Astrobatics/Power-ups and Weapons

Power-ups and Primary Weapon
The game features several power-ups, all of which help the ship in different ways, they do not provide any score when taken.

Receiving power-ups will show a text in the middle of the screen, once you're maximized with that power-up, for example you are able to fully upgrade all of your cannons with Weapon power upgrade, there will be no more text indication when you will receive an another one, indicating that you don't need it anymore.


 * Turret upgrade - This power-up installs normal turrets first on your ship, one Turret upgrade will provide 1 Turret, once the ship has 2 normal turrets, this power-up will upgrade the 2 normal turrets each by installing rocket launchers in them, resulting in your turret providing extra primary weapon power while also shooting straight rockets that deal a good amount of damage, the shots the turrets shoot/fire are affected by the Weapon power upgrade. These turrets can take damage and be destroyed, if a Rocket turret takes enough damage it will downgrade into a normal Turret before it gets destroyed completely. The turrets are also capable of firing Super-shots.
 * Weapon power upgrade - This power-up improves the damage of your Rear cannon, Primary cannon, Spread-fire (including the Advanced Spread-fire, both by only 1 level), and Turret shots by one level each, this is the most valuable power-up as this improves your overall DPS, once your Primary and Rear cannon is maximized, they will "ignite" as they hit targets indicating that they deal great damage, it will take up to at least 10 Weapon power upgrades to maximize the ship completely, and this will be affected if say, you only have your primary weapons, you have your rear cannon, you have no turrets at all or at least 1 and 2, if you take a Weapon power upgrade and you are still missing a normal Turret or Rear cannon for example, they will be delayed by 1 or more Weapon power upgrade levels depending on how much you took before you finally got them, please refer to Scoring and Techniques on how to work around with this at least.
 * Spread-fire upgrade - This power-up improves the coverage of your primary cannon by adding spread-fire shots in 2 stages, the first Spread-fire upgrade will give you 2 additional spread out shots, and the second Spread-fire upgrade will give you Advanced Spread-fire by giving 2 more additional spread out shots for a total of 4 extra shots branching out of your Primary cannon, the Spread-fire is affected by Weapon power upgrade along with Advanced Spread-fire for only 1 time.
 * Rear-cannon - This power-up makes your ship gain a cannon at the back, which is useful along with the Mines for fending off enemies that come out from behind, the Rear cannon is affected by the Weapon power upgrade and has at least 5 - 6 upgrade levels. The rear cannon can also fire a Super-shot.
 * Guard bot - This installs 1 guard bot to your ship for up to a total of 5 guard bots that surround your ship, the bots have quite a good number of uses, aside from using the bots to defend yourself from enemy fire and asteroids, you can also slam your guard bots to an enemy to destroy them or slam your guard bots to mines and enemy ships to destroy them.
 * Ship repair - This restores the HP of your ship, the higher your HP is the higher you will regain your HP from this power-up, this isn't quite common so avoid getting hit.
 * Extra life - This power-up gives you one extra life, this power-up is hard to spot as some can be obtained on say, a certain barrier or a quick enemy formation, some missions give this out straight ahead.

Extra Weapons
Here are the 5 extra weapons the ship can carry around and use during missions, the ship can hold up to 99 charges for each weapons but this is impossible to reach except for the Mines due to being a common drop.


 * Mines - Each Mine power-up gives out 7 Mines, when you Right click or press Shift these mines will come out from the back of your ship, they don't inflict much damage on their own but one can stack or pack these mines into clusters for some good damage, the Mines are useful for fending off enemies that appear from the back of your ship and also for detonating enemy Mines, to detonate an enemy mine with your own Mine, release your Mines to an enemy mine directly to make it explode.
 * Homing Missile - This launches 2 Homing Missiles that approach into the nearest target with missile speed that is slightly slower than the Rockets your turrets shoot, the missiles inflict great damage, these Missiles can intercept enemy fire and they can also destroy Mines, each Homing Missile power-up gives 3, do not use these a lot as these missiles can save your life.
 * Laser - This fires a strong, 1 - 1.25 second purple Laser that can be panned to help destroy weak enemy hordes or Mines, the Laser inflicts great damage when one takes a full blow from it, the Laser can also destroy the cannons that reside in indestructible asteroids in Asteroid levels when aimed correctly at the center.
 * Shield - Activates a shield that lasts for up to 7 seconds, please take note that you should still be careful as sometimes even when your Shield is active and you try to ram into an enemy or asteroid for example, you will not take any damage but your Turrets will, this will happen if your turrets are installed to your ship after you activate your Shield so if you want to make sure that your Shield will protect your turrets, obtain them first then activate your Shield, only use this power-up if it,s a must as the Shield is not a common drop (usually appears on asteroid levels), and its worth a good amount of extra points, once the Shield has been activated, its percentage indicator will appear on the screen like as if you've received a power-up, the text percentage will sometimes appear as Heavy Barriers, if it does and the Heavy Barriers text starts to blink then it is an indication that your Shield is about to run out, on newer versions it will correctly show how many percentage of Shield you have left before it will deactivate.
 * Support Airstrike - Calls 3 ships that arrive into the screen, firing with their almost maximized Primary Cannons and Homing Missiles fast for 2 - 3 seconds before leaving, this only appears in select missions (Missions 6, 14, and 15 for example) and you can only get up to 2 Support Airstrikes, mostly only 1, I recommend using this power-up only on bosses that really require this power-up such as the Mission 15 boss as this is worth a lot of extra score points, otherwise, other extra weapons like Homing Missiles should protect you without losing too much potential extra score.