*Pew Pew Pew*
*Shields offline*
*Power Plant malfunction*
*Thrusters offline*
*Eject, Eject, Eject*
Aloha dear PvPers. This is the next level of getting into proper PvP, surviving hostile player encounters and basically claim your right to dominate in this universe.
This guide is the second level of my previous guide (click) "Start Hunting!" where I covered the first steps to get into PvP. In the first guide I have shown you the basics and hopefully provided you a base to build on. My intention was to throw you into something where you can learn fast, however, at some point you want to progress and upgrade from your Vulture, right?
Well, this is why I write the second level. This guide is for anyone who has already basic PvP experience and wants to improve more. If you are completely new to PvP I would not recommend you to read this guide as it will confuse you more than it would be somewhat of support for you. Read "Start Hunting!" and get familiar with what I am talking baout there before progressing to this guide. Otherwise prepare for frustration and insurance bills. I will not force you to leave now but I recommend you first gather some experience.
Enought of the introduction, let's get started!
Table of contents:
1. First Words
2. Personality Test
3. Advanced Ships
4. Focus of Sub-Systems
5. Power Priorities
6. Advanced Strategy
7. Psychology of Combat
8. Extro
1. First Words
2. Personality Test
3. Advanced Ships
4. Focus of Sub-Systems
5. Power Priorities
6. Advanced Strategy
7. Psychology of Combat
8. Extro
Frist Words
So you may have noticed that the Vulture isn't quite the most powerful ship, right? Good. In your travels across the space you encountered Pythons, FDLs, FASs, Clippers and many more players flying bigger ships. But they are so expensive! How much does it cost upon a loss? Around 4 million credits per death for a 95% insurance cover.
But you need a better ship nonetheless. At this point some of you will choose different paths. Depending of what you want to achieve you can pick a different ships.
I highly advice you to just pick one ship for now! No matter if you have billions of credits nor not. The purpose of this advice is to get you used to a specific ship and develope a certain feeling for it. A Fer-de-Lance might seem to be an alternative to the Federal Assault Ship but they are two complete different ships and behave differnetly.
So to cover Step 1 again (choosing a ship) I would like you to complete this personality test below:
Personality Test
Question 1: During your first PvP encounters, how were you feeling during the fight?
a) Focused, comfortable
b) Nervous, uncomfortable
c) Panic! Can't focus at all!
Question 2: What is your prefared playstyle (you may use other PvP games as a reference)?
a) Assault (balance of offensive and defensive moves, average kills)
b) Assassin/Reaper (purely offensive, lack of defensive, fast kills)
c) Tank (purely defensive, lack of offensive, slow kills)
d) None of the above
Question 3: How often have you been blown up during PvP encounters, excluding deaths in a transporter such as a T7? Use a percentage.
a) less than 10%
b) 10% - 20%
c) 20% - 30%
d) 30% - 50%
e) more than 50%
Question 4: How hard to you want to progress in PvP and keep fighting? Aka how much fun do you have PvPing?
a) A lot
b) Average
c) Not really fun (why do you read this guide then?)
Question 5: How much credits are you ready to spend?
a) >100 million credits
b) 100 - 150 million credits
c) 150 million credits or more
a) Focused, comfortable
b) Nervous, uncomfortable
c) Panic! Can't focus at all!
Question 2: What is your prefared playstyle (you may use other PvP games as a reference)?
a) Assault (balance of offensive and defensive moves, average kills)
b) Assassin/Reaper (purely offensive, lack of defensive, fast kills)
c) Tank (purely defensive, lack of offensive, slow kills)
d) None of the above
Question 3: How often have you been blown up during PvP encounters, excluding deaths in a transporter such as a T7? Use a percentage.
a) less than 10%
b) 10% - 20%
c) 20% - 30%
d) 30% - 50%
e) more than 50%
Question 4: How hard to you want to progress in PvP and keep fighting? Aka how much fun do you have PvPing?
a) A lot
b) Average
c) Not really fun (why do you read this guide then?)
