Can I ask- when fighting NPC’s, how do you avoid the endless head to head circles and jousting? My dogfights always degenerate into jousting matches. It’s boring and I can only kill 2-3 medium ships before heading back to the barn for repairs. Anacondas crush me (nothing worse than being in front of an Anaconda repeatedly). I’m in a moderately engineered FDL. Not complaining about the game, I think I’m doing it wrong. I’ve watched the Vindicator Jones (and many other) combat tutorials. Maybe I’m just a born explorer.
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Can I ask- when fighting NPC’s, how do you avoid the endless head to head circles and jousting? My dogfights always degenerate into jousting matches. It’s boring and I can only kill 2-3 medium ships before heading back to the barn for repairs. Anacondas crush me (nothing worse than being in front of an Anaconda repeatedly). I’m in a moderately engineered FDL. Not complaining about the game, I think I’m doing it wrong. I’ve watched the Vindicator Jones (and many other) combat tutorials. Maybe I’m just a born explorer.
That's not accurate. The ship is irrelevant to the XP you get, only it's rank matters. An Elite eagle will give you as much as an Elite corvette. So you should be concentrating on the small ships.
There's a significant difference between moderately engineered and fully well built engineered. Perhaps you could post your build and theorycrafters could help you? Situational awareness is key, of course, but having a good loadout without a gazillion reticles helps immensely. In addition, the better range control you have, the quicker the kill. I am working on range control myself and it's not easy, especially with human opponents. Being so good at maneuvering your ship so that most of your attention can be focussed on the opponents next moves and watching the radar are some of my long term goals.
The reason I love combat in this game so much is because of the very very high skill cap. There is always more to learn and there is always a more knowleadgeable/expert pilot than one's self. Perhaps someday soon things will start to click for you in combat and I assure you, that you will be very pleased indeed that you persevered.
Good luck to you.
o7
The ranked ships (those with higher rank ratings) are almost always the larger ships, at least for me. Rarely, do I get a high ranked target in smaller ships and since you need zillions of kills (incrementally more) as you climb the ranks, you have to go with what gives you the probability of higher ranks. For instance, I've never seen a Novice, Mostly Harmless Anaconda/Federal Corvette.
In my case it's a Fer de Lance engineered to mostly Grade 3 Specs, with the exception of three Grade 5 overcharged Multi-Cannons (with Corrosive Experimental). The Shields are also Grade 3 (overcharged). I go into combat with 1 pip sys, 1 pip eng, and 4 pips weps. Unfortunately since my Beams are only Grade 3 (overcharged) and take a while to whittle down the Anacondas/Corvettes.
I always end up in the head to head circles, BUT the key is to maximize your survivability.. Use your chaff as you're turning to go head on. Use all the Weps at once (both Beams and Cannons, mine are all gimbled, including the huge single multicannon) Only time to let off the Beams, is when the target has dropped chaff. In those times, let off to reduce the heat buildup. Don't slow down too much head on. The suckers outgun you head to head. Make passes. Approx. every other pass for me is a chaff run and the alternate passes are high speed boost runs to get back behind them and buy time for another chaff run. Another sweet trick I've learned is to utilize my heat sinks when my Beam Weapons start giving me Heat warnings. This gives me precious extra Beam firing time to make up for the lesser Beam power. I usually end up with 10% to 20% shields left, but I've also had them knocked off in the final moments of the fight. My final line of defense is Military Bulkheads. I'll leave the fight if I get down to a dim single shield ring if the enemy has 2 shield rings still showing. This sometimes happens when one of them is smart enough to utilize their Cell Banks. In my case, I don't use Cell Banks during combat, because they just add to the Heat problems that I'm generating with the overcharged Beam Weps.
Oh, and in the case of Anacondas/Corvettes, I almost always head back to the barn to replenish before the next fight. I gotta have at least 2 heat sinks left to fight and I usually end up using them all. Just no way to outgun these big suckers without heat sinks buying extra continuous firing time.
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Great stuff. Thank you! o7
You're in an FDL and you've died thrice today? What are you doing? I've been living in one for months grinding out my combat rank, think i've like died 3 times in three months. As to making money, plenty of ways to do that, mining still a great way to do it
What ship were they in?
Do you have engineering?
the npc was in a harmless eagle the cmdr was in a fully modded battle ready anaconda
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What I do is; throttle down, press the down vertical thruster, keep the enemy in line of fire and as he goes above me pitch up and if need be use FA off to keep it centred. You can juggle the lateral thrusters as you watch the ship grow larger. It's like shouting fish in a barrel.
It is, isn't it?
Combat is all about knowledge. You have to learn how to defeat NPCs. They're not OP. You just need the right ship, equipment and knowledge. One thing you can't do is just chase after them firing your weapons in an unsuitable ship.
If you think what you've seen is bad, go try a wing of 4 special ops in a CZ or some of the Thargoids, then you will realise how easy your NPCs were.
As Bruce Lee said, his style is the art of fighting without fighting. That's a good style to adopt when you're mining, trading or running missions.
