A sense of disappointment, but...?

[Mohenjo]

Well, I've been playing for a while now, and I've been enjoying the game immensely. I tend to do a lot of trading, carrying goods back and forth. It's simple but I enjoy it. Sometimes I'll do some mining, but it wears thin having to chase down the little rocks all the time (I'd love some kind of tractor beam). Occasionally, I'll investigate the sensor contacts. There's never really been anything of interest. Occasionally there might be a ship for me to fight, which is fun, but today I had rather a disappointing experience.

I warped into a strong contact and found nothing there but a few white contacts. At first I thought they were warp trails, but they turned out to be cannisters. Since there's no point in collecting such things because they're illegal, I hit my frame shift drive to leave. As it was charging about 6 ships warped in, basically on top of me, and destroyed me before I could do anything. One, maybe two seconds.

I call this disappointing, because of how it happened. I don't expect to win every fight, but I do expect to have a chance to react to it, to at least TRY to escape or fight back. I don't think it's good for any game to put players in a position where they can't actually DO anything. If we can't take any kind of action, either because the enemy does so much damage we're instantly killed, or because they use disables and holds, or what have you, then there's no GAME in the game.

I don't know if it's possible to prevent this kind of thing, but I thought I'd bring it up in case it is.

I also wondered if there's some way to avoid this sort of thing that I don't know about. I mean, my frame shift was already charging, and they warped in and killed me before it could finish, so I don't know what else I might have done. Any thoughts would be helpful.

 

[SAB380]

A 'strong' signal source is telling you that something very large, or multiples is being picked up by your scanner.

You should really only go into them if you've got a seriously capable ship or you're in a wing.

Once you saw it was nothing but a few canisters, you're reaction should be to go Admiral Ackbar and boost and frame shift instantly.

 

[COOPER TTE]

I think you've been very unlucky, OP, and in this scenario I agree 100%. You should never 'not have any chance.'

Sure, you should be in a position where the wrong decision gets you killed, but not with no options at all.

That said, my own SSS experiences so far (including this bait scenario) have always allowed me options to survive, which is why I think you've been unlucky.

Chin up

 

[Mohenjo]

No worries, as I say, I don't expect to survive EVERYTHING. It was the complete lack of any chance to do anything that bothered me. Still, if strong signals are ONLY this sort of thing, then there's no real reason to investigate them, especially when I'm mainly a trader/miner.

As an aside, I thought I'd mention a positive. I took my shiny new Cobra into a planetary ring to do some mining. Gathered a few units of minerals, and noticed the local cops were fighting someone. I stowed the mining laser and flew over to help them out (ie. cherry pick a few bounty credits). That was rather fun, though I nearly clipped one of the cops with my multicannon (I have two medium burst lasers and a small multicannon on her now).

I started on my way back to the asteroids I'd been mining and spotted another Cobra, a WANTED one, and labeled competent. He was facing right at me, and I still had my guns deployed. Remembering that this isn't Star Trek, I went Han Solo on him, and opened fire first. It took about 15 minutes, bobbing and weaving, manuevering for position, ducking behind asteroids to recharge shields, and finally I was able to kill him. Pretty decent bounty on him too.

I returned to dock and had about 93k credits waiting for me... and about 3k credits from my mining - which had taken me over an hour. I wondered aloud why I bother mining or trading, then remembered I'd never been destroyed doing either... though there's definitely a discrepancy there.

Anyhow, the fight was really entertaining. I am really enjoying the game. I look forward to it adding even more depth (and I really look forward to being able to get up and walk around inside my ship - I hear that's coming?).

 

[Ydiss]

The difficult thing about this game is not everything is neatly explained with pop ups and tutorial messages to guide you. For some players that can be disheartening to outright disorienting.

The best way to tackle this is to read the manual and then spend a long time reading as much about the game on the forums as you can. I believe the newcomers forum is a good place to start.

 

[bamber]

You always have a chance OP but did you take a knife to a gun fight i.e did you go looking in stong signals with a weak ship - strongs are in place mainly for wings or very good very well armed singletons

 

[Sandmann]

I warped into a strong contact and found nothing there but a few white contacts. At first I thought they were warp trails, but they turned out to be cannisters. Since there's no point in collecting such things because they're illegal, I hit my frame shift drive to leave. As it was charging about 6 ships warped in, basically on top of me, and destroyed me before I could do anything. One, maybe two seconds.

That's a honey trap.. we had them back in beta and they've put them back in with 1.2. The canisters would probably have been gold, and if you noticed your comms window when the other ships warped in you would have seen messages like "I can't believe that worked! Let's get him boys!" etc. As others have mentioned the fact that it's a "STRONG signal source" means you better have your game face seriously in place or be ready to rocket out of there. Sorry you weren't aware of it previously, now you are better informed.