Newcomer / Intro How To find Combat suitable for My Current Ship?

[Mizbehave]

This is something I always have trouble with. I fit a ship with weapons, shields, hull modules, etc, etc and go off to a conflict zone/HAZ RES/Nav Point/USS/etc and get my butt kicked toot suite. How do I find combat that's suitable to my current ship build (regardless of what that may be) so that I can experiment with different weapon/shield/hull setups to find out what works for me?

It seems that all the general advice for combat assumes that everyone has a top tier ship that's engineered to the brim.

What do you do if you want to fight in a small ship but haven't unlocked all the engineering? What if you decide you'd like to try a medium ship instead but haven't unlocked the ranked ships?

I'm trying not to give a specific example so that people don't fixate on it but here's a couple:

Small unengineered ships - Cobra/Viper/Vulture/Eagle
Medium unengineered ships - Krait/Mamba/Python/Chieftain

Given one of the ships above where do you go to learn combat and have fun without getting nuked all the time?

 

[Morbad]

Offline challenge scenarios for the basics.

Then any RES, except hazardous, as there is no police support there. Or find some friends who are up for some friendly sparring.

 

[sinisalo]

Yep, go to any RES aside from the one you listed, and assume the role of wingman to the highest-ranked security Anaconda. Fly off his wing, let him choose targets even. Scan them, to ensure they are wanted. When the Conda opens fire, do the same. With your small ship and presumably low DPS, you'll never pull aggro off the cop and can get in to the groove.

As you and your ship improve you can branch out in to those you have listed.

RES =Resource Extraction Site

Good hunting commander.

 

[[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos]

I’ve been hanging around Compromised Nav beacons, they offer a range of ships at a range of ranks.

 

[Slange Lands]

Commander Picard, an incredible PvP pilot says there are two things to combat.
1. Hitting
2. Not getting hit

In other words Commander Mizbehave, it's not about the ship so much as the pilot's maneuvering abilities.

With perfect range control comes perfect aim. With perfect range control comes serious evasion abilities.


In addition to the advice from the other posters above, you could try:
Watching some youtube vids on maneuvering.
Then, start practicing getting behind a target and tail them keeping as close to them as possible. When you get bored try more agile and smaller ships.

You can practice maneuvering in any ship, engineered or not as long as you DO NOT FIRE and are not in a Haz Rez. Dont carry any juicy cargo of course.

As you are practicing maneuvering, do deploy weapons so you also practice tracking the target reticle. Be also aware of the three orange triangles surrounding the target. The key triangle is the solid one which indicates the target nose heading.

Be sure to gradually unlock engineers when you can stand to. You will have more fun with an engineered ship.

Combat is soooooo much fun.

o7

 

[Hooplah]

Here's my low to high risk opinion when trying out new ships and weapons builds to gain experience.
This is based a new combat player until they figure out how to deal with each level.

Navigation Beacon
Resource Extraction Site low, med, high, hazardous
Compromised Navigation Beacon
Conflict Zone low, med, high

I didn't start playing with USS threat levels until I had some experience with the ship and weapons loadout.
Non-human USS (Thargoids) is a totally different ball game requiring advanced skills, engineered ship and weapons builds.

My combat ships progression:

Viper, Vulture, Federal Assault Ship, Federal Gunship, Imperial Clipper, Fer de Lance, Federal Corvette, Imperial Cutter.
A lot of the newer ships didn't exist at the time. My current favorites are Corvette, Fer de Lance and a multi-crew Krait Mk II.

As a player gains combat Elite ranking the NPC enemies are going to get better. Keep improving and unlocking engineers.

 

[Mizbehave]

Here's my low to high risk opinion when trying out new ships and weapons builds to gain experience.
This is based a new combat player until they figure out how to deal with each level.

Navigation Beacon
Resource Extraction Site low, med, high, hazardous
Compromised Navigation Beacon
Conflict Zone low, med, high

Thank you, this is really helpful

 

[Yingnei Gasua]

This is something I always have trouble with. I fit a ship with weapons, shields, hull modules, etc, etc and go off to a conflict zone/HAZ RES/Nav Point/USS/etc and get my butt kicked toot suite. How do I find combat that's suitable to my current ship build (regardless of what that may be) so that I can experiment with different weapon/shield/hull setups to find out what works for me?

It seems that all the general advice for combat assumes that everyone has a top tier ship that's engineered to the brim.

What do you do if you want to fight in a small ship but haven't unlocked all the engineering? What if you decide you'd like to try a medium ship instead but haven't unlocked the ranked ships?

I think conflict zones (even the low ones) have tougher NPCs compared to Haz Res. Nav Beacons have weak NPCs too.

Stay away from conflict zones without an engineered ship unless you are pretty skilled.

 

[aRJay]

I think conflict zones (even the low ones) have tougher NPCs compared to Haz Res. Nav Beacons have weak NPCs too.

Stay away from conflict zones without an engineered ship unless you are pretty skilled.

Yes the ships in conflict zones are fitted out as warships with strong armour, shields and weapons and no slots wasted on non combat items.

 

[Hawk of Battle]

Personally, when I first started getting into combat, I bought myself a viper 3, unengineered, and headed to a low res site, just to get the used to everything and grasp the basics. Do that for a little bit, and just make sure you're not biting off more than you can handle. Stick to low rank targets and small ships until you get a feel for what you're flying, how much damage you can deal to different ships, how other ships move and how different ranks are more or less difficult in comparison.

Doing this I found very quickly that low res and its super aggressive police was not the best for learning combat per se, as they tend to do so much more damage and jump on enemies so quick you can barely even get involved in the fight yourself, but it will give you a grounding and familiarity with everything that's going on, then you can think about maybe trying a medium or even haz res site, and by comparing the difference in enemies in those areas you can see how different it is and start getting used to properly fighting real enemies and what you might need to either make it easier to keep up with their higher ranks and better ships or where you need to improve as a pilot. For instance, moving on from a low to a haz res I realized my little viper was just too squishy to take on certain ships I kept seeing, especially when they're in wings, so I upgraded to a vulture. More firepower, more hp, but still small, fast and cheap enough to not worry if I died. Then I started messing with engineering and then going on to conflict zones and only after many, many more hours did I try a totally different ship and got myself a chieftain, which is just amazing and can now tackle basically everything.

Or maybe that's just my own skillset improving.... nah it's probably the chieftain being a boss.

 

[Yingnei Gasua]

When I first upgraded from the free Sidey to a Grade A everything Cobra I was feeling all HotShot and took on a massacre mission, went into a Conflict Zone and ended up being massacred. Didn't even knock 1 ring off their shield iirc.

Now with an engineered K2, I can go about ignoring em and collecting parts while shots bounce off. The difference between engineered and non-engineered feels a lot more different than the paper stats of +50%/+90% suggests.