Non-combat ships vs Players in Uber-Combat Ships

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So, my question is: have any of you found a decent tactic for surviving these boring encounters? Specifically, when you're not in your combat ship (which would provide an obvious answer!)

If you've been interdicted, you already failed.

I don't say that glibly.
Unless you're prepared for a fight, there's absolutely no excuse for allowing another ship, especially another player, to take up position on your six without taking some defensive measure(s) first.
You can high-wake, head for a landable planet, do an emergency drop-out of SC or even just turn a bit to prevent the interdiction from ever happening.
 
Thanks so much for all the ideas, everyone!

Stealthie, you mentioned doing an emergency drop-out of SC - do you mean during the interdiction mini-game?

If so, that had never occurred to me, and really appeals to my sense of theatre! Risk a dramatic maneuver to start trying to shake 'em off, at the cost of some self-damage...
 
I blocked a dozen or so players, simply because they ganked me in the true sense of the word (many vs one). I think they're weak cowards and don't deserve my presence as their in-game content:)

Don't mind getting shot out of space by a single player even if his ship is min-maxed, as I could in theory do the same to them if I had the inclination to engineer my ships that way (which I don't) and attack other players for whatever reason (which I don't, unless they're gankers).

The OP is trying to git gud.
Don't be a crab in a barrel.

Thanks so much for all the ideas, everyone!

Stealthie, you mentioned doing an emergency drop-out of SC - do you mean during the interdiction mini-game?


No, just hit drop twice, before they get close.
You'll take a little damage but be hard to follow, if you're smart about it.

Have fun with it I say!
 
Lol I sense we're not going to have a constructive exchange! What has happened to this place this week?

I think a combat ship engineered to the max will have such an advantage over an explorer build that the explorer is dust. I meant that response in relation to the fact that we're talking about an explorer build. If you push the limits on defensive engineering (as I have with my armed trader) then you are no longer flying the sort of explorer build referred to in OP's post, imho.



I have several thousands of engineering mods under my belt.
You have very few from what I gather.

When I tell you flat out that you are wrong, it is up to you how you take that information.

Do you want me to sugar coat it?
 
OP commiserations, I am sorry most here will just tell you to not play in Open if you don't want to be ganked/griefed (can never work out which is which lol). Which is fine except that some players will then complain about people playing in Solo/PG, belittle anyone who does as paramount as cheaters because they can affect the BGS without fear. Whilst I can see some of these attackers are 'roleplaying', some are just your common garden variety schoolyard bully, why else would someone in a murder ship attack a ship like yours. There is no skill involved, nothing to gain, and nothing to lose, it is just the work of a socially inept individual. People will of course say that the player who attacked you was well within the rule (yes, but who says the rules are fair) and was perfectly entitled to blow you up as he/she/it was playing their game. True, but no one every asks why you can't play your game, are players like you just content for the few, don't you have the same rights to enjoy the game the way you want to play it - evidently not. I just wish that FD had introduced a more robust C&P system where anyone with a notoriety about a certain level loses something tangible when destroyed, like all their engineering and access to said engineers. At least they will be busy redoing the grind and not blowing up anyone!

My only recommendation is get out of the bubble, at least a few hundred lys away, and you will be able to play in open because most of the low life idiots can't get that far away from their secure little bubble of fun. Keep on heading out until you don't see any players - you still might see the occasional player but you are more likely to find they have as much interest in you as you do in them, which is probably zero!

For the morally outraged at what I have said, feel free to block me, trust me I won't lose any sleep over it :D
 
I have several thousands of engineering mods under my belt.
You have very few from what I gather.

When I tell you flat out that you are wrong, it is up to you how you take that information.

Do you want me to sugar coat it?

He wasn't wrong, you were just talking in slightly different contexts from each other (damn you internet!)

But I'll take any sugar going (which is probably why I'm so svelte) :D
 

Deleted member 182079

D
The OP is trying to git gud.
Don't be a crab in a barrel.

I was only speaking for myself and wasn't saying the OP or anyone should block people willy-nilly. Just don't really have much respect for people who gang up on others as it's unfair, so choose not to play 'with' these people going forward. There's also very little to learn from those encounters as mostly you won't have the time to react due to the overwhelming odds/firepower against you.
 
Dear forum people,

Could I borrow the use of some of your collective experience?

Every now and again (such as last night), I'll get pulled out of supercruise in my explorer by another player in an uber-combat ship, who says not a word and is already firing by the time we instance.

Whenever this happens, they seem to be using an "impulse attack, trajectory affected" weapon, of some crazy-powerful kind that kills in about five shots.

Now, while part of me is tempted to wonder what the appeal of this is (vs a clearly non-combat slanted ship, without asking for cargo etc), I'm probably better off assuming that it's down to some deep seated and ultimately tedious psychological thing, and just blocking them post-mortem while I'm re-buying.

So, my question is: have any of you found a decent tactic for surviving these boring encounters? Specifically, when you're not in your combat ship (which would provide an obvious answer!)

