Combat

A combat cutter surrounded by seven Luminate Combine warships

Ship-to-ship combat is one of the core Vanguard Galaxy activities. It involves the player navigating to a location with hostile (or friendly!) ships and/or stations, and then engaging in combat until one side withdraws or is destroyed.

Means of Destruction

While any ship can participate in combat - voluntarily or not - combat-oriented ships serve this role better than others. See Ships for more information. However, it is possible (and in the beginning of the game, quite expected) for the player to mount a combat Turret onto any ship they own and perform combat missions successfully.

Combat turrets come in many forms and sizes - some use energy-based attacks, some use projectiles. Some are able to hit without fail, some need extensive ammo expenditure to inflict significant damage. Some turrets are designed for close, medium or long-range combat exclusively. Player has free reign on weapon selection and loadout customization.

Other than using combat turrets, player can equip combat drones if they have access to a ship with a Drone Bay. Drones can be deployed in any configuration, so running a mining ship with mining turrets, but a handful of drones dedicated to defense is perfectly viable.

Available combat drones , for example, are laser drones and with the Advanced Drone Access skill in Drone skill tree, the Missile drones also become available.

Weapons of War

Any turret not specifically intended for mining or salvaging is a combat turret.

Thus, in the list above, anything not prefixed as Mining- (which includes AO - Asteroid Obliterator) or Salvage- is a weapon.

There is no consensus on what weapon is best (*), as each weapon has their own benefits and use-cases (*), and the final selection is up to the player, or to chance - when looting powerful weapons off enemy ships.

_{* These are bold-faced lies. Railguns are the best. Many weapons have no use-cases. Hopefully game will be re-balanced so this changes.}

Example Weapon

Weapons have their Combat Power rating. In simplified terms, the total combat power generated by all weapons (and other modules) is added together, general Power is added to this, then the number is modified by skills and other bonuses to reach a final "Combat Power" score. This score is divided by 5, and that is how much damage per second (DPS) the weapons are expected to produce. Many other factors are relevant here, see Power for power calculations, Damage for damage calculations, Precision for critical hits, Energy for bonus multipliers, to name a few. Also Drones are relevant for combat as well.

The Combat Skill tree deals with combat exclusively - causing damage and critical hits.

Note: The majority of Combat skill tree is applicable for any activity type - mining or salvaging included, as critical hits are critical hits no matter if the turret deals combat or mining damage.

Means of Survival

A combat cutter surrounded by seven Luminate Combine wrecks

Ships can withstand only so much punishment. They have three primary defense tracks:

1. Shields: Not all ships have shields. Shields take damage first, and can regenerate during combat if the player pilots the ship away from hostiles to catch a breath.
2. Armor: Armor is the second line of defense, and not all ships have armor. Armor can regenerate during combat even while damage is still incoming, but this process is much slower than shields unless extensive customization is done to ship gear.
3. Hull: Hull is the third and final damage track - once hull is depleted the player ship will perform an Emergency Jump - and withdraw to safe confines of the closest friendly station to begin repairs. NPC ships can attempt the jump, but often will not get the opportunity

Example of Chisel Mk. II Mining Skiff with Hull and Armor tracks:

Defense modules such as Armor and Shields are not the only provider of Armor and Shields - any module or turret may have their own Armor and Shield scores, which grant the ship defenses, however those will not be multiplied by the Armor Plating or Shield Generator module multipliers.

The Defense Skill tree deals with defense - recovering from damage and mitigating it entirely.

Note: The majority of Defense skill tree is applicable for any activity type - mining or salvaging included, Damage is damage, no matter if caused by missiles or radiation.

Withdrawing from Combat

Emergency Jump Initiated

Often the player takes a larger bite than they can chew. When this happens, nothing is lost - except time. Ships with drained hull will initiate an Emergency Jump to the closest station.

There are no downside to retreating and then coming back with a vengeance, unless the player was performing one of the special missions that do not allow for retreat, such as Patrol, Bounty Hunt or Industrial Ops. In that case the mission will abort, and will likely cost the player a single point of Rank.

Combat Missions and Encounters

Looking for trouble is easy - any Mission Board (even at pacifists like Steel Vultures, Mindus Holdings or Intertrade Network) offers a wide variety of misisons, some of which include combat. Even simple mining and salvage missions at higher rarity levels (colors) feature some adversary - usually automated defenses, small drones, or even full-fledged flotillas. In such cases it's best to go ahead with a combat ship (or at least a combat layout on current ship), clear the hostiles, and then return with a workhorse to mine or salvage in peace.

Combat mission example:

Random timed Combat POI

Outside of Misisons, one can encounter random map POIs that are geared towards combat, such as Pirate activities - marked with a red crosshairs on map, and the goal is to clear out all hostiles there.

Enemy ship classes β 0.8.1.3

Hostile combat ships come in five hull classes: Cutter, Gunship, Corvette, Frigate and Destroyer. Which class an encounter can field is set by the enemy level - larger hulls only appear once enemy levels are high enough:

Class	Appears from enemy level ~
Cutter	1
Gunship	10
Corvette	20
Frigate	45
Destroyer	75

Destroyer-class enemies appear in standard mission waves from enemy level ~75, or as the target of a high-level Capture Ship mission from around level 50. They can also be found as derelict wrecks at battle-debris salvage sites.

Warzones and Dread Ports

These are special systems within the Frontier (see Navigation) that are designed for combat activities. Once the player gets a gate key for those systems (by fighting and looting pirates for Dread Ports, or purchasing from faction controlling the gate to a Warzone), the player will run through a gauntlet of combat situations, escalating to an all-out station offense mission. The reward for these are Bonus skillpoints, so everyone should participate if able.

Combat POIs and the target station inside a Warzone below. Dread Ports are similar.

Outside Assistance

There are two types of help the player may receive during a combat situation - random and planned.

Random Patrols and Mercenaries

A squad of Canisec patrol craft may be passing by while player is engaged in combat, and will help out. This happens entirely randomly and player has no control over this. Also, very rarely, when the player takes damage, a helpful mercenary (see Omnitac Agency) may decide to help out and joins the fray.

Hiring Mercenaries

A well prepared player will know that hired help is just a fistful of Credits away - and hire a mercenary to fight alongside them, over at any Omnitac Agency station. Mercenaries will hang around for as long as their contract lasts, and if their ship is defeated, they will withdraw, repair, and then return once repairs are finished - even to the same combat if it lasts more than a few minutes.