Operation BlackKnife
Having a hard time?
In most of your encounters while playing Operation BlackKnife, you will be heavily outnumbered. Luckily, you have access to the most powerful ship in the war, and this guide.
COMBAT
While a certain amount of dexterity is required in combat, most of your advantage will come through proper utilization of your ships highly customizable weapon and module loadout.
For example, if you have just been defeated by a barrage of Large Enemy Capital Ships, than it would probably be wise to equip a full armament of Capital Missile Launchers, and attach a mix of Armor & Energy Modules.
Some example Ship loadouts
Fighting: Fighters
Weapons: Lasers & Guided Missiles: These weapons work well, however Pulsar Lances will one-shot-kill most fighters, and they have a super fast reload speed
Modules: Speed & Armor: While fighters seem small and annoying, they can do a lot of damage if you don’t pay attention. A elite UCF Fighter is equipped with a Pulsar Lance, and can do up to 150 damage in one shot if you let them get to close
Fighting: Frigates
Weapons: Guided and Streaker Missiles: Don’t bother using Lasers on Frigates, their armor will ignore most of the damage. Try to circle around them while hitting them with your high damage missiles. Capital Missiles will dispatch Frigates in a few shots.
Modules: Armor: Frigates are normally equipped with some deadly armaments, they will kill you.
Fighting: Capital Ships
Weapons: Capital Ships Missiles: These super powerful missiles are the way to go. Capital Ships have extremely powerful armor and plenty of hit points, they are also packed full of Missile Batteries and Pulsar Lances, so its best to stay as far away from these baddies as possible. If you are feeling particularly hardcore, you can try and equip full armaments of Pulsar Lances, and see if you can sneak up and possibly tear through their hulls in one hit [Be careful though, almost all capital ships are equipped with anti-fighter close-range Pulsar Lances, which do have the capability of killing you in one hit].
Modules: Your going to have to mix it up to match your play style. Armor is always helpful, but if you think you can dodge the missile barrages, you can try to equip a mix of Handling and Speed boost, and if you are trying for a suicidal Pulsar Death Lance Ninja Strike, you will need a high energy capacity to make sure you can fire all your Pulsar Lances at once.
The Perfect LoadOut
There is no Perfect LoadOut, every situation requires different weapons
Upgrades
Remember to upgrade your ship! Upgrades are a great way to improve your ships performance overall!
Modules Stack
It’s also important to remember that the percentage bonuses from your modules will stack!
General Combat Tips
-
- Don’t every stop moving
If you stop, you die. Keeping your ship moving around will allow you to avoid deadly lasers and missiles focused where you were.
- Focus on one target at a time
When facing multiple opponents, every time you destroy an enemy ship, that is one less ship firing at you, which makes your job easier. (This strategy applies to all video games)
- Properly manage your Auxiliary Powers
It is important to always be shifting your Auxiliary Powers to suit your needs, but also make sure that you are allowing time for your Auxiliary Power to recharge during combat!
- Don’t be afraid to retreat
Tactical Retreat isn’t shameful, if you are about to die, activate your speed boost and afterburner your way out of there. There are no ships as fast as you, and once you are a safe distance away, you can recharge your Auxiliary Supply and possibly even resupply and go back to the fight (remember that they will hunt you though)
Auxiliary Powers (only available after level 3)
Perhaps one of your more ships greatest strengths, is mastering the use of your special auxiliary powers.
Armor Boost
Having your Armor Boost active will prevent you from constantly requiring expensive hull repairs, and possibly provide the extra bit of health you need to survive a surprise encounter with a barrage of missiles.
Speed Boost
Sometimes instead of taking the hits, it is better to avoid them all together. The speed boost can allow you to dodge dangers & maneuver behind enemies, and for a small auxiliary cost. It can also help you when you need to retreat and regroup if things get to dangerous.
Cloaking
While Cloaking serves a huge purpose in the end of the game, it can be used in normal situations as well. Cloaking can allow you to sneak up on your enemy before unloading a powerful 4000+ damage pulse strike on their hulls, if you have a powerful enough weapon, they might not have time to react.
Also, while you cant escape enemies that already have a lock on you, when you are running away, it prevents them from relocking onto you. (A fact that is not mentioned in the game is that enemy ships will rescan for new more important targets during combat, if you are cloaked during this rescan, they will lose their lock on you)
Interesting Facts & Stuff
Technical Things I Know Fact-Players will bother me about, and to prove I do create a story when I make a game.
ISA & UCF Explained
The ISA is the International Space Alliance, it is a democratically run government that is Earth centered and manages the sector around the Sol (our sun) System.
The UCF Stands for the United Corporate Fleet, they a separate country like entity that preside outside ISA Space. They are not Aliens! They are humans that did not want to live in the Socialist Society that is the ISA. The UCF and ISA have had wars in the past, but this war is the first communication the ISA has had with the UCF in over 120 years.
What year is the game set in?
The game is set in the year 2900, humanity has spread themselves across this portion of the galaxy etc etc etc¦. No intelligent Alien races have yet to be discovered, however, artifacts have been found that hint at other intelligent species in the galaxy.
WHY CAN I MOVE ONE DIRECTION AN LOOK ANOTHER?!!?
Every single beta tester asked this question¦ its something called the omni-directional drive system. It is a system that allows the ships engines to direct the engine exhaust in a direction independent of which way the ship is facing!
Second of all, game balance. I even tried to see what the game is like if you had to fly the ship like a car or a conventional aircraft, it wasn’t fun. It was too hard to maneuver around while in combat.
What is a Capital Ship? What is a Frigate? What is a Fighter?!!?!
I feel bad that I never explained what these size categories are, I just assume everyone watches, reads and plays as many space scifi games as me.
Fighter Class
Fighters are small ships that are used as cheap replaceable weapons. They are generally fast, lightly armored, and don’t have very powerful weapons.
Frigate Class
Frigates are about 5-10 times the mass of fighters, this allows them to have much more armor and better weapons.
Capital Class
Capital Ships are the heavy scale tippers in combat. They are 3-6 times larger than Frigates, they are equipped with heavy armor that greatly diminishes damage to their powerful weapon systems.
ODEQA Drive Explained
The ODEQA Drive stands for Ostrovsky’s Dark Energy Quantum Accumulator. It is an old theoretical energy generator that has only been recently mastered by the engineers in the 2900’s.
This generator basically pulls from the Ambient Dark Energy that perforates the Universe and converts it into high amounts of useable energy. The special thing about the ODEQA Drive, is that it only requires a small amount of space, that is why military engineers outfitted the X1 series fighter-class ship with the ODEQA Drive. It is the power accumulated by this drive that allows you to utilize the high energy auxiliary powers that no normal ship would be able to use do to the unthinkable energy requirements.
I named the drive after my Grandfather Hank Ostrosky (added a V in the name to make it sound more sciency) who passed away in 1997, as well as being a great political activist, he also had great interest in quantum physics and technology in general.
Why can I fly faster than my lasers? Einstien would be crying ;-;
I know you cant go faster than light, but if the ships were really firing lasers, it wouldn’t do much for game balance when you couldn’t dodge would it? If you really wanted something that makes sense, think of each laser as a mini-pulsar lance with momentum!
Pulsar Lance, wtf is it
The Pulsar Lance is a stream of concentrated ionized plasma that is encased by a magnetic field to create the beam effect
Any more questions
If you are having trouble with the game or have any more questions or comments, please feel free to drop by the LoneWolf Forums.