Difference between revisions of "Garfield's Complete Guide"

Latest revision as of 08:50, 30 July 2015

Yet another player guide by yours truly,captainGarfield. This guide will be split into two parts: Quick Start and Comprehensive. The Quick Start portion will briefly explain the different parts of the game's control setup and how to get going in the world of Star Sonata. The Comprehensive portion is intended to cover nearly every aspect of the game and provide you with the wisdom and knowledge I've gathered in the years I've played. Both parts can be used together or completely separate, and an Index will be provided for those looking for specific information. 

As a disclaimer, I realize this is not the first guide of its kind. I also realize that most other guides were left incomplete, had a bias, or have simply become outdated. In any case, I cannot guarantee that what you find here will always be 100% accurate and be the best source for you to base decisions off of. I am simply offering my opinions in the hope that they may help you to avoid some of the mistakes I have, and learn some of the tricks I've used. 

As I continue to develop this guide, I ask that anyone who happens to read it point out any factual mistakes I might make or give me suggestions. I plan to, once the guide has reached maturity, to actually begin interviewing other players for their input and knowledge on a variety of subjects.

Part I: Quick Start

Controls & Interface

Before you can even think about playing the game, you need to know your way around it. Here's a quick and dirty introduction to all the different aspects of the interface. Try to keep up, because I'm not gonna waste any time with this section.

The screen is divided up into 4 parts: The Ship Box, Hotbar, Menubar, and Chat Box. Naturally, the game itself is in the center portion, with your ship in the center.

• The Ship Box shows your Shields, Energy, Visibility, and Weapon.
• The Hotbar allows you to bind your most commonly used items to a key on your keyboard.
• The Menubar lets you access all the different windows the game uses to interact with the player.
• The Chat Box lets you communicate with other players and provides key information in a timely fashion.

The Menubar has 10 buttons. From left to right, these are: Help, Warp, Dock, Galaxy Map, Options, Social, Character, Ship, Radar, and Inventory. Clicking any of the first three will cause an action, the others toggle windows. Help opens a browser window to the Star Sonata help page, Warp takes you through wormholes, and Dock allows you to go inside stations.

The Chat Box has 7 tabs. From left to right in the default configuration, these are: Event, All, Galaxy, Trade, Help, Team, and Squad. The order of these tabs can be changed by clicking any one and dragging it. Their uses are:

• Event: Displays any game-related messages, such as kills, actions, and the Message of the Day.
• All: A global chat where any player can talk.
• Galaxy: A local chat where only players in the same galaxy as you can talk.
• Trade: A place to advertise, buy, and sell.
• Help: A place to ask questions not easily answered by the Wiki or appropriate for All chat.
• Team: Lets you talk to other members of your Team in private.
• Squad: Lets you talk to other members of your Squad in private, and displays Squad-related events.

Most of the game involves flying your ship around and shooting at stuff. Before you can shoot at something, you first have to target it. If this weren't necessary, then it'd be impossible to avoid attacking everything from neutral space stations to teammates while fighting! To target something, simply click on it. A new box will appear providing information on the targeted object. You can also sort through the list of targetable objects in the galaxy using the Ctrl, Z, Q, and Tab keys. Using Shift with any of these keys will cycle through the list in reverse.

Here's a list of the most pertinent keys (click to expand):

There are a number of windows in the game which you use to interact. I'll briefly go over them here:

Welcome to Space

At the start of the game, you're going to get a dinky little ship. You'll be in some strange looking place with a lot of green things flying around. This is fine, go ahead and click one. Press the Space Bar to shoot at it, and watch as it explodes. Now you know how to kill things, you bloodthirsty heathen.

Now that you've satisfied your bloodlust, it's time to start getting payed for it. Go to the base (the big thing that doesn't look like a rat, as you probably now know those green things as) and dock in it. You'll get a window with lots of tabs; right now, we only care about the first one. There's a box with some missions in it, double-click one. They're pretty self explanatory, so just do what it says and come back to claim your reward. Keep doing missions, eventually they'll lead you to the Nexus where there's... wait for it... more missions! Do those, and keep reading when you're done.

