Newcomer / Intro Newbie here and asking for advice

[ebermudez]

Hello there,

I am a newbie Commander here. Although I had been playing for some very sporadic time, I always ended up frustrated because I always ended blew up. Now that I have returned I decided to ask for some advice. Currently, I have a Vulture without engineering (I am in the process), equipped with a multi cannon and a pulse laser. Both gimballed. I have this for when I play PvE and rarely play on PvP.

I am looking for some advice. Is this a good ship to learn to fight, or would it be better that I would buy a Fer-de-Lance or any other ship to start? And, is there any good advice or tips to improve the fighting skills? Because I have found myself that I end up lots of time trying to "catch the tail" of the other ship while they are shooting at me. I have read on other forums that some people try to blow up the powerplant to kill them faster but I have absolutely 0 ideas of how to do so.

Thank you very much.

 

[Chris Simon]

Hello there,

I am a newbie Commander here. Although I had been playing for some very sporadic time, I always ended up frustrated because I always ended blew up. Now that I have returned I decided to ask for some advice. Currently, I have a Vulture without engineering (I am in the process), equipped with a multi cannon and a pulse laser. Both gimballed. I have this for when I play PvE and rarely play on PvP.

I am looking for some advice. Is this a good ship to learn to fight, or would it be better that I would buy a Fer-de-Lance or any other ship to start? And, is there any good advice or tips to improve the fighting skills? Because I have found myself that I end up lots of time trying to "catch the tail" of the other ship while they are shooting at me. I have read on other forums that some people try to blow up the powerplant to kill them faster but I have absolutely 0 ideas of how to do so.

Thank you very much.

Hi.
Vulture is a good ship. It's kind of the opposite of the Fer-de-Lance though, so the question of which ship is "better" for you will depend on which style of combat you prefer.
Vulture is definitely the cheapest of the "adult" combat ships, so it's nice for a newbie as the death doesn't cost as much.
It is also very agile ship. It should win most turning fights and believe me, if you have problems staying on target in a Vulture, any other ship will be MUCH worse, so you may be doing something wrong (pips to engines, throttle in the blue zone and you should outturn anything except the Eagle)
Because of its agility and relatively low damage output, Vulture's time on target is crucial.
Ships like Fer-de-Lance are faster but turn much worse so with them, you have to employ a jousting match of sorts - Big burst of damage, fly away, turn, close in and hit them again. Every pilot prefers something different, so it's up to you to try it out and find out which one you are.

As for the powerplant targeting - there is a binding in the controls settings under "Targeting" section called "Target next/previous subsystem", if you bind it, it will let you cycle through the enemy ship's modules and target them individually. Powerplant and thrusters are an obvious choice, of course, but you can also disable their weapons, life support, etc. It's fun to experiment with this. If you don't have buttons to spare, you can also target the subsystems via the left hand ćontrol panel in your cockpit

 

[ebermudez]

Thank you very much for your answer. To be honest, I have seen videos of the Fer-de-Lance and I saw it ad more firepower, but more firepower is not always better if you can't hit them. I will stick with my Vulture. Maybe the problem is that I feel I am constantly accelerating and stopping my ship. I had never though about placing it on the blue zone. I thought that the blue zone indicator was only to have a speed reference for flying.

 

[Chris Simon]

Thank you very much for your answer. To be honest, I have seen videos of the Fer-de-Lance and I saw it ad more firepower, but more firepower is not always better if you can't hit them. I will stick with my Vulture. Maybe the problem is that I feel I am constantly accelerating and stopping my ship. I had never though about placing it on the blue zone. I thought that the blue zone indicator was only to have a speed reference for flying.

The blue zone is the point of the highest manoeuvrability. You can keep the throttle there for the whole duration of the fight (unless you're chasing somebody) and only use Boost from time to time to get ou of the enemy crosshairs.

 

[ebermudez]

Again, thank you very much.

A little question to conclude... when using lateral thrusters or the ones that go up and down... they are also affected when I am on the blue zone or not?

 

[Chris Simon]

Again, thank you very much.

A little question to conclude... when using lateral thrusters or the ones that go up and down... they are also affected when I am on the blue zone or not?

Not sure they are directly affected per se, but their effect is higher at the "blue zone speed", so technically yes.
They are affected by the number of pips you've got in the ENG capacitor, though.

 

[d8veh]

Thank you very much for your answer. To be honest, I have seen videos of the Fer-de-Lance and I saw it ad more firepower, but more firepower is not always better if you can't hit them. I will stick with my Vulture. Maybe the problem is that I feel I am constantly accelerating and stopping my ship. I had never though about placing it on the blue zone. I thought that the blue zone indicator was only to have a speed reference for flying.

That's a really bad thing to do. The best thing about the Vulture is its agility and change of speed. You need to fly backwards when dealing with small ships.

Try watching this. You might get some ideas:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqPTEHgWW_A