The ships systems are as follows:
The structure: once the enemy penetrate your shields, the structure is the only thing left to protect you. Once this is gone you die.
The cpu: used to interface with other computers and to display the interface. Without this, or if this is heavily damaged, you will not be able to upgrade your systems. The worst part is that when flying you will see all of your systems fail, such as targeting, power management, and weapon selection, your 'interface' will be gone. This is worse than it sounds
Power: this is not how much engine power the ship has. When this system goes, you get blown up, simple. When this system is heavily damaged it will make your interface very weak, and you will not be able to see any of the screens in the top left, such as damage, energy etc. all other screens will be very faint, if not non-existant
weapons: when this system is heavily damaged or destroyed, all of your weapons will fail. Making you defencless, but more to the point, making you unable to attack/disabaling your ship.
Engine: when this system blows, you die. When this system gets heavily damaged, say, 96% (!!!) your ship can only travel at about 160 mph, instead of the usual 300+ mph , and you have the risk of being blown up, next time they shoot you.
Now that you understand the ships systems, you can work out which weapon you would want to buy. Although missiles can do extensivly more damage than guns, missiles run out, and you have to go buy more, which is expensive, whereas guns rely on your energy, if you followed my earlier steps of getting a fusion reactor this is not a problem, if you didn't then buy some of both. You never know when you may need a missile after running low on energy, and you never know when you may need a gun after runnin out of missiles. Devestators and swarms are recommended missiles.
My verdict:
its not up to me to say what you should buy, but (if you havent already got hardwar) I think that it is a great game, and well worth the price. I got my copy for only 15 pounds from a local shop ! it's probably even cheaper by the time most of you are reading this.