My tactic with NPC pirates in that situation would be to immediately submit to interdiction, and then just boost continuously away at 500 (2 pips in shields, 4 pips in engines) until I can go back to supercruise. They can't do any noticeable damage to my shields when I'm getting further away at that rate.

With these players, that tactic is totally ineffective - I'm dead before my FSD cooldown is over. I didn't have time to see what ship they were in, so I don't know whether it's just that they're fast enough that keeping up with a retreat at 500 is no problem, or whether it's to do with the whole "impulse attack" thing. Have any of you used that kind of weapon? What's the effect from the user's point of view, when attacking a fast-fleeing ship?

Depending on the answer to that, have you found any way of countering it (in a non-combat ship, long enough to get away)?

Or, for interdictions without the obvious NPC pirate/police comms message (i.e. where it's presumably a commander), is fighting the interdiction mini-game (which I never bother with for NPCs) the better bet?

Any thoughts/anecdotes gratefully and curiously received!

Cheers

Commander Salter


[Edited for auto-correct spellings!]

There is only one 'fail safe' tactic when you fly a paper ship in Open.

Don't get interdicted.

- Turn on your bandwidth monitor to detect player activity in your instance.
- Have a hi-wake target ready.
- If you see a hollow triangle in supercruise, immediately turn directly towards it and hi-wake.

If you do this and do it fast, you will survive. :cool:
 
He wasn't wrong, you were just talking in slightly different contexts from each other (damn you internet!)

But I'll take any sugar going (which is probably why I'm so svelte) :D


I bolded the specific point that I was taking contention with, and that part is certainly wrong.
Defensive creep has outpaced offense.
That has been discussed ad nauseam/infinitum.

The odds are stacked to the person trying to flee believe it or not, as long as you take some measures.
 
I have several thousands of engineering mods under my belt.
You have very few from what I gather.

When I tell you flat out that you are wrong, it is up to you how you take that information.

Do you want me to sugar coat it?

This isn't a question of volume of engineering mods under your belt, it was a question relating to facts within the game, of which I do have some experience. I am not wrong, I just read the question and gave a tailored response based on knowledge, a response relevant to true exploration builds. Thing is, the game really isn't that complicated, and you know nothing about me or my life, so to assume that your extra thousands of engineering mods gives you some insight which invalidates my opinion is... rashly incorrect.

I was also not rude, which is where we differ. Why some people feel the need to 'speak' to others across the internet in a way which I real life would come across as rude and aggressive is entirely lost on me. You have simply chosen to out yourself as a small-minded keyboard warrior, something which simply cheapens a forum and causes no one any benefit. It's a shame, as you had previously seemed a reasonable sort, but this is just unpleasant. So no, thank you, I do not need you to sugar coat anything (I'm ex-law enforcement, have seen plenty of people present things warts and all), thank you for permission to take your 'information' how I choose to, and ftr I am not flat out wrong. You overstretched.

I apologise if I have upset you in some other thread (the sneering aggression of your closing line suggests that I have, as it sits oddly within my limited posting in this thread) but I'll draw a line here. Last week I had no one on 'ignore', you are now my third this week, and on each occasion it was from an unsolicited quarter. Perhaps there is something in the air.

OP: apologies for this siding, and thank you for speaking up for me, and whatever has been said do take to the bank my advice that a pure exploration ship has its limitations.

o7
 
Sorry to hear you are having issues with these sort of attacks, they are, as mentioned above, part of Open experience some like it, some hate it, but it is OPEN!

Going to Solo or a group is the perfect answer and will instantly stop these sort of encounters. However if, like me, you want the Open experience and the adrenaline buzz, then you have to try learn the evasive action. If they do interdict you in the ship you are describing, basically you will lose, and credit to you for not combat-logging.

The way i always approach this type of game play is to beat them in supercruise, not in normal space where their weapons will shred you before you can text 'Why are you doing this?' Press the keys 'Ctrl' and 'B' whilst in game and it will bring up in the bottom left corner of the screen a 'Bandwidth monitor'. This very basically shows you network traffice coming into your PC and leaving your PC. BEFORE you jump into a system if the send and receive numbers start to SPIKE at above say 1000+ and continue in this high or go higher it means your PC is contacting another players PC to bring you together in the same instance.

So now you know to expect other players when you drop into that system, armed with this knowledge expect the unexpected, and immediately look for hollow squares or worse hollow triangles, turn toward them and pick up speed. lock the hollow icon on your sensor so you can see his/her ship and watch it's flight path. As you pickup speed, watch to see if this target turns to get behind you which is the position you have to be in to make an Interdiction attempt. You will (Should) be going faster than this target by now so they cannot interdict you untill the distance tween you starts to decrease so as long as you don't slow down or turn sharply they will always be behind you with the distance tween your ship and their ship growing you are safe.

This will give you an indication if they are after you or not, if they keep following you when there is nothing in the direction you are heading they are after you. They will never catch you as long as you are not heading towards any Planet, star ot other object which will slow you down, maneuver your ship to head into deep space.

One of two things will happen next.

1. They will give up the chase as you pull them further and further away from their hunting ground and they will give up the chase they cannot win.

