Mission Difficulty Limits?

[andrewg_oz]

I don't think I'm a totally rubbish pilot (in a pretty nice Cobra), but I've just been trying to complete a Hunter-Killer mission against an Elite Anaconda and the difficulty is so far beyond what I can do I'm finding it hard to believe! I've taken out Pythons with little difficulty, but this Anaconda is taking out my shields (A4) with one shot, then 25% chunks of my hull in quick succession. I can't even complete a KW scan without my canopy cracking! My D2 beams don't even seem to touch his shields!

I knew a 150,000Cr mission would be hard, and I thought 30hrs would have been plenty of time to find the target and have several goes at him. Well, it's been many hours, many goes and I haven't even come close. The Anaconda seems to be twice as maneuverable as my Cobra and invulnerable, while my Cobra feels more like my loaner Sidewinder.

I've now only got 5hrs on the timer, and RL commitments mean I'm going to fail the mission.

The level of frustration right now is off the scale I reckon the game should not generate such unbalanced opponents - it should take into account your ship and not offer impossible missions.

 

[Blast Hardcheese]

Most of those 100k+ cred missions are elite anacondas. I would recommend having at least one chaff launcher and one shield cell bank, and some very strong weapons, as well as amazing piloting, don't take them unless you're very confident you can beat them.

 

[Katkon]

Try the following:
- high quality shield cell banks; a B4 will give you 11 reloads
- chaff for avoiding his turreted lasers
- gimbaled beam laser(s) for taking down his shields; ideally one size 2
- size 2 dumbfire missile pod - gives you 36 missiles; only fire when his shields are down
- gimbaled MCs or cannons in the size 2 slots; or more dumbfire missile pods
- when you fight him be sure to aim for either his "FSD" or "power core" via subsystem targeting (this applies to the gimbaled weapons only)
- you can do all of the above with just beam lasers and gimbaled MCs, but dumbfire missiles finish the job very quickly. Aiming won't be a problem as you'll likely be up close and personal with him

Good luck!

 

[Renegade Roach]

If the missions were only offered to a certain ship size and above it would unfairly restrict those of us who like to do them in Cobras and Vipers. Now you know how tough they are you won't make the same mistake again....right?

 

[FaolGlas]

I finally knocked one down today. I went 4 gimballed multicannons on my Viper, made the shields hard, but once down, chews through the sub targeted system. I found that gimbals are the only way to get a sub system down to zero, for me anyway, had been running all fixed before but never did much damage to subsystems that way.

I went for the MCs just for power use, that way I could keep power in my shields more often. Still ran with a B3 shield cell. Had chaff, but never used it before, and forgot what the button was, so never used it, ahem. Going to go after more, is a fun pastime!

And aye, they are in a totally different league of difficulty compared to most anything you'll run into outwith the specific missions.

 

[andrewg_oz]

Thanks for the advice, guys. I've just got back to the PC and found the mission expired (as expected). Lesson learned - big paying missions need a big ship! Maybe when I have a Python or an Anaconda of my own.

I had previously taken out a random Anaconda at a Nav Beacon, so therefore thought I could handle this. As I write this there's a 193K mission on the board. I shudder to think what *that* would be like!

I have a pair of gimbaled beams and heatseekers, but I didn't even get close to getting the shields down to use the missiles or target sub-systems.

The chaff and shield cells are good ideas that I hadn't tried. Now that the mission has expired I'll simply try to select missions more to my capabilities.

All that was getting to me was the sheer speed at which this Anaconda was handing me my a**. I've not experienced anything like it before.