Newcomer / Intro Conflict Zones are Hard (Lol)

[RenzorTheRed]

That was my google search last night after trying a low intensity conflict zone for the first time. I learned that the NPC ships there are pretty beefy. Engineered, even.

I've been playing a month or so, have 11 ships (I think?), have gotten my earnings as high as $450mil grinding Robigo point with a Python, and I think I'm half-way through Novice in dogfighting. (Pioneer in exploration.) Well, I bought myself a Krait MKII, outfitted it for general use while still being able to fight, engineered the FSD (just recently visited Farseer for the first time and Grade 5'd a bunch of FSD's for my various ships + Mass Manager) and decided to see how Conflict Zones were. I picked up a small 'massacre 8 pilots' mission and headed to the low intensity.

Wow, the ships there were tough. I didn't exactly dive into the center. I looked around at the edges for a while, figured out how to determine which of all of the green blips were my mission targets, and attacked a drop ship. I could barely scratch the thing. I figured a dropship wouldn't be so tough; a slow brick that I've never owned but YouTubers say is basically junk. It was an armored beast. When I saw the writing on the wall and knew that it would kill me before I kill it, I fled back to my home station (it pursued me like an angry warthog, firing missiles and lasers) a short distance away. I repaired, replaced my Wake Scanner that I was using for FSD engineering material scrounging with point defense (doh), and went back out.

Second foray, I attacked a vulture. Brought its hull low, but it warped away before I could kill it. Oddly enough, when I returned to the big fight, I found that same vulture (or another one at the same 22%ish hull as the one who just fled), and killed it. Then, I found another vulture that was being attacked by a friendly. Waited until his shields were down a little then joined in. It was a crazy, jousting fight. The NPC was a Master, and was very good at staying facing me. I brought his hull really, really low when my canopy started cracking, and when my enemy was at 2%, he suddenly became insanely hard to hit, circling around me masterfully and staying out of my fire zone. It was crazy. I haven't really learned how to use Flight Assist Off, and I'm not very good at thrusting vertically etc., but that Vulture was out-maneuvering me like a boss. My canopy burst for the first time. He had regenerated a small amount of shield, and was at 2% hull, totally unwilling to die, but I stuck in there for a little while longer, trying so damned hard to finish him off before running out of oxygen. I did. Managed to get through the shields and finish him off, then I limped home at 41%, making it back into the station with :49 left on my air.

I realized that there was no way I'd kill six more like that before bed, haha. Won't be able to finish that bounty, unless there's no normal 24 hr time limit.

I didn't expect conflict zones to be so hard, especially the low-intensity one. From my quick research after, I guess they're the next level after you've dominated Haz Res sites. That was a fun and crazy fight. Is my research correct? Was that Master Vulture chock full of engineered hull reinforcements and stuff? Should I be engineering my weapons and shields and armor etc before returning? I definitely need to work on my combat piloting. Hope you enjoyed the story.

Oh, P.S., here's my current build: https://s.orbis.zone/ep-c

 

[Chrystoph]

Massacre missions don't care what you kill, only that they belong to the appropriate faction. Sidewinder, Vulture, Anaconda, all equal one kill.

Yeah, CZs are rougher. First place in the game, excluding PvP, that you need a combat optimized build.

If you want to make money from massacre, find somewhere that is paying to kill pirates, find several factions that all want the same pie rats dead, and, most important, find a Low RES you can take your fighting vessel into. That way, each ship you kill counts against multiple missions, you have back up in the form of Security and you can really learn the basics of dogfghting PvE. As your confidence grows, move to a RES or High RES. The critters improve in capability.

For additional benefit, you can fit a Collector Limpet controller and harvest Materials from the wreckage. Just remember that, while the Cargo Scoop is open, there is no Boosting.

 

[Achtung-Goomba]

Good story, and glad you managed to find the fun in biting off a bit more than you can chew! I did a similar thing a month or so into my game, except I was in an unengineered Keelback so it went decidedly worse for me

I’m not a expert, and I’m sure they’ll be in here shortly with much better advice! But to my knowledge yes you will find that CZ NPCS have at least basic engineering and are decked out for fightin’, with beefier shields and hull than you’ll encounter in RES combat. Low CZ, which with my builds and flying I tend to stick to have the weakest but still better equipped and mildly engineered NPCs, with Medium and High intensity CZs feature progressively tougher foes and ‘scenario’ baddies, like the dreaded Spec Ops (I tend to avoid them unless I see them being aggro’ed by a bunch of friendlies and isolated).

