Why? Because they explode easily under concentrated fire. I almost always set all of my frigates and cruisers so that enemy frigates are given top priority. Target priority is simply a system of telling your ships what to attack first. The editor for AI settings allows you to set target priority and range. If you go wrong here, you could well lose a battle even if your fleet is great. Manipulating the AI settings of ships in the deployment screen is absolutely crucial to victory. Also, there is a mechanic in the game which reduces the effectiveness of each new shield module placed so as to keep players from stacking shields too heavily, so more than three shield modules tends to be a waste. While any ship will be in trouble once its shields are down, armor is an effective way to keep a ship kicking just a little longer. Some armor is always a good idea with cruisers, and often with frigates. However, you do need some flexibility in your strategy. Making use of shields in preference to armor will dramatically increase your effectiveness in most battles. The details are explained in my weapons and armor guide, but in summary shields have greater resilience against damage over time. Generally speaking, however, shields are better. Okay, there are some exceptions, particularly in scenarios where shield effectiveness is cut in half. A good contingent of ace pilots can cream both in short order.
Once you have some good fighters built, deploy them! Particularly in scenarios where the enemy makes heavy use of frigates and fighters. I don’t even recommend armor - speed, really, is king. Turning fighters into torpedo bombers can work well in a few cruiser-heavy challenges, but the weight of torpedo modules make fighters so slow that they become vulnerable to enemy fire.
I recommend building your fighters fast and using standard fighter laser weapons. They counter fighters, they counter frigates, and they even counter cruisers (although it takes some time to punch through cruiser armor). They’re great because they counter almost everything. While they at first seem like a waste of time because your pilot limit in the early scenarios don’t allow for use of many of them, they become very important in the latter half of the game, so much so that victory without them is nearly impossible. Using these tips will be more than enough to beat every scenario in the game on normal difficulty and most of them on hard.
#Gratuitous space battles generic mod enabler how to#
This strategy guide will outline a few tips on how to win. Worse, it is entirely possible to miss a basic element of the game’s strategy without ever knowing. There is a lot of planning involved, and the feedback received from your losses doesn’t always reveal why you were defeated. Gratuitous Space Battles is a lot of fun, but as the scenarios become more difficult it can become a very hard game to win.