EVERSPACE 2 – Guide on How to Become a Good Pilot

Quick Guide for New Pilots

Dont Fly Heavies

Seriously, dont fly heavy class ships. The primary goal of heavies is to outgun and out tank your opponents. The same strategy does not apply to the other 2 classes and youll have the feeling of “oh my god everything does so much damage to me how can you not fly the gunship or the bomber to out damage and out tank them”.

Dont Take Damage

Aside from the front shield, your primary goal should be to not be getting hit. Mistakes will happen and you will take damage eventually, but more often than not you should be dodging and ducking

Use Your Damned Devices And Ultimate

They are always there to help you, use them all the time. Don’t worry about recharge, the afore mentioned dont take damage comes into play when your device is on cooldown.

Your ultimate is a tool, stop waiting for a time when its going to be usefull when youre swarmed and just use it already. Back off and fly backwards to kyte enemies to recharge it. Dont forget to deactivate it to save the charge if you got the use out of it you needed. This will have it recharge to full faster and allow you to use it more often.

Stop Hurting Yourself

missiles, mines, and the flak cannon have AOE damage that hurts you too if youre too close. Try and keep some distance between you and your target. Preferably such that they are infront of you at all times so you can hit them. Your guns cant shoot backwards.

Gameplay Tips

Never build ship classes exactly the same; you should always build to each class’s specialty. Plan out your devices, weapons, and stats. For example, Expertise might not matter on some ships but matter dramatically on others.

Never fly back into the same path you just came from, and never fly in a straight line to evade. Enemies lead where you’re going, not where you’re at, so it’s more important to have non-zero acceleration than non-zero velocity, but high velocity still helps.

If you’re still learning, generally you want one panic device off cooldown, something you can hit if you get surrounded and swarmed, mostly to get out of said situation.

However, if you only have one panic device, don’t hesitate to use it if things seem to be getting out of hand.

Flak can be fired danger-close, and you can use it to clobber targets around you, but it will apply any effects onto you just as much as onto the enemies. They are kinetic focused, so don’t use flak if you’re out of shields (as it will shred your armor), and don’t use flak if you don’t want its effects on you (Destabilization + bypass shields + no armor will shred you).

Larger doesn’t necessarily mean that much slower; it does mean much less maneuverable, however. So don’t expect a bomber to U-turn at the same speed a vanguard can.

Breathe. You don’t have to constantly kill things, and due to how weapon, shield, and boost regen works, you don’t want several short bursts. You’d rather have one long burst and a breather to recharge.

Weapons recharge even when not selected, so don’t be afraid to fire one weapon until it’s empty, then swap to another one.

All weapons you have with an AoE can hit you. This includes flak, homing missiles, rockets, mines, the bomber’s ARC-9K, and worst of all: cruise missiles. Don’t fire them danger-close.

However, in general, if you’re flying backwards, then a mine’s AoE won’t hit you, even if it immediately triggers.

Carrying around a “utility” flak and beam laser is very helpful for exploration, as they are generally unparalleled in niche but common scenarios (mine clearing for flak, buttons for lasers, and depending on how fast you want to go, mining for either/or).

Craft items that are not severely underleveled. A level 1 shield will just get you killed at level 10, so don’t be afraid to craft a shield at that point; any shield will do.

Figure out your own weaknesses and work to adapt to them. What may be devastating to some people may be incredibly weak to others, yourself included. (Personal note: Of the outlaw/bloodstar units, I have the most issues with snipers and prospectors due to high damage/shield damage and kiting from both.)

Some pieces of equipment can have special modifiers that no other piece of equipment has. For example, cargo units and boosters can have handling, speed, and boost speed modifiers, while shields can have modifiers that affect how a shield acts. Sometimes these modifiers are well worth keeping around even when the piece of kit is outdated.

You don’t have to lock onto a target to fire upon it, but it really helps.

If you’re skilled enough, you can lock onto one target while firing at another. This is most useful for firing missiles at one target and pummeling another (or firing mines in one direction and thermo-gunning another enemy).

Experiment; you never know what your new favorite gun will be unless you give it a shot. Worst case scenario: if it’s a gun, you have another gun or two ready to go; if it’s a ship, then you get full resale value on the ship for your next purchase.

You have a higher forward top speed than sideways.

Inertia dampeners can be toggled on or off, and this can let you drift; however, it also kills your acceleration, so you don’t want it always off.

Kinetic damage and energy damage catalysts don’t override the prefix of a weapon, so don’t be afraid to put those on your favorite gun.

Hull matters shockingly little compared to armor and shields, as it takes full damage from enemy energy and kinetic damage, which will tear through it extremely quickly.

Enemies do use energy vs. kinetic damage weaponry, and if you pay close attention, you may pick up which ones are firing kinetic-focused rounds and which ones are firing energy-focused rounds. Focus on ones which are effective against your loadout.

Don’t tunnel vision; an enemy is an enemy. The more off the board, the better, and the more dangerous ones tend to be more durable anyway.

Different weapons have different strengths and different weaknesses, best shown in secondaries (especially rockets vs. homing missiles vs. mines).

Don’t be afraid to use consumables. You’ll get plenty to use throughout the game, to the point where you can almost constantly sell them and still get plenty for the next fight.

Additional Tips

Although damage and damage types are covered in one of the game’s tutorials, I went an embarrassingly long time without a proper understanding of them and hopefully I can save someone else the headache.

Your (and enemy) weapons deal Kinetic Damage, Energy Damage, or a mix of both. What damage a target receives is based on their currently active defenses in the following order:

• If the target has an active shield (blue health), it will only take Energy Damage until the shield’s HP is depleted
• If the target has armor (yellow health), it will only take Kinetic Damage until the armor’s HP is depleted
• The target’s hull (red health) will take combined Kinetic and Energy Damage until their HP is depleted (this destroys the target)

A couple of related tips:

• Energy focused weapons are excellent at shredding through both Shields and Hull, which is the basic HP composition of many enemies in the game. There’s no immediate need to swap to a Kinetic focused weapon once you break an enemy shield, as long as they don’t have armor.
• Generally if a weapon has balanced damage, the Powerful or Rapid Catalysts will increase a weapon’s DPS more than a comparable tier Energy/Kinetic Dmg catalyst. Similarly Energy/Kinetic Dmg catalysts are higher DPS increases on weapons that favor one energy type.
• Kinetic and Energy DPS shown on the a weapon’s stat card does not reflect any secondary effects or other synergies, so don’t treat those numbers as a final judgement. If something sounds good, try it! If something feels good in your build, keep it! If you keep dying, see what synergies you could be better exploiting to increase your damage.