Fighting other pilots

Fights against other pilots are the sharpest part of Citadel; win them by picking when and where they happen.

Other players are the biggest threat and the biggest prize in a breach: whatever a ship carries goes to whoever brings it down.

How turrets hit you

• Turrets lock and track on their own, and they track based on your signature radius: the smaller your signature, the harder you are to hit.
• Shots can miss outright.
• Range matters as well. At twice a turret's optimal range it deals only about 30% of its damage, and pilots with the Marksman perk lose damage up close while gaining it far out.
• Turrets and drones deal kinetic damage, so kinetic resistance is your counter to them.

Your signature also grows with heat, with every shot you fire and whenever your throttle is above zero. A cold ship coasting with its guns silent is at its hardest to track.

Missiles and torpedoes

• Missiles, torpedoes and mines deal high-explosive damage, and signature radius does nothing against them.
• Shields are the counter: they resist 30% of high-explosive damage, armor only 20%. Armor is better against turrets (24% kinetic, shields 10%), and nothing raises its high-explosive resist above that base.
• Against missiles and torpedoes, keep your distance and keep your transversal high: move across their path, not along it. Missiles coast for 0.8 s after launch before they accelerate.
• Beta Patch 2 cut missile damage (Cruise Missile 200 to 180, Torpedo 250 to 225) and homing bonuses to keep missiles dodgeable.
• Torpedoes reload more slowly since Beta Patch 1.
• Only mines deal splash damage.
• A Rampart Gatling shoots down missiles aimed at your hull, and a Flak Cannon battery's Shockburst destroys nearby enemy missiles.

Cloaks

A Cloak hides your orange out-of-range icon from enemies, and missiles cannot track a cloaked ship. The devs say the signature system is still being refined, so expect this to change.

When to run

Most of surviving PvP is choosing not to have the fight.

• Scout before you engage, and do not pull too many NPCs at once.
• Cloud Wake and The Gallows have no build-rating limit, so you can meet a much bigger ship there. Your faction's lower-tier breaches keep the enemy faction out.
• The only exit from a breach is a train. Know where your nearest extraction marker is before you commit, and leave while you still can.
• Ramming does no damage yet, so it will not save you.
• Squads hold up to five pilots (three before Beta Patch 2), and squadmate distances always show. The squad system is basic; if joining fails, add each other from the callsign list inside the breach.

Class matters too: Scouts are the mobile class and Sentinels the tanks.