Iaera, this is a wonderful reference - thank you for writing it up! I had been saving components for later installments of my guide, but hadn't had the energy to get around to it since posting the first half - and now I don't need to, as I can just point people here!
I particularly like how you broke it down into terms that don't require arcane knowledge of GSF's mechanics to understand. Definitely a good reference for learning players.
In the interest of keeping informative discussion going, I wanted to add my two cents on a couple of components you highlighted. (Came back up here after finishing the rest of my post to sheepishly admit that, as usual, my "two cents" turned into more like "two thousand cents." Brevity, someday I will come to know you... but not today.)
(Standard) Laser Cannons - I often refer to these as Standard Lasers, as they represent the middle ground of the laser options - they have no particular strength or weakness, and are all-around decent lasers in any situation. They have good range, good rate of fire, good damage, good tracking, and good power efficiency. I highly recommend these lasers if you are struggling with the lighter laser types. Other than their lack of specialisation and lower damage output than Quad Lasers, there's very little to complain about here.
I am in accord with pretty much all the info you provided in this guide, but wanted to highlight this bit on Laser Cannons as particularly good for newer pilots. I agree with your assessment that there's very little to complain about with Laser Cannons, and I would probably recommend them as the best Primary Weapon choice for newer players. Once you've learned the feel of how LCs handle, it won't be a hard shift to then branch into experimenting with Rapids, Lights, or Quads. But the beauty of LCs is that, for most people, there's no
need to branch into other components, really. If you're happy with your LCs, you'll continue to be effective in most circumstances.
Quad Lasers - The Laser Cannon's bigger brother, the Quad Laser handles almost identically. The chief difference is its significantly higher power drain in exchange for higher damage output - if you use Quads, you will frequently find yourself depleting your weapon power pool in short order, and this can result in unfortunate scenarios where you can't quite finish off an opponent. However, these are still very good all-purpose lasers.
Quads are my favorite, but they are a bit harder to master due in part to the higher power draw Iaera cites, but also due to the fact that they have lower accuracy and a lower rate of fire than standard LCs at max range. Basically what that means is it's a little harder to make shots with your Quads land, so you have to be more familiar with your range sweet spots and your aiming skills, in addition to managing your power more carefully - but if you are comfortable with that minutiae then Quads pack a stronger wallop. I personally like to stack my Quads with Frequency Capacitor to compensate for the lower rate of fire, which has the net effect of upping your DPS considerably but also even further accelerates the power draw and increases the risk of being left with no juice at all if your finger is too heavy on the trigger. For all of these not-rookie-friendly reasons, I personally wouldn't recommend them as a component to learn on, but they might be something to explore later on.
Heavy Lasers - At the top end of the laser spectrum, these lasers have the highest damage and range, but the slowest rate of fire. They are also virtually useless in close-range turning fights, thanks to their abysmal tracking and firing arc. With that said, these are solid lasers in most situations, and have some unique upgrade possibilities that make these very punchy and very nasty lasers to sling around if you prefer long-range damage output.
Heavy Lasers are a dangerously underestimated component. These canons are only found on Strike Fighters and Bombers, and while most Strike Fighters will probably be trying (for good or ill) to dogfight and will probably be relying on a different Primary, Heavy Lasers on experienced Bombers is pretty much standard fare. It's important to remember that not only are Heavy Lasers the most accurate of all the Primary components (making them more deadly to Scouts in particular), but they also have the options to be specced into
both shield piercing and 100% armor piercing upgrades - no other Primary component offers that combo, and it is deadly. (They don't actually have higher base damage than the other components - almost all of the Primary Components have higher base DPS numbers - but the armor piercing upgrade can magnify their ultimate damage output in the right circumstances.)
