Caustic damage bug?

Pville_Piper

Pville_Piper
I was fighting a Glaive and took multiple hits from caustic missiles. I ran the heat to >150 and three times and didn't stop the damage. I was not in a caustic cloud and was not being attacked the third time I tried and failed. I ended up needing to abandon the life pods and made it back to the station with about 9 percent hull.

I was having fun rescuing life pods from signal sources and fighting Scythes in update 15, but now I rarely get interdicted by Scythes, even though I'm carrying escape pods. In fact, with escape pods on board, I've been interdicted by Glaives twice as often as I have been by Scythes and 3 times as many times by scouts which I don't fight scouts as the caustic damage is too heavy, which limits my time to find signal sources as I have to return to repair more often, and the payout is too low.

I'm growing very weary of AX combat and in particular, the caustic missiles. You can't EMP them, you can't point defense them, you can't out run them and you can't out turn them. The spam from a single glaive is just not fun as you can't do anything about it. I'm not interested in getting caustic sinks. I'm very tired of the whole just add/mange another module, ships have gotten so specialized with the goid war that it's pathetic. I got interdicted by a human NPC, fat lot of good the pathetic goid weapons do_On top of that, the long-range beam with thermal vent does nothing. In update 16, it helped manage heat, now it doesn't.

I have enough guardian materials left to make 4 gauss cannons, but I'm pretty suck with fixed weapons and they degrade, necessitating a return trip to the station, so why bother.

Sorry to be so down, but I've tried really hard to figure out tactics and ship loadouts, only to have it seem to change with every update. I don't know, I'm just tired of it, one less reason to play the game anymore.
 

Kira Goto

Kira Goto
If you take four caustic missiles from a Glaive at once, there is a strong chance that has applied several stacks(which a caustic missile does by default, but the intense stacks wear off quickly without player input). Which then requires more time at 120+ heat to burn them off.

I noticed this myself when coming out of a Titan’s corrosive cloud, if I didn’t quite have caustic sink coverage to get out mostly corrosion free. With the many stacks that applies, I had to spend quite a while staying above 120 heat to get rid of them(but going 150-180+ actually turned out to cause more module damage than it sped up the process of burning it off).

And it might not strictly solve the issue per se, but a heatsink could help circumvent those caustic missile launches - seems to be based on your heat level, maybe around 30% required for them to launch those. Staying in silent running or at very low heat while attacked by Glaives(even if they obtain target lock) has never seen me deal with the quad caustic missile.
 

Pville_Piper

Pville_Piper
Not sure what was going on, it is the first time I've seen that happen. The Glaive was just spamming the caustic missiles... I'd get hit, then before I could burn it off, I'd get whacked again, and again... I must have been hit by 3-4 volleys in quick succession.

In previous updates, I used the beam very successfully against the Glaive... When I used the beam the kills went quicker and I sustained less damage. This time, in every encounter, it made no difference. In the last encounter, the heat climbed up as I was using the beam.

I've done 4 different ships and multiple modules... I'm done re-engineering everything all the time.
 

Ned Flandalorian

N
If you don't hit the target a thermal vent beam will actively increase your heat rather than decrease it. Glaives don't particularly care about heat anyway, once they've spotted you.

Surely engineering four different ships would have been a bigger job than just getting caustic sinks.
 

Factabulous

Factabulous
I guess they haven't got a ship capable of visiting the Maelstrom to get the unlock on the Caustic Sinks? Might need another ship engineered, and maybe an FC :sneaky:
 

Pville_Piper

Pville_Piper
Ned Flandalorian said:
If you don't hit the target a thermal vent beam will actively increase your heat rather than decrease it. Glaives don't particularly care about heat anyway, once they've spotted you.

Surely engineering four different ships would have been a bigger job than just getting caustic sinks.
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Hitting the Glaive with a long range, thermal vent beam is no problem. They don't maneuver much and prefer to face tank you. Which is a bit of luck considering they can outrun you.

The reason I don't want to run caustic sinks is that when you fight Glaives you'd use them up pretty quickly... It doesn't seem that you can synthesize the ammo for them, which means you need to RTB more.

Beyond the fact that it's yet another module that has to be run, if you're expecting an encounter with a Scythe, you need an EMP, so you're quite quickly running out of utility mounts if you run a heat sink and a Xeno scanner. The whole thing has gotten beyond ridiculous.

You need more than one EMP if you meet up with a pair of Scythes, even one can tax a single emp beyond its ability. Although, since update 16 dropped, I don't think I've seen more than one Scythe at a time and with update 17 they seem to be easier to kill and less missile spammy, but then they are pretty rare to find.

