Newcomer / Intro Hot to attack other ships ingame?

[Aedil]

The topic name says it all. So, if I just want to attack another ship, no matter player or NPC, what should I do first? Ofc I'm not mentioning if you're near a station and another ship is only in 2 km distance, I'm talking about situation when you arrive in a system through jump and want to attack someone (for example, a pirate ship to fulfill a contract), what should you do technically step by step? Unfortunately the game lacks training simulation for such kind of activities

 

[PeeB4uGoToBed]

Assuming you don't have an interdiction beam, look for USS points and hope there are pirates or whatever you want to kill, put them in sight and target them and deploy your hardpoints and fire away. Also, there's a combat tutorial in the launcher

 

[Aedil]

Yep I don't have USS yet, coz I've played few days as a trader, collected quite a lot of credits and got a new ship as well but started to feel that this is boring for me and I'm losing interest for such gameplay, so I decided to delete my save and start it all from the scratch to play a maximum-hardcore smuggling/piracy oriented game, thats why I need to get new skills how to handle my scrap Sidewinder and 1000 credits in other way

 

[rdizz]

Unidentified signal sources
Just hop in them like you do a station.

 

[planatar]

Several options really.
If you are in an Anarchy system then feel free to attack any ship and you won't be punished with a wanted status or a bounty.
If you are in any other type of system then you are only free to attack ships that show as wanted when you have targeted them. Attacking any other ships will result in getting a bounty and a wanted status in that system.
You will find ships at Nav beacons, USS's and Resource extraction sites or in SC you can interdict them yourself if you have that module.
If you have a kill mission for pirates then typically I find you need to find NPC ships that threaten you over the comms first.
If you have a kill warrent scanner then it is very good to increase the amount of bounty you can receive killing another ship, once scanned the extra bounty can be seen on the contact tab in your left UI.
Note even if kill warrant scanner shows a bounty you are still only free to attack ships that show as 'wanted' in your targetting UI.

Be aware that in an Anarchy system, no ships show as wanted and you will need a kill warrant scanner to pick up bounties but on the other hand you are free to attack whomever you like.

I tend to avoid attacking ships that are associated with the controlling faction for a system since it appears to drop your rep in that system. You may not care about that.
You will also find that attacking a ship makes other ships of the same faction red on your radar. This doesn't necessarily mean that they will attack you or that you are free to attack them.

As for tactics, I tend to find a suitable target, approach with full shield/sys pips, kill warrant scan, switch to a more balanced pip setting favouring weapons and then open fire from below and behind the target.
Against larger ships I also target the power plant subsytem in advance.
I also very much encourage you to equip a shield cell bank.
You can equip more than one but you would need to either assign them to different fire groups or disable/enable them as needed.
Try to keep speed at 50% for optimal turning and if you find yourself being out turned then either increase engine pips or change tactics (e.g. reverse instead).

Assasination missions tend to be elite anaconda NPCs, so probably avoid until you are at least in a well equiped viper and know what you're doing.

If your hull is breached then consider running
Keep in mind that all bounties you have collected and not yet claimed will be lost if your ship is killed.

 

[ReaperAlex]

USS=unidentified signal source. it's something that pops up as you supercruise about and if you target it then you can fly to it and drop out of supercruise when Safe to Disengage pops up just as you would a station. it's a built in part of the game, not something you buy or unlock.

all sorts of NPC's or even cargo (will be flagged as stolen) can spawn in a USS, so they can be good for hunting pirates.

for pirate hunting though nav beacons and resource extraction sites are generally better. at one of those sites NPC's will constantly spawn, and for many it's less frustrating than going fishing for USS's. just be aware there is some screwy logic with factions and reputation at the moment, if you shoot a pirate that happens to be in the same faction as the cops, they will get upset with you. it's not that you've done anything wrong, it's just they are not reacting properly to your legitimate kill

speaking of legitimate kills, never ever open fire until your ship has confirmed the target it wanted. i don't care if you saw 3 ships attack a hauler, and when you scanned the first it was wanted, and when you shot at the wanted ship the other 2 went red on scanner, and then you moved on to the 2nd and that showed as wanted. if you shoot at the 3rd before your ship has confirmed they are wanted you will be breaking the law.

if you mess up and shoot an innocent (kamamazi cops diving in front of you mean this will happen) first get out of there and into supercruise to avoid the cops fire (less of an issue when you're in a bigger ship) then find an outpost not a station. outposts have no security, you can dock and pay off your small fine. stations on the other hand have active patrols and if they scan you then it's game over, the station will open fire and you will almost certainly die. which is really annoying when you lose thousands worth of ship for a measly 200cr fine!

look up how to smuggle for tips on sneaking into station while avoiding the cops if you cant find or dont want to fly to an outpost.