What all of that means to you as someone facing an opponent with Heavy Lasers is that you should
not try to face tank them. A lot of people make the mistake of assuming that a bomber sitting there shooting at you as you approach is just not going to be as deadly as a Scout or Strike doing the same, but if they are sitting there shooting at you with
Heavy Lasers then you are just asking to die; be evasive, as the tradeoff Heavies make for their high penetration and excellent range is terrible tracking on a moving target.
What all of that means for you
using Heavy Lasers is, as I mentioned in
the Tracking Penalty lesson of my guide, that Heavies may be a good choice for you if like fighting at long range, and if your preferred strategy is to focus on picking off a ship currently engaged with another pilot. As Iaera mentioned they are virtually useless in close range dogfights, but if you like to take your shots from a safer distance then they may work well for you. Just be aware that, like Quads (although for different reasons), it's very important to make every shot you take with Heavies
land because your rate of fire is so slow, so your manual aiming factors here significantly.
Burst Laser Cannon - The other odd duck, the Burst Laser is essentially the shotgun of the laser options. It does very high damage at close range, but is not very useful outside of that. This makes it something of a gimmick weapon, as it will kill most targets in only 2 or 3 shots, but don't expect your opponents to respect you much for doing it... (cf., any first-person shooter which includes shotguns)
This is the only point at which I might want to present a somewhat counter argument. While it's true that Burst Cannons are only really useful at very close ranges, I would argue that it is perhaps the most powerful cannons component in the game. So much so, in fact, that while I am generally very reluctant to throw around the too often abused term
OP in games, this is the only component I might argue comes close. Almost without fail if someone is complaining about being (or feeling like they've been) one-shotted in a dogfight, it's because they were hit with BLCs.
There are some things I think are very important to consider regarding BLCs (much of what I'm referencing here might make more sense in conjunction with my lessons on
Evasion & Armor Piercing and again on
the Tracking Penalty):
1.) They have the best accuracy at very close range, and best tracking penalty (meaning higher accuracy when taking shots at the outside edge of your firing arc). Because of this, they are the indisputable champion at dogfighting on, under, and immediately around a satellite objective in Domination, for those pilots who are trying to both hug the sat (to either keep it neutral or keep it green) and clear enemies from that zone at the same time. No other weapon comes close for this task. (Note if you are firing on people on the sat from a position
off the sat, then any other weapon might work better. But specifically for tight-turning dogfights, on or off a satellite, BLC is deadly.)
2.) BLCs are the only dogfighting Primary (excluding Heavies, for the aforementioned reason that those are not good for dogfighting) that offers the upgrade of 100% armor piercing. In fact, excluding missiles and pods, only three weapon components offer this upgrade: Burst Laser Cannons, Slug Railgun, and Heavy Lasers - and there is a very good reason that the first two in that list are the only weapons capable of genuinely one-shotting enemies. Armor piercing completely ignores any damage reduction provided by your ship's hull, which makes them particularly deadly to Strike Fighters and Bombers (and to a lesser degree Gunships) which all rely on damage reduction over Evasion as their damage mitigation default.
3.) Most pilots who use BLCs pair them with the Targeting Telemetry component (under Systems), for the massive boost to critical chance and critical magnitude. This means that a pilot often only needs to hit you
once with BLCs with a very good chance to score a crit which, when coupled with BLCs' high base damage and armor penetration, means they are going to hit with a
massive punch. Like Iaera said, it's the shotgun of space, and it's nasty.
4.) Scouts with BLCs equipped are second to none in clearing turrets off a satellite in Domination; they can typically one shot a turret (again because of that armor piercing) and thus fully clear all three turrets off a sat in a handful of seconds.
5.) BLCs are second only to Gunships' railguns in quickly killing Bombers. Again this is particularly important in Domination, where getting a bomber off a satellite is key.
6.) The two most frequently used Gunships (the Quarrel/Mangler and the Condor/Jurgoran) also have a BLC option, and many experienced Gunship pilots use it. This means that those gunships have the potential to be deadly in a dogfight as well as at range. While some gunship pilots never bother to learn anything beyond sniping, if you find yourself going up against a particularly wily gunship pilot who always seems to win even in a dogfight, consider that they might be using BLCs and perhaps adjust your range of engagement accordingly.