Question 5: How much credits are you ready to spend?
a) >100 million credits
b) 100 - 150 million credits
c) 150 million credits or more
Okay, pelase remember your results. I will now show you a couple of ships that are viable for all-round PvP encounters and are suited for almost everything.
Also, I will not provide you any loadout for any ship here as there are too many possibilties and all of the mare equally good. By the way, you should already seen a good bunch of loadouts during your PvP encounters so you can tell which one are efficient and which are not. A full turreted pulse laser Fer-de-lance will most likely not be as efficient or effective as a Rail/Plasma Federal Assault Ship.
If you are completely unsure about your loadout I am sure you know how to help yourself. This forum has a lot of suggestions and if you struggle with the forum, Google is your friend.
Oh, and the names of the ships are clickable for an image!
[Fer-de-Lance]
Description: One of the most powerful offensive ships. It has a good weapon loadout with x4 C2 and x1 C4 hardpoints. Its hardpoint placements are really close together which allow for a very good use of fixed weaponary.
Due to its leight mass, it is capable of turning tight curves as well as keep up with the most ships when it comes to hunting. With a top boost speed of ~ 400 m/s it will most likely catch every known ships.
Additionally, the Fer-de-Lance as a strong shield value which allows for strong shield loadouts.
And if this is not enough, it also has x6 C0 hardpoints!
Price: ~ 51 million credits
Strengths:
- good hardpoint placements
- average primary firepower
- excellent secondary firepower
- good agility
- x6 C0 hardpoints
- good top boost speed ~ 400 m/s
Weaknesses:
- weaker hull resistence
- expensive bulkheads
- tiny jump range ~ 11 LY
- tiny fuel tank of 8 T
- no large hardpoints
- expensive base price
I would take this ship if you match these results from the personality test:
1. a)
2. a) / b)
3. a) / b) / c)
4. a) / b)
5. c)
Description: One of the most powerful offensive ships. It has a good weapon loadout with x4 C2 and x1 C4 hardpoints. Its hardpoint placements are really close together which allow for a very good use of fixed weaponary.
Due to its leight mass, it is capable of turning tight curves as well as keep up with the most ships when it comes to hunting. With a top boost speed of ~ 400 m/s it will most likely catch every known ships.
Additionally, the Fer-de-Lance as a strong shield value which allows for strong shield loadouts.
And if this is not enough, it also has x6 C0 hardpoints!
Price: ~ 51 million credits
Strengths:
- good hardpoint placements
- average primary firepower
- excellent secondary firepower
- good agility
- x6 C0 hardpoints
- good top boost speed ~ 400 m/s
Weaknesses:
- weaker hull resistence
- expensive bulkheads
- tiny jump range ~ 11 LY
- tiny fuel tank of 8 T
- no large hardpoints
- expensive base price
I would take this ship if you match these results from the personality test:
1. a)
2. a) / b)
3. a) / b) / c)
4. a) / b)
5. c)
[Federal Assault Ship]
Description: An answer from Core Dynamics to the request of a more specialised Federal Dropship. The Assault ship is faster, more agile and comes with a decent punch. It still has a weak shield value but as we know the federal navy, the FAS has a really strong hull.
This ship doesn't really fill any specific role ... it is more a ship of all-round purpose. It can sustain a good amount of damage while still being able to outmanouver its opponents.
All in all this ship is pretty basic with x2 C2 and x2 C3 hardpoints and x4 C0 ones. Its behavior, however, is very special and allows for extreme manouvers even with flight assist on. It's main pwoer comes from its shape which almost negates the penalty for stayling outside the blue zone. The Assault Ship is capable of turning fast at high and low speeds.
Price: ~ 20 million credits
Strengths:
- good primary firepower
- average secondary firepower
- excellent agility
- good top boost speed ~ 400 m/s
- good armor
- excellent hardpoint placements
- cheap abse price and bulkheads
Weaknesses:
- weak shields
- only x4 main hardpoints
- requires a federal navy rank
- small fuel tank of 16 T
- small jump range ~ 15 LY
I would choose this ship if your results match these:
1. a) / b)
2. a)
3. a) / b) / c) / d)
4. a)
5. a) / b) / c)
Description: An answer from Core Dynamics to the request of a more specialised Federal Dropship. The Assault ship is faster, more agile and comes with a decent punch. It still has a weak shield value but as we know the federal navy, the FAS has a really strong hull.