 

[Aedil]

Thank you all for your advices. So about cargo which "needs to be stolen" for some missions, such cargo also appears randomly in USS? Because I avoided these contracts in the past because didn't know where to find such type of cargo. I also got an idea how to attack ships just by entering random USS. But what about nav beacons for example? I do choose to travel to beacon, arrive there and what next? I see numerous ships cruising around me, but how to attack any of them? Or I should disengage on the beacon first?

P.S. What's the point of piracy if to attack only "wanted" ships? What should stop me from just attacking some random "clear" npc, destroy him (if I'll succeed ofc), get the cargo and then just leave to another system which is not so secure?

 

[PeeB4uGoToBed]

Thank you all for your advices. So about cargo which "needs to be stolen" for some missions, such cargo also appears randomly in USS? Because I avoided these contracts in the past because didn't know where to find such type of cargo. I also got an idea how to attack ships just by entering random USS. But what about nav beacons for example? I do choose to travel to beacon, arrive there and what next? I see numerous ships cruising around me, but how to attack any of them? Or I should disengage on the beacon first?

P.S. What's the point of piracy if to attack only "wanted" ships? What should stop me from just attacking some random "clear" npc, destroy him (if I'll succeed ofc), get the cargo and then just leave to another system which is not so secure?

Nav beacons work just like USS. you go up to them in supercruise and safe disengage just like stopping at a USS, the USS is where you'll find the cargo you need to steal, at nav beacons you'll see all kinds of ships

 

[ReaperAlex]

Thank you all for your advices. So about cargo which "needs to be stolen" for some missions, such cargo also appears randomly in USS? Because I avoided these contracts in the past because didn't know where to find such type of cargo. I also got an idea how to attack ships just by entering random USS. But what about nav beacons for example? I do choose to travel to beacon, arrive there and what next? I see numerous ships cruising around me, but how to attack any of them? Or I should disengage on the beacon first?

P.S. What's the point of piracy if to attack only "wanted" ships? What should stop me from just attacking some random "clear" npc, destroy him (if I'll succeed ofc), get the cargo and then just leave to another system which is not so secure?

attacking wanted ships means you wont get shot at by the cops, or get a bounty on your head. assuming you don't care about that or bad standing with the faction then feel free to blast away!

if you want to go pirating then buy a cargo scanner, use that to check there is something worth having. when you are fighting target the cargo hatch, then try to very carefully place your shots on the cargo hatch when their shields are down. your aim is to break the hatch before they explode as an exploding ship means no cargo to loot. you can buy limpet thingies which act like a missile that can lock into and break the cargo hatch open for you, another good investment for a pirate.

but do research how to smuggle as going down this route means a very high chance of getting shot at by stations, and they take no prisoners.

 

[planatar]

Yes sometime random cargo appears in a USS.
In a nav beacon (or anywhere) you can just target ('y' key by default I believe) whatever ship you want to attack and open fire.
'Piracy' can be quite tricky and you'd probably want to look up a tutorial.
You can of course just attack any random 'clear' npc and destroy them but in most cases you won't get any cargo that way.
If you aren't in an Anarchy you will get a bounty and authority ships will eventually arrive to attack you.
To get cargo you are better to use a cargo scanner to first find a ship carrying decent cargo, then get close and stay close (so they are mass locked and can't escape), then attack and bring down their shields and then use cargo hatch breakers to release the cargo. Alternatively try and destroy their drive so they can't escape.
You probably don't want to destroy the ship. (since you will get an even bigger bounty).
Mass locking only works if your ship is at least as big as theirs.

 

[Aedil]

I did some smuggling before already so know basics, just want to focus more on this . But I must admit you surprised me about realism of cargo damage... To be honest, I thought that when you destroy a ship all cargo gets outside to be looted, but seems you should be a top class pilot (I'm not that kind ofc) to make cargo leave the enemy ship without any special modules/systems to be involved in this (like if you use scrap Sidewinder without any additional stuff installed)... I'm confused.

 

[Aedil]

Screw this... The first pirate who attacked me was a sidewinder without a shield, I lowered it to 50% hull easily and then he just made some ace-style movements totally disappearing from my view no matter how hard I tried to follow him according my scan and destroyed me in a minute... Despite I played most basic combat training sessions quite successful. I just deleted this save, thinking what to do now. Seems that Elite trading/contracts system is too boring for me (coz it's too easy to make money in the game at the moment without risking anything seriously if you just follow "lawful citizen" role-model, the game should have been much more hardcore in this component) but I'm not that good as a pilot to contest even low level NPCs in combat, so no chance for piracy career... Confused what to do.

