Weapon Station: Player Guide

The Weapons console is manned by the Weapons Officer, sometimes called the "Tactical Officer". The Weapons Officer's role is not only to manage all of the weapons on the Artemis, but to prepare scientific instruments like Probes and Beacons. The ship's stock of Homing Torpedoes can also be converted into energy, giving the Weapons Officer control of an emergency reserve of fuel. The Weapons Officer should always be aware of the state of the ship's shields, and be ready to report to the Captain the instant they begin to fall.

The Weapons Officer also shares with the Helmsman the ability to raise and lower shields, and change the view on the Mainscreen. Along with the Captain and Helm, it is one of the three most important roles in the game.

Weapons: Capabilities and Responsibilities 

• Raise and Lower shields 
• Target enemy ships
• Manual target specific enemy systems 
• Load torpedo tubes
• Fire torpedoes/ deploy mines/ launch probes
• Fire primary beams
• Adjust beam frequency 
• Monitor enemy shields
• Convert Energy to Torpedoes/ Torpedoes to Energy 

Official help text

Screenshot / Transcription

Note: the image to the right shows the Weapons station as it appeared in Artemis 2.6. Artemis 2.7 introduced probes, tags and beacons, which increased the selection available. 2.7 also introduced a new "pop up" selector which shows only the ordinance type currently selected, until the control is clicked on to show the types available. Although other editors may wish to post a new screenshot, it may be a good idea to wait and see whether there will be additional changes in the next few releases.

Basic Play for the Weapons Station

• Targeting:
• Target enemies by clicking on them. 
• A target lock is required to fire beams. A lock is not required for kinetic ordnance, but without a lock a homing torpedo/nuke/EMP/Pshock will use its own targeting rules.
• Firing a homing torpedo/nuke/EMP/Pshock with a lock means that it will go active immediately on launch and seek its target.
• Firing a homing torpedo/nuke/EMP/Pshock without a lock means that it will fly straight until is passes near any vessel (including enemies, neutrals, friendlies, and stations) at which point it will home in on that target.
• If no ship is targeted, beams will not fire regardless of whether they are engaged.
• Kinetic Ordnance:
• Often collectively referred to as torps or munitions, the tubes can be loaded with homing torpedoes, nukes, EMPs, mines, or (in v2.2) Pshocks depending on what the tactical situation and the captain call for.
• As of Artemis 2.7, the type of ordinance to load into the tubes is selected from a "pop up" menu. This menu normally displays the currently selected torpedo type as a single button, with three up arrows superimposed over it. Clicking on the button will pop up the list of types, and hovering over each selection will display a short description of that ordinance type. Choosing a type will close the menu and select that type.
• It takes time to load or unload the tubes, and the tubes must be powered and undamaged.
• If clicking to load or unload the tubes isn't working, get a status report from Engineering. 
• Homing torps, nukes, EMPs, mine, and Pshocks are fired manually by clicking the "Fire" button.
• Homing torps have some degree of maneuverability and a targeting range of 5400m (the torpedo range shows up as a grey circle, and is equal to the radius of the compass ring at zoom level 4).
• Nukes have a targeting range of 5400m and a 1000m blast radius so can take out several small ships in one shot.  If no target is hit after it has traveled 6000m, an automatic timer will detonate the warhead.
• EMPs (formerly known as ECMs) behave similarly to nukes but only damage enemy shields and not the hull.
• Mines do not require a target lock and only travel a set distance before stopping dead in space and arming.
• WARNING:
  