2. They keep following you, in which case you High wake out and have a rethink on you getting into that system (Going to try again ot going into Solo/Group and then trying again). Ig you choose a high wak option, make sure your intended system you are jumping to is in front of you and not behind you in ANY way, as if you turn to line up you may come within their FSDI range and Bang they have you!

The above all depends on out thinking the cmdrs and being quick in your decision on what you do when you drop in. This is where the bandwidth monitor is SOooooooooo useful not only for the attackers, as they can also see you approaching on their monitor as much as you can see them whilst you are approaching. So if you see this rise on the start of the drop in procedure, BE AWARE and BE READY.

If you are in a bad position with hollow squares/triangles all around you when you jump in, come to an Immediate stop, and drop into normal space, make sure speed is at minimum and whilst the 10 sec FSD cool down is happening, go to the Nav panel choose another system and high wake out. The aggressors have to find your wake signal and approach this. This period of time in them dropping on your wake signal should give you enough time to cool down, plt your next jump and activate the FSD.

As you get more experience at this procedure, you can play with them a bit, bring your throttle to just under the shaded area on the throttle indicator, initiate your FSD and line up with your next jump and it count up but you will not jump as you are not going fast enough. Have your finger hovering over the boost button, and as soon as the aggressor jumps in, YOU BOOST and you insta jump leaving him/her stranded whilst they cool down. they won't have time to do anything.

This last bit needs a bit of practice, but it is my fav why of avoiding these types of incidents. I even do this but low wake instead of high wake so i jump back in the same system and head towards my destination. I count 14 (Their cooldown period and their FSD countdown), then just as they pop up again i am at idle speed and i drop down again and repeat the procedure. Its amazing how this really really annoys them. A word of warning......you must practice this as timing is critical in getting this to work, and it won't work if they are in a group as a wing member will be waiting for you to pop back into supercruise and they will nab you. Thats where experience come into it.

TL; DR.......
Bandwidth Monitor...USE IT.
Practice watching what their ships do.
Fly towards them and past them.
Get up to speed as soon as possible.
don't head for any star, planet, or other gravity item which will slow you down.
Practice again.

You can have some fun with these people and laugh at the abuse they send over the ingame comms

Fly Safe.
 

Deleted member 182079

D
So now you know to expect other players when you drop into that system, armed with this knowledge expect the unexpected, and immediately look for hollow squares or worse hollow triangles, turn toward them and pick up speed. lock the hollow icon on your sensor so you can see his/her ship and watch it's flight path. As you pickup speed, watch to see if this target turns to get behind you which is the position you have to be in to make an Interdiction attempt. You will (Should) be going faster than this target by now so they cannot interdict you untill the distance tween you starts to decrease so as long as you don't slow down or turn sharply they will always be behind you with the distance tween your ship and their ship growing you are safe.

This will give you an indication if they are after you or not, if they keep following you when there is nothing in the direction you are heading they are after you. They will never catch you as long as you are not heading towards any Planet, star ot other object which will slow you down, maneuver your ship to head into deep space.

This is some really good advice and something I only recently worked out myself - observing opponent's ship angle and speed really helps predicting what the other player is up to. Put me at ease several times when I thought someone was chasing me while they were in fact flying the other direction.
 
This isn't a question of volume of engineering mods under your belt, it was a question relating to facts within the game, of which I do have some experience. I am not wrong, I just read the question and gave a tailored response based on knowledge, a response relevant to true exploration builds. Thing is, the game really isn't that complicated, and you know nothing about me or my life, so to assume that your extra thousands of engineering mods gives you some insight which invalidates my opinion is... rashly incorrect.

I was also not rude, which is where we differ. Why some people feel the need to 'speak' to others across the internet in a way which I real life would come across as rude and aggressive is entirely lost on me. You have simply chosen to out yourself as a small-minded keyboard warrior, something which simply cheapens a forum and causes no one any benefit. It's a shame, as you had previously seemed a reasonable sort, but this is just unpleasant. So no, thank you, I do not need you to sugar coat anything (I'm ex-law enforcement, have seen plenty of people present things warts and all), thank you for permission to take your 'information' how I choose to, and ftr I am not flat out wrong. You overstretched.

I apologise if I have upset you in some other thread (the sneering aggression of your closing line suggests that I have, as it sits oddly within my limited posting in this thread) but I'll draw a line here. Last week I had no one on 'ignore', you are now my third this week, and on each occasion it was from an unsolicited quarter. Perhaps there is something in the air.

OP: apologies for this siding, and thank you for speaking up for me, and whatever has been said do take to the bank my advice that a pure exploration ship has its limitations.

o7



I am not offended

But I can objectively prove that I have lots of experience in engineering.
Therefore I speak with a fair amount of verifiable experience when I say that your statement I put in bold is false.
That is relevant to my assertion of true vs false.
That is it.

We can also look at the numerous threads on the same topic if we want.
I am simply streamlining the information.
That's not rude.


It is rude to go on this tangent:

You have simply chosen to out yourself as a small-minded keyboard warrior,

No, I'm just blunt.
And you're still wrong about defensive engineering despite this diversion.
 
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