Newcomer / Intro I'm Rubbish!! Please Help Me!

[ChewyBachus]

I absolutely LOVE this game! I've played now for a couple weeks, and I just can't stop. I've managed to answer all of my questions to this point by searching forums, Google, and YouTube, but I created my forum account to reach out to the community for help.

I've learned trading, mining, bounty hunting, exploring, a lot of missions, and even managed to get a couple of Grade 5 engineers unlocked. I've made quite a lot of money in the short time I've played, and even went so far as to soft reset my account by spending it on some ships and storing them.

What I need help with is combat. I'm so garbage at it I should be flying a dumpster, not a space ship. I've participated in quite a bit of "combat" at the Nav Beacon, and extraction points, but it's not really combat when there's a ton of other ships helping and drawing all the fire. I've recently joined up with a Power Play faction, and I'm trying to interdict enemies for 1 on 1 combat. I've watched a lot of YouTube videos, and the pilots there seem to never have any problem at all keeping their target in front of them never taking return fire. I can't keep a target (even a very sluggish one like a T6) in front of me, and once I lose sight of them it's a struggle to get them in front of my ship again.

I'm currently flying an Adder. I love it, and would like to continue flying it for quite some time. I know that my ship choice is not my issue because I'm not trying to face enemies that I don't have a reasonable chance against. If the enemy is Harmless to Novice it doesn't matter what it is I can fight it because it seems they never leave home with weapons or something. If the enemy is Competent I wouldn't interdict anything bigger than an Asp Explorer (I can take the Asp, but it's a real fight, and a damn exciting one). Once the enemy is ranked Expert I can't even fight another Adder, and a Sidewinder is a hard fight that takes a long time.

I was just interdicted by an Expert Adder, and I hit it at least 6 times with a G3 overcharged medium pulse laser. I managed to knock his shields to about half before he turned on me, flew straight at me, and hit me twice leaving me with a single ring on my shields. Once he was past me I couldn't get him in front of me again, and a couple seconds later I had no shields at all. Another second passes and he destroyed my chaff launcher, and my thrusters were malfunctioning. I took that as my cue to get the hell out of there, and low waked to the station with my tail between my legs and 50% of my hull missing. I have many results that are similar to this, but this is the latest battle that finally brought me to these forums

My ship: Adder

Core:
1C Lightweight Alloy (I had Military Composite, but reading that maneuverability was key for small ships I knocked it back)
3A Power Plant
3A G3 Clean Drive Thrusters
3A G5 Extended Range FSD
1D Life Support (weight)
2A G4 Charge Enhanced Power Distributor
3D Sensors (weight)
3C Fuel Tank

Hardpoints:
2E G3 Overcharged Pulse Laser
1G Multi-Cannon x2

Utility:
0I Chaff Launcher
0D Frame Shift Wake Scanner

Optional:
3A Shield Generator
3A Fuel Scoop (no weight)
2D FSD Interdictor
2E Cargo Rack (empty no weight)
1A Shield Cell Bank

If you can see something glaringly wrong with my ship please let me know, but I'm 100% sure any issues I'm having are 99% my fault

Any help you can offer is greatly appreciated. Thank you!!

 

[D.G.Cerberus]

Couple of suggestions:
1) Have you learnt to use lateral/ vertical thrusters with and without boost to accelerate your turn
2) For even tighter flips, and I don't know what your control set up is, the use of reverse in conjunction with pitch and vertical thrusters turns you faster
3) I assume you are keeping throttle in the blue for maximum agility
4) You can boost turn without touching your throttle (i.e. keeping it in the blue)
5) Learn to toggle FA on and off during manoeuvres

The above should help you with keeping enemy in sight.

The other thing I would say is flip your small hardpoints to pulse lasers (modded hopefully), and make your class 2 slot an overcharged multicannon, preferably with incendiary or corrosive rounds special effect.

Good luck CMDR

 

[Rob_the_Sparky]

Just to add why you should swap weapons over, shield damage is shield damage but hull damage is scaled so a small weapon against a large hull does very little damage so it is generally better to fit you kinetic weapons to your larger hardpoints. However, against another Adder this would not have changed anything.
.
You also do not say if you are using gimbled weapons. These do less damage per second but will be on target for much longer than fixed weapons so do more damage overall (exception being ace pilots and very manoeuvrable ships).