I have a love/hate relationship with Burst Laser Cannons. I avoided them for a long time because they were both seriously annoying to be on the receiving end of, and because my personal flight preferences don't jive well with the close-range requirements of their use. But despite my reluctance, it was impossible not to come around to the acceptance that they are leaps and bounds more effective at certain tasks than any other weapon in game. There's a very good reason that you will see pilots who rely heavily on BLCs (with the experience to use them well) regularly topping the leaderboard in high kill counts. There are plenty of days when I would be just as happy to see BLCs removed from the game entirely (or at least to have their armor piercing upgrade option removed), but the game is it what it is, and BLCs are a real threat it would behoove pilots to keep an awareness of.
Cluster Missiles - These are the only type of missile from the first (eponymous) category. Although relatively short range, their range is still comparable to that of lasers. With their extremely fast lock time and wide locking arc, these are the premier dogfighting option. They do low damage per hit, but the cooldown is so short that you can begin locking your target again almost immediately after firing the previous volley. This makes them the only missile that can reliably hit Scouts, who can otherwise easily evade missile locks.
Yep yep! All of the reasons Iaera cited (in addition to their having the widest - and therefore most rookie friendly - firing arc of all missiles) go into why I would strongly recommend Cluster Missiles as the ideal component for newer players to learn on. I, like many players, struggled for a long time in the beginning to understand just why my missiles didn't seem to "work." That's because lots of factors can go into a failed missile lock, almost none of which are easy to
see, and therefore very hard to understand. Cluster Missiles give you the best chance to get a successful shot off, and building experience with them can be a key foundation to building skill and comfort level for other trickier missile components in future.
EMP Missiles - In the Missile category, this weapon sacrifices damage in exchange for utility. This is a situational weapon, and its primary use is for disrupting those annoying bomber-nests - one hit from the EMP missile will nuke all mines in the area and damage and disable drones. That's about the extent of its usefulness - don't rely on this as a primary weapon. Use it to support your team in a specialist-built ship.
I love EMP Missiles in theory, but I think it's important to note that in actual practice they are not as effective as they seem on paper. The sad truth is that the EMP field put out by this missile is not in fact large enough to encapsulate an entire satellite and all its immediate environs - meaning that it almost never actually clears out an entire bomber nest. To most effectively leverage EMP Missiles you have to have a very solid grasp of positioning and choose the target (generally a stationary turret, mine, or drone) that you know will most centrally position the epicenter of your EMP field detonation to capture the most mines and drones within it. This can be extremely hard to calculate in the middle of a frenetic battle.
In my delusional dreams, someday the range of the EMP field will be expanded to 5000 meters, which would instantly increase their effectiveness by many orders of magnitude. I will happily turn back to the EMP Missile dream on that day.
But as it currently stands, I personally have only ever seen two pilots who truly leverage EMP Missiles well; as with all things, someone who's taken the time to master something can prove all naysayers wrong, but generally speaking I personally would not recommend that newer pilots take the promise of this missile's tooltip too much to heart. Sadly. :(
Proton Torpedoes - The 'standard,' direct-damage option in the Torpedo category. Like Concussion Missiles, their use is pretty straightforward - lock target, watch target explode. As a Torpedo, however, it is utterly unsuited to dogfighting situations, and is useful only in a stand-off interception role. It will not reliably hit Scouts or even Strike Fighters, and is best used against Bombers or Gunships who you know have just expended their Barrel Roll. With that said, it does extremely high damage, and can even 1-shot some ships if you manage to score a hit.
