How do I know my enemy's strength??

mscsniperx

M
I am fairly new to Elite and came across a problem. Is there a way to know a target's specific shield and hull strength... (Ie.. what thier MJoules, Integrity is) ??
I am playing PVE and see there can be huge difference in two identical ships in how much shields and weapons they have. It would be nice to know if I am way outmatched before engaging them.
The only way I see now is to know the relative ship types and the ranking of the NPC pilot.
I have an A-Rated Python and was picking off everything up to other NPC Pythons with ease but then came across an FDL NPC that was insanely shield tanked and took me out by without me even scratching his paint.
If I had known it was tanked way beyond my shields or egnineered, I never would have engaged.

If there is not a way to know his actual shield/integrity strenght, are there any loose rules of thumb on what to expect from "X" ranking of an NPC? Ie, an elite NPC python would likely have engineered + A rated stuff.
 
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Bartizan

Bartizan
You will never really know your enemy until you fight them. Ok, that was a little more yoda than I meant it, but still true. You can see what a target has with regards to modules installed (sub-target window), but beyond that, you won't know shield or amor strength or "how" they will employ some things. About FDL NPCs, one of the most annoying things they seem to do a lot is spam endless SCBs (without the horrific heat penalty apparently).

With time and combat experience, you will get a feel for how a target is matched with you on sight.
 

viper666

V
As a general rule of thumb, enemies that are Dangerous rank will have the hardest hull, also they spam chaff and shield cell banks. Deadly enemies seem to have decent shields especially on the larger ships.
Elite enemies tend not to use chaff or shield cell banks (at least rarely.) Other than that it's random luck from the Frontier goodies bag of tricks. No matter, if you learn to use rail guns (long range grade 2) any NPC will be toast.
 

zeke312

Z
Also note that the FDL is arguably the best combat ship in the game. it is very fast and maneuverable, has a huge hard point and 4 mediums and very high base shielding. Much tougher than a python, which is not a combat dedicated ship.
 

Deleted member 38366

D
The best way really is the same method that applies to both PvE and PvP : establish and stick to solid abort criteria and an egress plan

How far you want to go concerning that is depending on many factors, but primarily to personal experience and desired risk level.

So if i.e. you lose Shields, the other Ship still has them and is visibly firing an SCB to refill it - it might be a good idea to abort the Engagement right there.
Rapid egress (denying any potential Mass-lock) is commonly best done via Hi-Wake - a HyperJump to any nearby System.

Only requires a bit practice and some discipline, but it'll save your Ship often especially when still new to the Game.
At a much later stage in the game, that egress decision might not kick in until i.e. 50% (or lower) Hull or after certain critical Modules malfunction or reach critical levels.
 
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Krash

Krash
FalconFly said:
The best way really is the same method that applies to both PvE and PvP : establish and stick to solid abort criteria and an egress plan

How far you want to go concerning that is depending on many factors, but primarily to personal experience and desired risk level.

So if i.e. you lose Shields, the other Ship still has them and is visibly firing an SCB to refill it - it might be a good idea to abort the Engagement right there.
Rapid egress (denying any potential Mass-lock) is commonly best done via Hi-Wake - a HyperJump to any nearby System.

Only requires a bit practice and some discipline, but it'll save your Ship often especially when still new to the Game.
At a much later stage in the game, that egress decision might not kick in until i.e. 50% (or lower) Hull or after certain critical Modules malfunction or reach critical levels.
Click to expand...

Best advice ^^. Sometimes lower combat rank NPCs can surprise me. I'm thinking, "no way is that guy only a novice" when his shields refuse to drop. So choose your point of "get out of dodge" and don't miss it.
 

mscsniperx

M
FalconFly said:
The best way really is the same method that applies to both PvE and PvP : establish and stick to solid abort criteria and an egress plan

How far you want to go concerning that is depending on many factors, but primarily to personal experience and desired risk level.

So if i.e. you lose Shields, the other Ship still has them and is visibly firing an SCB to refill it - it might be a good idea to abort the Engagement right there.
Rapid egress (denying any potential Mass-lock) is commonly best done via Hi-Wake - a HyperJump to any nearby System.

Only requires a bit practice and some discipline, but it'll save your Ship often especially when still new to the Game.
At a much later stage in the game, that egress decision might not kick in until i.e. 50% (or lower) Hull or after certain critical Modules malfunction or reach critical levels.
Click to expand...