Briefing: Tactics

Star Sonata is, at its core, a top-down shooter. The physics in the game are extremely simple and the game mechanics, for the most part, very straight forward. In every top-down shooter since Asteroids, the player controls a character from a bird's eye view and, well, shoots stuff. In Star Sonata, movement is defined by a few key variables:

• Speed - the max speed of a ship limits how fast it can go. Distance in the game is arbitrary, and 1 speed means you move 1 distance every second.
• Thrust - essentially, this determines how quickly you can get to top speed. Weight affects this greatly - you need more thrust to move more weight.
• Turning - the rate at which you turn. Weight also affects this, and so you need more torque to overcome more weight.
• Weight - every item on a ship has a weight, and this variable is used to determine how the ship handles.

Inertia counts. If a ship starts moving forwards, it will not stop until something forces it to. Explosions matter, too. When something blows up near your ship, it creates a concussion that pushes you away and sometimes jams your engine temporarily. There's also tractors - both yours, and those of players and AI. There's 3 kinds of tractors: push, pull, and hitchhiker. Each will push objects away from, pull objects towards, or move the player towards objects. Tractors on AI can make it hard to move around, but you can also use your own tractor to your advantage. Try slingshotting yourself around a planet when you get a chance - learning to use everything at your disposal for maneuverability is key.

The tactics I cover here all involve moving your ship a certain way. These are: Kiting, Jinking, Flybys, and Out Turning.

Kiting

Kiting an enemy refers to positioning yourself in such a way that you are out of range of their weapons while simultaneously close enough for the AI to keep following you. Most AI have a range at which they will follow you indefinitely, usually between 50 and 100 distance beyond the range of their farthest shooting weapon. You can use this to your advantage by using a long range weapon and shooting at the AI without taking any damage. This is a good tactic if you don't have a strong or extremely agile ship and need to kill something tougher than you are.

Jinking

Jinking is basically dodging. You cannot dodge lasers, but if the enemy is using projectile weapons, you can make them waste their shots by out maneuvering their bullets. Getting too close to the AI while doing this isn't effective, as you have less time to react. Try to find a distance at which you can keep shooting while also making adjustments to your position.

Flybys

Flybys are essentially running full speed at the enemy, shooting a salvo of projectiles, and flying past. Speed Demons, especially, like to use this tactic as they tend to have the shield regeneration necessary to recover after sustaining damage from this. This is a good way to take out targets that could kill you if you stay within firing range long enough, but are not easy to kite or jink. You have to make sure you can recover enough of your shield bank between each run and do it fast enough that the enemy doesn't recover as well.

Out Turning

Many AI turn slow. If you can stay behind them, you can keep shooting without getting shot. Note that some weapons have something called "Full Tracking", which allows them to be shot 360 degrees. If the AI has this, then this tactic is worthless. However, it is especially useful for taking out larger, gear laden AI, as these tend to be heavier.

In spite of the fact that Star Sonata is a top-down shooter and relies heavily on arcade-style gameplay, there's still a few other tactics to consider that don't involve maneuvering.

Training

Training is the process of controlling the enemy's aggressiveness. AI will tend to shoot at whatever is doing the most damage to them - you can use this to your advantage to make them shoot at what you want them to. You, your slaves, and your drones each may not have that much shield bank individually, but if you combine them all then that's quite a lot. Dividing up enemy fire between each can help you last longer in battle. To capture an AI's aggro, you need to shoot at it. It usually doesn't take long. If you need to lose it, bring the AI near a slave or drone and wait for them to shoot at it. Once your slaves or drones start doing some damage, the AI will switch aggro. Note that some AI will not always respond to this due to the nature of their programming.