• The trigger radius of a mine (500m) is only slightly smaller than the launch range (634m), but both of these are smaller than the kill radius (1000m).
• Upshot: If the mine will go off as soon as it arms (e.g. if you're dropping onto an enemy) you should be moving forward (i.e. not at a dead stop) when you deploy it. Otherwise it's less of a bombing run and more of a suicide bomb.
• Pshocks (added in v2.2) behave similarly to homing torpedoes but deal damage over time to any target that has no shields or that has a current shield strength of 0.
• Non-Lethal Ordnance: (added in v2.7)
• In addition to the munitions above, the launch tubes can also be loaded with probes, tags and beacons. These ordinance types use the standard torpedo casing but are used to carry scientific instrumentation, to help explore or investigate the sector.
• Probes have unlimited range, but self destruct upon reaching the edge of the sector. They fire directly forward from the ship, ignoring any object currently targeted by Weapons. As long as the probe is in flight, the ship's sensor range will be extended to cover the area around the probe.
• Tags home in on the target like homing torpedoes, but on striking the target, it attaches a scanning instrument to the hull or an organic creature's hide. Tags are intended to be used to gather data from monsters, but if fired at a Skaraan ship, they are able to interfere with Cloak and Teleport abilities.
• Bio Beacons are dropped ordinance, like mines. When loaded into a torpedo tube, a secondary selector will appear allowing the Weapons officer to select a specific type of monster, and whether the beacon should attract or repel that monster type. Beacons can be very useful to attract monsters to a location where they can be used to distract enemy vessels and possibly destroy them. 
• Light Cruisers and Scouts may wish to make use of non-lethal ordinance as an alternative way of dealing with enemy invasion or BioMech infestation. Note that Bio Beacons cannot attract BioMechs directly, but other monsters can still be attracted by a beacon in order to interfere with them.  
• Beams:
• Beams do not need to be fired manually; simply target a ship that is within your beam arc and click the the Auto Beams button on the right side of the station screen. If the button is lit, the beam state is ON and beams will fire as rapidly as the current energy allocation allows.
• Beams have an arc in which they can fire. They also have a maximum range. This is shown on the display as an arc in front of your ship. 
• Beams on the light cruiser have a default range of 1000m. Other ships may vary.
• Beam arcs often overlap. The light cruiser has two beam arcs which overlap at the front. As a result, only one beam will fire when the target is directly to the right or left, but both will fire when the target is in front.
• Beams can be targetted and fired manually by deselecting the "Auto Beams" button while a target is selected, which brings up the gun camera. Click off (deselect) a target to disengage the gun camera. When manual firing is engaged, the beams will not fire unless the Weps officer clicks. See Advanced Play below for more information on using manual targeting.
• Firing beams consumes energy. The system will also drain energy at a constant rate when not firing (regardless of whether beams are set to auto or not).

•  Shields:
• Raise shields by clicking the Shields button on the right side of the station view or use Key Binds (Q to Toggle, K To Raise and L to Lower).
• Shields consume energy when they are up, so drop then when they're not needed. Similarly, having both front and back shields up is twice the drain on the Artemis' energy and cooling systems. If the tactical situation permits, coordinate with the Captain, Helm, and Engineering to drop the unneeded shields. 
• Monitor enemy shields:
• Like the helm console, you have limited information on the state of the enemy shields, but not as much information as the science and captain's map consoles have. Shield state for fore and aft shields can be determined at a glance by looking for the colored hemispheres around enemy ships.
• Green shields are above 75% strength.
• Yellow shields are above 50% strength.
• Red shields are above  25% strength.
• Blinking shields mean they are taking damage  

Advanced Play for the Weapons Station

• Enemy and neutral ships are destroyed when they have taken 70 points of internal damage. (ref)

• Beam frequencies 
• The shield frequency bar graph displayed on the Science scan is a measure of the strength of the enemy's shields at various frequencies across the electromagnetic band. A high bar means that the shields are highly effective at dissipating directed energy in that frequency. Conversely, a low bar means that the shields are weak to beams on that frequency.
• Tuning your beams to a frequency that the shields are weak against can make a great deal of difference when in prolonged battles or when engaging multiple targets at once.
• See screenshot at right: In the example, the Skaraan Executor's shields would be most vulnerable to beams on frequency D. More detailed explanations of this system can be found on the Beam Frequency page.
• To facilitate communication with Science or the Captain, the objects they have selected on their consoles are visible on the Weapons console, if in range. Science's selected object appears with a pulsing green square around it, and the Captain's selection has a rotating yellow square around it. Science and the Captain can also see the target Weapons has selected.

