Conflict Zones - Difficulty Changing?

[Kingston@#]

Thanks for the info! ..But why does the difficulty change that much between several visits?

you properly approach each CZ differently, there are many instances of how you play a CZ, not all are the same. I usually have no problems. I tend to stick to one format of play, no matter what type CZ it is I play them the same.
choose side, look for your target. preferably one that's being attacked by an npc. nick the kill and follow that format. stay close to your allies, they will help you out if you get attacked. many hrs of fun to be had, plenty of mats needed to stay in for that long. I usually have enough for 20 reloads.

 

[Crank Larson]

The Empirials have some sort of glow in the dark jumbo jet- then stick some guns on it- mentality.

It's very important to be able to glow in the dark. I stuck some big guns on my Cutter. They work fine.

 

[Factabulous]

OP : Are you paying attention to what ships you are attacking? As a player fairly new to CZs I sometimes find I'm trying to take out an Elite Corvette - which bizarrely takes down my shields faster than an Expert Cobra would

 

[ArchEmperor]

High Intensity always works best for me. Everything dies so fast it is way easier.

 

[CubicCode]

Actually ... that's rule #2. Rule #1 is never select sides until you've put some distance between yourself and the majority of the combatants. Nothing can ruin your day more than dropping into a CZ and selecting sides only to discover that you are the only "green" ship in the zone and you've suddenly got the entire armada on your tail.

That could be a reason for the "varying difficulty". Perhaps the faction I chose was outnumbered by a few ships so that I directly got targetted by multiple ships.

CZ's in general could do with a complete rework, so you know what you're getting into. Rather than structure it like the RES sites are, site spawns should really be something like this:
- Skirmish (Contains ships from both sides)
- <faction> Outpost (Contains a destructible outpost belonging to the faction like the ones from CQC and a small defence fleet, and also spawns opposed ships, so you can choose to attack or defend)
- <faction> Capital ship (Typical one-capship encounter, belonging to that faction)
- Capital Skirmish (Opposed capship spawn)
- Variations of the above in asteroid belts
- Surface Outpost Assault (Skimmers, turrets and the current procgen outposts. Scanning things like InfoHubs could provide warbonds via intelligence. This would be the main source of warbonds, to mitigate the ease of just peppering these with missiles from above, thought judicious use of turrets would fix that.)

Nice idea! That's something I'd vote for!

OP : Are you paying attention to what ships you are attacking? As a player fairly new to CZs I sometimes find I'm trying to take out an Elite Corvette - which bizarrely takes down my shields faster than an Expert Cobra would

No I did not. But I will in the future.

Btw: Dropped in a high-hntensity CZ yesterday and it was quite fun! So it seems that high- or low-intensity is not directly linked to difficulty. It may be that the rounds I had not survived for long were due to chosing the outnumbered faction.