 

[SirDavros]

I absolutely LOVE this game! I've played now for a couple weeks, and I just can't stop. I've managed to answer all of my questions to this point by searching forums, Google, and YouTube, but I created my forum account to reach out to the community for help.

I've learned trading, mining, bounty hunting, exploring, a lot of missions, and even managed to get a couple of Grade 5 engineers unlocked. I've made quite a lot of money in the short time I've played, and even went so far as to soft reset my account by spending it on some ships and storing them.

What I need help with is combat. I'm so garbage at it I should be flying a dumpster, not a space ship. I've participated in quite a bit of "combat" at the Nav Beacon, and extraction points, but it's not really combat when there's a ton of other ships helping and drawing all the fire. I've recently joined up with a Power Play faction, and I'm trying to interdict enemies for 1 on 1 combat. I've watched a lot of YouTube videos, and the pilots there seem to never have any problem at all keeping their target in front of them never taking return fire. I can't keep a target (even a very sluggish one like a T6) in front of me, and once I lose sight of them it's a struggle to get them in front of my ship again.

I'm currently flying an Adder. I love it, and would like to continue flying it for quite some time. I know that my ship choice is not my issue because I'm not trying to face enemies that I don't have a reasonable chance against. If the enemy is Harmless to Novice it doesn't matter what it is I can fight it because it seems they never leave home with weapons or something. If the enemy is Competent I wouldn't interdict anything bigger than an Asp Explorer (I can take the Asp, but it's a real fight, and a damn exciting one). Once the enemy is ranked Expert I can't even fight another Adder, and a Sidewinder is a hard fight that takes a long time.

I was just interdicted by an Expert Adder, and I hit it at least 6 times with a G3 overcharged medium pulse laser. I managed to knock his shields to about half before he turned on me, flew straight at me, and hit me twice leaving me with a single ring on my shields. Once he was past me I couldn't get him in front of me again, and a couple seconds later I had no shields at all. Another second passes and he destroyed my chaff launcher, and my thrusters were malfunctioning. I took that as my cue to get the hell out of there, and low waked to the station with my tail between my legs and 50% of my hull missing. I have many results that are similar to this, but this is the latest battle that finally brought me to these forums

My ship: Adder

Core:
1C Lightweight Alloy (I had Military Composite, but reading that maneuverability was key for small ships I knocked it back)
3A Power Plant
3A G3 Clean Drive Thrusters
3A G5 Extended Range FSD
1D Life Support (weight)
2A G4 Charge Enhanced Power Distributor
3D Sensors (weight)
3C Fuel Tank

Hardpoints:
2E G3 Overcharged Pulse Laser
1G Multi-Cannon x2

Utility:
0I Chaff Launcher
0D Frame Shift Wake Scanner

Optional:
3A Shield Generator
3A Fuel Scoop (no weight)
2D FSD Interdictor
2E Cargo Rack (empty no weight)
1A Shield Cell Bank

If you can see something glaringly wrong with my ship please let me know, but I'm 100% sure any issues I'm having are 99% my fault

Any help you can offer is greatly appreciated. Thank you!!

Don't worry, you're not alone!

In isolation, or with help, I feel like a badass. But when I've come up against a handful of good NPCs alone or a slightly overpowered player, I tens to get obliterated. I'm learning, slowly..

 

[Rocky-451]

Personally, I don't see the point of fighting in a weak non-combat ship when you can afford a good combat one, like the Viper. With the improved AI of NPCs, combat is hard enough already without handicapping yourself. Sure, the insurance cost is cheaper, but it could be a self-fulfilling prophecy...

If you haven't see some of Vindicator Jones' videos, here are two excellent ones:
Combat Tips 101 E1
Combat Tips Episode 2 Advanced Maneuvering

 

[Ism]

First of all, I was out in space for 6 months. When I got back to the bubble, NPC were smarter....much smarter.
I got my butt kicked by robot ships that never gave me any grief in my python or vulture. So after losing 3 ships, I changed my tactics.
Now I can generally go mono-a-mono with most ships, but I get into it with a wing I will have trouble. It's a whole new game for me and I'm in love with it again.

