Subset Games Forum

Anyone rely most of their engagements on Autofire?

I only ask because it seems timing lasers to break shields is superior to out-of-sync auto fired shots...

...I am starting Normal mode for the first time and wondered whether relying on Autofire is a "bad habit."

Then again, as far as "bad habits" are considered, I'll defend tactical pausing any day.

I only really auto fire with II ion cannons because they shot so damn fast. Otherwise I time every thing unless the ships almost dead and it won't matter. If you have a bunch of identical weapons you can probably leave auto fire on but even then you probably want to be selecting new targets any ways.

While the 'not needing to target more than once' thing is really helpful, I like to leave the autofire off if I can help it. Generally, I don't have weapons that are good to autofire with. Missiles, for example.

Only with ion cannons or weapons that are the same speed as each other. Otherwise, you're right, it's usually very important to sync your attacks to get through shields, and autofire is no good for that.

I use both autofire and tactical pauses liberally. If the AI can react much faster than I can in real time, I figure that both options help reduce the gap in my reaction time. I'm legally blind, so it's not just a matter of how fast I can react, but often how long it takes for me to notice if a cooldown finishes, if damage is dealt somewhere, etc.

I was inspired by an old Star Fleet Battles/Star Fleet Command tactic, which seems to apply with ion weapons in FTL. In those games, it was discovered that slightly staggered fire is much more effective at wearing down a shield than relying on alpha strikes, because the shield has less time to recover between each successive shot.

As an example, take 2x Ion Blast 1 - Rather than two simultaneous ion shots, thus setting the shield lockdown at 5 seconds, one shot hits, then another 2-3 seconds later, effectively lengthening the lockdown by a precious few seconds with each volley. With autofire on, you only need to set up the initial attack, and just switch targets while paused, as needed. This of course assumes each successive shot hits, but it can buy a few extra seconds for normal weapons/drones to strike. I admit, it works much more consistently in the early game, before the enemy ships get ridiculously high dodge rates and 4 shields.

Of course, if you're autofiring an Ion Blast 2 every 4 seconds, you might not need to worry about doing this too much, if at all.

I don't use it most of the time, unless you have synched guns (e.g. Kestrel B) you tend to lose damage. Or, worse, you might forget to turn off auto fire for your missile launcher/bomb and waste ammo.

Depends of what weapons you get, for instance I got two BL mk 2s and an ion mk 2, so I'll leave them on auto fire as the ion fires so fast there's no point in syncing it as it fires faster then the damage wears off so you can really stack up the dmage with it, meaning it would weaken your position not to autofire it, and of course my 2 lasers are of the same type so they have the same charge rate. But if you have a variety of different weapons with different charge times then autofire may not be a good idea, same as with missile using weapons, as they may burn through your supply.

I rarely autofire, even with Ion Blasts. But that's probably because I'm more often in pause mode than not and usually just leave it until my projectiles hit. With Ion blasts, as soon as they hit I target again. Works for me.
Autofire per weapon would be nice for those though...

I NEVER use auto fire. more then once using it I lost my entire four man crew boarding because i forgot I had auto fire on and that last missile hit....

I often autofire "fast" weapons like Ion while keeping "slow" ones ready but without target (I think only exception is Glaive Beam on Stealth B, You want it shoot as often as it can).
Of course, I sometimes do go with or without autofire.

Mostly partial tho since it's smart to "tickle" while getting ready for "punch"...