I still consider myself new to ED although I have been playing since October 2017. After about 350 hours of pretending to be Han Solo, I am just starting to become proficient in combat against NPC’s and players, so I am slowly climbing ranks. Now, my increasing combat success is, I believe, primarily attributed to affording better ships, A-rated modules, and modding most of those modules. However, I have read forum commentary that some players’ combat success is attributed to their “fighting style.” This made me think of those hyperbolic martial art styles...Drunken Master or The Crane...lol...but I am extremely curious about other players’ fighting styles? What do these styles look like? Do these fighting styles have names? Once I have a frame of reference, I’d love to identify my fighting style if I have one. Thanks for any and all feedback!
Fighting Styles?
- Thread starter The Cosmic Sojourner
- Start date
Most new players have a tendency to get stuck in "Joust" mode with NPCs for example, because that's what NPCs prefer to do for fighting style.
A skilled player will maneuver themselves within about 500m of the ship, and ride their back like Yoda on Luke.
When you get that good with fighting, you will have a tendency to stick with smaller ships as they are much harder to shake.
However, as you start getting into medium and large vessels, your fighting "style" does tend to change. Now you're dealing with slower ships, less maneuverable, but with tougher hulls/shields so they can take a punch or two before having an issue. For these types of ships, the fighting style changes from something similar to small ships, all the way to flying in reverse and pounding the living hell out of your opponent, hoping that sheer firepower will drop their defenses before yours go down.
So yes, there are many fighting styles, most are contingent to the ship you're flying (or trying to fly, as the case may be) although some players just have a specific style that works for them. Some oddities I've seen in the past:
Haz Rez bounty hunter that would dance around an asteroid against an opponent so he could basically play peek-a-boo with them until he got a great angle or slipped in behind them, etc and then would rip them to shreds, only to go dancing around the next asteroid as they finally turned around to hit him.
Or a maniac in a Corvette who tried to fly like he was in a Cobra III - He would FA-off/on and flip that thing like it was a toy model and tear into opponents that way.
Or an Cutter pilot who literally sat there in the middle of the firefight with turret everything and just unleashed hell while rotating his ship and relying on shields of eternal doom.
Or a lunatic in a Clipper who would maneuver himself into position against an Anaconda for example and would RAM them, relying on his shields surviving the impact - again and again and again...he had a certain way of hitting he said, that did more damage to them and less damage to him.
So...yeah. Fighting styles. It's a thing. To my knowledge, they don't really have names (except maybe that last one, it was nicknamed a "Boop" and his ship was called the Betty Boop).
Now, get out there and find your own style that works for you.
Me personally, for Haz Rez NPCs, I just park my Corvette, crank up the tunes, launch the collector limpets, open the cargo hatch...and wait for the poor suckers to come by to see what's in my hull.
Thanks much for the detailed response. Very informative and appreciated.
My pleasure. If you are looking to study some of the pro-skill dog fighting combat pilots, there are several videos on YouTube that show many of the maneuvers they use, when they use them and why. If you're looking to try out some new moves, it's a good place to start.
Awesome! Definitely will look for those videos.