Combat missions really hard

[YenExios]

Welcome to Discovery!

Not sure if you've played Discovery before, but the way guns work is very different compared to Vanilla Freelancer.

As of patch 5.2.1.1, for vhfs you’ll want to stick to all Class 2 guns. The Class 1 guns are usually for light fighters, and the Class 3 guns you find on Npc bases and planets are for bombers. You can use Class 3 codename guns on vhfs, but they cost an obscene amount of money for newcomers. The Class 2 guns will do for now. You can't save power by switching to lower class guns. No matter what class of guns you have, you will run out of power.

If you are struggling with aiming (like me), you can try missles, but they usually do less damage per second compared to normal guns. Unlike vanilla, they need power to use. You still have to aim them too.

Just repeating what others have mentioned, for ships that have 6 gun slots you want 2 deshield guns and 4 anti hull guns. You also want to have them at the same speed and range. Class 2 speed ranges from 600 to 750. You will do more damage for less power consumption (higher efficiency) with 600 guns compared to 750, but it will be harder to hit those shots since they travel slower. You'll want to try to match refire rates as close as you can. What speed and refire you want in the end depends on what feels comfortable for you. Experiment as much as you can until you find something you like!

A basic setup for VHFs would be: 4x Adv. Flashpoint (Hullbusters) & 2x Imp. Debilitator Mk1 (Shieldbusters) guns. All 750 speed, and Class 2.

You’ll want to make separate weapon groups for them as well if you haven’t already. Three should suffice. One for all guns, one for hullbusters only, and one for shieldbusters only. You can use all guns when you have full power to deshield the enemy faster, or use shield busters only if on low power, and then switch to hullbusters once they are deshielded. This should help you conserve power further without wasting hullbusters on shield or shieldbusters on hull.

Lower level/payout missions are recommended at the start. They usually spawn light fighters which won’t do nearly as much damage and have less health than vhfs. Might be annoying to catch though. Even if the pay is low, you’ll still make money getting kills. Once you feel comfortable, you can try higher payout missions.

If you are looking for stuff to buy with all the money you have, you can look at codename guns which will cost like 100 times more than regular guns. Cheapest ones you can find on player bases are 200k up to 2 million each. Maybe even more. And that's only for snub guns!

You can use darkstat to help find locations of lower pay missions, guns and ships.

Movement is also a thing to improve. You can use this video series to learn. I was very new to discovery as well, and I learned a lot watching it. It's for pvp yes, but it can help to improve movement for missions as well since npcs do have better movement compared to vanilla.

This turned out longer than I thought. I'm confident in my information, but others can correct me if I got something wrong. I hope this helps.