Usecases for parts

Here are all the functional parts of the game. This guide outlines common use cases and gives a short analysis on the parts place in the meta of Career, Domination and Elimination (last updated: 21.11.2024)

Energy Weapons

Small Blaster

Flexible weapon with fast projectile speed but low damage. It often just gets outclassed by the more efficient heavy blaster

• Career: Decent in early game, but falls off quickly.
• Elimination: Sometimes used as a one of support weapon to finish crippled or rammed opponents off.
• Domination: Niche use on waste • kites which abuse the energy efficiency.

Heavy Blaster

Good sustained damage with the downside of requiring a large surface area.

• Career: Best used on kites early game or avoiders which are good at all stages of the game.
• Elimination: Used as the main damage source on avoiders for being light and having relatively fast projectile speeds.
• Domination: Used on decently strong kites or walls which hunt down kites.

Point defense

The best way to defend against missiles and also decent at stopping other projectile weapons. For front defence its often better to go with more reliable shielding instead but they are a good choice if you want redundancy or if you run a kite. Kites have the advantage of giving the pd more time to fire at projectiles before they make impact.

• Career: Good defence for ships which struggle against he missiles or emp.
• Elimination: Sees some use on kites which are very niche currently.
• Domination: Very strong choice for kites. They can make use of remaining command points and fire down cannon shells from interceptors trying to ram, emps or even the occasional missile ship. They can use the downtimes between engagements to refill with energy through their often very long supply lines.

Disruptor

The best way to take down enemy shields. It can not really do much else though. It pairs well with blasters or cannons, which struggle against shields.

• Career: Good support weapon on any ship that can spare the surface area.
• Elimination: Good support weapon on walls, avoiders and ion rammers.
• Domination: only sees very niche play due to the fact that shields are not as common as in elimination and that trying to go around shields is often better than fighting them head on. Still, they have a small niche on interceptors meant to hunt down kites or on shielded walls which want to win mirror matches.

Ion

The continues focused fire of ions makes them a strong choice for various ships. You can bury a core deep behind many defenses or you can spread the ions out to increase dps and protect them with shields and speed.

• Career: Strong main weapon on kites and rammers.
• Elimination: Ions have it rough in the current meta but they were used on kites, avoiders, cruisers and rammers. Kites and avoiders simply have much better alternatives and cruisers struggle to keep up in this fast meta. Even the strongest of these ships, ion rammers, lost the arms race against the more efficient chain gun ships.
• Domination: Only sees play on kites, but the great range makes them very successful there.

Mining laser

This was nothing more than a meme weapon in the beginning, ⁣but after some substantial buffs it has become barely playable in pvp. It deals very low amounts of damage but it is hitscan and they can be hidden behind a ton of armor just like deck cannons.

• Career: Aside from its obvious use of efficient salvaging it also makes for surprisingly good weapon. The main benefit is that it gives better drop rates of resources and keeps enemy reactors from exploding.
• Elimination: Mining laser orbiters are very off meta but also very fun to fight.
• Domination: Standard deck cannon ships can be refitted with mining lasers to provide more sustainability and a better way to defend against orbiters in exchange for firepower and a much higher cost due to energy requirements.

Projectile Weapons

Standard Cannon

Fast projectile speed, good penetration and high chance of setting fires but very low damage.

• Career: Decent early game or on small flanking ships.
• Elimination: Sees niche use as a support weapon on avoiders and ultra light orbiters to start fires.
• Domination: Niche use on fast interceptors.

Large Cannon

Very high penetration makes large cannons exceptional at dealing damage to exposed parts making them the weapon of choice for many flankers and swarms. Their high health pool often allows them to be used without additional defenses. They are weak against armor and shields though, which means that cannon ships mostly cannot win in a head on fight against ships using higher tech weapons.

• Career: Very strong early game weapon and good on flankers even into the late game.
• Elimination: Good on walls and swarms, which can use the cannons full potential.
• Domination: They warp the whole meta, being used on many different archetypes like wastes, interceptors or shielded brawlers.

