannot wait that long, Jaguar suggests: "Buy all the upgrades you want at Galcom, leave, tell your engineers to get started on the repairs (upgrades), and then dock with Galcom again, and ask them to finish the repairs." This completes all the upgrades. While this still uses game time, it does not use up as much play time.

Pugwash has a method of gaining instant upgrades. First sell as many spare parts, weapons, and unused supplies as possible, buy a Trellis, Numega, and Linear IV, and launch. "Set ten engineers upgrading the reactor, 5 engineers upgrading the engine, and 5 engineers upgrading the shield. Dock at Galcom immediately. Sell the old reactor, shield and engine that have just been upgraded and buy the Titanium V launch from Galcom. Now upgrade your Hull armour but do not set any engineers to install/repair it. Exit Logistix and look at the hull armour display - it will be at half then jump to full. Check the battlecruiser status - hull is now 2500 but Logistix will show Hull/armour (Titanium/V) 100% but highlighted in white (repair suspended or not scheduled). Do not set any engineers to repair because once you take some damage to the hull the white will be removed and if you have taken 1-2% damage that is all you will have to repair without any time penalty."