This ship doesn't really fill any specific role ... it is more a ship of all-round purpose. It can sustain a good amount of damage while still being able to outmanouver its opponents.
All in all this ship is pretty basic with x2 C2 and x2 C3 hardpoints and x4 C0 ones. Its behavior, however, is very special and allows for extreme manouvers even with flight assist on. It's main pwoer comes from its shape which almost negates the penalty for stayling outside the blue zone. The Assault Ship is capable of turning fast at high and low speeds.
Price: ~ 20 million credits
Strengths:
- good primary firepower
- average secondary firepower
- excellent agility
- good top boost speed ~ 400 m/s
- good armor
- excellent hardpoint placements
- cheap abse price and bulkheads
Weaknesses:
- weak shields
- only x4 main hardpoints
- requires a federal navy rank
- small fuel tank of 16 T
- small jump range ~ 15 LY
I would choose this ship if your results match these:
1. a) / b)
2. a)
3. a) / b) / c) / d)
4. a)
5. a) / b) / c)
[Python]
Description: The tank amongst the medium ships. It has a lot of internal space for good shield generators, shield cell banks and hull packs combines. It's excellent firepower with the exclusive C7 Power Distributor and x3 C3 and x2 C2 hardpoints allow for a dangerous combat vessel feeling. It comes with the basic x4 C0 hardpoints but with a C7 Power Plant.
Its hull can even resist the damage of larger hardpoints.
Due to its larger internal space, it sacrifices top boost speed as well as agility. But in this ship will most likely never have to run. It is superior in defensive AND offensive values while still staying relatively agile.
Also worht mentioning its high mass lock factor of 17
Price: ~ 54 million credits
Strengths:
- good shield value
- excellent hull resistence
- excellent firepower
- C7 Power Plant
- lots of internal space
- average jump range of 16 LY - 18 LY
- big fuel tank of 32 T
Weaknesses:
- slower than other dedicated combat ships with a top boost speed of ~ 350 m/s
- very expensive up to 200 million credits
- high penalties for staying outside the blue zone
I would choose this ship if your results match the following:
1. a) / b) / c)
2. c) / d)
3. a)
4. a) / b)
5. c)
Description: The tank amongst the medium ships. It has a lot of internal space for good shield generators, shield cell banks and hull packs combines. It's excellent firepower with the exclusive C7 Power Distributor and x3 C3 and x2 C2 hardpoints allow for a dangerous combat vessel feeling. It comes with the basic x4 C0 hardpoints but with a C7 Power Plant.
Its hull can even resist the damage of larger hardpoints.
Due to its larger internal space, it sacrifices top boost speed as well as agility. But in this ship will most likely never have to run. It is superior in defensive AND offensive values while still staying relatively agile.
Also worht mentioning its high mass lock factor of 17
Price: ~ 54 million credits
Strengths:
- good shield value
- excellent hull resistence
- excellent firepower
- C7 Power Plant
- lots of internal space
- average jump range of 16 LY - 18 LY
- big fuel tank of 32 T
Weaknesses:
- slower than other dedicated combat ships with a top boost speed of ~ 350 m/s
- very expensive up to 200 million credits
- high penalties for staying outside the blue zone
I would choose this ship if your results match the following:
1. a) / b) / c)
2. c) / d)
3. a)
4. a) / b)
5. c)
If you still don't feel comfortable with the ships mentioned above you can also try out these adoreable ones:
- Federal Gunship (Cheap man's Python but even more firepower)
- Federal Dropship (A mixture of the Assault and Gunship but incredibly slow)
- Imperial Clipper (Excellent top boost speed of ~ 450 m/s but bad hardpoint placements)
- Orca (Believe it or not but it is somewhat viable, especially with its MLF of 15 and its speed)
- Keelback (Assault type but not used often for its C3 PD)
- Vulture (Like it? Why not hanging around a little more?)