• Manual targeting of beam weapons  
  

• How to: To engage manual control of the beams, deselect "auto beams" on the right side of the weapons screen, then select a target. This will bring up the gun cam view. Manually targeted beams are subject to the same firing arc and range limitations as auto beams. When in the gun camera view, you will see the targeted ship regardless of its bearing to the Artemis and regardless of whether is in either of your beam arcs. To avoid getting "lost in the scope", it's important to listen to your other crew members for situational awareness, particularly with regard to switching targets as helm maneuvers you through the space.
• The reticle: The circular targeting reticle controlled by the mouse will turn green when you are within range, the targeted craft is within the firing arc of at least one of your beams, and at least one of those beams is charged. 
• The arc and recharge diagram: Below and to the right of the gun camera view is a schematic of the overlapping beam arcs as well as a red chevron indicating the relative position and heading of the targeted craft. When the red chevron is within one or both of the arcs, the active arc or arcs will turn green. Clicking will fire all weapons that have a shot, at which time the arc will turn red, rapidly shrink down, and then begin expanding again, giving a visual representation of the beam recharge time. When it reaches its full extent (assuming the enemy is still within range and arc) it will turn green, indicating that it is ready to be fired again.
• Target points: The gun camera view will indicate via differently colored crosses the points on the targeted vessel that are critical to the various shipboard systems of maneuver, weapons, propulsion. Highly accurate shots to these areas will do internal damage even despite the presence of shields, directly reducing the adversary's ability to use the damaged system.
• Mind the fact that the points are shown no matter what side of the ship you are facing. If the point is located on the other side of the hull, it will still be shown, but hitting this point will not inflict a hit to the systems - since you are not hitting the system point, but a totally unrelated part of the hull.
• Enemy subsystem mechanics (Based on Thom's response to this question here.)
• Damage: A successful hit on a subsystem will destroy that subsystem for the whole ship, regardless which highlighted node you hit. A direct hit on any of the red Weapon nodes will take out both fore and aft beams. Additionally, once a system has been neutralized, further damage to that system doesn't make it any more broken. Instead, move to the next system. (Though Thom's answer is clear that additional fire on a damaged system will not damage it more, it's not known whether a second shot resets the repair clock. See below for details on the repair clock.)
• Repair: The code that controls damage to enemy vessels goes from 0.0 to 1.0 (least damaged to most damaged). Anything other than 0.0 means that subsystem is broken and offline until repairs over time bring it back down to 0.0. It's not known how much damage a single aimed shot does on average or at maximum, but the highest possible repair time for a system appears to be: (0.05 damage repair per unit of elapsed time) x (the number of units required to go from 1.0 to 0.0) {assuming time units are seconds} , giving a total of 20 seconds to repair a system from totally destroyed to functional.
• If you click at the point that is located in the other half of the ship (like, taking enemy up front, you click at the point on its hull located on its rear half), your beams will hit that shield facing.
• This means that a skilled weapons engineer can hit enemy rear shields even when approaching from front, which is very useful against ships that have powerful front shields and low rear shields.
• At the same time, unskilled weapons engineer can repeatedly target front and rear shield arcs, making it take significantly more time to destroy a ship than on auto mode.

• Boomerang Torpedoes
•  It is possible for a homing torpedo or mine to hit the far side of a target if fired from close enough range.
• For example, suppose two enemies are closing in, and you determine that KR1 has a weak front shield and KR2 has a weak rear shield. The weapons officer can lock onto KR1 and keep hammering its front shield with beams. When the ships get close enough he can quickly lock onto KR2, fire two homing torpedoes, then switch back to KR1 before the beams cycle again. If the range (and relative bearing of the Artemis' tubes to the target) was exactly right, the torpedoes will fly straight out of the tubes, missing KR2's front aspect, and curve around to detonate on its weaker rear shield. 

