Wing Assassination Missions: WOW!

galahad2069

G
If kill order is a thing for an engineered Vette during these missions, then I'm glad I've never bothered to do the grind for those hefty piece of crap :p

These missions are very easily soloable in a small ship like a Vulture, without any exceptional piloting skill:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4F6GJ_WUyE

Were it not for the eternal SCB spamming and the very limited ammo capacity of frag cannons, they would be easy to solo in a Sidewinder as well, as the henchmen of the main baddie are likely to HW away as soon as you boost beyond sensor range.

But fetch a frag/plasma FAS/FDL and you can kill them in any order as you please.

The only problem with these new assassination wing missions are the crapload of bugs infesting them. I really hope they are gonna be fixed ASAP, as the missions themselves are fun to do and give away nice G5 mat rewards.
 
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Aashenfox

Aashenfox
galahad2069 said:
If kill order is a thing for an engineered Vette during these missions, then I'm glad I've never bothered to do the grind for those hefty piece of crap :p

These missions are very easily soloable in a small ship like a Vulture, without any exceptional piloting skill:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4F6GJ_WUyE

Were it not for the eternal SCB spamming and the very limited ammo capacity of frag cannons, they would be easy to solo in a Sidewinder as well, as the henchmen of the main baddie are likely to HW away as soon as you boost beyond sensor range.

But fetch a frag/plasma FAS/FDL and you can kill them in any order as you please.

The main problem with these new assassination wing missions are the crapload of bugs infesting them. I really hope they are gonna be fixed ASAP, as the missions themselves are fun to do and give away nice G5 mat rewards.
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I can't see the video, but I'll check it out at lunchtime. I wanna say though, that taking advantage of mechanisms and behaviours of the AI that one understands because one has been in the game so long, like causing the henchmen to bug out by kiting them out of range, is not playing the game, it's gaming the play and is not impressive to me in the slightest. It's not a bug, it's players taking advantage. People might say 'so they should fix the AI' and to them I say, 'ok, feel free to try your hand at making a realistic 6DOF combat AI, see you in about 20 years'. But hey if that's fun for them, great. If I wanted to kite them all around the instance, I could probably do it in my lightweight courier, it would take 20 minutes, but hey, I won, right? ;)
 

Audaxxx

Audaxxx
galahad2069 said:
If kill order is a thing for an engineered Vette during these missions, then I'm glad I've never bothered to do the grind for those hefty piece of crap :p

These missions are very easily soloable in a small ship like a Vulture, without any exceptional piloting skill:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4F6GJ_WUyE

Were it not for the eternal SCB spamming and the very limited ammo capacity of frag cannons, they would be easy to solo in a Sidewinder as well, as the henchmen of the main baddie are likely to HW away as soon as you boost beyond sensor range.

But fetch a frag/plasma FAS/FDL and you can kill them in any order as you please.

The only problem with these new assassination wing missions are the crapload of bugs infesting them. I really hope they are gonna be fixed ASAP, as the missions themselves are fun to do and give away nice G5 mat rewards.
Click to expand...

Nicely done sir. I'm not a fan of the old runaway and reboot tactic though, I really dislike that mechanic. Where is the energy supposed to be coming from to miraculously recharge the shields in a few seconds flat? I'd like to see it done in a sidewinder, wouldn't you be able to synth the ammo?
 
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galahad2069

G
ecob81 said:
Nicely done sir. I'm not a fan of the old runaway and reboot tactic though, I really dislike that mechanic. Where is the energy supposed to be coming from to miraculously recharge the shields in a few seconds flat?
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It's more of a "look how easy it is" video, not a "look how great I am" one. It was made to demonstrate how good PvE ship the Vulture is, for somebody who was disappointed by it in another thread.

The reboot mechanism is a valid thing in the game. Were it nonexistent, I could have done the same without boosting away, with a bi-weave shield instead of the prismatic.

As for the Sidewinder, I tried it and survived, but could not finish the mission because the 2 wretched frags of poor Sidey would have taken a very long time and all my mats to chew through that huge shield.
 