Tanking

Tanking is all about taking damage, rather than directing it. Some players prefer to have an incredibly large shield bank and simply take the hits while their slaves, drones, missiles, fighters, or other players do the actual damage. Shield Monkeys tend to fall along this line, though they are intended to heal without taking damage rather than be shot. Tanking can be challenging and most setups rely on a high-bank, low regeneration shield, meaning that once that bank is gone, there is virtually no way to replenish it in a timely fashion without the help of healer drones or another player.

Briefing: Strategy

Next, go to Deep Space, do the missions there. Basically just do all the missions you can find, until you think you're not getting enough from them anymore. Yes, feel the greed. Aspire to be greater, greater than the rats and the volcoms.

Once you've done that, go to Sol. To get to Sol, go through the gate to Earthforce Celestial Garden. The one to Sol is in there. Go to the Earthforce Frontier Station and see what missions are available. If you have any skillpoints, use them.

Core Skills

• Piloting: You can't pilot a giant ship if all you know is zebucarts. Learn to fly more complicated things.
• Shields: Shields keep you from getting blown up. They're also complicated to install. Not just anyone knows how to jack a billion cables together.
• Energy: Nuclear reactor leaking? Too bad, there's no health insurance here. Energy is what makes your ship go round, keep a lot of it.
• Radar: You can't shoot what you can't see. And there's a lot you're not seeing, like why that haircut looks bad on you.
• Engines: Puff puff. Go fast faster, turn hard harder.
• Equipment: You see that launch tube? Go crawl inside it.
• Weaponry: Shoot stuff with bigger and bigger guns.
• Cloaking: Don't get shot at.

So, there you go. The most important to you are probably piloting, weaponry, shields, and energy. You can't shoot without energy, it doesn't matter if you have energy if your gun sucks as much as you do, your guns don't matter if you die instantly and none of it matters if you can't fit it all in the freaking ship.

In any case, get some skills if you can and get some new gear. You should have plenty of money from the Nexus, so go nuts. You should have a decent level of Piloting now so get rid of that Helga.

Next, go to Blue Outpost and kill the little blue ships. You'll get to level 50 easy. Now kill the bigger blue ships. You can get some slaves at this point too, which are extremely useful because it's like having another player beside you.

Once you've killed just about everything you can find and can't level anymore, get Warp Navigation to 2. You can do this at Sol or Paxius, whichever you prefer. However, you've probably got some blue stuff from killing things in the Outpost, so Sol is probably best.

Next, do the same thing. Get to level 100, and start worrying about specialization. This is important, because this game doesn't let you do a little of everything and be good at it. You need to choose a play style and stick with it. There's a lot to consider, but whatever's been working best for you so far is the path you should take.

Before you even worry about class skills, I'd worry more about your core skills. Most people say get a class skill as soon as possible - this is okay, if you know what you want to do already. But I think it's not wise to urge new players to make an important decision so quickly. You can still head in one direction or another first, and see how you like it.

So, core skills. At this point you probably have most somewhere between 8 and 10. Now think about what you're lacking in. Do you run out of energy too often? Do you blow up a lot? Your weapons don't do enough damage? Figure it out and go get that skill up, then get better gear. Whatever's holding you back, move it out of the way.

Once you've chosen a path, follow it. Don't meddle around, it's a waste of time.

Briefing: Class Skills

Class skills are oftentimes seen as the pinnacle of a player's progression. Having your class skill and its subskills maxed out isn't necessarily a sign that you've reached the end game, but are getting close to it. The bonuses given by these skills tend to be greater than any other skill in the game, and so they are extremely important later on.

Many players say you should get your class skills maxed out as soon as possible. This is definitely good advice, though it is often misinterpreted. You should get your class skills maxed, but not before you get your core skills maxed. You don't need to have, say, Radar to 20, but you definitely should have Piloting, Shields, and Electrical Engineering to 20 at the least before you worry about your class too much.

Now, you can start with your class whenever you feel comfortable making that choice. It doesn't matter if you're level 20 or 200, just begin when you're ready. When you do start to class up, try to keep it consistent. You want to pace yourself, since class skills take a lot of skill points, but you also don't want to lag behind too much.