My advice would be, if you’re ready for it, to engineer up to G2/G3 on essential combat modules for defence and offence; shield and multi-cannon engineering is readily accessible from early engineers if I recall, and you will notice the difference immediately. NPCs seem to be quite ‘logical’ in how they fight to my experience, so doing some mild engineering to buff your shield strength and thermal resists will help you stay in fightin’ form longer, along with some hull reinforcement for tankiness and module reinforcement to help protect vitals. And equipping and modifying your weapons to deal thermal damage to shields, and at least one multi-cannon with the corrosive experimental will work wonders at improving your TTK. This is all very basic advice from a fairly casual player, but if you can apply the basics and start clearing CZs you’ll find methods that work for you and develop your flying style and builds from there. I’ve cleared CZ in both a beefy Anaconda decked out for war and a nippy little Adder weaving through the battle like an annoying wasp, they’re both fun in their own way and you’ll find what works for you.

Good luck CMDR, I do love a bit of ‘star wars’ action when the mood takes me and I’m invested, and the ambient chatter and space battle visuals are some of the more exciting combat for me!

 

[RenzorTheRed]

Thanks for the tips.

I mostly go to fight at Lo-Res and High-Res, and I've done a bit of fighting and material collecting at Nav Beacons while also scanning wakes. Haven't set foot in Hazard Res yet.

In that Low Conflict Zone, the only small ships I saw were vultures. Everything was medium +. Asp Explorers, Dropships, etc.

I'm looking forward to replacing those Seeker Missiles with Pack Hounds come Thursday when PP catches up to my points.

 

[Vetinari]

Sounds like you had fun anyway

Go for the Eagles and Couriers first they much softer than Vultures although all CZ ships are bullet sponges. try sub-targeting the Power Plants on Vultures.

Yes youre right its one step up from Haz Res but its quite a big step up in terms of damage taken and given and engineered enemies.

Edit: If only Vultures and Asps, Asps are still the softer of the 2. Or can reset the instance by going into SC and back again and seeing if RNG gives better mix.

 

[Achtung-Goomba]

Thanks for the tips.

Yeah, I mostly go to fight at Lo-Res and High-Res, and I've done a bit of fighting and material collecting at Nav Beacons while also scanning wakes. Haven't set foot in Hazard Res yet.

In that Low Conflict Zone, the only small ships I saw were vultures. Everything was medium +. Asp Explorers, Dropships, etc.

I'm looking forward to replacing those Seeker Missiles with Pack Hounds come Thursday when PP catches up to my points.

I love going for the Asps when I see them, lately I’ve been flying light and fast small ships with an unhealthy predilection for rail guns; the Asps have wonderfully fat pancake hulls and the NPC pilots seem to stall a lot when turning, which I find great for hammering them with a few salvos of hyper-velocity slugs right in the soft spots!

 

[RenzorTheRed]

I love going for the Asps when I see them, lately I’ve been flying light and fast small ships with an unhealthy predilection for rail guns; the Asps have wonderfully fat pancake hulls and the NPC pilots seem to stall a lot when turning, which I find great for hammering them with a few salvos of hyper-velocity slugs right in the soft spots!

Yeah, I don't know why I went for a second vulture instead of an asp, lol. I can see by your Inara sig that you like the Courier. I bought one of those and A-rated it because it's so cool, haha. Haven't put it through the wringer yet though. Looks like an X-Wing. Pretty cockpit.

 

[Chris Simon]

Yeah, I don't know why I went for a second vulture instead of an asp, lol. I can see by your Inara sig that you like the Courier. I bought one of those and A-rated it because it's so cool, haha. Haven't put it through the wringer yet though. Looks like an X-Wing. Pretty cockpit.

Courier is good for CZs. The smaller and faster the ship, the easier time you'll have zooming around.
I actually found the high intensity conflict zones to be (counterintuitively) easier, because there simply are more ships and therefore you won't "stand out" as much and won't draw as much aggro.

If you struggle, it's easier (as no doubt somebody above me said already) to simply keep within a group of "friendlies", flick through the targets and see who's close to dying and help finishing them off. If you start getting under attack, run away and find another blob of green and repeat.
It really pays off to equip an A-rated sensors so you can see more of the battlefield and check targets from safer distance, too.

 

[d8veh]

That was my google search last night after trying a low intensity conflict zone for the first time. I learned that the NPC ships there are pretty beefy. Engineered, even.

I've been playing a month or so, have 11 ships (I think?), have gotten my earnings as high as $450mil grinding Robigo point with a Python, and I think I'm half-way through Novice in dogfighting. (Pioneer in exploration.) Well, I bought myself a Krait MKII, outfitted it for general use while still being able to fight, engineered the FSD (just recently visited Farseer for the first time and Grade 5'd a bunch of FSD's for my various ships + Mass Manager) and decided to see how Conflict Zones were. I picked up a small 'massacre 8 pilots' mission and headed to the low intensity.

