Thank you for the amazingly fun choice with Hyperion's guns

[solardawning]

Repair drone bugs aside, I'm having a blast with the Hyperion.
It's a "player-bait" ship- it has everything that I'd want for a high risk high reward personal ship. It's fast, responsive enough to maneuver well, and has teeth!

The best thing is the guns- they have high projectile speed so they feel fun and snappy to use. Hitting moving targets is feasable. But most importantly- the decision to give them higher base damage on shooting surface elements is perfect.
This mechanic is a reward for intelligent aim- it not only makes your best approach vs. L/XL enemies be to defang them first, after that it acts as a reward for shooting them in the shield generator (as you deal 50% increased damage to burn down their shield pool). The feeling it creates is "I'm using my superior maneuverability to shoot them in the weak point for critical damage", and that's a feeling I now know I really needed on a large ship with guns! Previously we'd only really get that for stripping elements with special S-ship guns like burst rays.

This is all to say- I love it.

[Raptor34]

Is the surface damage thing in the encyclopedia?
It does sound nice, since previously my standard for engaging with destroyers is to strip guns first anyway.

[solardawning]

Is the surface damage thing in the encyclopedia?
It does sound nice, since previously my standard for engaging with destroyers is to strip guns first anyway.

Yes, the six guns do 800 base damage per shot each to shield/hull, but 1200 when shooting surface elements.
When shooting a L/XL ship in it's main shield generator, you do the 1200 to the ship's shield pool. So it's like a critical hit.

[flywlyx]

With the current method of selecting surface elements, using the main weapon effectively is a hassle—pause, F3, select, F2, unpause. It’s an annoying process to repeat for every surface element. So, I only take out the shield carefully.

[solardawning]

With the current method of selecting surface elements, using the main weapon effectively is a hassle—pause, F3, select, F2, unpause. It’s an annoying process to repeat for every surface element. So, I only take out the shield carefully.

I use the 'zoom in' function to target turrets, but I do wish 't' would just target the closest surface element to where my mouse/guns are pointing.

[flywlyx]

I use the 'zoom in' function to target turrets, but I do wish 't' would just target the closest surface element to where my mouse/guns are pointing.

For the Xenon K, the shields are positioned too close to the ship's center, making it difficult to select them accurately.
Maybe not the closest, but at the very least, when I'm aiming at a surface element, it shouldn't default to selecting the ship instead.