 

[planatar]

Well if combat is challenging for you then at least it isn't boring right?
Sounds like you just need to adopt a few tactics.

If the pirate was out turning you then you need to increase the pips to your engine and then (very importantly) ensure you are at 50% on the throttle (use the key bound mapping).
If he is still out turning you, no matter what you do, then it is probable that your ship thrusters simply aren't good enough and you should switch tactics.
I find that mixing it up a bit and switching to reversing tends to throw NPC's right in front of me and make them easy to target, however it has a downside in that it also becomes much easier for them to target you.
Also be aware of the combat rating of the pirate, avoid NPC's that are Dangerous, Deadly or Elite until you get much better at combat.

Mostly I find that combat is about power distribution management.
Gimballed weapons are also a big advantage and I would very much advise you use them. If an NPC uses chaff then you can un-target them and use your gimballed weapons as fixed.
Shield cells are also a massive advantage.

 

[cmdr lowest]

I did some smuggling before already so know basics, just want to focus more on this . But I must admit you surprised me about realism of cargo damage... To be honest, I thought that when you destroy a ship all cargo gets outside to be looted, but seems you should be a top class pilot (I'm not that kind ofc) to make cargo leave the enemy ship without any special modules/systems to be involved in this (like if you use scrap Sidewinder without any additional stuff installed)... I'm confused.

Just target the ship. Keep it in site until the scan completes. Confirm they are wanted status before opening firing.

Then use your left had panel to select which sub-system you want to target, cargo hatch is at the top.

Start firing and hope you get lucky.

Sometimes the enemy gets scared and ejects cargo too to bribe you into not killing him. They probably do that more if they are not wanted and you are properly picking on them and being a true pirate...

 

[PeeB4uGoToBed]

Just target the ship. Keep it in site until the scan completes. Confirm they are wanted status before opening firing.

Then use your left had panel to select which sub-system you want to target, cargo hatch is at the top.

Start firing and hope you get lucky.

Sometimes the enemy gets scared and ejects cargo too to bribe you into not killing him. They probably do that more if they are not wanted and you are properly picking on them and being a true pirate...

Haha, that happened to me once, I was fighting a wanted pirate and he dropped his cargo, I didn't know why, either to throw off my vision or as a makeshift minefield full of fish barrels, I didn't even think he was bribing me

 

[cmdr lowest]

Haha, that happened to me once, I was fighting a wanted pirate and he dropped his cargo, I didn't know why, either to throw off my vision or as a makeshift minefield full of fish barrels, I didn't even think he was bribing me

Yeah, ships do that to distract you into letting them get away.

One day it's fish - the next day it could be valuable imperial slaves or rare commodities in those canisters. just be wary also that the canisters only survive in the conditions of space for a short time so you need to scoop them all up quick or they will be gone forever... another reason the ship drops them to distract you while they make a run for it.

 

[ReaperAlex]

i believe the only time a ship vents cargo before it blows is if the cargo hatch was damaged prior to the ship blowing up. it does happen, though if your pirating you'd want to focus on making it happen all the time

as for being a crack shot, sure it's ideal, but all you have to do is break their shields then let a limpet mine loose, that will (if it hits the right place, they can miss) pop the cargo hatch for you.

as for that nasty sidewinder, even the worst of ships have guns and those guns can of course hurt. most ships have the lower tier guns, all of which are dangerous, so you can't laugh off a bad ship as it's still a threat.

just sounds like you need a bit more practice on the combat. don't give up now, throw yourself at it!

2 most important bits have already been said, throttle to the blue zone and pips to engines.

there are a few other things you can do. try thrusting up as you pull up to tighten your turn. alternatively try thrusting down as you pull up to widen your turn, making it easier to get them in your gun sights. if all else fails throw it into reverse.

 

[cmdr lowest]

I really need to try out these cargo limpets. They sound fab.

 

[RobWolves]

Screw this... The first pirate who attacked me was a sidewinder without a shield, I lowered it to 50% hull easily and then he just made some ace-style movements totally disappearing from my view no matter how hard I tried to follow him according my scan and destroyed me in a minute... Despite I played most basic combat training sessions quite successful. I just deleted this save, thinking what to do now. Seems that Elite trading/contracts system is too boring for me (coz it's too easy to make money in the game at the moment without risking anything seriously if you just follow "lawful citizen" role-model, the game should have been much more hardcore in this component) but I'm not that good as a pilot to contest even low level NPCs in combat, so no chance for piracy career... Confused what to do.

Before I got better at combat, I used to hang around Nav points, find a wanted ship and wait for the Security to start shooting him down (or see the shooting in the distance and boost over there). That way, you've got some help in shooting down a wanted NPC for a bounty. Makes it much easier as long as you avoid hitting the Security as they're dog fighting.