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Perhaps this is just because I'm new to the game and haven't yet learned any proper strategy, or it might be because I'm low-level enough that I haven't gotten to the point of needing to worry about power management, but my general strategy in space combat is pretty much this: Fire whatever is facing the enemy, as often as I can.

This of course results in a lot of abuse of the keys I have bound to "Fire all weapons". It gets especially annoying sometimes when I'm trying to fire while turning and accelerating/decelerating and/or doing other keyboard-based operations at the same time. It's even worse when the combination of commands I'm issuing intersects (accidentally or intentionally) with OS-level keyboard shortcuts.

For example, the default key binding for "Fire All Weapons" is Alt+Space and the default binding for "Throttle Up" is Q. Often times, in the heat of battle, I'll have Alt held down so that all I have to do to trigger my weapons is hit Space. Then, when I rush to hit the throttle for some maneuver I'll accidentally end up hitting Tab. Of course, what does Alt+Tab mean to Windows? It means the game gets dropped while I'm switched to another window or the Desktop.

So, to avoid this sort of complication, I'd like a way to easily toggle my weapons to auto-fire whenever they're in range. This would help greatly simplify the task of battle while also making it easier to not accidentally hit some OS shortcut in the midst of it. However, I haven't been able to find this option by looking through the Key Bindings in-game. Is there another option for doing this?

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  • The default binding for Throttle Back is what?
    – Joe the Person
    Jul 12, 2012 at 2:53
  • @JoethePerson TAB I suspect
    – kalina
    Jul 12, 2012 at 4:06
  • @pixel TAB is switch target, by default. I think Q and E are throttle up and down 25%, respectively.
    – Frank
    Jul 12, 2012 at 4:08
  • @fbueckert Actually, I think you've got Q & E swapped. Q is down, E is up. I almost never use TAB. I just point my camera at an enemy and hit fire. The game automatically chooses the nearest hostile target in view. Then again, come to think of it, you might be right about Q & E. I think I swapped them in my own bindings 'cause having "throttle back" on the left just didn't make sense to me.
    – Iszi
    Jul 12, 2012 at 12:39

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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I believe Shift+Left Click on your weapon in the HUD will set it to autofire. You will know if you've successfully set it if it gets highlighted in a green border.

Note that you can do this to all your weaponry, so you could potentially set all of them to fire when you hit your fire key. Be warned that it will drop your weapon energy precipitously doing so.

One other thing: this will auto-fire your weapons until you no longer have a target. Once you destroy whatever it is you were shooting at, you need to designate a new target, and hit the fire key again.

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  • Let me make sure I understand this properly. To auto-fire, I first set a weapon to automatic fire (Shift+LMB). Then, when I have a target in range I activate the weapon(s) once (Alt+Space for all) and it will continuously fire the auto-firing weapons whenever it can until the current target is destroyed. Is that correct?
    – Iszi
    Jul 12, 2012 at 12:41
  • That is correct.
    – Frank
    Jul 12, 2012 at 12:46
  • This solution does not work for me.
    – user30577
    Aug 8, 2012 at 5:04
  • Turned out to be ALT+RMB for me. Don't know if it's because of any re-mapped keys I have or not.
    – Iszi
    Aug 12, 2012 at 18:50

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