To get more utility slots you need to go to a large ship. But when I ran my Corvette in update 16 I almost always run into multiple Glaives. When I did get a single (rare though that was), the Vette just couldn't keep up and took more damage than either my Krait or the FAS. I stopped using the Vette after getting jumped with 4 Glaives and spending 20 million on a rebuy. I got hit with so many lighting attacks that HUD was fragmented and shaking so bad that you had no idea what it was displaying for extended periods of time. Not fun.

The other thing I noticed with update 17 is after I killed the Glaive, an interceptor drops in. Nice, here I am with a much-reduced hull, modules damaged and outfitted for Hunter combat....

I used to make about 20 million a run picking up escape pods, now I pretty much have to RTB after fighting a single Glaive. I rarely have enough hull left to take on 2, one at a time, but I have done that. I would probably not survive 2 Glaives at a time. Consider in update 15 that I successfully took down 4 scouts, a Glave and a Scythe in the same instance. And took down 2 Scythes and 4 scouts multiple times. Now, with a fully upgraded ship, I'm barely able to survive one Glaive.

I'm just at the point I've totally lost interest in doing anything AX related. I've spent millions buying and outfitting ships, wasted tons of engineering mats on modules that are pretty much useless. My module storage is clogged up with useless engineered modules that I can't do anything but sell. All that time and materials wasted. How much more do I need to waste just to get to parity with the current game and then have the hand of god wave over the game and they become worthless due to some new "content"?
 
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Ned Flandalorian

N
You can synth ammo for caustic sinks.
You don't need ECMs for scythes, they won't use their hatchbreakers whilst you have a shield and the odds of even encountering them without specifically looking for them are very low.
The basic gist is caustic sinks are far more useful than ECMs, and especially running a large ship like a corvette is just asking for trouble.
 

Pville_Piper

Pville_Piper
Ned Flandalorian said:
You can synth ammo for caustic sinks.
You don't need ECMs for scythes, they won't use their hatchbreakers whilst you have a shield and the odds of even encountering them without specifically looking for them are very low.
The basic gist is caustic sinks are far more useful than ECMs, and especially running a large ship like a corvette is just asking for trouble.
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I thought they crippled the shields?
 

Kira Goto

Kira Goto
Pville_Piper said:
What I heard is that if your shield goes down, you can't get power to the system, so, in effect, your utility slots don't have power.
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That’s not entirely accurate. It will drain your sys capacitor attempting to recharge/rebuild, however, so you need to assign more pips to it(and hope it is up to snuff if you use a biweave). It’s generally why anti-Interceptor builds are shieldless, from my understanding of it.
 

Pville_Piper

Pville_Piper
Ned Flandalorian said:
You can synth ammo for caustic sinks.
You don't need ECMs for scythes, they won't use their hatchbreakers whilst you have a shield and the odds of even encountering them without specifically looking for them are very low.
The basic gist is caustic sinks are far more useful than ECMs, and especially running a large ship like a corvette is just asking for trouble.
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By the way, what is the current thinking on shields for AX hunters? Just in case I feel like banging my head against the wall again...
 

Ned Flandalorian

N
If you're doing actual hunting where your goal is specifically to engage the interceptors/hunters and destroy them, you don't want shields because they won't last and hull is more important. The exception would be Orthrus hunting since they don't shoot back, and having shields is handy for ramming them (to get rid of their shield).

If you're doing other AX related stuff, like titan mining/rescues or spire collections/sabotages, they are handy for absorbing fire and/or collision damage while you escape from whatever is trying to kill you (the assumption is that you will try to get away instead of fighting to the death).

If you do end up in a situation where a shield rebuild is draining all your SYS power and you desperately need to use utilities, hitting silent running will instantly turn off the shield to let SYS recharge.
 

Pville_Piper

Pville_Piper
Ned Flandalorian said:
If you're doing actual hunting where your goal is specifically to engage the interceptors/hunters and destroy them, you don't want shields because they won't last and hull is more important. The exception would be Orthrus hunting since they don't shoot back, and having shields is handy for ramming them (to get rid of their shield).

If you're doing other AX related stuff, like titan mining/rescues or spire collections/sabotages, they are handy for absorbing fire and/or collision damage while you escape from whatever is trying to kill you (the assumption is that you will try to get away instead of fighting to the death).

