Sporadically taking damage when I fire my weapons

Question

I didn't notice this happening on my starter ship, but I noticed it immediately upon buying my first new ship (C-class Shuttle):

Whenever I fire my weapons (stock Photon Cannon), after a few shots my ship will take a surprising amount of damage to shields and / or hull, about 30% shield and 1-2 hull points.

• It doesn't happen on every single "pew", only after several shots, and the shots can even be spread apart over several seconds
• It's not just when the gun overheats
• there doesn't seem to be a pattern
• Happens when I'm shooting enemies, asteroids, terrain, or animals (don't judge me)
• Does not happen when I shoot at nothing (off into space), even for extended periods of time

Is this a bug? Nuance of my ship? I can confirm my party member had same thing happening in his B class Shuttle, is it specific to shuttles?

This makes any combat encounter a nightmare, so I'd think that if it was a game mechanic I just hadn't heard about, others would be complaining about it too. But, I cant find anything in forum posts about it, on my ship mods, or in the game's Help section. Playing on XB1 just FTR, hoping it's not a console bug though.

Answer 1

As of Patch 1.55, this bug has been resolved.

Fixed an issue where player ships could shoot themselves in multiplayer

---

According to an article on kotaku, this has been confirmed by Sean Murray that it is indeed a bug due to network lag while in multiple player sessions.

Our ships are procedurally generated, as are our weapon stats. The issue you mention affects a subset of ships that players can buy in-game, with certain weapons,” Sean Murray, founder of Hello Games, said over email when Kotaku asked about the bug. “It is generally only seen when multiplayer is active, and is related to network lag in these cases. The issue has been fixed by the team, is in testing, and will be released in a hotfix soon

_{(emphasis my own)}

---

The community over on reddit are experiencing the same issue. As one user breaks it down, you are essentially shooting your own hit box.

Some players on the steam community state they do not experience this issue when playing solo. They indicate it is likely due to network latency when playing with other players and your ship flys faster than your weapon shoot. I personally have yet to experience this while playing solo, so this is plausible explanation.

A temporary solution, provided by the users on reddit, is to either remain still or fly backwards when shooting your weapons. This in not a too terrible of a solution when destroying asteroids or a small band of pirates, but this makes a swarm of pirates much more difficult.

Answer 2

The only fix i found for this is to install a phase beam. You still take damage when you shoot objects, but the damage is very minimal.

Good luck