Briefing: Gear

Talk about the different items, what they do.

Briefing: Augmenters

Go into detail about augmenters.

The World Keeps Going

The game moves on even if you don't.

Briefing: Teams

A good team is hard to come by. Many teams are simply full of underachievers or lowlifes. Others are filled with people who may seem too cutthroat or edgy for you. It's important not to judge a team simply by objective qualities, but also by how you feel about it. That may sound unusual coming from me, but if you're not happy in a team, you're simply going to want to leave. That'll cause unnecessary drama that nobody really wants to deal with. So find a team that seems to have similar goals to yours, and players who you already know you like.

If you absolutely can't find a decent team or simply want to start your own, you'll need to acquire the Leadership skill first. This skill is fairly easy to get for most players and simply requires a bit of money and some time. When creating a team, think very carefully about how you want to present it to other players. Are you about integrity and doing things the right way, or are you going for something more laid back, a place where people can just come and go as they please? Are you planning to accomplish something important, or simply intend to figure things out as it goes along? Whatever decision you may come to, make sure you reach it before you actually create the team.

It's not entirely rare, but it also doesn't happen a lot, especially in a large team. Believe it or not, if you put in the time and effort, you may actually get promoted in your new team! What you do when this happens is take a step back and reevalute your position. What did you do to even get promoted in the first place? Whatever it was, identify it and keep doing it. If you start slacking off, you're simply going to be resented by other players, especially those a lower rank than you. If you've been placed in a position of trust - say, an Officer, or even a Councilor - do not betray it. You will inevitably regret it. It will tarnish your reputation and people tend to not forget these sorts of things.

If you feel you do not like a team anymore, or do not like what position you are in, it is best to talk about it with someone who can actually help first. Do not simply leave a team unless you've been told to do so - a lot of teams do not take too kindly to it, since it can harm their score. If you feel you're in a position of responsibility but don't actually want that responsibility, ask to be demoted, don't cause trouble.

In general, use common sense, and always consult your teammates before making an important decision.

Dungeons

• Danger Factors, how they affect dungeons
• Layers, how they too affect dungeons
• Good and bad dungeons, and why
• Alternatives
• Uber dungeons

Perilous Space

The final frontier.

Death

Death in this game is not as morbid as it may be in other places, like real life. In fact, dying in this game isn't even as bad as it once was. In previous years, dying in Star Sonata meant losing gear, and slaves could actually be converted into carbon wisps quite easily if they didn't have a Slave Stasis Generator equipped. Drones couldn't be repaired - if you lost them, that was it. Indeed, it was harsh in the olden days, and many Gear Glues were spent trying to prevent the inevitable.

Now, all slaves are equipped with stasis generators by default (one could say the control bots have them inbuilt), drones do not explode but simply break, and players can no longer drop gear when they die.

In spite of all of these improvements (some say they have made the game too easy, but I digress) dying in this game can still be a traumatic experience.

Death is marked by one's shields reaching 0. Now, your shields actually can be 0 and you still won't die, so in actuality it's being shot without shields that kills you. Your ship enters stasis and you are ejected in either spirit or pod form. For more information about the process of death, see Death.

When you die, equipped items on your ship lose Durability. The lower their Durability, the less effective they are. To regain Durability, you have to repair the items on your ship, which costs money.

Slaves also suffer from a loss of Durability upon death. Drones, when killed, are simply converted to a destroyed form, and must be scooped and repaired in order to be used again.

F2P vs P2P

It has to be mentioned.

Moving On

A closing message.

Part 2: Comprehensive Guide

Introduction

Describe this portion of the guide.

All is Well

The End of Everything

When a universe begins, there is a bit of a chaotic phase where everyone is rushing to find the best galaxies, the best planets for colonies, and just get their bases and everything set up. Large teams will try to take large tracts of space that they will eventually fill with drones and trading slaves, only to have to pack it all up again later. Very quickly, and almost without warning, the universe will soon look like it did when it ended, just with everything in a slightly different place.

