Pixelmusement - PixelShips - Game Guides

Strategies Last Updated:
February 1st, 2010

PixelShips --- Strategies

Moving Around:

* One of the most important skills to learn to play Classic PixelShips is precise key tapping; Being able to tap an arrow key at certain rates to go in a direction at a speed other than full. Using key tapping skills you can move in any direction you want to on the screen and will greatly improve your chances of survival. To learn how to do key tapping simply try to navigate in diagnoal directions all the time, never moving just horizontally or just vertically. As you get better at diagnoal movement you will find dodging shots and walls becomes much easier.

* NEVER stay at the far left edge of the screen for extended periods of time. Most people believe that if you stay on the left edge of the screen in an arcade game you will be able to see ships and shots coming ahead of time and will be able to dodge them. Nothing is further from the truth. In fact, you are more likely to die on the far edge of the screen because you can only dodge in directions that put you CLOSER to what you're trying to dodge! Simply speaking, try to stay as close to the center of the screen as you can. This way, if a shot comes your way you can dodge diagnoally backwards to give yourself MORE time to dodge the shot, and in Warp Zones can buy you an extra split second to dodge an oncomming wall. True, at first when you start staying in the center the game will be VERY hard, but your reflexes will get faster over time and you will soon find it much easier to dodge things.

Shooting Straight:

* Aim is critical in PixelShips. If most of your shots are missing you will not do enough damage to win a battle. Learning to aim is as simple as learning to NOT shoot when the enemy is right in front of you, but learning to shoot split seconds BEFORE the enemy is in front of you. This technique is called "leading", and is quite a common tactic you must learn to play any kind of shooter. Learning to lead is as simple as never firing when the opponent is directly in front of you unless of course the opponent is heading straight for you without even trying to dodge.

* The Spectrum Gun only appears to make life easier in PixelShips. Its shots will envelop your opponent making it hard for him to dodge, but the shots themselves are not that powerful. In short, don't rely on the Spectrum Gun to do the job for you later in the game.

* The POWER rating of a ship is absolute. Meaning regardless of what weapons you have or how rapid they fire, the amount of damage you can do in one second is based soley on your POWER rating. Knowing this however, remember that single low-rapidity shots will do incredible amounts of damage while multiple high-rapidity shots will do miniscule damage. The idea is to pick the best weapon your ship has for the task at hand. Defeating droids is best done with high-rapidity weaponry and PixelShips are easier to shoot down with precision shots since they can do just as much damage to you.

Reserve Slots:

* Always make sure you choose your reserve slots carefully. If you don't plan to capture many ships in a mission, assign at least three reserve slots to ships and the other two to empty spots in your collection. If you plan to collect a ton of ships, only assign one or two ships to your reserve. Also, if you are still below mission five in a campaign try to fly only ships that can be upgraded, and if you can, always make sure you have at least one REALLY powerful ship in your reserve for emergencies.

* Warp Zone missions are the only exception to the rule. When your mission is to survive a Warp Zone and nothing more you will not fight ANY PixelShips so make sure you fill your reserve up with your fastest ships!

Losing Gracefully:

* If a campaign starts to get too hard you may wish to forefit it and start a new campaign. Doing this is pretty simple. First, bail out of your mission with the ESC key if you are still fighting, then, empty your reserve of ships and lead off with one of your weakest ships that you never plan on upgrading. Get this ship destroyed and the campaign will be over. Simple as that.

* Something to remember is that you are EXPECTED to lose ships in the campaigns. You have to be a real expert in order to dodge every shot fired at you, and sooner or later your ship simply wont be able to take anymore. Not to mention in later campaigns the PixelShips you fight will be equal in strength, even MORE powerful in some cases on hard skill, so your chance of winning battles decreases. Don't be discouraged and hit the ESC key every time you lose a ship, just make sure to choose ships you don't mind losing when you begin a mission and save your rare ships for later on once you lose your more common ships that you can simply get over again.

The Reflector and Reflector-X Ships:

* These two ships have reflective shielding, so when a shot hits one of these ships it will actually be reflected back to its attacker! This is not as useful as it sounds but it is a rather neat feature of these two ships. You still get hurt though so remember not to rely on this special ability when flying one of these two ships.

Campaign 0000:

* This campaign is MUCH harder than any of the other campaigns in the game, and the last mission is pretty much a death sentence if you're not prepared. Make sure you have a TON of Class A and X ships on hand before you take on this final campaign! Also remembering too you must fill every spot in your computer database before you can fly campaign 0000.

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