That said, all the advice others gave is really good. Here's my advice.

1. When you boost turn, the accelerated turn is only in the initial boost and for the 1st quarter turn. In other words, you cant boost and then turn a second later and expect to turn, you must be pulling on the joystick when you hit boost. Give it a try.
2. When in combat, set your forward speed to 50% and use thrusters for forward and reverse acceleration. That way you will always fall back to 50% speed when you take your finger off the thruster control. As you know, 50% speed is the fastest turning rate.
3. Skip number 2 if you use FA off. FA off always resets your forward speed to 0% and it can screw you up in the heat of combat. But it will allow you even better maneuverability when you get good at it.
4. Watch the NPC rating. Above dangerous, they have weaponry and aim that's unreal. I can hardly dodge their manual aim weapons (like plasma) without using extreme evasive maneuvers. Nobody is that good a shot.
5. Watch the NPC tactics. The good ones always dump chaff on the swing around for strafing run. If they do that, one thing you can do is unlock the target. The chaff wont affect our gimballed weapons (if you have them).

 

[goemon]

hey, doesn't sound too bad what you are able to pull off!

- i guess, some if your problems come with npc flying backwards

- adder isn't the most nimble ships. i like it, but it has limitations in combat role

- downsize your shield to class 2A - less weight, more manouverability vor <10℅ shield

- give the modul "enganced performance thrusters" a try, which you can buy at fraseer, martuk and palin. on those slap your drive tuning

- give missiles a chance. you want to destroy ships fast after shields are down

...

and enjoy. you will get better over time!

 

[Naughtius Maximus]

If you are getting interdicted, you'll want the upper hand. Part of being good at combat is actually knowing when to run and when to fight. The moment you are interdicted (and by that I mean NPC players taunting/threatening you on comms) - check out their ship on the contacts screen. For the most part you will have enough time to do this before the interdiction starts. What you will get from this is a chance to see what sort of ship the aggressor is flying. If you fancy your chances then guns out! - if not, just run.

But the bottom line is - don't bother fighting the interdiction. If you loose, you'll get a damaged ship, 40 second wait for the FSD to cool down and a pirate/bad guy coming right at you - never a good position to be in. Whether you are standing your ground or going to run like the wind, submitting gives you a 10 second FSD cool down (pirate has to wait longer), plus no damage to your ship. If you are running - blast away, DON'T drop any chaff and seconds later you'll be FSD'ing out of there.

If you are standing your ground, the moment the interdiction ends, spin your ship around 180 degrees as the NPC is always behind you. You have time in these 1st few seconds to deploy weapons and set your PD accordingly. Oh yeah, remember that full pips to shields will boost them to around 150%....

If you take on any assasination missions - bear in mind that the cash reward is a good indicator of the size of fight you will face. A large payout will almost certainly mean a bad     ship to destroy AND the very real likely hood that the target will be in a wing. If you still take it on, go for the target as a priority - don't waste time with the wing ships. Your only goal is the target so once it's gone you can run like crazy and leave the wing ships behind..

I have no problem taking on a bunch of NPC's in my Vulture. Mind you with RA armour and everything else top spec its a formidable beast [haha]

 

[ChewyBachus]

Thank you all for the tips!

I'm using m&k so getting used to using the thrusters will just take some more practice.

The laser is fixed, and the multi-cannons are gimbaled. That way I get more damage with the laser over a gimbaled one, but precise aim is less important. With the cannons I'm shooting at sub-components so it's much easier with gimbaled weapons. I'll swap the locations to maximise the kinetic damage, and go work on the engineer for multi-cannons.

Watched the Vindicator Jones videos, and those tips should surely help.

When I'm being interdicted I immediately drop speed to 0 and submit. Once out of super cruise I immediately boost, and as soon as the enemy blip is on radar I target next to see what it is. If it's something I don't want to fight, im already getting away. If it's something reasonable I 180, and get into the fight.

This is how I enter the "weapon fire detected" USS as well. Ever since I dropped into a Threat 1 USS only to be greeted by 4 enemy ships. I was shredded before I could get away. I thought "that is threat 1?". I did learn to always be pre-running when entering those USS so I don't get caught out.