Star Sonata isn't the only game of its kind to use a system like this, where the game world is reset once every few months. However, it is a very important aspect of the game in many ways. For example, Hydroponics missions can only be done once per universe. Places like Hyper are hard to invade for any team wishing to seize control of its resources, and so the universe reset allows another team a chance to take hold, preventing monopolies. The same happens for most other resources, and just about everyone gets a chance to try and take some valuable plot of space.

So, why does this matter to you? Well, there's a number of reasons why, and we'll explore each one briefly before expanding on it in a later section.

The Economy

Describe how the economy in the game works.

Making Money

Farming

Shops

Pirating

Slaving

Saving Money

Losing Money

Investments

Leveling Up

Dungeon Farming

Power Leveling

Grinding

Detail: Teams

• Teams are crucial to the way Star Sonata works
• Scores are not indicative of whether a team is good or not
• How to identify a good team without scores as reference
• How to be an asset
• How to be a leader
• How to wage war

Diplomacy

• Networking, and why it's important
• Reputation; image
• How to end war
• How to reason with the unreasonable
• Compromise
• Following through
• Recovery; redemption from failure

Detail: AI

AI, as you should already know, stands for Artificial Intelligence. The name implies that an AI player is both not alive and also smart. While the former is true, the latter is a complete and utter lie. There is nothing smart about the AI in this game, or most games for that matter. AI in Star Sonata seem to follow a script-based program where they will prioritize certain behaviors over others depending on what's going on around them.

AI seem to have a number of different states and I will attempt to catalog them here as I learn more.

Standing

When there is nothing for the AI to do, it will simply stand in one spot for a while. Leads To

Roaming

AI will move for no reason after standing in the same spot too long. Sometimes, they will warp. Leads To

Docking

AI will randomly dock at AI bases and player bases. Sometimes, they will buy some commodities, but most of the time their hulls are too overfilled to do anything. This behavior is more for effect than anything else, giving players a sense that even the AI have stuff to do in this game. Leads To

Aggression

• AI will become aggressive for a number of reasons
  • They are shot at
  • Their attack code determines they need to attack a passing player
  • Their swarm code determines they can kill a stronger player than usual e.g., the Rosemarys and Basils in Perilous Outpost sometimes attack the Earthforce AI, though their scripting should prevent this (there's no way they can win), but due to swarm mentality, a group of aggressive AI will attack just about anything.
  • They are programmed to be aggressive, for mission or design reasons e.g., Flyswatters, who are intentionally annoying

Leads To

Regression

When an AI is about to die, it will often try to run. Because the script doesn't seem to take into account where the threat is but rather that there is just a threat in general, most AI will keep warping through the same two gates over and over again until their shields are high enough to resume attack behavior. Sometimes, they will stay on the other side if they leave this state quick enough and eventually resume their normal roaming behavior. And/Or/Instead

Spin Out

AI will sometimes freak out and spin in circles if they can't run but are still about to die. The only reasons I can conjure up for this behavior are: 1. They are programmed to behave like this, so their deaths are more epic, or 2. Their retreat code can't find a gate to warp through and they continue with the last action they were given (in this case, turning so they can head towards a gate).

more to come...

Bases

Talk about the pros and cons of owning a base, and how to get started.

Colonies

Talk about how to run colonies and what the point is.

Drones

Talk about drones, their pros and cons, and what's best for the situation.

Slaves

Slaves are a key component to the Star Sonata game. They are also pretty unique, and not many other games, even those outside the MMO genre, have something comparable to the ones found in Star Sonata.

Slaves in Star Sonata can be completely independent of the player. Once a slave is activated, it becomes an AI just like any other NPC in the game, the only difference being that you can give it orders. If given a set of commands to repeat, the slave will do them almost indefinitely until it either dies or the Universe ends. Combat slaves are a little less versatile but still obey your commands to not attack or to avoid harm to themselves ("Stay Close").