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galahad2069

G
Aashenfox said:
I can't see the video, but I'll check it out at lunchtime. I wanna say though, that taking advantage of mechanisms and behaviours of the AI that one understands because one has been in the game so long, like causing the henchmen to bug out by kiting them out of range, is not playing the game, it's gaming the play and is not impressive to me in the slightest. It's not a bug, it's players taking advantage. People might say 'so they should fix the AI' and to them I say, 'ok, feel free to try your hand at making a realistic 6DOF combat AI, see you in about 20 years'. But hey if that's fun for them, great. If I wanted to kite them all around the instance, I could probably do it in my lightweight courier, it would take 20 minutes, but hey, I won, right? ;)
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In the video all enemies are properly killed. The HW "bug" was not exploited, you won't need to do so unless you fly an eagle or something like that.
 

ilo

ilo
galahad2069 said:
If kill order is a thing for an engineered Vette during these missions, then I'm glad I've never bothered to do the grind for those hefty piece of crap :p

These missions are very easily soloable in a small ship like a Vulture, without any exceptional piloting skill:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4F6GJ_WUyE

Were it not for the eternal SCB spamming and the very limited ammo capacity of frag cannons, they would be easy to solo in a Sidewinder as well, as the henchmen of the main baddie are likely to HW away as soon as you boost beyond sensor range.

But fetch a frag/plasma FAS/FDL and you can kill them in any order as you please.

The only problem with these new assassination wing missions are the crapload of bugs infesting them. I really hope they are gonna be fixed ASAP, as the missions themselves are fun to do and give away nice G5 mat rewards.
Click to expand...

Awesome, just, simply.
 

GammaZ

G
Aashenfox said:
Personally I think they are weighted perfectly. Think of it like this...

Outstanding pilot with excellent outfitting...

Small ship - EXTREMELY challenging
Medium Ship - Challenging
Corvette/Cutter - Normal.

Average pilot with good engineering

Small ship - Impossible
Medium ship - EXTREMELY challenging
Corvette/Cutter - Difficult.

Bad pilot with shoddy engineering...

Will not be able to solo the encounter in any ship.

Essentially they are weighted to be done by 2-4 average pilots with average engineering, and not be too punishing at that level. Solo challenge is perfect, make it really hard for yourself by using a medium ship.
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It sounds logical but i am not sure i agree with this assessment. At least for me medium ships are the hardest. Big enough to be reliably hit, not tough enough to tank it. Small ones are the easiest. Seriously, vulture works great. I suspect courier with proper loadout will work similarly well. Corvette... well, it is risk-free and does not require any skill apart from making good loadout, but it is slow too.
With everyone sharing vids... i'll share mine too: https://youtu.be/Zb58DfuXnsQ
It is conda version, but it is quiet similar to corvette one (corvette is a little tougher but is easier to hit too), cutter is the hardest as breaking through SCB-s is not trivial and running out of ammo is real risk.
 
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Audaxxx

Audaxxx
Probably the most efficient method I've seen yet. You did miss out scooping up all those lovely mats though, I wouldn't be able to leave them all behind especially when they drop a few G5's.
 

sb413197

S
Some are commenting on the ease or difficulty...it all depends what spawns. There are wings that are unbelievably challenging and can rip a frag vulture in seconds (I faced a wing full of rail equipped ships, and there was once a cutter with what must have been comparable HP to my own - even a doubleshot frag wouldn't get through that quickly). There are also a lot of wings that a frag vulture would easily beat the main ship and get the heck out of there, like a ninja....that is a near-perfect build to quickly assassinate something!
 

galahad2069

G
sb413197 said:
Some are commenting on the ease or difficulty...it all depends what spawns. There are wings that are unbelievably challenging and can rip a frag vulture in seconds
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There's nothing to worry about in there if you have nice engineered shields and boosters. The difficulty level of these missions depends basically exclusively on the ship type the target is flying (Conda: easy, Vette: medium, gigashield Cutter hard). The wingmates of the main baddie don't seem to be flying engineered ships.
 
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GammaZ

G
sb413197 said:
Some are commenting on the ease or difficulty...it all depends what spawns. There are wings that are unbelievably challenging and can rip a frag vulture in seconds (I faced a wing full of rail equipped ships, and there was once a cutter with what must have been comparable HP to my own - even a doubleshot frag wouldn't get through that quickly). There are also a lot of wings that a frag vulture would easily beat the main ship and get the heck out of there, like a ninja....that is a near-perfect build to quickly assassinate something!
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Yeah, cutters are challenging. Actually swapping corrosive for second incendiary helps a lot with them, makes it possible to break through cells.
Other than that i am actually interested in seeing one of those "hard" spawns, as I've done a lot of this missions already, with different ships and different main target, but rest of the wing seems to be quiet similar every time.

galahad2069 said:
Nice calm flying, dear Vulturist colleague.