In another thread I also read a tip about plotting a course on the galaxy map so you can high wake out of danger if you get in over your head. I bound a key for next waypoint, and I've already used that tip to save my bacon when I was close to death.

Thank you all for the help. I'm going to get to practicing again today.

 

[Naughtius Maximus]

Another tip for you - watch out for the "trap " USS's... like the one where you find 8 odd tons of gold floating next to a destroyed ship....

After a few seconds a whole load of pirates appear to blast you to pieces for walking into their trap...

 

[JetsonRING]

^^^ What he said and in addition simply thrusting in any direction but especially "downward" in the "Z" axis while fighting forces your opponent to constantly maneuver as he/she fires, as the maneuver tends to move you "down" and out of your opponents topside WEPS field of fire by putting you "below" their ship in relative space, especially if they are under high acceleration and you are not. Not saying it will work against anyone good . . . and "rate kills": Keep your throttle in the blue for maximum turning rate whenever you are applying Delta-V (turning) in fact, I bound a button to 75% throttle so I could hit it exactly every time I need it.

One question though, why fight in an Adder? Got something against actual combat ships like the Vulture or Eagle?

 

[D'Kaeth]

...

I'm using m&k so getting used to using the thrusters will just take some more practice.

...

I know there are people who thoroughly enjoy the game with mouse and keyboard, but I cannot imagine it, myself. You might try getting an inexpensive HOTAS. The feel is very intuitive and having most of the controls at your fingertips is very helpful. I just use a Thrustmaster T-Flight HOTAS X right now and it works great (although I'll be getting the new, ED one soon). I also use Voice attack so that my hands never leave the stick during combat. Granted, I am not great at combat, but I feel more or less competent. Might be worth your time and money.

Just a suggestion, of course.

 

[Chris Simon]

Thank you all for the tips!

I'm using m&k so getting used to using the thrusters will just take some more practice.

The laser is fixed, and the multi-cannons are gimbaled. That way I get more damage with the laser over a gimbaled one, but precise aim is less important. With the cannons I'm shooting at sub-components so it's much easier with gimbaled weapons. I'll swap the locations to maximise the kinetic damage, and go work on the engineer for multi-cannons.

Watched the Vindicator Jones videos, and those tips should surely help.

When I'm being interdicted I immediately drop speed to 0 and submit. Once out of super cruise I immediately boost, and as soon as the enemy blip is on radar I target next to see what it is. If it's something I don't want to fight, im already getting away. If it's something reasonable I 180, and get into the fight.

This is how I enter the "weapon fire detected" USS as well. Ever since I dropped into a Threat 1 USS only to be greeted by 4 enemy ships. I was shredded before I could get away. I thought "that is threat 1?". I did learn to always be pre-running when entering those USS so I don't get caught out.

In another thread I also read a tip about plotting a course on the galaxy map so you can high wake out of danger if you get in over your head. I bound a key for next waypoint, and I've already used that tip to save my bacon when I was close to death.

Thank you all for the help. I'm going to get to practicing again today.

Regarding the fixed vs. gimballed weapons - If I were you, I'd devote one day to testing.
It's very easy to say "Fixed do 25% more damage, therefore they are better" but they're not. Well, not always. On a proper, agile combat ship fixed weapons do miracles. But on a slower multirole ship, where you spend most of the time chasing after the opponent in a dogfight, desperately trying to place the crosshairs on them it's not that obvious. In other words - Higher damage of fixed weapons is useless for you, if you can't land it on the opponent.
In such cases, the gimbals may have 25% lower damage output, but if they can hit twice as often, they come out better.
Same with turrets. Many people hate them for they low damage, but what they fail to see is that they can lay that damage on target constantly.

Just a fuel for thought. Every ship and every pilot is different. If something doesn't work for you, try something else. It doesn't matter that it worked for the guy who recommended it.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

Since you say you have the credits, why not try learning combat in a ship that can handle a pounding?
A Vulture has amazing shields and is more agile than an Adder. It is a very good ship to learn to use fixed weapons. Fixed large pulse lasers in a Vulture can easily tear an Anaconda apart, yet the Vulture still has the agility to dogfight with an Eagle.
Upgrade a Vulture with a few engineers and it's a beast.

