Combat Questions - attack types

[Codger]

I'm not much of a combat guy. I fight with interdictors, and that's about it.

But I have a Corvette I've been working on, modding it up, and I needed 1,000,000 in combat bonds to unlock the Engineer, Juri Ishmaak.

So I decided to head out to a Conflict Zone and see how things went.

I knew all the tips from reading this forum. Enter the CZ, fly away from the center of battle to the edges before picking a side, watch for lone ships you can take on without being in the middle of a lot of them, etc.

It went very well. I was very careful, of course, that's my nature, and I took care not to get into a big ball of enemies. Anytime I got ganged up on, I exited the area. My Dirty Drives 5 meant that the bigger ships could not catch me (good bye, Anaconda who wanted to kill me), and it also allowed me to draw a few smaller ships (Python on down) out from the pack where I could fight them alone.

But I did get into some pitched battles, and a couple of things happened that I wasn't sure what to make of.

1) Several times, I got the "Warning, Thermal Attack, gaining heat!" message. But my heat did not go up, not even 1%. So I'm not sure what the warning was about.
2) A number of times there was some kind of purple attack -- plasma maybe? -- but all it did was flash a lot of purple and there was no other effect I could discern. I'm guessing that either they missed me (seems unlikely, I'm in a big ship and not even trying to dodge), or they just didn't dent my shields. I'm not sure what to make of it.

Anyway, I got my bonds successfully, and unlocked the Engineer. So now my Asp can carry mine launchers with Reverberating Cascade (kills their shields) and Ion Disruptor (kills their thrusters). I usually run away in my Asp, but hey...can't hurt to have some extra oomph in the mines, right?

As a bonus, I got a bunch of Polymer Capacitors while I was in there. Those have been hard to find, so I was pleased.

So, anyone know about my 2 questions?

 

[Mc80]

Definitely a plasma accelerator. They add heat to your ship, but its neglible and dissipates fast, so you can ignore it.

 

[D.G.Cerberus]

Hello CMDR
I only ever seem to get the "Warning, thermal attack" message from my Deadly and Elite 'Condas.....but I have stopped worrying. It appears IMO that they are just saying you are being attacked by thermal weapons as opposed to kinetic ones.....rather than implying you are getting hit with engineer Heat Meta ones....

I have the same ship and the same result -They attack. I have same warning. I turn around and kill them. Dependent on how many there are, I might lose a ring of shields. But usually not.

And as of this evening, I now have some very nice Grd 5 OC MC Incendiaries.
Happy days

 

[Speedy O]

"Warning thermal attack" is, I believe, a hangover from the now nerfed, npc engineered weapons.
There was a bug so they got hammered but no one told the audio dept.

Purple weapons is Plasma.... Really slow projectile, so easy to evade/miss...

 

[PhanttoM]

Plasma Accelerators (the purple blobs) now give off a little on impact — Which kinda makes sense since plasma is superheated gas after all.
NPCs frequently miss with these weapons because they have really slow projectile speed. (I fly a Clipper for reference)

Since you're flying a modded Corvette, that's most likely why the Plasmas don't feel like they make a dent on you.

 

[Wobblin-Gobblin]

Are you using FA OFF in combat? I used it a few times and find it very difficult to keep the enemy in my target cross. Without fa off its also very hard to stay behind higher ranked npcs, especially dangerous ones and above. Any clues?

 

[Codger]

Are you using FA OFF in combat? I used it a few times and find it very difficult to keep the enemy in my target cross. Without fa off its also very hard to stay behind higher ranked npcs, especially dangerous ones and above. Any clues?

I'm not the one to ask. I just flail around until they die. I'm no expert, and although I know how to use FA Off in theory, it's not something I do very often.

 

[Truesilver]

Elite and Deadly NPC's do have access to RNGineers but unlike Cmdrs they do not appear to stack special effects.

Thermal shock is an incredibly weak special in isolation which is why, from NPC's, it can safely be ignored. (That is, you were indeed being hit by a weapon with the thermal attack special, but one multi or laser with thermal shock now imparts next to no heat increase to a big ship.) Thermal cascade on missiles is far more dangerous but few if any NPC's seem to have that.

Likewise (to a big combat ship) one ball of plasma does trivial damage which is why you could safely ignore that too.

 

[Codger]

Thanks for the info!

 

[TuxedoSteve]

Elite and Deadly NPC's do have access to RNGineers but unlike Cmdrs they do not appear to stack special effects.

Thermal shock is an incredibly weak special in isolation which is why, from NPC's, it can safely be ignored. (That is, you were indeed being hit by a weapon with the thermal attack special, but one multi or laser with thermal shock now imparts next to no heat increase to a big ship.) Thermal cascade on missiles is far more dangerous but few if any NPC's seem to have that.

Likewise (to a big combat ship) one ball of plasma does trivial damage which is why you could safely ignore that too.

Only kindof right. The deadly and elite NPCs have access to engineers, but only for modules other than weapons. They cannot mod weapons because people complained it was OP. Instead, the thermal attack warning is caused solely by PA rounds, which impart a very small amount of heat without needing modification (like how railguns have a very slight 'impulse attack', but nowhere near as much as shock mines or force shell cannons.)