However, the three ships mentioned first are in my opinion the most effective ones as they fill certain roles pretty good. You obviously can win in any given combat ship (or even freighter) but usually only highly advanced pilots do this. You just want to progress from a Vulture for now, right?
- Federal Gunship (Cheap man's Python but even more firepower)
- Federal Dropship (A mixture of the Assault and Gunship but incredibly slow)
- Imperial Clipper (Excellent top boost speed of ~ 450 m/s but bad hardpoint placements)
- Orca (Believe it or not but it is somewhat viable, especially with its MLF of 15 and its speed)
- Keelback (Assault type but not used often for its C3 PD)
- Vulture (Like it? Why not hanging around a little more?)
However, the three ships mentioned first are in my opinion the most effective ones as they fill certain roles pretty good. You obviously can win in any given combat ship (or even freighter) but usually only highly advanced pilots do this. You just want to progress from a Vulture for now, right?
Good now you have chosen your ship. I will now tell you what advanced pilots do to guarantee their victory.
Focus of Sub-Systems
Everyone comes in a situation where the source of the failure is yourself. A good pilot will also experience these scenarios but a good pilot knows how to react to them.
So by focusing sub-systems you will devide up a good pilot from a bad one ... most likely.
Now ...
Remember your drivering license theory course? Well sit down and do it again with Elite: Dangerous. Your ship consists of various modules and other stuff. Your main parts which are found in every ship are.
You will always be able to target these subsystems on any given ship so assign a key to quickly switch between them! You can do that in the key bindings menu.
Now what happens if a module gets 'sniped'? They will not work properly and malfanctions occur.
Now here the list of the basic modules with their malfunctions:
- Power Plant (reduce power output)
- Thrusters (manouvering thrusters not working correctly)
- Frame-Shift-Drive (loss of FSD charge)
- Life Support (nothing)
- Power Distributor (random pip assignment)
Upon destruction all modules except for the power distributor and power plant simply stop working and act like they are offline.
A destroyed power distribut will be unable to reassign your pips (but still recharges the capacicators if you had pips in there before) while a powerplant just works with a 50% power output (+/- 10% I am not sure about that, don't get my PP sniped that often as I usually win
) but has a chance to implode and so destroy your ship even if your hull is not at 0%!So you better be very careful with Power Plant malfunctions.
Additionally, you can target other modules such as weapons, shield generators (not shield cell banks, though), AFMUs and other modules your opponent carries around.
At this point your task is to decide what module to snipe. I really prefare the FSD as my prey always runs away from me so I keep them in the instance (results usually in combat logging whatsoever
)As you probably haven't got much experience yet I recommend you targeting the powerplant against unexperienced players as they usually haven't got any knowledge abooouuuut ...
Power Priorities
Your bread and butter. Easy to set up BEFORE you enter a fight. This decides how you have to behave in combat.
However, no examples again, I assume that you already have a little knowledge about that.
In my first guide I have told you to just use two priorities to avoid confusion and prevent things from looking more complex than they actually are.
But this may has lead to your power plant malfunctioning and turning your Vulture into a sitting duck waiting to get ripped apart by a hungry wolf.
Power priorities work as follows. The smallest number has the highest prioritiy and if your power plant can't supply all your modules, your ship will start to shut down all the modules starting from the largest number until it can supply all the modules again.
Note: If you only have one priority for example and consume more than 100% power, your ship will shutdown ALL modules even though it could power some but as it doesn't know which modules to power it will simply shot down the module with the largest number (priority) which in this example is 1.
Okay good but how to setup your priorities?
