Newcomer / Intro New player questions/double checking my understanding of things

[d8veh]

I've done up to I think Deadly so far?

Do you mean that you've tacled Dropships and pythons up to deadly or your rank is deadly? A little birdie just landed by my window and tweeted that your rank is competent, which is about 10% along your journey to elite.

It's possible that thw AI is programmed to be easier on you because of your low rank; however, I thought that only applied to interdictions. If it is the case, you might find things getting a bit tricky in the future, especially just flying around in the blue zone. You should be flying backwards in an Anaconda.

All I can say is that your description of your fighting in a Haz RES in an unengineered Anaconda doesn't match my frame of reference, which has left me a little confused, but if it works for you, stick with it. I can remember the first time I got one before we had engineering. I was so pleases as I left the station with my sunglasses on and my elbow out the window, but after half an hour at the high RES, I was so frustrated trying to chace after all the ships without catching them that I parked it up and went back to my trusty FDL.

 

[Chris Simon]

Do you mean that you've tacled Dropships and pythons up to deadly or your rank is deadly? A little birdie just landed by my window and tweeted that your rank is competent, which is about 10% along your journey to elite.

It's possible that thw AI is programmed to be easier on you because of your low rank; however, I thought that only applied to interdictions. If it is the case, you might find things getting a bit tricky in the future, especially just flying around in the blue zone. You should be flying backwards in an Anaconda.

All I can say is that your description of your fighting in a Haz RES in an unengineered Anaconda doesn't match my frame of reference, which has left me a little confused, but if it works for you, stick with it. I can remember the first time I got one before we had engineering. I was so pleases as I left the station with my sunglasses on and my elbow out the window, but after half an hour at the high RES, I was so frustrated trying to chace after all the ships without catching them that I parked it up and went back to my trusty FDL.

Yes, I think he means he fought NPCs up to Deadly.
Conda's very decent unengineered DPS/DPE can deal with almost anything although - AFAIK the engineering level of NPCs scales with their rank, but only Elite NPCs have engineered weapons. So he's still in for a surprise or two.

 

[DanielKT]

Yes, I think he means he fought NPCs up to Deadly.
Conda's very decent unengineered DPS/DPE can deal with almost anything although - AFAIK the engineering level of NPCs scales with their rank, but only Elite NPCs have engineered weapons. So he's still in for a surprise or two.

Do you mean that you've tacled Dropships and pythons up to deadly or your rank is deadly? A little birdie just landed by my window and tweeted that your rank is competent, which is about 10% along your journey to elite.

It's possible that thw AI is programmed to be easier on you because of your low rank; however, I thought that only applied to interdictions. If it is the case, you might find things getting a bit tricky in the future, especially just flying around in the blue zone. You should be flying backwards in an Anaconda.

All I can say is that your description of your fighting in a Haz RES in an unengineered Anaconda doesn't match my frame of reference, which has left me a little confused, but if it works for you, stick with it. I can remember the first time I got one before we had engineering. I was so pleases as I left the station with my sunglasses on and my elbow out the window, but after half an hour at the high RES, I was so frustrated trying to chace after all the ships without catching them that I parked it up and went back to my trusty FDL.

Chris is correct. I've fought up to Deadly enemies.
What ship the AI is in has varied. I'd say mid range medium class is most frequent. Deadly is semi-rare still but they certainly aren't unheard of. I'm not so stupid to attack a whole pack of them at once though lol

What is your frame of reference? I've gone into them and generally they fight 1v1. I'm sensing that maybe isn't normal?

I'm curious; why should I be flying backwards in my ship?
I keep the throttle somewhere in the blue zone depending on what weirdness they are doing.
How exactly is the AI making straffing runs on me while still moving the same direction? I know from a physics standpoint that it should work like that.
Just don't know how to use the controls to accomplish it.

 

[Chris Simon]

Chris is correct. I've fought up to Deadly enemies.
What ship the AI is in has varied. I'd say mid range medium class is most frequent. Deadly is semi-rare still but they certainly aren't unheard of. I'm not so stupid to attack a whole pack of them at once though lol

What is your frame of reference? I've gone into them and generally they fight 1v1. I'm sensing that maybe isn't normal?

I'm curious; why should I be flying backwards in my ship?
I keep the throttle somewhere in the blue zone depending on what weirdness they are doing.
How exactly is the AI making straffing runs on me while still moving the same direction? I know from a physics standpoint that it should work like that.
Just don't know how to use the controls to accomplish it.

What d8veh means is that less agile ships have trouble turning quickly enough to win a jousting match so it's easier in such case to just fly in reverse (backing away from them) and force the opponent to try and catch up, which pretty much keeps them in your crosshairs. It's a very easy and successul, albeit boring tactic.
You have to be willing and able to face-tank a lot of damage, though.

And 1v1 is good. Unless you have an SLF or a wingmate, you'd be struggling against wings of NPCs, especially if they're higher rank.

 

[DanielKT]

What d8veh means is that less agile ships have trouble turning quickly enough to win a jousting match so it's easier in such case to just fly in reverse (backing away from them) and force the opponent to try and catch up, which pretty much keeps them in your crosshairs. It's a very easy and successul, albeit boring tactic.
You have to be willing and able to face-tank a lot of damage, though.

And 1v1 is good. Unless you have an SLF or a wingmate, you'd be struggling against wings of NPCs, especially if they're higher rank.

Ah, classic retrograde. Not sure how well that would work in my "rarely breaks 150" Anaconda when the NPCs strangely don't seem to have any issue going twice that while shooting

I have a the fancy looking SLF..umm......"GU-97" with a NPC pilot. Rehired one from harmless and they are currently up to expert in a day or so.

