Also, the ship configuration interface is a royal mess. The way weapons are purchased and placed on your ship makes no sense; some missiles go in gun mounts, some guns go in missile racks, and some weapons go in either. If you own multiple ships, you have to skip through several screens to move components around. In the actual game, the way weapons are fired makes it impractical to use more than two weapon types at a time, no matter how many you may be carrying. For instance, you can't link medium and heavy lasers and still have access to your missiles at the same time.
However, the actual feel of combat is sufficiently exciting to weather these shortcomings. Tachyon uses quasi-Newtonian physics so combat is often a matter of moving in one direction while attacking in another direction. This gives the battles a great sprint and drift feel, with ships sliding past each other and frantically twisting to line up their shots. At times, it resembles jousting more than the traditional World War II dogfighting that inspires most space combat games. The graphics are bright, bold and even a little cartoony. The ship designs are sharp and imaginative. And there are some spectacularly mammoth space stations that look exactly like you'd expect a space station to look.
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