Advice on Multi-Ship combat (PvE)

[Chaitin]

I have been working on some pirate Lord missions in a wing made up on 1x Python, 1x Chieftain and 1x Challenger.

Often going up against the standard pirate Lord setup of 1x FDL and 4x Vultures.

All of our ships have moderate levels of engineering and I was wondering what more experienced players would recommend in terms of targeting priority?

Do you all go after one target at a time?

 

[bladebss]

Kill weaker ships first as this cuts fire down fast. So if you can kill some small ships fast buy all focusing them first untill there is one each and then split the deck this will help from being shot in the back.

If you have week links in the wing who are struggling all focus on the ships attacking the weakest amoungst you. This will draw the attacking ships away from the weak.
And have the strongest engage more than one ship again to draw focus away from your weaker wing mate.

In a wing of 3 like that you should be moping the floor with those npcs. So it should be down to money and speed. So you should all focus one ship at a time and kill from weakest to strongest.

 

[Morbad]

Generally you want to assess ships by two criteria: how much damage can they do and how quickly you can shoot them down.

If you find a ship that can be downed much faster than the rest or is much more dangerous than the rest, those are strong candidates for being shot down first. When in doubt, I try to remove the fragile targets first and then focus on the tougher ones as the latter are often easier to evade.

When opponents are in similar ships, you may need to prioritize by loadout. In PvE encounters, I generally consider hitscan weapons most threatening because NPC are much more accurate with them and they tend to do well against non-thermal resist shields. So, for those singe-FDL, quad-vulture, encounters I usually knock out the beam laser vulture first and send an SLF, if I have one, against the MC vulture, because the MC vulture will often never hit an SLF.

in a wing, you often want to divide and conquer. Separate the target from it's escorts, rapidly destroy the most threatening of the escorts, destroy the target, then mop up the rest.

 

[Aashenfox]

2 Chaff.

 

[Morbad]

2 Chaff.

Definitely can be the difference against an NPC wing...even some CMDR wings for that matter.

Hard trade off though...do I dump the PDT on a hybrid build and have no way to thin out those seekers I inevitably encounter as soon as I pick up the chaff, or do I try to get by with a single (or no) chaff launcher?

 

[Stealthie]

A Python with engineered weapons should be capable of taking out any NPC ship in the game, right up to Elite Cutters and Corvettes.

If it was me, I'd suggest whoever's flying the Python goes after the target and everybody else shoots at any other NPCs shooting at the Python which should result in less NPCs shooting at the other ships in your wing too.

Multi-ship dogfights tend to get pretty messy so it's best to keep plans simple.

 

[Aashenfox]

Definitely can be the difference against an NPC wing...even some CMDR wings for that matter.

Hard trade off though...do I dump the PDT on a hybrid build and have no way to thin out those seekers I inevitably encounter as soon as I pick up the chaff, or do I try to get by with a single (or no) chaff launcher?

I too found this a tough decision at first and I went for dropping the PD. It does hurt a little at times, I confess, but my shield is down for exactly one minute and the extra chaff helps it stay up in between for long enough to be an overall increase in effective health. That's subjective of course, and I do fly 'more' evasively when shields are down, so it needs to be used as part of an overall strategy. Definitely happy with literally endless chaff when it's really needed. ymmv.

 

[Morbad]

I too found this a tough decision at first and I went for dropping the PD. It does hurt a little at times, I confess, but my shield is down for exactly one minute and the extra chaff helps it stay up in between for long enough to be an overall increase in effective health. That's subjective of course, and I do fly 'more' evasively when shields are down, so it needs to be used as part of an overall strategy. Definitely happy with literally endless chaff when it's really needed. ymmv.

I typically use the same loadouts for PvP and PvE combat (only exception is usually the FSD) and seekers are about as common as setups that rely on gimbals on CMDR vessels.

 

[Brrokk]

Nominate one person in the wing to choose targets and then all shoot at his target. There are selection buttons for that, usually numbers 7,8,9 and 0. Smaller ships first, as others have said.

 

[Xious]

Focus the FDL. He's the only real target.

 

[Aashenfox]

I typically use the same loadouts for PvP and PvE combat (only exception is usually the FSD) and seekers are about as common as setups that rely on gimbals on CMDR vessels.

Sure, I try to as well, but op specifically asked multiple contact pve, and I'm sure you'd agree, chaff is THE biggest npc damage mitigator, and it's value is only multiplied in multiple contact engagements. You can get by with one, but when you just want to survive long enough to take out the target and leave, spamming it on cooldown is very effective.

 

[Ceekay]

I've noticed several of the target ships in these missions use phasing sequence experimental effects (blue lasers) that some damage will bypass the shields so fitting some additional HRP/MRP is worthwhile.

I'd sent the more agile ships after the escorts (Chieftain and Challenger) and attack the mission target with the Python