Now we’ve reviewed Star Wolves 2, it’s time to provide tips on how to beat the game! Since achieving most of the game’s goals involves winning space battles, this is what this short guide will focus on.

Granted, Star Wolves 2 isn’t that hard. The ever-present quicksave and quickload functions mean you can easily recover from disaster and try something different. And your run-of-the-mill enemies, such as random pirates and enemy faction members, become easy pickings once you’ve upgraded your fleet past a certain level. The same is true even for supposed toughies like the Aliens, Angorians, and the Bezerks. But in the beginning, when your offensive and defensive capabilites aren’t that developed, surviving is literally a struggle.

Luckily, we have just the info you need to make life as a space-faring mercenary a little easier.

Fooling the Enemy Into Submission

Basically, the enemy AI in Star Wolves 2 has only one principle: attack the nearest ship until it’s destroyed or out of radar range. There’s no retreating for computer-controlled players in this game. They concentrate on the first enemy ship they encounter, a trait you can use to your advantage in two ways:

Using your mothership as a tank. No matter how much you upgrade your fighters, your frigate will always deal and take more damage. Befitting it’s capital status, it can actually win over several enemy fighters all by itself. You can maximize this by sending in your mothership first. The enemy will concentrate on her, while you direct your fighters to attack individual enemies as a group, killing them off one by one. In other words, use your frigate to distract and take the brunt of the enemy’s firepower, and your fighters will survive long enough to take them out.

Luring the enemy into an ambush. Ok, so the first tactic didn’t work. The enemy simply dealt too much damage for even your mothership to bear. Here’s where having a fast fighter comes in handy. Once you know where the powerful enemy is waiting, line up your fighters and mothership far away from the opponents, keeping them close to each other. Take your fast fighter (preferably piloted by a character with a high piloting skill, which makes it harder for enemies to hit them) and manuever it towards the enemy. Once you see the bad guys react to your fighter’s presence, redirect it to a point behind your waiting fleet, making it pass through your other ships. The enemies will pursue. Since they’re concentrating on your scout, they won’t pay attention to your mothership and the other fighters—even as they fire unopposed. You will severely weaken the enemy force, even destroying a fighter or two.

Upgrade, Upgrade, Upgrade

The other aspect of winning battles in Star Wolves 2 is to equip your ships with the best possible equipment. Keep on building your cash reserves, diverting from the main storyline to take up inconsequential (to the plot) missions of you have to—so that you have enough capital to upgrade. Make sure your fighters’ weapons match their respective pilots’ abilites. If a pilot is an expert in lasers for instance, that’s what you should put in his weapon slots.

There you have it! As long as you manuever your ships to deal maximum damage to your enemies while minimizing your own losses, as well as fight with state-of-the-art technology, you’ll have no problems beating Star Wolves 2. Bet you can even finish the game today if you put your mind into it.