General Advance Xeno Scanner

[tolm]

It can be done with fast and nimble ship and Hydra distracted, but it's still so incredibly frustrating experience that I simply don't want to bother. Spend one or two minutes scanner button pressed down, trying to sniff the Interceptor's tailpipe while it keeps slipping in and out of the 500m range. Even with 1000m range it would be much easier, though I would recommend 1500m range so that the larger ships can play too.

I just think we’ve seen enough of ‘em now that the standard scanner should be able to pick ‘em up, with the Xeno Scanner acting as a “booster” or something like that.

There’s thousands of these coming … they can’t ALL require an Epic end-game boss-battle or a couple of wings to take down. That’s just stupid game design.

As much as the “best of the best” crowd won’t like it, this gameplay needs to be opened up to us “filthy causuals” if the game is going to grow and survive.

 

[He$$eeTant]

… they can’t ALL require an Epic end-game boss-battle or a couple of wings to take down. That’s just stupid game design.

As much as the “best of the best” crowd won’t like it, this gameplay needs to be opened up to us “filthy causuals” of the game is going to grow and survive.

It’s a long winded answer so TL; DR ignore hydras.

Hydras and Medusa’s are very hard indeed however the good news is they are rare as part of the CZ battle. Not that this is important or even relevant but I’ve done quite a few CZs and personally I’ve only seen Cyclops and Basilisk deployed against us as part of the CZ completed win/lose bar. The Hydras I’ve seen are deployed after the CZ is won as a kind of “thanks for winning now try this”.

There is no need to fight this BOSS level, If at that point all cmdrs leave the instance then it gets reset to a new CZ.

The other point about the war is that due to the issues surrounding the “software bugs” hardly any CZ get to complete, some just hang at scouts others deploy invisible interceptors and even more hang at the Hydra stage with no “congratulations you won the CZ “ along with the accompanying 10,000,000 credits. So it’s safe to say one of two things

1) Fighting plays such a small part in winning the war that “the hard boss” as you put it can stay as it plays no part in the statistics of winning the war and is irrelevant.
2) Fighting and killing is important but winning a CZ is not relevant to that task.

So while they are very hard to kill, they only really give players that do it 60,000,000 credits, they are not part of the game effort required to win the war.

On the other hand Cyclops and Basilisk can generally be taken down by a few cmdrs who are at the early stages of Interceptor fightings and offer new players a great feeling of accomplishment and an 8 or 24 mill credit boost.

My personal stage is beginner and I categorise it as follows:

1) Beginner is able to solo a cyclops every time and a Basilisk 3 out of 5

2) Intermediate is able to solo a Basilisk every time and have a good fight with a Medusa

3) Pro is able to solo a Hydra, even 1 time in 5 shows an immense ability.

Now the term solo comes from hunting Interceptors in NHSS sources, identifying a specific Interceptor and engaging in battle. It is not fighting in a CZ. The specialist cold running ships are used in these scenarios and the fight itself is a long list of scripted actions at specific times countering known measures from the interceptor based on the Heart number extracted.

Good luck Cmdrs

 

[tolm]

It’s a long winded answer so TL; DR ignore hydras.

Hydras and Medusa’s are very hard indeed however the good news is they are rare as part of the CZ battle. Not that this is important or even relevant but I’ve done quite a few CZs and personally I’ve only seen Cyclops and Basilisk deployed against us as part of the CZ completed win/lose bar. The Hydras I’ve seen are deployed after the CZ is won as a kind of “thanks for winning now try this”.

There is no need to fight this BOSS level, If at that point all cmdrs leave the instance then it gets reset to a new CZ.

The other point about the war is that due to the issues surrounding the “software bugs” hardly any CZ get to complete, some just hang at scouts others deploy invisible interceptors and even more hang at the Hydra stage with no “congratulations you won the CZ “ along with the accompanying 10,000,000 credits. So it’s safe to say one of two things

1) Fighting plays such a small part in winning the war that “the hard boss” as you put it can stay as it plays no part in the statistics of winning the war and is irrelevant.
2) Fighting and killing is important but winning a CZ is not relevant to that task.

So while they are very hard to kill, they only really give players that do it 60,000,000 credits, they are not part of the game effort required to win the war.