I was hitting the NPC FDL with a large gimbled beam laser and 4-pips to weapons and he was able sustain a continuous and (<1K distance) beam on him for over a minute straight with hardly any effect!! Holy crap! that's when I knew I was in trouble.. for every other NPC, that beam would melt through their shields in under 20 seconds. To make matters worse after an eternity of a direct continous beam on him, I finally broke through the FIRST shield ring and he casually deploys shield bank and pumps it back to full... I was way outmatched. I tried to get away but it was too late. I notice the game spawns a bunch of easy targets at you to build up a sense of false confidence and then once you get cocky, it releases the insane ringer that comes in and destroys you. The game
 
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Krash

Krash
mscsniperx said:
I was hitting the NPC FDL with a large gimbled beam laser and 4-pips to weapons and he was able sustain a continuous and (<1K distance) beam on him for over a minute straight with hardly any effect!! Holy crap! that's when I knew I was in trouble.. for every other NPC, that beam would melt through their shields in under 20 seconds. To make matters worse after an eternity of a direct continous beam on him, I finally broke through the FIRST shield ring and he casually deploys shield bank and pumps it back to full... I was way outmatched. I tried to get away but it was too late.
Click to expand...

When you realized the FDL was going to be trouble, did you put 4 pips to sys?
 

60mm

60mm
Rank/Ship/Modules will always tell you what you're up against outside of CZ.

1 Large Beam isn't much btw. I use that just to keep my Krait cool.
 

IndigoWyrd

IndigoWyrd
There is coriolis.io
It will give you the base Hull Strength and shield ratings for whatever ship you select.
Most of us use it to "pre-build" our ships before we start sinking credits into them, only to find out something doesn't work as well as it sounded in our heads.

But no, there are no in-game tools to evaluate another ship in such a manner - which, in the end, is a pretty good thing too. It helps keep people from knowing your ships strengths or weaknesses quite so easily.
 

woodbane

W
Just purely from a logical point of view it seems a tad silly that we have the technology to see what modules another ship has but not ascertain their shield and armour values?

I wonder if FDev couldn’t just add the shield and armour stats as well somewhere? QOL improvement?
 

xxSHEPERDxx

xxSHEPERDxx
Was just investigating an issue with this and happened upon this thread in a google search.

I really want to know what the other ship's hull points and shield points are - not just percentages. In the past two days I have come across extremely questionable scenarios.
My ship isn't kitted for the best possible damage at the moment. I've been flying all energy based on a corvette - pulse laser turrets on everything with burst laser class 4s.

Typically I melt shields extremely quick but then takes some doing to tear through hulls. For the most part I have weapon pips to max and two pips in shields. I am alternating fire between the two 4s so that the power drain is evened out and the barrage is constant. (Also helps with heat generation compared to firing both at once). When a target gets out of sight, i'll switch on turrets so i'm hitting them while turning to train the 4s on them again, then rapid retract/deploy hardpoints so it shuts the turrets up.

Alternatively I can hang back with 2 pips in all systems and the drain won't exceed anything and the turrets can just harrass a target while I read a book or something. (If it's a target that will panic when their sheilds go out, which is quite a lot of small fry)

Now yesterday I was exploring a base out by an ice ring. Awesome scenery and I was messing around with the SLF in third person doing stunts around the base. About two minutes in the base came under attack by raiders. One of the enemies was an Anaconda with a drunk pilot that got lodged against the structure of the base. I hopped back in my 'vette and at point blank range began firing everything at it.

Not only did the shield take 2 minutes to burn through, but once it popped, the hull was taking very little damage over time. It wasn't a threat to me. It had one little beam laser that was trying to hit me and wasn't doing much. So I turned off the turrets and concentrated fire on the burst laser 4s. Quite literally took several shots (1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1) just for 1 percent of its health... so I kept at it, just waiting patiently and after about 4 and a half minutes (altogether) it finally died.

This was definitely not adding up. I reviewed the video several times and just couldn't figure out what was going on but could only assume that the thing wasn't using real stats, even with engineering. The thing must have been using highly inflated stats than players have access to.

Today I had another mission where vultures were paired with an FDL an flying as a wing. Every single ship was responding the same way. Extreme amounts of shield health - extreme amounts of hull health. Even the vultures. There is absolutely no way concentrated energy weapons of this kind are not going to decimate a Vulture's shields, yet it took 2 minutes, and then another 2 for the hull. To test this out, I actually left the mission area, swapped out my pulse lasers with torpedo pylons, came back, spent another 2 minutes breaking a vulture's shield and then spammed torpedoes. It survived. They weren't being shot down by countermeasures - the hull dropped a bit with every hit, but it survived. A vulture. The sim experience went awol and became an MMORPG. This was a 'raid boss'.

This has no place in this game and I disagree vehemently with whatever lead decided this was the way to go with 'balancing'.
 

Archvillain

Archvillain
Related, is there any way to see if a player's module or ship is engineered at all? (Other than, y'know, The Hard Way... :ROFLMAO: )

I just assume everything is engineered to the gills, but maybe there is a smarter way :)
 
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