hi! i'm air. i'm pretty good at cosmoteer so here is some information i know about the game. if i am missing some niche thing, please let me know in the comments or on discord (@cfcfcfcfcf) because i probably forgot :(. this guide will attempt to go over *everything* i know about the game. this includes super small things like armor optimization, walkway cutting and crew role hybridization/layering so some of it will be incomprehensible if you don't already know about most of the "visible" mechanics.
i will try to separate the guide into sections, and each section will have subsections, which will in turn have more subsections. they will go from broad topics (like piloting) and get more and more specific as they go into more subsections (like alternating boost).
the guide is very much wip and (much) more content will be added. it will try to update it daily, but will probably forget a lot of the time.

if something is wrong or incomplete (and it's not obviously incomplete because i didn't finish), please let me know!! i wrote this because there are lots of guides, but *all* are incomplete and many are wrong.

sometimes i will provide a ship to optimize or beat or rearrange in order to give an example of the thing i'm talking about. to load a ship in game, just drag the image into the game. saved ships are stored at
the data for the ship is encoded in the pixels, so any compression will break them. if you'd like to learn more, join the discord.
try loading this ship:

after selecting a ship, there will be a hamburger. you can set ai and team from there. if you click the hamburger on the top left of a creative game, you can open the battle helper. use shift+c to toggle auto camera.
sometimes this will be necessary so the opponent can fight back or to test a ship's logistics without having a piloting advantage.

try making these 2 fight in the battle helper:

the techs stand for techniques. usually these are meant to compensate for the ai's bad aim. there are 3 main types: turret weapons, nukes, rails and homing weapons.

turrets have a limited amount of techs they can do, mostly because the game ai is already pretty good at it. however, you can lead your target if your opponent is aggressively orbiting. you can also stay in direct control mode to keep the turret's aim if you are using ships that spin a lot. electrobolts and cannons can be given individual targets to maximize drain and the shots that break supply corridors. sometimes this is counterproductive though.

nukes do not motion predict properly because of the way they work. why that happens is not going to be discussed here. nukes need to have their target led in order to hit. you can also autofire them for them to travel in a straight line (and it will go slightly past their max range). nukes will also deal damage with many separate explosions that grow in size. this means that if all nukes hit the same place, damage will be wasted because the nuke will not have time to propagate the damage. you can either slightly stagger your fire or try to make them go in a line with piloting.
asdf

homing weapons usually have 2 different ways of natural despawn. one is at normal max range, and the other is a set time. the set time will always allow it to travel longer than max range in vanilla. this concept is applied in range extenders. PUT MORE INFO!!! and also range extenders and also cancelled targets

energy weapons use power. the turrets are good for sustained precision. they are able to consistently punish mistakes (although weaker than projectile weapons can). they are good on squibs because they are light, on traps because they are consistent, and on walls because they can sustain.

energy weapons do have drawbacks: they use energy, they need dedicated infrastructure always and they tend to be squishy.
because they need energy, there *must* be a reactor nearby unless you're using a meme build. not only that, but there must be a path to the reactor that is usually very squishy. if that path gets cut, the rest of the weapons that also use that path will not be able to be supplied. however, because that path carries energy, it can double as shield supply.
energy weapons will almost always require a large reactor with defenses in front with horizontal walkway for supply. usually there will be shields directly attached to the walkway and corridor going up towards the gun. this walkway is often also used for engines. this is both good and bad - it is cheap and allows for easier hybrid crew, but it means that if it's cut, that entire reactor is wasted.
energy weapons are also squishy. in rams, they will almost always lose. they are also weaker on small ships because of this, since the bigger hp of cannons matters a lot for those.

rails, piloting confidence, smaller spaces, nuke, ion overkill, missile specific, tunnel/aoe, prism armor