Deck Cannon

This is probably the easiest weapon to use: Just place them behind layers over layers of armor and youll have a decent ship. Deck cannons deal high burst damage and are easy to protect but struggle against fast and maneuverable opponents due to their low projectile speed.

• Career: Excellent weapon on any highly armored ship.
• Elimination: They are used on rammers and heavy walls, but they struggle in the current meta. The low projectile speed makes deck cannon ships rely on fast speeds to catch the other fast meta ships but the heavy armor slows them down a lot. They are also just outcompeted in their niche by the stronger chaingun rammers.
• Domination: Used on the super popular tanky deck cannon ships which can take out most outer ships in a head on fight.

Chaingun

Functions very similarly to ions but their high weight makes them much less desirable for faster Ships. Probably the strongest melee weapon currently in the game at higher cost ranges. Chainguns need a lot of investment into magazines though which makes them very hard to use on smaller ships.

• Career: Great main weapon for rammers.
• Elimination: The best rammer weapon but really useable otherwise.
• Domination: Almost unusable. Too heavy for kites and inconvenient and inefficient for rammers. Sees niche use on rammers which are meant to hunt deck cannon ships. Good pilots can easily avoid a ram though.

Flak

Decent at defending against all kinds of projectiles but the limited firing range is quite limiting. A past nerf has made this horrible as a damage dealing weapon removing one of its main pourposes.

• Career: Decent against nukes. Its probably better to stick with point defense for most other situations.
• Elimination: Had great success on walls and ul • orbiters but is just bad after the nerf.
• Domination: Was very bad even before the nerf.

Railgun

The speed, range and precision is what makes rails one of the deadliest weapons in the game.

• Career: Railkites are very easy to pilot and super effective. Many consider it the best ship to make.
• Elimination: Maybe the best weapon in the meta. Multiple of the best ships use them to quickly punish out of position enemies showing a vulnerable part. Tractor beam railfans do this by rotating the enemy, railtraps attack from multiple sides and spinners use an interceptor to attack from another angle.
• Domination: Very hard to use due to low effectiveness at lower cost brackets. Sees very niche play on expensive railfans which try to snipe any ship flying by.

He Missile

Missiles are easy to use and can be put in fairly protected places. They are not very precise, but frequently hit opponents from a vulnerable side.

• Career: Can be used on various orbiters or sometimes flankers.
• Elimination: Missile orbiters are the best way to use missiles. They are very easy to pilot and have always been at least decent in the meta. Other ways to use them include kites, barges and diagonal cruisers.
• Domination: They can be used on niche missile orbiters which can take out smaller ships which cannot dodge when the opponent does not pay their full attention.

Nuke

Nukes deal devastating amounts of damage but are hard to land shots with. They require little ammo which makes it possible to fit them as a side weapon on many different ships. They flexibility and general strength makes them an amazing choice in any game mode.

• Career: Use them as a supporting weapon on basically anything. Or even use them as your main weapon to instantly vaporize the enemy if they cant dodge.
• Elimination: Nukes are a very popular side weapon on rammers, different orbiters or tb rail (basically on any ship). They are also the main weapon of ultra light nuke orbiters which can use their superior speed to literally throw nukes at your opponent making it impossible to dodge them.
• Domination: They are used on nuke sticks which are meant to quickly take out targets with high defense like 2 dc ships. They also see play on dc nuke hyprids which have high defense and the ability to take out other dc ships. They also see play on various other off meta archetypes.

EMP

A good alternative to disruptors in case you do not have the surface area or if you wanna stunlock enemy ships with a more powerful drain effect instead of only disabling their shields.

• Career: Good support weapon especially on long range kites which struggle to penetrate shields.
• Elimination: Sees use on some morbiters or even pure EMP barges which aim to stunlock opponents and kill them with a small interceptor.
• Domination: Emp orbiters are an essential part of your fleet which can take out wastes or disable reactor ships to make them easier to kill.

