So I have three hauling contracts open between two systems to carry a total of a couple thousand items, worth around 16 millions. Because of this, I have between three and seven interdictions to fight off with every trip that I make between the two systems.
My issue is, one of those interdictions sent me into a planetary ring, which then forced a submission - meaning that my Type 7 was easy pickings for the Anacondas that were chasing me, which cost me my Type 7, and one of the contracts plus the fine for not completing - about 10 millions all told.
As a relatively new player, this is not an insignificant sum to be losing, and I'm extremely frustrated with this obsessively intrusive mechanic - it causes me to lose around five minutes, per trip, of a 24h timed contract, if I find myself lucky enough to not die.
So, is there any way to make these interdictions stop, or am I cursed to risk losing any and all contracts I take?
I would like to add that these tend to occur either just after coming out of hyperspace, or just before entering the planet's SOI - essentially, it's a game of luck between evading or crashing and dying.
There are no easy way to say this, it is a learning thing. IF you check your missions, on atleast one of these, there would have been a statement similiar to this, "there might be ships sent after you"... this means, that once you accept any such missions, there is a "dice" rolled to see if there will be any ships sent after you.
Mission have a recommended rank, and higher ranked missions, will in this case, spawn higher ranked ships and large ships size, so if you are seeing high ranked Anacondas, then you most likely picked Deadly/Elite ranked missions. And also if the mission pays well, is also an indication that it might be a high ranked mission.
So this is how you watch out for this kind of stuff before.. but does nothing to solve the issue you are curently facing.
Interdictions, can be won, and with some practice, it is very much doable against NPC's. Type 7 is often a fairly competent ship in this regards, and if you compare it to its bigger sibling, the Type 9, it is immensely better! But this require skills, and only way to learn is by doing.
Sadly, trying todo combat in Type 7 against a high ranked Anaconda, is not easily done, and here the only way is lots of practice but also very important, your Type 7 need to be outfitted for this sort of action. But if you can stay alive long enough for security to arrive, they can usually take care of the attacker, and you can move on... and if you have atleast one laser on your ship, shooting at the attacker a little bit, just to tag it, you get the bounty when the security ships destroys it, and for Anacondas, that is usually in the range of 500 000, and it is usually 4 ships in the mission, so would be another 2 million.
Here comes some other tricks you can do.... when entering the system, do not fly directly towards your target. As where would that put anyone entering the system after you? behind you... so often you have time to get away from the sun, speed up and your pursuers have to get away from the star, giving you a safe distance, if you end up on "wrong" side of the star, and have to fly around the star, ALWAYS fly away from the star, as that gives you more spend and when you are a bit from the star, you can start to fly in big curve towards your destination. Why a big curve? because for anyone trying to interdict you, they need to be within range and BEHIND you. so if you fly a "longer" distance in a big curve , they need to fly faster than you to get behind your... and since you have a head start, they are should not be able to catch you before you need to slow down. This is why you should not fly directly towards you destination, as your pursuers will be DIRECTLY behind you, so once in range, they can interdict you.
So if am in your situation in a to weak ship, I go for the flying in such a big curve, that I arrive to the destination from the OTHER side, meaning, you should be able to see the sun behind your destination. As this means any pursuer, need to fly in an even bigger curve to get behind me and thus travel a bigger distance, they are very unlikely to manage to get behind me and be in range before I can exit at may destination.unless I fly in so big curve that I end up to far away from the destination and I fly in a straight line, this will once again give any pursuer enough time to catch up as I slow down.
So to recap:
- Do not fly in a straight line to your destination
- Do not fly around the sun to close, as that will SLOW YOU DOWN ALOT, fly AWAY from the sun, in whatever direction that is. Try this out, watch and compare your speed. (this also applies to flying around planets)
- Fly in a big curve towards your destination. This makes is very, very hard for anyone chasing you to get behind you.
- Arrive at the destination from back side. ie, the side that is NOT facing the sun, as this maximizes your chances to avoid interdiction by a pursuer.
- AVOID flying in a straight line
There is another way if you see that targets will be send after you. and that is BEFORE loading up your ship with the cargo, change to your combat ship, assumes you have one, add small cargo rack, load mission cargo, and then fly that ship, get interdicted, and now hopefully you should be in a good position to fight the attackers. unless you have several mission with ships after you, you will only face one such ship at a time. And also, after a while, security will arrive and assists you, so just flying avasive and avoiding getting killed is a good tactic if you are not proficient in combat. But you still need to survive long enough for Security to attract the focus of the pursuer.
Of course, if you are already in your Type 7 with lots of cargo loaded, this does not work... as your combat ship most likely will not have have enough cargo space to allow you to change ships.