Wow, the ships there were tough. I didn't exactly dive into the center. I looked around at the edges for a while, figured out how to determine which of all of the green blips were my mission targets, and attacked a drop ship. I could barely scratch the thing. I figured a dropship wouldn't be so tough; a slow brick that I've never owned but YouTubers say is basically junk. It was an armored beast. When I saw the writing on the wall and knew that it would kill me before I kill it, I fled back to my home station (it pursued me like an angry warthog, firing missiles and lasers) a short distance away. I repaired, replaced my Wake Scanner that I was using for FSD engineering material scrounging with point defense (doh), and went back out.

Second foray, I attacked a vulture. Brought its hull low, but it warped away before I could kill it. Oddly enough, when I returned to the big fight, I found that same vulture (or another one at the same 22%ish hull as the one who just fled), and killed it. Then, I found another vulture that was being attacked by a friendly. Waited until his shields were down a little then joined in. It was a crazy, jousting fight. The NPC was a Master, and was very good at staying facing me. I brought his hull really, really low when my canopy started cracking, and when my enemy was at 2%, he suddenly became insanely hard to hit, circling around me masterfully and staying out of my fire zone. It was crazy. I haven't really learned how to use Flight Assist Off, and I'm not very good at thrusting vertically etc., but that Vulture was out-maneuvering me like a boss. My canopy burst for the first time. He had regenerated a small amount of shield, and was at 2% hull, totally unwilling to die, but I stuck in there for a little while longer, trying so damned hard to finish him off before running out of oxygen. I did. Managed to get through the shields and finish him off, then I limped home at 41%, making it back into the station with :49 left on my air.

I realized that there was no way I'd kill six more like that before bed, haha. Won't be able to finish that bounty, unless there's no normal 24 hr time limit.

I didn't expect conflict zones to be so hard, especially the low-intensity one. From my quick research after, I guess they're the next level after you've dominated Haz Res sites. That was a fun and crazy fight. Is my research correct? Was that Master Vulture chock full of engineered hull reinforcements and stuff? Should I be engineering my weapons and shields and armor etc before returning? I definitely need to work on my combat piloting. Hope you enjoyed the story.

Oh, P.S., here's my current build: https://s.orbis.zone/ep-c

Nice story. That's exactly what I'd expect to happen, but you did OK. Here's my advice:

Firstly, an unengineered vulture needs the two big optional slots filled with module reinforcements to stop the canopy getting blown out. That will allow you to stay there longer.

Next, whatever ship you use has to be fully optimised for combat. Don't waste a single module on convenience.

A high CZ might be better because there are more ships there and you get more choice of targets. First, go for the Eagles, which are easy to kill. Next, go for Asps after targetting their powerplants. Not all Asps turn sideways on so that you can take out their PPs, but a lot do, which significantly shortens the battle. After that, look for Pythons that are already half dead. Always target the powerplants. If they're already fighting another ship, you can sometimes take out their PP and kill them before they turn to you. keep away from the special ops ships that have names Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta. When you see them, go to the other side of the field.

On a Vulture, burst lasers work quite well, but you have to downgrade the thrusters to C to get enough power without engineering.

If you come under a sustained attack, drop a heatsink and boost away. Once they start chasing you, they rarely give up, so jump out if necessary, then jump back in again and carry on. You can do that any time you want.

Watch the radar all the time. Nearly every ship will be involved in battles with other ships. Never let a lone red get behind you. That's most important when new ones drop in.

Here's how I'd do an unengineered Vulture:

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

coriolis.io

 

[aRJay]

The ships in CZs are only built to fight, there will be no cargo racks, fuel scoops or limpet controllers everything will add to their offence or defence and will be optimally rated.

Some of the higher grade pilots especially in the higher risk zones will have some engineering.

Then there are the scenario ships such as Enemy Captains, Journalists and Spec Ops. They will be engineered, Spec Ops fly as a wing of 4 protecting their leader, the Alpha, they not only have engineering but also some exotic wepons such as Enzyme missiles which they use as soon as your shields go.

 

[Chrystoph]

Vulture - always disable the cargo hatch if you don't have racks (good general advice, but Important for the V). This uses power whether or not you have a use for it.

 

[RenzorTheRed]

I was in a Krait MKII.