Fundamentally, and particularly as a newer pilot's experience is concerned, I fully agree with all of this on Protons. That being said, once you've achieved a better comfort level with missile locks I think Protons can be very effective. As with most things in GSF this comes down in large part to learning what your optimal ranges are. You are not going to score a Proton hit on someone you are dogfighting with; you need to target ships engaged with other targets, or which are more stationary like Bombers (in the open) as Iaera mentioned. But remember that the lock-on time for a Proton is still shorter than the cooldown time on most missile-breaks, which means that a pilot who is watching you and well positioned for this shot has a very good chance of shoving a Proton up your exhaust pipe.
Basically, while Protons are more difficult to use effectively, the tradeoff for the struggle involved in getting a successful lock is a
massive punch - primarily because Protons are the
only weapon in the game with 100% shield piercing. Coupled with their 100% armor piercing means that pretty much
none of your defenses matter. If you get hit by a Proton, you are SOL.
Thermite Torpedoes - In the Torpedo category, this is essentially a Proton Torpedo with less direct damage, but with a large DoT and debuff in its place. Its primary use is bomber-killing, since the debuff will make the Bomber in question very susceptible to follow-up damage from your lasers or other missiles, in addition to the long-duration DoT. As with other Torpedoes, it has some limited use against Gunships and Strike Fighters if you can hold the lock and their evasive manoeuvre is on cooldown.
Nothing meaningful to add here. Just wanted to chirp up about how much I love my Thermites.
As one of only three weapons in the entire wide array of the game's components that has a DoT (and a potent one at that), they have the nasty side benefit of a confusion and panic factor on top of everything else. If you've ever died at the hands of a pilot you know was nowhere near you at the time and were wondering what happened, most probably (and obviously excluding gunship sniper fire) they hit you with a Thermite and you slowly burned to death at a later time.
Rocket Pods - Finally, in their own little category we have the humble Rocket Pods. Unlike all other missile options, these are unguided, dumb-fired direct-fire weapons. They behave exactly like lasers albeit with less firing arc and tracking, making them well-suited to combo with your lasers for direct, targeted DPS. They don't do well in turning fights (they are useless outside of the direct centre of the screen), but against slow-moving or stationary targets (such as oblivious Gunships!) you can keep centred, these are excellent weapons. They're also the ideal weapon for satellite assaults - the added DPS allows you to swiftly knock out defense turrets before they can hurt you much.
I would argue that BLCs are the superior weapon for satellite assaults, but there's no doubt that Pods are very useful in this capacity as well. One of their downsides, though, in addition the things Iaera already cited above, is that you can blow through your munitions load of pods very, very fast (due to their almost instant rate of fire, which makes them a bit of a trap for newer pilots who are anxiously heavy on the trigger) and quickly be left with no secondary weapon to speak of. This should not necessarily discourage people from using pods, but it's something important to keep in mind. If you enjoy using Rocket Pods, I recommend choosing someone in your Crew selection who increases munitions capacity.
Barrel Roll - The default on many ships, Barrel Roll propels you directly forward at high speed. You will actually travel considerable distance using this! It slaughters newbies, who frequently use it to collide into asteroids, so be careful where you're pointing with this one. At 30 seconds, it also has the highest cooldown, making it the least suitable for sustained combat. Because of its long-distance boosting, it has some secondary utility for crossing large sections of the map rapidly.
Wanted to chime in to comment on using Barrel Roll to cover large distances. This is particularly handy, especially if you're in a Strike Fighter or the Flashfire/Sting (which has less engine oomph than the other scouts). But as Iaera mentioned Barrel Roll has a high cool down, and also a high engine pool point cost to activate, which means if you are burning your BR to
get somewhere you may find yourself out of a missile lock once you arrive and engage in your fight. For this reason I most frequently pair BR with the Distortion Field component (Systems category), because Distortion Field (in addition to being a fundamentally powerful component for its Evasion boost) also can break missile locks once upgraded to the highest tier. That gives you two missile breaks you can juggle, and opens up BR for travel purposes.