On the other hand Cyclops and Basilisk can generally be taken down by a few cmdrs who are at the early stages of Interceptor fightings and offer new players a great feeling of accomplishment and an 8 or 24 mill credit boost.

My personal stage is beginner and I categorise it as follows:

1) Beginner is able to solo a cyclops every time and a Basilisk 3 out of 5

2) Intermediate is able to solo a Basilisk every time and have a good fight with a Medusa

3) Pro is able to solo a Hydra, even 1 time in 5 shows an immense ability.

Now the term solo comes from hunting Interceptors in NHSS sources, identifying a specific Interceptor and engaging in battle. It is not fighting in a CZ. The specialist cold running ships are used in these scenarios and the fight itself is a long list of scripted actions at specific times countering known measures from the interceptor based on the Heart number extracted.

Good luck Cmdrs

Thanks for taking the time for that detailed response - appreciated!

Yesterday, every CZ I was in spawned one or two Hydras if they had any Intereptors … the rest seems for be bugged and just very slowly spawned Scouts with no progress bar!

So perhaps I was just unlucky OR I was getting put in at the end of the instances?

From what you’re saying … it’s possible to win the CZ before the Hydra’s show up? That’s interesting … suggests I was very much flogging a dead horse … or being flogged by a dead horse, perhaps?

 

[He$$eeTant]

Just finished a Medium AX CZ it ran according to above, scouts, cyclops and Basilisk followed by scouts to finish, congratulations and payment followed by Hydras at which point I left.

Edit; It was the third CZ I tried, the other two where bugged.

Edit edit…. I think the xeno scanner should be 5k. It’s very useful for identifying interceptor, highlighting sub targets - hearts - and quantifying the remaining swarm size. I realise it’s more QOL but there seems little reason not to do it now we are at all out war

 

[Spike K]

Inara got you covered, folks.

Been there a while now.

\\///
Oo
Spike.k

 

[tolm]

Inara got you covered, folks. View attachment 338407

Been there a while now.

\\///
Oo

Spike.k

And yet they don’t have the EAX stuff? What do they know that we don’t?!!

 

[Bigmaec]

COMPLETED CG - Enhanced AX Project: AX Multi-Cannon Turreted

hello, where do you collect the rewards from this :) CG Hey, The new Enhanced AX weapons are available from ANY Rescue Megaship (Blue/Green on the Galaxy Map) as they are released, some are available now, others will be released on the Thursday AFTER any CG's completed by Thursday (if that...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Already confirmed by @Artie as some artefact.

 

[Kimosabe_X]

Damn...

 

[Mersozz]

Don't forget the passive function of the scanner. It will show you what variant you are fighting, the hull and shield health and will show when you are making hits.

Excellent point

 

[Nickolai]

I'm not experienced enough to discern the different interceptors and so I have no idea if I'm getting in over my head until it's almost too late.

If you have the xeno scanner equipped, a passive scan like normal will show you the number of hearts (at the bottom left) as rectangles, and also show you the status of the hearts (red meaning exerted). 4 hearts is a cyclops, 5 is a basilisk, etc. That's the easiest way to identify it from a distance.

I was delighted to get the fixed enhanced AX m/cs. I was thinking that I could use them in the same way as fixed Guardian gauss cannons.

If you change your targeting mode (in right side ship menu) to "trailing" it will place the target reticule where the bullets will land (as opposed to the default leading, which shows you where to shoot to land on center mass).

This makes it possible to use the fixed AX MC on hearts. But there are other disadvantages to using the AX MC such as armour piercing.

 

[MartinG]

Here’s another idea: instead of a one-size-fits-all(-not) advanced xeno scanner, how about adding engineering blueprints for the existing xeno scanner. It would allow players to choose their preferred style: either the current scan time at a longer range, or a fast scan at current short range.

Ideally, IMHO, the relevant blueprints would have the following characteristics (for a completed G5 blueprint):

• Long Range: +300% range (i.e. 2 km), scan time unchanged, perhaps +200% mass to compensate
• Fast Scan: −80% scan time (i.e. 2 s), range unchanged, perhaps +150% power draw to compensate

However, even just adding the existing utility scanner (KWS/FSWS/MS) blueprints to the XS would offer a big improvement.