• Infinite Homing Torpedoes
• Do not forget that you can make torpedoes from energy. While everybody knows that you can convert them to energy and most use it extensively, there are some less acknowledged techniques:
• Never let your stations build homings. Order something else, since you can make homings much faster and not taking up precious production time
• When docked, if you are not in a hurry, start making homing torpedoes from energy. This will make sure that when you are in a pinch, homing torpedoes will be available there to be taken
• As a last resort, you can dock to a station, make your helms turn towards approaching enemies, and continuously fire homing torpedoes towards them without lock. They will home in on their targets all right when coming close. Don't forget to turn off impulse, warp, beams, shields, leave sensors at 1% and maneuver enough for helm to counteract the tractor beam rotation force, while raising torpedo power. This makes you deal continuous damage at a range of 5000, and can often win you an otherwise fatal endgame encounter. Don't forget to use EMP's to soften up big fleets' shields (fire them without lock too).

• Zoom Ranges
• At the different zoom levels, the compass ring has the following approximate radius:
  

  Zoom 1	Zoom 2	Zoom 3	Zoom 4
  1200m	2400m	3600m	5000m

• Relative Display Mode: The Options button in the upper-left corner lets you change to Relative Display Mode. With RDM turned on, the top of your screen is no longer 'north'. Instead, the top of your screen is always in front of your ship. As you turn, your ship remains pointing up and the map rotates around it. 
• Showing Weapon Arcs: The Options button also lets you turn weapon arcs on or off. 

Official Help Text: This is a transcription of the official helptext from the game, brought up by pressing F1

This is the weapons station. It controls your beams and your torpedoes. First, you can't fire beams or homing torepedoes if you don't lock on. You lock on by clicking (inside of the rosetta circle) directly on the red enemy symbol you want to target.

Before you can file a torpedo, select the type you want, and click the Load button for the tube you want. Once complete, the fire button will be active. Most torpedoes need a target lock, but then will always hit the target. Without a lock, torpedoes launch straight out from the ship, travel straight until they detect a close enemy, home in and explode. Type 6 Mine torpedoes simply fly behind you and become static space mines. 

Beams are different. If the Auto Beams button is on, and the enemy is targeted and in your weapon arcs, they will fire automatically every 6 seconds. Consult with the Science officer to choose the best beam frequency. With Auto Beams off, you can lock an enemy and manually fire at it. 

You can also control a few other things. The buttons along the right side control the current view of the main screen. Below them are buttons for raising the shields. One more button, Zoom, lets you toggle between 4 zoom levels on your display. 

Under that, two small buttons also allow you to trade Mark 1 torpedoes for energy, and vice versa. 

The green symbol in the center of your screen is your ship. Red symbols are enemies, purple symbols are other player ships, and yellow rings are space station. If 'Show Weapon Arcs' is on, the fat pie wedge in front of your ship represents your weapon arcs; your beams can only hit a target inside the arcs. 

The Options button in the upper-left corner lets you return to the console choice screen, and exit the game. 

Hot Keys

          K: Raise Shields

          L: Lower Shields

          Q: Toggle Shields
          B: Toggle Auto-beams
          L/R Arrows: Switch Beam Frequencies

          T: Zoom In

          Y: Zoom Out

           1: Select Homing Torpedoes
           2: Select Nukes
           3: Select Mines
           4: Select EMPs

           5: Not enabled for "Select Pshocks" by default, but can be enabled as discussed under Keyboard

           Shift + 1: Load/Fire Tube 1
           Shift + 2: Load/Fire Tube 2
           Shift + 3: Load/Fire Tube 3
           Shift + 4: Load/Fire Tube 4

           Shift + U: Torpedo to Energy

           Shift + I: Energy to Torpedo

           F2: Front Screen
           F3: Left Screen
           F4: Right Screen
           F5: Rear Screen
           F6: Tactical Screen
           F7: Long-Range Screen
           F8: Status Screen

Related articles:

Weapons | Beam Weapons | Nuclear Torpedoes | Munitions | Mines | Homing Torpedoes | Damage | EMPs