Because of the way slave AI works, they can be have almost exactly like the regular AI in the game. This is evidenced by the fact that a slave and an enemy AI that are of equal strength can sometimes dogfight for minutes at a time, the same way AI which are aggressive to each other will sometimes do.

The only major difference between slave AI and regular AI is that slaves lack any autonomous behavior, in the sense that they do not have a run script or an aggression script. This means a slave AI will never run away from an enemy, and they will never attack an enemy of their own accord.

Ships

At the start of the game, choosing a ship is mostly about preference. You will soon find that these preferences may eventually lead you to a certain class skill. If you like bigger ships with lots of hull, you may go for a support or fleet focus, but if you like fast ships you might go for speed demon. There's a large number of ships in this game and lots of different ways of setting them up. The same two Pax Astrologicas, one augged for Berserker and one augged for Engineer, are effectively two entirely different ships because their stats are so strongly affected both by the class skills and by the augmenters equipped.

Towards the end-game, you will find that many ships are in fact aimed at different classes. Some are even class-locked, meaning only one class can use (or make use of) that ship. Rhinos are for Engineers and Shield Monkeys (though ShMs tend to prefer Apprentice's Wards) and Lions are for Berserkers. Panthers are for Speed Demons and Dreads are for Fleet Commanders, and so on and so forth. But just because your class has a ship designed for it doesn't always mean that ship will fit your play style. There are a number of alternatives that you can use at any point in the game that my not align perfectly with the intended flow of character progression but are still good choices and may be even better for you than what's recommended.

So, you may be asking yourself at this point, "That's all fine and dandy, but it doesn't help me decide much. You basically just reaffirmed by belief that I am always right, because I am." SLAP! No! You aren't always right. Get that nonsensical sense out of your skull. The most important thing to remember in this game is that you are always WRONG. Why? Because that's what everyone else is going to tell you, no matter what choice you make. And this is why I assert that you should always go with what feels right for you, even if it may not seem like the best choice. And if it really doesn't work out, hey maybe they were right, but now you have an even better idea of what you need to improve on, right?

That means you need to think long and hard about where you're at and what you want to accomplish. I can assure you though, if you feel like you're getting to the point where it's getting difficult to kill the AI you ought to be killing at your level, a new ship is almost always the cure. Just remember to augment it, otherwise it'll be even worse than your last fully augmented ship, believe it or not.

Once you get that new ship, have it augmented properly, and are ready for something else, go read another section of this guide because what you ought to do next is get newer gear and probably go spend all those Skill Points somewhere.

Weapons

Damage types and more.

Detail: Augmenters

Get into the math of how it all works.

Detail: Classes

More math and detailed explanations.

Missions

Why should anyone do missions? Talk about it.

Detail: Gear

Include a discussion about fighters, missiles, etc.

Detail: Tactics & Strategy

The Numbers Game

When you get down to it, this game is all about numbers. Everything from DPS to your level in Aug Tweaking effects the way the game plays for you. We're going to talk about one of the most important numbers of all: enemies.

The number of enemies you are facing is generally important. You may not be able to kill 50 Rosemarys, though you can kill 25. You may be able to handle a group of Forgones, but throw in a few Big Greens and it all goes downhill.

When I call it the numbers game, I'm not saying that if all your assets combined can put out X DPS and the enemy can put out Y DPS , and you cross your shields against their fire and theirs against yours (and assuming all else is equal), the math is going to tell you who wins. It most likely won't, because there's a lot more influencing the way this works than that. In fact, my proposition is the antithesis of that mentality: it's not about the numbers, but instead how you apply them. It's all about where you direction your attention and when, and how you go about accomplishing that which needs to be done in order to win.