True, my build was more generalist. Even though I was a little tough with a hull of almost 1500 and bi-weaves of almost 400, the guys I attacked were another level lol. I was almost eaten by a dropship and a vulture on those two instances. Definitely could have replaced all of my 'generalist' stuff with more combat modules. Instead, I have a cargo rack, surface scanner, SRV hanger, etc. Maybe next time I'll bring my Chieftain with no such things.

 

[StanleyDunkan]

 

[Sapyx]

I don't think anyone's said it in the thread yet, and you didn't make it clear you had done this in the OP, but if you want to be credited with combat bonds, and/or if you actually care about the outcome of the war, then you need to formally "pick a side" in the conflict. You do this on the Communications tab (number 2, top-left) and click support for one faction or the other. When you do this, all the "friendlies" turn green, "enemies" turn red, and a little progress bar appears in the Info bar at top left, letting you know how many kills each side is making in the battle. First team to complete their kill quota "wins" the battle, and scores extra combat points in the overall war tally for the day.

My modus operandi for fighting in a combat zone: be a team player, not a lone ranger.

• Arrive at combat zone.
• Approach the centre of the zone slowly. Use this time to deploy weapons, rearrange PD pips, and to deploy the SLF if you've brought one.
• When you get within range of the combat, wait several seconds until all of the ships from both sides spawn in. They usually spawn in in two initial waves.
• Once they're all there and everybody's shooting at each other, now open the comms menu and choose a side.
• Pick an enemy ship that's already being picked on by the biggest, baddest warship being fielded by the green team. Go help that guy kill his target. The enemy ship will be too busy trying to hit the big bad friendly to worry about you, until it's too late.
• When you and your new buddy finish off that ship, let your NPC friend decide who to shoot at next and follow them.
• Do this for a few more ships, and you will end up with a nice Green Fleet of Death, that will quickly erase the colour red from the battlefield. Job done.

If you are playing the Medium or High CZs, these will spawn extra tasks for your team to accomplish, for extra credit. They might be to klll enemy war correspondents, to protect your own correspondents from attack, to destroy an enemy spec ops squad, to kill an enemy captain (flying a beefed up warship), or, in High CZs, to attack/defend a capital ship. These are great, if you can do them, but watch out for those enemy spec ops ships. They spawn in a pack of four, and are Elite-rated in heavily Engineered ships. If all four enemy spec ops ships decide you are their prime target, then get out of Dodge while the gettin's good, because together they're as efficient at player-killing as another player, shredding even a good combat-configured ship in seconds. If the enemy side spawns a spec ops wing, and your side doesn't, then I'd be prepared to run at any stage, because that kind of imbalance can easily create a Red Fleet of Death, and you don't want to go near one of those.

 

[Sapyx]

Oh, and as a "team player", I usually go into combat zones with a specific combat role in mind. My ship of choice is usually a shield-killer, bristling with lasers. I go in, help strip the shields quickly, then stand back and let my NPC buddies blow them away with a missile barrage, just firing off a couple of additional shots to make sure I still get the kill credit.

 

[aRJay]

Last time in a Conflict Zone (yesterday) I was picking my targets based on highest likely value (not recommended to start with) or who had least hull percentage left as that usually gives you a quicker fight.

 

[RenzorTheRed]

Oh, and as a "team player", I usually go into combat zones with a specific combat role in mind. My ship of choice is usually a shield-killer, bristling with lasers. I go in, help strip the shields quickly, then stand back and let my NPC buddies blow them away with a missile barrage, just firing off a couple of additional shots to make sure I still get the kill credit.

You do have to fire the killing blow to get credit though, right?

 

[Chris Simon]

You do have to fire the killing blow to get credit though, right?

Doesn't have to be a killing blow exactly, just a hit a couple of seconds before they die.
The only time when the true killing blow counts is when two players contend for the kill.

 

[Horse372]

Great thread. Tried the Paresa CG last week with my half engineered Cobra (Kai). I had dipped into the last cz cg a bit ago and realized they were "serious". I usually try to run a multirole build but for this one i had all the "xtra" slots filled w/ hull and mod reinforcements plus 2 shield boosters on the utilities by last Friday night. Still had to be careful but made it to 50% contributor w/ 6.5 mil in bonds (unlocking the bondage engineer (lol) and only had to rebuy once when i tried face tanking a gunship when we were both below 20% hull and my shields were stripped.

Now what to do w/ that 800k reward /sarc

 

[znôrt]

Hope you enjoyed the story.

good story, and you're doing great.

to add to all the good advice here: i'm not a fan of engineering at all but i recommend you do engineer your thrusters with dirty drives and power distributor with charge-enhanced. that's the soul of your ship and that alone will make a huge difference in combat, you will move around a lot better and have more juice to boost and shoot whatever you choose. have fun!