If you want to fight NPCs, go and get a ship equipped for combat and go to a resource extraction site, nav beacon or conflict zone to learn how to do it.
If you think what you've seen is bad, go try a wing of 4 special ops in a CZ or some of the Thargoids, then you will realise how easy your NPCs were.
As Bruce Lee said, his style is the art of fighting without fighting. That's a good style to adopt when you're mining, trading or running missions.
If you want to fight NPCs, go and get a ship equipped for combat and go to a resource extraction site, nav beacon or conflict zone to learn how to do it.
That's a good point, but a lot of people suffer from ignorance, and i don't mean that in a bad way. As I said in my other post, knowledge is the key to success in this game, and many people don't seem to be able to figure out how or where to get it.
You need to try different things until you find what works. Those old VJ videos have some good basic advice, but the game has moved on massively since then, so you have to adjust accordingly. Experience will show you how the NPCs behave in different circumstances. Knowing what to expect is half the battle.
It's OK to fight face to face if you have a stronger ship, and you're not going to lose your shields from it, which will work if you have engineered biweave shields, shield boosters and SCBs. The devs have programmed the AI fairly well. After a few jousts, they often turn sideways on for a bit to give you a shot at their powerplant.
Two techniques you can try (if you haven't already) is to toggle FA off and pitch up as they fly towards you to go over your head. That works if they're angled slightly upwards as they approach, but if they boost directly at you, it doesn't work, so you have to boost with full pitch up and FA off to nip round behind them. That works to an extent, but they soon pitch round to face you again.
Being honest, defeating these NPCs is 90% having the right ship and load-out. If I were to use a vanilla FDL in a high or haz RES, I'd probably be able to last a complete session, but it would be because I chose the right targets at the right time. I don't think that there are many pilots, who could take on anything in sight at will in a that ship.
If you want to wade in and take on everything in sight in a RES, you can still do it in a fully engineered shield tank Corvette, but even that can get into trouble in a CZ if you don't do it right.
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What I do is; throttle down, press the down vertical thruster, keep the enemy in line of fire and as he goes above me pitch up and if need be use FA off to keep it centred. You can juggle the lateral thrusters as you watch the ship grow larger. It's like shouting fish in a barrel.
Pretty much this, I play for fun so have no interest in 'git-gud' whatever that actually means so this above is pretty much my tactic, moved up to rails and PAs in the FDL using this technique. Concentrate on thrusters, dirty/drag drives as best as you can get really make a difference. Vindicator does a vid showing this technique so watch again, its the only combat series I watched. Also slow down, I can stay slow and use thrusters to keep inside the turning circle mostly. FDL I fly 4/0/2 occasionally 4/1/1 if I have boosted just to recharge.
The first time I flew the FDL it cost me 10 rebuys in the same CZ for an II, but I learned a lot. I limped home a lot wiser, a lot poorer but with a well earned and proudly displayed Decal
FDL is mainly a shield build so go for that. Best shield plus boosters preferably engineered. Preferably with Guardian Shield Booster. Vanilla is good but Guardian and Engineered is something else.
Maybe get one of the Beams with Thermal Vent to help with cooling, saves on heatsinks. Ill even fit a medium turreted Beam with Efficient/Vent to let me concentrate on the multi and rails or plasma. I don't really do meta builds so I have main MC with corrosive and other with other effects.
Sub target modules. Power Plant is usually a good one as usually central so a close miss can be a hit and theres a small chance a Conda will blow up with 30% hull when powerplant gets to 0. Shield generators can be targeted if they keep coming back with cell banks on top but I usually just got for the power or FSD.
In the heat and speed of battles, how do you find the time to bring up the screen to sub-target modules?
Easiest way is to change the key bind to allow you to select it v. quickly. That then becomes second nature to use as soon as you select a new target. For the main NPCs you will actually end up knowing how many selections to move through by class to get to the power plant.
Also look up the asteroid training trick for FA Off, it helps loads when you are first starting out with it. Finally I would also recommend that if using FA On, you set your drives in the blue zone for manoeuvrability and then use forward and reverse thrust to moderate speed as you track your prey. It will help a lot as you get used to it - also a key for FA Off. If necessary make use of the second key set for combat, although you get used to using thrusters and can just fly with them moderating speed after a while.
Hope this lot helps, although there are also many different opinions out there on how to do it - some useful advice, some less so. Experiment and you will get better. Good luck.
The game can be played, and ships flown well, with almost any rational control setup, including nothing more than a normal keyboard and mouse.
Regarding the rate of fire of your seekers vs. NPC missiles, unless they are very high rank and thus likely to have Engineered weapons, NPCs should have exactly the same ROF, rack for rack, as your CMDR. It's possible you are witnessing dumbfires, which cycle much faster, but are much easier to evade.
Throttle/thruster control.
I play for fun...becoming a competent pilot is both fairly inevitable with enough experience as well as something that facilitates more fun.
Muscle memory, or setting up a hotkey to cycle through enemy subsystems.