Space Combat (PvE)
Where Away Missions are fast and frenetic, space combat is far more tactical. Two things are always in mind in a space encounter: positioning and power management. The first is huge. Each ship has shields on four sides and which way you face literally changes the outcome of battles.
Every weapon you equip has an arc of fire. Usually the equation is to sacrifice potency for arc. The average phaser or disruptor has a 75% radius around the ship. This means it can fire from the fore or aft (depending on which one it is equipped in) and both sides. Torpedoes tend to be one direction (fore or aft) and some higher end phasers, such as dual, also have a small radius.
Projectile weapons like torpedoes are also primarily used against the hull of a ship, while beam weapons are for shields.
The basic ships have three slots for weapons. This means to start you have fore and aft phasers and some torpedoes in the second front slot. The typical tactic in this configuration is to stay side on to your enemy and circle them. You blast with both your fore and aft phaser banks simultaneously from this angle, then swoop in for the kill when the shields go down with a well timed torpedo volley.
Other situations call for other configurations. When I was in single-target encounters against a much stronger enemy, I would equip dual phasers in slot one and dual phasers in slot two up front. Then keep my wider arc on the back, abandoning torpedoes altogether.
;)
Rather than dive in and get to a side position as fast as possible, I'd instead inch in to 10 KM away from my enemy (max firing range) and then cut the engines. From there, I'd move all power I could to my forward shields and blast him with the two sets of dual phaser banks. Naturally, the larger ships are slower and would take some time to close the gap. If they started to get close at all, I'd toss the thing in reverse, always being sure to keep my front shields towards him. The key to this strategy was not to get flanked (it was suicide if he had lots of friends), but the phasers blasted so fast that they quickly decimated his shields and would eat away the hull integrity before he could compensate. The downside to circling these foes with the side strategy is that you end up going fully around them and have to eat away all four shields to get the kill unless you're lucky. With a stationary strategy I could rip through the ship from one side.
The crew also plays a nice role in all this. The basic ship has one slot for each of an engineering, tactical and science officer.
The science officer does debuffs and buffs. For example, I tended to use someone who had tachyon beam experience, which was basically a shield debuff on a single target. Although, tractor beams (essentially a speed debuff) were also popular.
The engineer is usually more internally focused. They can give you a quick boost. Remember when Picard yelled "Emergency power to shields!" That's what the engineer does. They can give you a quick shield boost, more power for your weapons, some extra speed or whatever you chose. Being a tank type, I had someone with the Emergency Power to Shields ability.
The tactical officer is about the weaponry. Here I rotated since I had two tactical officers on staff. One gave a buff to torpedoes. Essentially, for 30 seconds, you could fire a volley rather than one at a time. It was really handy if there was a brief opening in the shields. The other had "Fire at Will," which let me use all of my guns when outnumbered. If I was at an angle where one of my phasers was not facing my target, this ability would have it fire on another target in its radius.
Another huge part of space combat is how you set up your power distribution. There are four components: auxiliary, engines, weapons and shields and you have 200 points to distribute. The game comes with four basic presets, each one focusing a full 100 on the area of choice, 50 on a secondary complimentary system and 25 on the other two.
The choice of where you put your energy modifies the efficiency of those systems. More power to weapons makes for more damage, more power to auxiliary improves your science skills like tractor beams, etc. Generally though, as a largely solo tactical captain, I found myself almost eternally in Attack, which goes 100 to weapons, 50 to shields and 25 to auxiliary and engines. It's not quick enough to reliably change during combat, so usually this is a choice you have to make early.
;)
In space, like land, there is death penalty. If you die during a mission, you simply respawn nearby and keep working on it. There is also a pause function here too when you're in an instance.
Occasionally the controls (A and D bank left and right, W and A go up and down) can be a bit tough on the fingers. Again, an auto-attack would be nice. I found my thumb literally going a bit numb from mashing the space bar, which fires all available laser weapons, all night. Holding CTRL while hitting space fires any projectiles, but usually I just hit the three button. Managing your shields, engines, where you're facing, the camera and the weapons all at once can be a bit daunting, but is easy enough once you get the hang of it.
Movement can be a bit slow in space. There are wide turning arcs and sometimes a fight can lead you far from where it started. To make basic travel inside space areas faster, you can shoot to full impulse, but the down side is that this takes all power away from other systems. In other words, you have to be very careful not to get caught with your pants down since the systems take time to readjust.
Space combat is a welcome contrast to the ground content, and far more polished. The only complaint I have with it is that it seems Cryptic knows it's more polished and has made a lot more content revolve around it. I occasionally found some of the missions dragged on.