If you do end up in a situation where a shield rebuild is draining all your SYS power and you desperately need to use utilities, hitting silent running will instantly turn off the shield to let SYS recharge.
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Thanks, I am deliberately seeking hunters... Sorry, I thought I'd made that clear. I used to find a lot of Scythes, but that was nurfed as apperently the thermal vent option for cooling.
 

tolm

tolm
Pville_Piper said:
Hitting the Glaive with a long range, thermal vent beam is no problem. They don't maneuver much and prefer to face tank you. Which is a bit of luck considering they can outrun you.

The reason I don't want to run caustic sinks is that when you fight Glaives you'd use them up pretty quickly... It doesn't seem that you can synthesize the ammo for them, which means you need to RTB more.

Beyond the fact that it's yet another module that has to be run, if you're expecting an encounter with a Scythe, you need an EMP, so you're quite quickly running out of utility mounts if you run a heat sink and a Xeno scanner. The whole thing has gotten beyond ridiculous.

You need more than one EMP if you meet up with a pair of Scythes, even one can tax a single emp beyond its ability. Although, since update 16 dropped, I don't think I've seen more than one Scythe at a time and with update 17 they seem to be easier to kill and less missile spammy, but then they are pretty rare to find.

To get more utility slots you need to go to a large ship. But when I ran my Corvette in update 16 I almost always run into multiple Glaives. When I did get a single (rare though that was), the Vette just couldn't keep up and took more damage than either my Krait or the FAS. I stopped using the Vette after getting jumped with 4 Glaives and spending 20 million on a rebuy. I got hit with so many lighting attacks that HUD was fragmented and shaking so bad that you had no idea what it was displaying for extended periods of time. Not fun.

The other thing I noticed with update 17 is after I killed the Glaive, an interceptor drops in. Nice, here I am with a much-reduced hull, modules damaged and outfitted for Hunter combat....

I used to make about 20 million a run picking up escape pods, now I pretty much have to RTB after fighting a single Glaive. I rarely have enough hull left to take on 2, one at a time, but I have done that. I would probably not survive 2 Glaives at a time. Consider in update 15 that I successfully took down 4 scouts, a Glave and a Scythe in the same instance. And took down 2 Scythes and 4 scouts multiple times. Now, with a fully upgraded ship, I'm barely able to survive one Glaive.

I'm just at the point I've totally lost interest in doing anything AX related. I've spent millions buying and outfitting ships, wasted tons of engineering mats on modules that are pretty much useless. My module storage is clogged up with useless engineered modules that I can't do anything but sell. All that time and materials wasted. How much more do I need to waste just to get to parity with the current game and then have the hand of god wave over the game and they become worthless due to some new "content"?
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That’s all horribly familiar and is how I ended up trying an AX Cutter before getting thoroughly fed up with the constantly moving goalposts and calling it a day for a good few months.

Back on Elite a little now but no AX again yet and I‘m not sure I can be bothered with whatever is needed to start doing Maelstrom / Titan / Spire shenanigans.

I miss the surface AX CZs back pre-15. I was having fun with those. :cautious:
 

Kira Goto

Kira Goto
tolm said:
Spire shenanigans.
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You don’t really need a whole lot for those. As long as you make it past Glaives (or don’t get interdicted by any), a standard AX build could work for those*.

*Bar maybe bringing an ECM to divert Banshee disruption missiles(more like torpoedoes), though a pulse neutralizer - same thing you’d need to get to a Titan - can protect you from those as well.

Also want to be mindful about the chance of Orthrus frying Guardian weapons, or bring regular AX multis/missiles. And people sabotaging brings in a scout swarm plus angry interceptor.
 

Pville_Piper

Pville_Piper
So last night I bit the bullet and got me some medium enhanced gauss cannons, fitted them to my Krait along with a 2 large AX enhanced multi cannons and a medium, long-range thermal vent beam. Two trips into thargoid space and never saw a Glaive! :ROFLMAO:

The first real fight I had was with some scouts, very hard to hit them with the gauss cannons as they don't face tank you and took a lot of damage trying. I ran into a Scythe on that trip, but was pretty beat up from the Scouts and trying to coordinate my efforts with the gauss cannons.

The next flight I ran into some Scythes, took my usual beating of about 20% hull as I tried to figure out the best way to use the gauss cannons. The second one showed real promise as I lost just under 10% hull. The best strategy seems to be to wait until they face tank me and rip them with the gauss, all the while whittling them down with the AXMCs. The other thing is to run away from the Scouts, the Scythe will follow like a happy puppy, when the Scouts fade out, yank that puppies leash real hard.

I can confirm the beam works well with the AXMCs and lowers the temp while they are firing. It helps recover from a gauss volley. The other thing I noticed was that the 2 Scythes never used the lightning attack after the initial run on me... Not sure why the change.
 
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