Weapons
Shields between the crew and the vacuum, and the decision about what gets shot. Both of those are yours, and the second one is the harder job.
What the console does
- Shields, up or down. Raise them and everything else gets harder — they drain power and they stop you docking. Lower them at the wrong moment and the mission ends.
- Target selection. You pick what the ship is pointed at. The beams do their own work once something is targeted and inside their arc.
- Beams. Fixed to the hull, with arcs that cover some directions and not others. Being unable to shoot is usually a geometry problem, and geometry is Helms.
- Missile tubes. Load a tube with the type you want — homing, mines, and the nastier things if the ship carries them — then fire. Loading takes time, so decide before you need it.
- A finite magazine. Missiles don’t come back. Docking at a friendly station is how you restock, which makes running out a navigation problem too.
Doing it well
Don’t shoot what Science hasn’t identified. Out here a contact is a stranger until somebody scans it, and plenty of them are neutral, someone’s escort, or a client you were sent to protect. Shooting first has consequences your character keeps — reputations are hard to repair and this universe remembers.
Call your shield state constantly. Nobody else can see it. “Front shield at thirty percent” is the single most useful sentence on the bridge — it tells Helms to turn, Engineering to push power to shields, and the captain that time is running out.
Load the tubes on the way, not on contact. The quiet stretch before the fight is free time. Spend it deciding what goes in each tube, and you’ll have missiles in the air while the other ship is still thinking about it.
Who you’re working with
You and Helms are effectively one person with two keyboards: they own the angle, you own the trigger. Science tells you which target actually matters and what it’s carrying. Engineering can pour power into shields and beams when it counts — but not into everything at once, so ask for what you need and let go of it afterwards.