 

[KEFEN]

We all agree on the xeno scanner, an improved range or a shorter scan time would make the fight easier for everyone.

 

[El Guido]

If you have the xeno scanner equipped, a passive scan like normal will show you the number of hearts (at the bottom left) as rectangles, and also show you the status of the hearts (red meaning exerted). 4 hearts is a cyclops, 5 is a basilisk, etc. That's the easiest way to identify it from a distance.



If you change your targeting mode (in right side ship menu) to "trailing" it will place the target reticule where the bullets will land (as opposed to the default leading, which shows you where to shoot to land on center mass).

This makes it possible to use the fixed AX MC on hearts. But there are other disadvantages to using the AX MC such as armour piercing.

Didn't know that Cmdr. And I am grateful that you have told me. Switch targetting to 'trailing' to hit the hearts. I'm going to try it.

 

[Coehoorn]

Sounds like a skill issue.

 

[zeta]

Might be an idea to launch a new advance xeno scanner, one that can work after an interceptor becomes hostile.
You have alot of pilots wanting to have fun and be involved but are not good enough at AX combat to run all fixed weapons, not being able to target the heart of an Interceptor in combat zones to maintain the gimble weapons and NPCs not being great at it either means lots of players are avoiding combat.

Doesn't have to work on all of them, or increase the numbers to make it as challenging but more are involved.


Also remove the "take me HERE" from passenger missions fleeing stations, I mean risking life and ship to rescue people for them to tell you WHERE you must take them would not happen lol.
"Get me the hell out of here please" would be the normal for a war..

Surly your aim is to have as many people involved combat or not, Again I'm not saying make it easy I'm saying change the parameters so it is as hard but everyone can get the sense of emergency and get involved.


Examples.
Advanced Xeon scanners only work on low level Interceptors for now, Drop reward credits to match difficulty and increase chance of 2 landing in low AX zone by 50%.
You can then increase the marker for how many wins/kills are required for the push back of that station/system in line with the new KD ratio of CMDs.
This would get all the beginner AX pilots involved more and make little difference to the hard core AX fighters that are happy where things are. There needs to be a scale of the content. IMO

Passenger missions from stations that are in a system being attacked might ask for a specific location as a bonus mission/reward.
But the mission is "Get me the hell out of here" passengers can be offloaded at any rescue ship for a lower reward.
Increase the sense of emergency in Cmds mind sets and more people will be involved, again you can change numbers required for fail/succusses

Get modified shard cannons, a wing of 4 even without ability to use fixed weapons can kill a cyclops in 1-2 minutes.

 

[tolm]

Get modified shard cannons, a wing of 4 even without ability to use fixed weapons can kill a cyclops in 1-2 minutes.

I feel like “get a wing of 4“ is almost the more important part of that equation … at which point any of the Guardian weapons will surely get the job done?

 

[zeta]

I feel like “get a wing of 4“ is almost the more important part of that equation … at which point any of the Guardian weapons will surely get the job done?

That's likely true.

But both modified plasma chargers and modified shard cannons are powerful enough that a wing of two or even solo should be able to kill a cyclops, especially if the NPCs are around to help. The regular plasma charger and shard cannons while they are guardian weapons, are not even in the same class as their modifed counterparts, and I discounted gauss cannons based on my perception of OP's skills.

Modified shard to me seems an OP weapon vs cyclops, it seems to be a point and shoot weapon towards the general area of the cyclops, and eventually it will go down.

 

[tolm]

That's likely true.

But both modified plasma chargers and modified shard cannons are powerful enough that a wing of two or even solo should be able to kill a cyclops, especially if the NPCs are around to help. The regular plasma charger and shard cannons while they are guardian weapons, are not even in the same class as their modifed counterparts, and I discounted gauss cannons based on my perception of OP's skills.

Modified shard to me seems an OP weapon vs cyclops, it seems to be a point and shoot weapon towards the general area of the cyclops, and eventually it will go down.

Fair points - I’ve never used the “normal” versions of either Plasma or Shards.

I don’t find Mod Shards that great against the “hull” of the Interceptors - Mod Plasmas seems much better for that.

The reverse seems to be true for Hearts - a couple of close range shots with a pair of Mod Shards makes short work of ‘em.