I haven't had too much trouble keeping targets within my crosshairs, hence the fixed cannons. I was using gimbled weapons till I noticed I was able to point the ship at the aiming aid anyway and seemed sort of silly to be wasting all that damage when I could seem to aim at it just fine. I actually tried Plasma Accelerators first.....yeah.... 8 PC hardpoints was brutal to the target but sooooo expensive for ammo. Also was frying my ship from the heat. So switched to the cannons to try and fix that. And it works, but does run into the pesky "target still has shields up" problem. So I switched two of the hardpoints to beam lasers and it seems to work....alright....still not happy with it though.

I think I'm sitting on almost 1300 shields and 3.1k hull with A or B rated everything? Nothing really special there compared to you folks turbo and super charged muscle ships, but it does seem to be more than the NPCs can dish out in damage. I don't think my shields have gone down in a week.....

Edit: fixed the defense numbers. My memory was slightly high. corrected.

 

[d8veh]

Ah, classic retrograde. Not sure how well that would work in my "rarely breaks 150" Anaconda when the NPCs strangely don't seem to have any issue going twice that while shooting

I have a the fancy looking SLF..umm......"GU-97" with a NPC pilot. Rehired one from harmless and they are currently up to expert in a day or so.

I haven't had too much trouble keeping targets within my crosshairs, hence the fixed cannons. I was using gimbled weapons till I noticed I was able to point the ship at the aiming aid anyway and seemed sort of silly to be wasting all that damage when I could seem to aim at it just fine. I actually tried Plasma Accelerators first.....yeah.... 8 PC hardpoints was brutal to the target but sooooo expensive for ammo. Also was frying my ship from the heat. So switched to the cannons to try and fix that. And it works, but does run into the pesky "target still has shields up" problem. So I switched two of the hardpoints to beam lasers and it seems to work....alright....still not happy with it though.

I think I'm sitting on almost 1300 shields and 3.1k hull with A or B rated everything? Nothing really special there compared to you folks turbo and super charged muscle ships, but it does seem to be more than the NPCs can dish out in damage. I don't think my shields have gone down in a week.....

Edit: fixed the defense numbers. My memory was slightly high. corrected.

It's not quite what I meant. The AI nearly always behaves the same, regardless of the type of ship (maybe Vultures are a bit different), they try to hold a position directly in front of you for a while, then they fly over your cockpit where you can't shoot them. I mean this is their general strategy, not that it's guaranteed that's what they do.

All you need to do is fly slowly backwards when you're face to face with them, then when they start to move forward, you increase your throttle backwards to about 75% and pitch up to follow them. It works really well if you hold FA off while they go over your head, which will keep them in your firing arc the whole time. Timing is important. After a bit of practice, you'll see how it works.

If you were flying around forward with the throttle in the blue zone, most of the small ships would fly over your head and get you from behind. You'd rarely get a chance to shoot at them. This is the bit that doesn't make sense to me. I have 2500 hours of doing nothing but shooting ships in RESs, so I know what happens there. What you've described is more like their behaviour in a Low or ordinary RES, but in a Haz RES, they behave as I described.

 

[DanielKT]

It's not quite what I meant. The AI nearly always behaves the same, regardless of the type of ship (maybe Vultures are a bit different), they try to hold a position directly in front of you for a while, then they fly over your cockpit where you can't shoot them. I mean this is their general strategy, not that it's guaranteed that's what they do.

All you need to do is fly slowly backwards when you're face to face with them, then when they start to move forward, you increase your throttle backwards to about 75% and pitch up to follow them. It works really well if you hold FA off while they go over your head, which will keep them in your firing arc the whole time. Timing is important. After a bit of practice, you'll see how it works.

If you were flying around forward with the throttle in the blue zone, most of the small ships would fly over your head and get you from behind. You'd rarely get a chance to shoot at them. This is the bit that doesn't make sense to me. I have 2500 hours of doing nothing but shooting ships in RESs, so I know what happens there. What you've described is more like their behaviour in a Low or ordinary RES, but in a Haz RES, they behave as I described.

I am possibly picking weird targets. Given an option, I'll go after the Python's first since they are the easiest 'common' ship to track. The 4 engine alliance ships are a close second in that regard. The Anaconda is the easiest to keep in sights and does not fair well vs fixed cannons.

I do not go into Rez sites often of any type. I have though and It's usually to round out system bounties before landing to turn them in or to locate pirates in general.

What I usually do is fly to the Level-4ish (+/- 1) Blue signal sources and pick apart the dozen or so ships within them. I think 'Competent' is the lowest I see in those with 'Dangerous' being more the norm with some Deadly and Experts sprinkled in here and there.

I'm actually not sure how to record a play session otherwise I would do so. I think the Raedeon software has the function. I'll look into it. But this is usually what happens:

Enter site, deploy SLF, deploy guns. Check target list. Pick the biggest ship first or the poor poor Cobra. Or Both.
Sometimes target the power plant. I'm uncertain if this is making much difference so I don't always do it.
Line up the cannons with the lead indicator, invert the ship so my belly is pointed at their direction of travel. The two beam lasers are in the L3 and L4 mount on the bottom.
Open fire with the cannons and lasers and direct SLF to attack either my target or the poor Cobra.
Follow the targets direction of travel by keeping the bottom of the ship facing it so the gimbled heavy lasers can maintain contact.
Roll and alter throttle as needed to maintain this orientation, pushing the nose down onto the target as much as is practical to maintain said lasers.
Line up cannon shots as able.
Repeat till target explodes, then move to next target and start again.