There are a number of weapon types available in X4, and this can be difficult to absorb when trying to learn the game.

This section covers the basics, to help with understanding what the options and variations mean, and why you might choose one versus another.

For information on how to add weapons to your ship, see the Equipping Ships section.

For information on how to use/control weapons during combat, see the Combat section. That section also covers details of how to enable/disable selected weapons.

Weapons come in several classes:

• Projectile: projectiles travel at a fixed speed in a straight line after being fired.
• Beam: beam weapons reach the target instantly (never missing) and do less damage than other weapons.
• Area: area weapons fire a projectile that explodes on impact or after reaching a fixed distance, damaging all ships in an area of effect.
• Missile: a missile launcher can fire one missile at a time. (See: Missiles section)

Ships may have primary guns, turrets, or both.

Most weapons are fixed to rotating mounts, allowing some aiming without repointing the ship. Primary guns have limited rotation arcs, while turrets have much larger rotation arcs.

Primary guns are controlled by the pilot, and turrets are controlled by the ship crew (who control them completely). The pilot fires the main guns, but has no direct fire control over turrets.

There is an in-game encyclopedia that lists every weapon you know about and details their properties.

The encyclopedia entry for equipment choices can be accessed directly by right-clicking on a piece of equipment in the ship configuration screen.

Below are descriptions of some of the more important statistics to consider when selecting weapons. Missiles have different properties and different types of variations, so they’re covered separately in the Missiles section.

Damage

Weapon damage depends on whether or not the target currently has any shield strength left. All weapons list damage against a “shielded target” and against an “unshielded” target. Note that some weapons will damage the hull even through a shield (and so list both shield damage and hull damage as damage for a “shielded target”). Some weapons do more damage to shields and less to hull.

Some weapons also have a “damage vs surface elements” property, if they do different amounts of damage than normal when fired against an L/XL ship’s shield generators, turrets and engines. (Weapons that do large surface element damage, even through shields, are very valuable to aspiring pirates.)

Heat build up

As weapons fire, they generate heat (shown as a dynamic status bar on the right side of the HUD, next to each weapon). Heat will build to orange (warning) and then red (fail). Overheated weapons take longer to cool down and cannot be fired again until considerably cooled.

Cooling is applied to weapons by the ship, and each ship model has a fixed cooling rate. This maximum cooling-per-second is divided across all weapons (so firing more weapons at once causes each of them to get a smaller share of the cooling provided).

Range

All weapons have a maximum range. Firing at a target out of range will have no effect.

Range is particularly important when considering turret choices for station defenses since a station obviously can’t move to close the distance to attackers with longer-range weapons. (See <>)

Fire and reload rate

Some weapons fire and cycle to fire again faster than others. Some projectile weapons fire a fixed “clip” of shots and then will take a brief pause to reload (which is automatic; you don’t need to reload or deal with ammunition in any way).

Most M-size and larger ships have turret mounts, and most main guns have a lighter, faster version in turret form.

Turrets are smaller weapons that are managed and fired by the ship’s crew (you do not aim or fire them yourself). Using the ship’s Information menu, under Loadout, you can change settings for whether turrets are active, and if so what types of targets they will select. (See the Combat section for information on configuring turret behavior.)

Most L/XL ships have a “main gun” (or several), a large weapon unique to that ship type.

These weapons are fixed to the hull, and within some small limits can only be aimed by moving the ship.

Capital ship weapons do high damage, but have low repeat fire rates and tend to generate a large amount of heat.