This highly depends on your loadout but I got some priorities for ALL of my ships up to priority 3:
1. Thrusters
2. Secondary systems (FSD, Sensors, Power Distrubutor, Life support)
3. Combat systems (shield generator, banks, weapons, etc.)
4. Secondary shield cell banks or other secodnary modules
5. Cargo hatch, FSD interdictor, Fuel scoop, basically all the useless stuff in combat
Unfortunately you can't go beyond priority 5 as far as I know.
Now, to power priorities belongs the ability to recognize on which priority you are and what modules are malfunctioning to avoid getting 'stealth sniped' (imagine you want to escape but your FSD was destroyed minutes ago. Welp, goodbye.).
Pay attention to your info panel at the top right corner. It will show important information such as malfunctions, incoming missiles, hardpoint deployments of enemies and messages if your modules are destroyed.
If you miss that, you failed and what do you do then?
The only way to get out of a scenario is to reboot/repair. There is a button in the functions tab of your ship where you can take parts from other modules and add them to the destroyed ones to provide basic functions.
For example if your FSD is destroyed you can reboot to repair it up to 2% (works only for destroyed modules). Note that your ship will damage other modules then and sometimes even your hull.
If you got there the nyou have already failed badly as your first have lost your shields, presented you a target for your opponent AND missed the malfunction messages. This risky choice is the only choice you have, however.
Here an example of me experiencing a malfunction. I check on which priority I am and try to avoid additional fire/damage until my shields are back online. At this point I was well aware that a destroyed powerplant would either mean that I have to quickly reassign my priorities so I can continue fighting or that I have to reboot and so presenting me as a target. Luckily, my shields went back online and my power plant continues to work normal.
https://youtu.be/J-ZI78_usZ4?t=3m28s
https://youtu.be/J-ZI78_usZ4?t=3m28s
Advanced Strategy
What do I mean with strategy? Well, it is your plan A and B and eventually C you create before going into a batlle. You just don't go in and say "Let's see what happens ..." unless you want to go risky.
So your plan A is what should happen in the best case and plan B is your average case "dodge" while plan C will be applied to the worst case.
Besides A being offensive, B a mixture of defense and offense and C being a purely defensive plan ... all plans involve a mixture of offensive and defensive moves but the intentions are different (e.g. attacking for defense ... sounds familiar, eh?).
Okay let's start with the best case then ...
Plan A:
Your intention is to engage. You want to attack another player, let's say in a Fer-de-Lance and you start interdicting him.
What do you do?
Assuming your target is equally or less skilled than you, you just want to shoot and outmanouver him. Try avoid fire while still attacking your opponent. Pretty easy against Pythons in my opinion if you are not flying a Python yourself.
Okay, let's say you manage to damage the FDL's shields to 1 ring (33% strength). Plan A involves a kill. You want to burst down his shields at all costs! So go for 4 pips to WEP and eventually for a ram to deny him using a shield cell. However, your first priority remains to don't lose your own shields.
the FDL's shields eventually go down and you managed to position yourself with shields online against a ship with shields offline.
From now on (or in case you face a hull tank) focus a subsystem as described above to apply extra so called "debuffs" to your target and increase your level of domination.
But what if the opposite happens? Your shields are offline!
Plan B:
So you got into trouble, hm? Don't worry! That happens. The only thing you need to do is change your fighting behavior until you achieve an equally standing between you and your opponent. You can either do that by stripping down your opponent's shields or getting yours back online.
However, at the moment you are at a disadvantage and this is where a skilled pilot shines. You got a problem, what is your answer? Ofcourse you could simply retreat and reengage later but since you wnat to go advanced we lay this aside.
As said, two possibilities: First strip down your opponents shield and secondly wait for your shields to go back online.
Your choice is highly dependent on your loadout and you should understand your own ship better than I do but I will cover both possibilities since I don#t know what ship you will be using.
But you certainly don't want to wait for your shields to go back online if you are out of shield cell banks. Recharging shields takes time where your opponent can damage your modules. Just an example.
