X3:Reunion Manual - Steam

On firing remember to fire in short single bursts, when you have the target in your direct path.Firing curved shots (aiming at the Auto-Target too much) or continuous bursts will mean a lotof wasted shots that might drain your ship’s power too quickly and leave you without anyweapons while they recharge.If you are taking on a group of Pirates, it is best to check what the ships weapons are with aFreight Scanner. If one of them is holding PSGs or Ion Disruptors, take that one down first orwhile you take on the others it will lay waste to your shields. Switch to medium powerweapons or lower if the ship is fast, as you will miss a lot more, but you will have a betterchance by being able to fire more continuously.If you are suddenly outnumbered by well-equipped M4s or Kha’ak, jump within the samesector and they will head towards your new location. Due to each ship having differentspeeds, the ships will form a long staggered line as they head in your direction, with the fastships getting to you first, so you can take them down one by one.Strafing your ship is a very effective way of avoiding incoming fire. You can also use the shipdrift to avoid hits while you turn or flip your ship to return fire.Some ships have a rear turret like the Nova and these can be avoided by twisting yourjoystick or use the [ q ] key to create a forward spin, this will reduce the number of hits fromthe other ship’s rear turret.Friendly FireYou will have to watch out for the locals when you are firing away at an enemy, yourreputation may drop like a stone and as a result you may not be able to buy certain goods orthey may even turn hostile to you. Should you accidentally cause damage, or death to a shipto which you had no hostile intentions, you can contact the local sector police or militaryvessels to declare the incident and avail yourself of any punishment.CapturingThe nice thing about flying a Pirate M3 Nova is the cool paint job that you get with pirateships. A rare and even better capture is the Raider (speed but lower shields but M5 haveTriplex scanners), Vanguard (more engine, laser bank a bit faster, weapons optimisations),Sentinel (higher shields but a little slower) or Hauler (more cargo and slightly slower) variantsthat have been customised at unknown shipyards. Extremely rare Mamba Raiders have beenseen reputed to have 2*25 MJ Shields with the speed and agility of an M4.The essential method of capturing is to remove the shields and reduce the hull to 87% orlower. To gauge the effort, fire a few shots and see how much the shield drops. If it takesthree shots of fire to reduce them to 50%, then fire another set of shots to take out theshields. You can also use missiles for bringing down the shields; wasps, which fire in swarmsof ten, are cheap and good for this.When the shields are down, change the weapon group to a lower-powered one and then useshort bursts of fire to keep the shields down and reduce the hull. If you keep doing this thepilot will sometimes bail. Most pilots will not bail if the ship is only getting intermittent shots, soa shock volley will make them fear you are going for the kill and they then might see senseand bail. Ion weapons though good for taking down shields, will destroy all onboardequipment and as a result reduce the value of the capture.55Possible capturing weapon group layouts:M3 Class use IonD and PAC for Shields and IRE for hullM4 Class use PAC for Shields and IRE for hullM5 Class use PAC for Shields and IRE for hullThe ship will then go to neutral status and you will then have totake command of the on-board computer by claiming the ship.