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[sogriffin]

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, but what does 'Linked' and 'Alternating' mean in the Weapons Loadout screen?

[Eji1700]

How the weapons are fired when you press/hold the trigger.

An easy example would be a weapons group with 2 reaper torpedoes.

If it's linked, when you fire that group it'll fire both at the same time.  If it's alternating, it'll fire the first one only, and then you'd need to press again to fire the second.

When to use which depends on the weapons and goal.

[Wyvern]

'Linked' means that, when you have that weapon group selected for active control, a mouse-click will cause every weapon to fire at once.
'Alternating' means that each click will fire one weapon, then swap to the next - it's primarily useful for weapon groups with missile racks.
Alternating can also be useful to get a steady (or steadier) stream of fire out of multiple slow-firing weapons; for example, a Dominator with a pair of gauss cannons - if you fire both at once, the enemy can tank that on shields, then drop shields and dissipate hard flux while the guns cycle, where if you fire one at a time, that doesn't work as well (or potentially at all).

There are, I think, some additional subtleties regarding whether or not weapons fire based on firing arcs?  I don't recall the details offhand.

And weapon groups that are set to autofire will completely ignore the setting; when on autofire, each individual gun gets its own little targeting AI that chooses whether or not to fire separately from every other weapon in the group.

[sogriffin]

Thanks everybody, that answers my question. Is there a manual out there that I can read?

[DDwarrirofire]

Thanks everybody, that answers my question. Is there a manual out there that I can read?

Wiki, Discord and here.

[Tempest]

Who reads manuals anyway?

[TaylorItaly]

Who reads manuals anyway?

Me.
I love reading manuals.

[bobucles]

Instruction manuals are sadly a product of a long lost age. The wiki is pretty informative, although it's rare to find a wiki that covers the absolute basics.

[Plantissue]

You can ask any questions you have here. I feel like a pinned "Simple Questions, Simple Answers" thread would work well for this forum so new players would feel comfortable asking questions.

[sogriffin]

Don't worry about me, this forum is very new player friendly.  I also know that if I ever want to get better with this game then I need to listen you to 'old salts'. 

[Wyvern]

As an additional note, for an 'alternating' weapon group, hitting the 'select group' button will cycle through the available weapons.  I.E., if you have a sabot rack and a harpoon rack both set to weapon group 1, you can hit '1' to swap which one is selected.  The ship control AI can do this as well, so it's frequently viable to, for ships you don't plan to pilot yourself, just lump all their missile weapons into one group and set it to alternating.  (The exception to that might be something like an Onslaught with rocket pods, where you want to force the AI to fire all of them at once if it's going to fire any at all.)

[Eji1700]

As an additional note, for an 'alternating' weapon group, hitting the 'select group' button will cycle through the available weapons.  I.E., if you have a sabot rack and a harpoon rack both set to weapon group 1, you can hit '1' to swap which one is selected.  The ship control AI can do this as well, so it's frequently viable to, for ships you don't plan to pilot yourself, just lump all their missile weapons into one group and set it to alternating.  (The exception to that might be something like an Onslaught with rocket pods, where you want to force the AI to fire all of them at once if it's going to fire any at all.)

Huh, I was totally unaware of that. I'd assumed there must be a way but i've just built around it forever so I never bothered to find out.  Neat

[Tempest]

As an additional note, for an 'alternating' weapon group, hitting the 'select group' button will cycle through the available weapons.  I.E., if you have a sabot rack and a harpoon rack both set to weapon group 1, you can hit '1' to swap which one is selected.  The ship control AI can do this as well, so it's frequently viable to, for ships you don't plan to pilot yourself, just lump all their missile weapons into one group and set it to alternating.  (The exception to that might be something like an Onslaught with rocket pods, where you want to force the AI to fire all of them at once if it's going to fire any at all.)

The AI actually follows weapon group settings? I thought it just scrapped everything and used whatever it wanted.

[Chronosfear]

Additonal pro tip and warning 

1)Fast mouse clicks with alternate on is close to firing All at once, since you rotate through them fast.
2)Holding mouse click with alternate will sync the fire rate to the same delay - works best with same weapons or fire rates (you dont have to Do the Timing yourself)
3)in alternate alle weapons will fire even if its Not on your target/crosshair. While in linked only those that can Hit your crosshair will fire
4)you can see which on fires next: in your hud the weapon is highlighted
5)activating the same weapongroup on alternate again to Switch to the next weapon without firing it

[Wyvern]

The AI actually follows weapon group settings? I thought it just scrapped everything and used whatever it wanted.

Depends on which AI you're talking about.  The autofire AI ignores linked/alternating settings.  The ship-level AI has the same controls you do - it can set groups to autofire or offline, and can select one group (at a time) for manual control.  Choosing exactly what weapons are in what groups can make dramatic changes in how good the ship-level AI is at using a given ship.

For an example, I sometimes set guns I want to always be left on autofire into the same group as the ship's PD weaponry.  Depending on the exact guns in question, this can 'force' the ship AI to leave that weapon on autofire... or it can backfire and result in the AI turning the ship's PD off entirely.  Testing of this sort of thing is always required; good thing we've got the simulator.