It really is frustrating when you don't understand why you can't do this or why that DG is so difficult. The truth is, you may have just reached the limits of what you can achieve with your current setup. However, there's still some extremely valuable strategies that you should know, both to squeeze a little more life out of that ship you got 200 lvls ago and should probably have replaced by now, and to increase your overall efficiency and give you some skills that might help you out in more extreme circumstances.

Focus Fire

• The crux of it is this: when you are fighting a small group of enemies, you generally don't need to worry about where all that fire from your drones, slaves, missiles, or fighters are going. You already know that you're going to win and you just don't need to worry about it. But as you increase the number of enemies to the point where they can actually begin dealing damage against you, choosing your targets suddenly becomes more important. When fighting a large group of enemies, you are likely to get killed if you don't do something about the DPS coming your way, and do it quickly. You can circumvent this by having something that heals you, or a neurotweak that will boost your shield regen, but those only extend your lifespan, not remove the cause of the problem. In other words, you just need to begin reducing their numbers.
• Kill the strongest first. Yes, that's right, take out the strongest enemies first. The ones who are doing the most damage to you, individually, are the most dangerous and need to be removed immediately.
• If all else is equal, go for the weakest first. On the other hand, you have a situation where all are giving about the same DPS and it doesn't matter which you kill. In that case, kill the weakest first - be it the one with the lowest shields at the moment, or the one that's a lower level than the rest.

So, let's consider an example. Again let's rule out other variables like resistances and whatnot and just focus on some pure, raw numbers. You have a ship with 100 shields and you can pull 50 DPS. You have an enemy with 500 shields that can only pull 25 DPS. Who wins? Well, the math says that he can kill you in 4 seconds but you can kill him in 10. So, you'd be dead 6 seconds too soon to kill him, and he'd still have plenty of shields left over. He only has 500% more shields and 50% less DPS, why can't you kill him? Well, did you sit in the same spot the whole time? What if you were able to evade half of his shots, so that it takes him 8 seconds to kill you? And if you let a slave or drone take the other 2 second's worth, hey, you just made it! I know that sounds like a copout, but that's just it! In this game, you use copouts like that to survive. The tactics section goes more in depth about how to avoid taking fire while dealing it, so we're just going to continue exploring the numbers here.

Another example: You and your enemy are equals. You both have 100 shields and can pull 50 DPS. You're both dead after 2 seconds. How do you win? Well, if we consider resistances this time, then whoever has the highest resists wins. If you both shot for the entire duration and landed all your hits, and one still died while the other lived, then you know who has the weaker ship. The same is true if you consider vulnerabilities rather than resistances, or damage boosts instead. What if we consider shield regeneration?

If you have a shield with a bank of 100 and it regenerates 10/s, then it takes you 10 seconds to recover. If, over the course of 10 seconds, an enemy can pull 20 DPS, he's only actually removed half your shields, since your shields are always recovering over the course of that period! Effectively, you'd have 50 shields left, and it'd take him an additional 5 seconds or so to kill you. Scale these values however you like, and it always works out the same. You don't have to just deplete their shields, but also neutralize their regeneration.

So, consider you have a bank of 100 and a regeneration of 20. It takes 5 seconds to recover. If an enemy does 20 DPS to you, then he can't break your regeneration (barring critical hits, of course). If he does even a little more DPS, however, he can kill you, albeit slowly. In order to kill you effectively, he needs be able to do at least twice as much damage as you have shield regeneration. And the true is for you, killing other things. And this is, again, where the numbers game comes into play.

If you have the same bank and regeneration as the last example and there's now two of those enemies, they can kill you quickly, because even though each is only strong enough to neutralize your regeneration, the other is now doing pure DPS. You will be dead in 5 seconds flat. This is why you may be able to handle a single Battleship for example, but if another one shows up, you're done for. Now, if you manage to kill the first Battleship quickly enough, you're back down to a single enemy. See why this matters so much? If, when that new enemy appears, everything you have suddenly starts shooting at it instead, then you're done for. Focus Fire.

Energize

Talk about energy and strategies for using it effectively.

Shielding

Go into detail about shields and how they work.