How Space Combat Works - Starfield Guide

Publish date: 2024-05-09

As you learn more about the timing of enemy attacks and when to strike with which weapons, you have the opportunity to continually allocate power to boost up certain systems. You can increase your ballistic firepower when their shields are down, or your engines when you need to quickly lose an enemy in pursuit. If one of your systems is taken out, you can allocate power out of it until it's repaired so no power is wasted.

Ship Weapons - Choosing A Weapon Type

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The left three systems represent your weapons, which can be assigned whenever you customize your ship and its turrets. By default, they usually relate to Lasers, Ballistics, and Missiles, but you can also swap them out for Particle Weapons, and non-lethal EM Weapons — but only three weapon types can be active at a time.

Lasers are great against an enemy ship’s shields, while Ballistics are better against the actual hull. Particle Weapons do a nice even spread of damage but don’t excel either way, and EM Weapons are electro-magnetic and allow you to disable systems without destroying the ship outright, in case you want to board them.

Missiles can deal a lot more damage, but require you to lock targets and are depleted fairly quickly. You’ll need some good mobility to stay locked onto a target long enough to deploy your missiles, but they can deal a ton of damage when used at the right time.

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Keeping an eye on the numbers along the circular HUD is essential, as it will tell you how much firepower your weapons can dish out before needing to replenish over time, as well as your top speed and when you can boost to avoid incoming missile locks.

Once an enemy is inside your circular HUD, you can begin to lock onto them and open fire. Once the lock is complete, your missiles will automatically seek them out. To fully destroy an enemy ship, you’ll need to deplete their shield, and then inflict enough hull damage to destroy them. However — once you learn the Targeting Systems Skill, you can specifically fire upon specific systems like an enemy’s engine to disable their movement, at which point you can fly close and attempt to board them instead.

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Targeting Systems can also allow you to deal with multiple threats, which you can expect to deal with later in the game. When faced with multiple fighters, try targeting their weapon systems to temporarily take them out of the fight so you can focus on other ships.

Ship Engines - Managing Your Speed

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Your ship’s Engine dictates how fast you can move around, and how good your top speed can get. Diverting more power to your engines gives you much more mobility and speed, but if damaged, you’ll be a sitting duck!

Depending on your ship’s mass and mobility, you can utilize your engines to chase down or escape from multiple targets. By allocating more power, you can hunt down and finish off damaged ships, and use your boosters carefully to get out of missile locks.

Ship Shields

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The Shields are a necessary defense to stop your ship from taking real damage, as indicated by the bubble around your ship icon in the right corner. Unlike hull damage, it will replenish over time, so if you start to see your hull taking too much damage, use Ship Parts (pressing 0 in battle, or pressing F when viewing your Ship Menu) to heal up.

Grav Drive: How to Escape Starfield Ship Combat

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The Grav Drive is how your ship can travel between the stars, and the more you upgrade it, the farther you’ll be able to travel between two points. You don’t necessarily need to allocate points from your reactor when in a fight, but you will need at least one point if you try to escape or otherwise travel to another system. The more points allocated to the Grav Drive, the faster you can make your escape — which can become vital if you find yourself outmatched!

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As a general rule, your ship will usually de-power you Grav automatically when entering a new system. If you’re not looking for a fight, it might be wise to quickly allocate power back as soon as you can. If pirates or the like show up to ambush you, you’ll be able to quickly warp away before they can get close.

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