I own a Sentinel Interceptor for home-planet defense, because that’s what the ATLAS intended. Four pirates warp into my system. “Hostile ships approaching.” As I grab my controls and switch to Infra-Knife, blow a gravitino ball-sized hole in the first pirate, he’s dead on the spot. Draw my rocket launcher on the second man, miss him entirely because they’re unguided and smash into a passing freighter. I now have to resort to the Defense Turrets mounted on my capital ship below. “Tally ho lads.” The high-powered Phase Beam shreds two men in the blast, the shockwave and debris field sets off proximity alarms. I now resort to dogfighting the last pirate, select my Sentinel cannon, pull him into the reticle and fire. He bleeds out in the cockpit because high-powered photon wounds are impossible to stitch up. Just as I get a “Shields down” warning.