 

[ChewyBachus]

Why the Adder?

I know this is going to sound weird, but I enjoy the struggle. I enjoy the tension of knowing there are way more things out there that can squash me than I can squash. Making my way through the game constantly making decisions whether to fight or flee, and hoping I make the correct ones, is exciting to me.

This game is magic because even in my Sidewinder I never felt game content was locked away from me until I got a better ship. In fact the only things I came up against that I couldn't do was assaulting a +++ base, and assassinating pirate lords. Those things need a better ship for me. I could do courier runs, salvage, smuggling, cargo delivery, exploration (went to Betelgeuse in my Sidewinder on day 1 to see it before it blows up ), bounty hunting, piracy, etc. It's all available to everyone right from the first time you complete your pre-flight check. MIND BLOWN!!

The same things that make the game great to me makes "upgrading" to a larger ship unnecessary for me. I mean yes the Type-6 can carry a lot more cargo than the Adder, but for what reason? To make more money to buy a Python that carry even more cargo that make more money? The actual gameplay doesn't change, the ships just get bigger.

It really comes down to the fact that I've only played two weeks, and I just don't want to miss out on this time of the game. I'm not in a rush to let my little ships go.

All of that said, and steering back on topic, I still need a lot of work on my combat skills. I'm not even concerned with which ships are involved in the combat so much. I find it's definitely the rating of the NPC pilot that determines whether or not I boost my butt out of the situation. Once they start getting to expert level I'm getting out played, and need to monitor the situation constantly.

The reverse turn was a great tip! I'm sure that's what's happening when I'm fighting less maneuverable ships, yet they can clearly turn very tight into me.

I have a key bound to 50% throttle so I'm always in the blue. I'm going to switch over to an all-gimbal setup as well so I can focus more on flying the ship while only needing to be "close enough" with my aim to fire. Also going to work on my up and down thrusters too. Great tips on those in the Vindicator Jones vids.

Again thank you everyone. It's awesome when you can get great advise like this.

 

[d8veh]

It's very difficult for a NPC to stay behind you if you fly backwards, so just pitch up and maximum reverse.

 

[Chris Simon]

It's awesome that you look at it this way. [up]

And I fully agree that making money for the sake of making money is pointless. However I would disagree slightly with the thing about staying in one ship. If you like Adder, that's great (I love her, too, btw.) but I personally enjoy almost all of the ships. You are completely right that the size doesn't matter when comes to an experience (emmm. That came out a bit weird), but for me, flying one ship would become dull. Every ship flies completely differently (That is another part of elite's magic) and it is a great fun to explore their possibilities.

So don't get your poor Adder beaten. She's great, but she can't handle everything. Challenge is fine, but taking an Adder to a fight with a high-rank enemy is like entering the MMA cage with a hand tied to your ankle.

And back on topic, your theory that if you'll be doing combat with Adder (non-combat ship, hence higher difficulty), you'll learn more about combat, is partially wrong. If you'll fight in an Adder, the only thing you'll learn is fighting in an Adder. Just so you know.

It's very difficult for a NPC to stay behind you if you fly backwards, so just pitch up and maximum reverse.

Oh, and this, well, I'm not sure it's a good advise for an Adder pilot. Flying backwards is a very powerful tactic in a ship that is slower but stronger than the opponent. But if you can't "out-tank" them, then flying backwards will only keep you in their crosshairs longer and get you killed.

 

[Rocky-451]

Another tip: you can find out what kind of ship is interdicting you by pressing the key for "Target Highest Threat".

 

[Naughtius Maximus]

Another reason for not flying backwards btw - especially if your ship has a large canopy (ASP etc).... you can get your canopy blown out well before your ship takes any real damage which means you flying blind for as long as your life support lasts.... voice of experience.

 

[Gavin Burke]

Use the sensor when fighting, if the guy gets behind you, then:

1) Turn flight assist off
2) Reduce power to zero (I have hot key for this so it's instant)
3) Turn 180oC to face him
4) Turn flight assist on

You'll now be flying backwards with the target in your crosshair so light him up! If you lose him, repeat the above