Mines

A good area denial tool used mostly on kites or avoiders.

• Career: Enemies in career are much slower than in the pvp modes. This makes mines a bit weaker as slower enemies will get hit by less mine shrapnel pieces, but the ai is also much worse in avoiding them than a player is. Its still good to have them on kites or avoiders.
• Elimination: Used on avoiders and kites to keep rammers and orbiters at range.
• Domination: Sees niche use on some kiters. There is also a off meta strategy of using mine layers to protect a point or even to block the spawn area.

Shields and armor

Armor

2x1 blocks and 1x1 weges are used most often for their compactness and penetration resistense respectively. Its used frequently in every game mode to soak high amounts of damage at the cost of credits and higher weight. The elimination meta probably uses the least armor due to the fact that good piloting can remove the need for a lot of redundancy. Being fast also is a very good strategy that doesnt pair that well with armor.

Small shields

A flexible defense tool which can accumulate a lot of value and can defend surface weapons from behind. Often used on ships with a lot of surface area weapons.

• Career: Pretty good at any stage of the game.
• Elimination: Used on orbiter walls, avoiders and some more off meta orbiters and rammers.
• Domination: Used on almost any kite, a lot of cannon ships and some deck cannon ships. It is the best way to defend your ship from continues fire in domination.

Large shields

Large shields provide a lot of defence and recharge quickly if they have good logistics. But the requirement for them to be on the surface in most cases requires some thought out layouts.

• Career: Strong side defense or front defense if supported with armor.
• Elimination: Large shields are what enables all of ultra light ships we see in the meta. Fast ships naturally synsergize with them dues to their weight, large coverege and the ability to recharge after manouvering out of enemy fire. They also play an important role as a strong last line of defense on armored ships like morbiters, ion or chaingun rammers.
• Domination: Used on almost any kite, a lot of cannon ships and some deck cannon ships. It is the best way to defend your ship from continues fire in domination.

Transportation

Small Thruster

Used as manouvering thrust on very small ships.

Standard Thruster

Used on some smaller ships or on bigger ships if there is space left on an engine room.

Large Thruster

The best thruster for smaller ships or avoiders. They have reletively small deadzones which makes them easy to defend and allows for compact and responsive thrust on avoiders.

Huge Thruster

Is mostly used when you just want a ship to move into one direction very fast and you cant use mrt for some reason. Tb rail for example still rely on them because of the faster rampup and their small deadzone.

MRT

The best thrust for any high cost mono thrust ship.

Hyperdrives and Hyperdrive beacon

• Career: Good utility and can be used to jump immobile ships like spinners into combat.
• Elimination: Only used on off meta ships which jump in some alpha ship to surprise attack or jump out an immobile ship like a missile stick.
• Domination: Sees niche use to just high cost ships like nuke barges in and out of danger.

Other

Capacitors

Capicitors can be a great help but with good logistics they can often be avoided. They are most effective for suppling the low energy storage point defense or the small shields in railgun barrels.

• Career: Sometimes useful but the abundance of resources often makes building another reactor just better.
• Elimination: Used in very long supply lines like the mentionead rialgun barrels. Also a important piece that allows 12er cg rammers.
• Domination: The tool that allows waste ships to be very cost efficient while still having a decent amount of range.

Sensor array

• Career: Every bigger ship should have it for the valuable information gathering.
• Elimination: Useless as elimination is played without fog of war.
• Domination: Sees niche use on emp ships which gather information and use the vision to fire their long range EMPs.

Explosive charge

• Career: Used for various smaller tricks.
• Elimination: Charges can blow off heavy armor to amke the ship more manouverable or remove structure like horns which already served their pourpose. You can also get around the 5 ship limitation with charges. You can also blow off your crew quarters to increase the ships speed.
• Domination: Only used on experimental oultra lights to blow off crew.