However, let's say you want to recharge your shields. What you want to do is to avoid damage at any cost. Go 4 pips to ENG and outboost and/or outmanouver your opponent while your shields are recharging. This takes a couple of seconds or minutes depending on your loadout and pip management. For low-shield builds, I usually prefare to recharge my shields but for shield tankers I usually want to go for the second choice:
Strip down the opponents shields. Since your shields are offline, 4 pips to SYS become pointless so you have a total of 66% more energy (4 out of 6 pips more to use)! Go 4 pips to WEP and/or ENG and unleash all your power to put alot of pressure on your opponent. At this point you also wnat to avoid fire but this is your second priority. Your first priority is to strip down the shields, even if you tarde hull damage in a ram.
Let's say either choice one or two is successful. Good job! You managed to get rid of the disadvantage and come back into an equally fight.
But what if all fails and neither of the choices you made help?
Plan C:
Retreat, Plan C is what you do when all fails, when YOU failed. You need to get out of the scenario to avoid total destruction (aka loss of your ship).
It is good to know what MLF your ship and your opponent's ship has. This decision will be easy: You are not mass locked: low wake - You are mass locked: high wake.
In case you high wake make sure to not move in one general direction. "Dance" around your opponent and don't be afraid to go close. This is where outmanouvering plays an important role and since your shields are probably offline anyways you can use 4 pips to ENG for maximum boost turns. It takes about 15 seconds to charge your FSD for a high wake, not too long!
But in case Plan C failed .. well ... you failed. You had alot of chances to win and/or get out of the heat but you still managed to fail. This is where I can't help you anymore. Falling through 3 stages of back-up is a really hard work
Just try again and analyse what went wrong. I for myself record every PvP scenario and watch them again in case I feel I didn't do very well. Even after 5 times of watching the same fight, I still discover a moment where I say "oh, this could have been done better!"Good, so much for advanced tactics.
Psychology of combat
This is a little tricky and assumes you have a decent "amount of empathy". Can be a powerful tool to make your opponent go crazy.
Also, a "bad minded" mindset is of use here but so is a "good minded" one.
I for example like to question myself "Where can I hurt my opponent the most?". Durign the fight, I analyse the loadout of my enemy and if I notice he has a low tolerance shield recharge build and he uses his SCB way too early I just stop shooting and let him overcharge his shields, effective wasting his shield cells.
The question here is to how get your opponent to use a shield cell too early (or maybe too late)? Well, against skilled commanders you will never make it at the first time. The answer to these questions developes during the fight.
There are some simply things to keep in mind. Your opponent will obviously use a shield cell when being low and having 4 pips to SYS. In this tiem frame you can go a little more offensive as you know your opponent can have a maximum of two pips to weapons. For best results go 4 pips to WEP when your opponent has low energy or is currently reloading.
Additionally, your opponent will likely not use any shield cell if he knows what it will overcharge the shields. So your task is to find out the "tolerance frame" where he will not lose any MJs but still has shield strength.
I won't go into detail here as this is even more complicated and advanced than I want to teach you now. I mean, this guide already is long enough
But for now, try to determine your opponent's tolerance frame, it will be helpful some day.
Another point is the getting your enemy to panic. Usually works against less skilled players. You want to put them in a situation they are not familiar with.
Being good is one way to do it, especially outmanouvering leads to panicing as they clearly recieve the message that they are not the dominant one in this scenario. The second thought then is what they are going to lose and if you attack a Python then you will probably be even more successful because the higher the rebuy the more they panic.
However, highly ineffective against determined PvPers as they are also familiar with getting blown up.
So ot conclude you want to put your opponent into an unusual situation. How you do that is up to you, be creative!
And one more way to "control" your opponent is to force them into a specific position/situation but again this is more advanced than davanced and I will not cover this here, maybe in the next guide
Extro
Alright! That's it. These are more advanced tactics you can try out to effectively succeed in your everyday PvP encounter. I hope you will learn something during your more advanced fights and be successful against a wider range of hostiles.
Feel free to give me any feedback (I would be really glad if you would do that!) or ask me any questions (also glad about questions!).
Other than that, dare something and fly risky! o7
- Crimson Kaim
PS: Sorry for any typos and grammar mistakes. They will
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