You could have slaughtered the rest of them as well though, you had plenty of ammo left.
☺
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Thanks :)
I probably could have slain them, but judging by prior testing hitting eagle with large frags is challenge in itself, probably harder than killing those conda. And not really worth the time.
 
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VeXxX

V
Wing assassinations are easy to solo. I take 3 of them at a time usually, do them all then hand them in for the materials.

I can imagine actual wings being let down by the lack of difficulty. How about if you do them solo, you get 4x the reward? The faction has put aside that money to get the job done, so if one pilot does the job they just pocket the other 3 payments?
 

Aashenfox

Aashenfox
VeXxX said:
Wing assassinations are easy to solo. I take 3 of them at a time usually, do them all then hand them in for the materials.

I can imagine actual wings being let down by the lack of difficulty. How about if you do them solo, you get 4x the reward? The faction has put aside that money to get the job done, so if one pilot does the job they just pocket the other 3 payments?
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Well, it's a valid point, but as I said earlier, they have to be able to be done by 4 bad pilots, so one would expect a good pilot in a good ship would have little difficulty. Half the fun of elite is setting your own difficulty level, imo.

When I went for this fight (vid in spoiler), I really didn't know if I was going to win or not, 320mj, no boosters, no cells, all lightweight weapons, D rated distro, and this is 2.4 engineering (top level though)...note the slight AI bug that if the vette doesn't hit you with the PAs, it doesn't fire its other weapons either, if that wasn't the case, I would not have been able to be so aggressive...eventually he got me with the PAs and that's where it got interesting. :)

[video=youtube;RWqi5FRcaR8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWqi5FRcaR8[/video]
 

AnotherVoice

A
Ziljan said:
This really depends on the mission and your ship. Some of these are easy enough to beat with just a solo FDL/Chieftain. Some are extremely dangerous even for a Hull/Shield tanking beast. I took my fully engineered Corvette (which had never needed SCBs before, even vs swarm waves of police) into a wing assassination mission solo thinking it would be cake. But I a few short seconds later, was facing a Rebuy screen. Went back for a second attempt, and the NPCs killed me even faster! Third attempt and swapped out some cargo and SRV pods for more HRPs MRPs and a crucial SCB. I *barely* survived the third attempt, and had to flee before being able to kill the Target. On the fourth and final attempt, was able to just barely kill the Target Cutter and escape with a limping ship.

I am one of the better pilots in the game and can hold my own in 1v1 PVP vs all but the best CMDRs in the game. Even though the game seems to scale the difficulty compared to your ship/skill level, I would recommend that newer to middling players bring at least one friend on these wing assassination missions, just in case you hit a "difficulty spike" like I did ;)
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There is a way to cheese these missions so they become really easy, but i won't talk about it here ;)
 

Troy_McClure

Banned
Troy_McClure
ilo said:
Awesome, just, simply.
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Weakest of weak AI - 'competent' & 'expert' ranks! Minimal evasion, poor defences & seemingly a yearning for death to come.

Ziljan made the point earlier (tbf, he always claims that the AI he is instanced with are specially designed by SJA, herself) about the relative difficulty problem that seems to be the case with these missions - it varies significantly.

Like CZs where one time, you can sit there farming away for hours with not a care in the world, but on other occasions there are a total of 2-3 allies (who never help you out!) & 10-12 enemies (all with rails & targeting YOU!). Then some dude posts a vid of a CZ where he is left alone & claims they are easy in an unmodded Vulture! Hmmm smoke & mirrors!

Wouldn't it be nice to actually have the mechanics broken down by the appropriate devs...just frikkin once!?
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
Aashenfox said:
I've been umming and ahing about applying to join Cobra Kai for a long time if you (collectively) will have me. You seem to have a great attitude to the game. /thumbsup
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Well, i'm more of a hanger on than an active member, but get on the Discord and chat. There is only really one rule, don't be a jerk.
 
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