Power Dive - This propels you downward in a 90-degree turn. Riskier than Koiogran or Snap Turn, Power Dive requires a little more finesse to avoid crashing. However, because it accelerates you similarly to Barrel Roll, with some careful positioning you can use it to propel yourself forward at considerable speed. Power Dive is particularly notable for having only a 15 second cooldown, making it an extremely attractive option if you find yourself getting hounded by missile locks.
In my personal experience, Power Dive is one of the most difficult of all engine maneuvers to master. It has been given the moniker
Power Die by many GSFers, and for good reason; I have self-destructed more often using Power Dive than with all the other engine components combined. But Power Dive has some pretty powerful benefits that might make it worth learning to use, one of which is the low cooldown Iaera mentioned (that can be lowered even further down to just 10 seconds with upgrades), and the other crucial one being that with the very first upgrade reducing power cost Power Dive is essentially
free to execute, making it the only engine maneuver missile break you can use while stranded with low engine power.
Retro Thrusters - I see this one a lot, and to be honest I'm not a fan - It's the evasive manoeuvre that most reliably nets me a kill after my target uses it. It propels you backward, and then you zoom forward again - placing you pretty much exactly where you were when you started. Perhaps it fools rookies, but an experienced pilot need only exercise patience before dusting the soon-to-reappear target. 20 second cooldown
Retro Thrusters are one of those components/tricks that is hard to master and easy to fail at, but extremely strong in the hands of someone who has put in the blood, sweat, tears, and innumerable self destructs to achieve comfort with. But my personal opinion is that this engine maneuver is really only suited to jousting - head on one-on-one shooting fights where the aim is to tank damage and see who can kill faster. The reason it works so well in jousts is because it boosts your Evasion (increasing your enemy's miss chance), and that it can break a missile lock while allowing you to never stop shooting your opponent. Couple this with some other component tricks of the trade and you can "eat" a truly astonishing amount of damage while still wailing on an enemy. But of course, there's no guarantee that your enemy might not just dish out
more damage than you do; that's the risk and thrill of a joust, after all.
All of that being said, there's no denying that if you're on the outside of a joust looking in, no engine maneuver is more predictable than a Retro, as Iaera mentioned. If you are flanking a Retro using pilot, they've made it very easy for you to keep them firmly tracked.
Also, due to the simple and obvious fact that Retros move you in
reverse into your blind spot, they are a
terrible choice if spatial awareness and terrain memory are not your strong suits.
GSF is dense with content and strategy, and this list doesn't even begin to cover all the different component options available, instead focusing on some of the common, primary options for Scouts and Strike Fighters. Of course, most ships also have semi-unique system abilities or oddball alternative options, but theorycrafting such things is beyond the scope of this simple guide!
I am very bad at keeping thing simple, as my responses here show.
I like to wallow in the weeds, perhaps too much. I plead the excuse of being starved for friendly GSF discourse (because the GSF discourse on the official forums can sometimes get way too elitist for my personal taste).
Above all, you are encouraged to experiment - I have my opinions on many of the components listed above, but many people swear by things I hate, or can't stand the components I love, so YMMV! Ultimately, every GSF pilot has to figure out for himself or herself which components suit their playstyle. Hopefully, this guide gives you a few clues about where to start!
Whole-heartedly agree with this sentiment! When I wrote my GSF guide I took a fair bit of time in the intro and in the lessons themselves to emphasize the fun factor and the individual playstyle factor, because sadly too often these basic building blocks of
game enjoyment get bashed on by META enthusiasts.
While I fully understand and embrace the desire to want to be effective and to win your matches, there's just absolutely no point to try to force someone to use only META-approved components if they are not going to have
fun with them. For some people
having fun and
winning are the same thing and inseparable, but for others they are not, and with a game with as steep a learning curve as GSF I think people first and foremost just need to be enjoying themselves enough to
keep playing... so YMMV is indeed key.
