Newcomer / Intro PVE combat - Newbie in ship combat - old Explorer/Trader

StumpyMat

S
Hi All,

Im a UK player solo that only get an hour or 2 in the evenings - I've been enjoying Elite on and off for years - I keep trying ship combat, but disheartened when it take me in a vulture (lightly Engineered) ages to take down a ship

I'm sure I'm doing something wrong - I'm shooting, getting ride of shields (not too bad), but the hull take forever - on youtube I see people take a vulture in unengineered and take out ships fairly quickly

I try to keep as close as possible (normally 1 to 2 k) - but in low conflict zones, I get 1 or 2 ships before I run out of ammo or have too much damage

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous
coriolis.io coriolis.io

Any help would be fantastic - as I enjoy combat, but it feels like I'm shooting a pea shooter
 

metatheurgist

metatheurgist
First off, ships in CZs are combat hardened. They are much more difficult to take down than ships in other parts of the game. Go try some RES or Nav beacons instead.

Shields are weak to thermal damage, hull is weak to kinetic (generally). Incendiary rounds converts a chunk of your damage to thermal, so the shields disappear fast but you are left beating your fists on hull with less damage. Try only one incendiary.
 

Factabulous

Factabulous
meta has good advice. I'd move up to a medium ship if you can - FdL or mamba work well - as they will give you more damage (and shields). I avoid using small ships for combat as they do make it difficult (though others will choose them for the challenge). And try to get to G3 engineering as that will get you more DPS and the mat requirements aren't too bad.

Also : Are you targeting modules? Specifically you should be targeting the powerplant (or drives on some ships) so that you have a chance for a quicker kill (if you can get the PP down to 0% the ship will explode without needing to chip the hull down to 0%).
 

StumpyMat

S
Awesome advise Meta and Fact - I made the mistake of taking kill missions for kill X number of faction ships - are those only for CZs (Mainly)

lol earning - 200m per hour of trading or exploring is nice money, I would love to make combat pay (at least 30% of that) -
 

aRJay

aRJay
You say you are usually between 1 - 2 km from target, your guns start to falloff ie be less effective at 1.8 km so try to get a little closer.

If you can switching one to the Corrosive round should speed up dealing with the hull.

As has been said ships in CZs are built for war so there will be no space not used for defences or weapons. This does mean that frequent disengagements to reammo and repair are quite normal.

I have made some tweaks to your build adding reinforcements engineering the armour and changing/adding special effects.

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous
coriolis.io coriolis.io

Personally I wouldn’t use a Vulture but that’s just me.
 

Helmut Grokenberger

Helmut Grokenberger
The severity of a Conflict Zone (low/medium/high) doesn't really impact the difficulty of the enemies. It's more how many ships need to be destroyed and what, if any, additional challenges are present; low CZs have none, mediums and highs can have Spec Ops, War Corrospondents, enemy captains and capital ships in addition to the "normal" cannon fodder. The enemy ships in a low CZ will still be heavily armed and possibly engineered. If anything, low CZs might have a bias towards smaller enemy ships.

It's been a while since I've been in anything other than a Hazardous RES, but a RES site in general is much less dangerous than a CZ. Unless you have cargo, the pirates will not attack you unless you shoot them first. Also, in low, medium and high RES sites the cops will help you and also be constantly engaging wanted ships on their own. I am not too sure about enemy scaling, but I imagine enemies in a high might be a bit tougher and maybe a few ranks above you than in a low one. Wanted ships in a RES site will not be engineered though.

If you are quite new to NPC combat, even low CZs will be a significant step up from any RES sites. I remember when I was starting people were saying low CZs are actually more dangerous than medium and high, because, depending on your rank, you might be the highest threat in the CZ and thus be a prime target, whereas in medium and high it might be more balanced out. I don't remember if that is true though.

If you seek guidance and mentoring, maybe NEWP could be something for you. I have no personal experience with them though.
 

Helmut Grokenberger

Helmut Grokenberger
Factabulous said:
(if you can get the PP down to 0% the ship will explode without needing to chip the hull down to 0%).
Click to expand...
Just to clarify: When the PP is at 0%, two things will happen. First of all, the NPCs will not recharge their shields anymore, because their power priorities switch them off when the PP goes down. So you don't have to deal with recharging and rebuilding shields anymore, which can be annoying if you don't have enough DPS to kill them quickly ;).

Secondly, each additional hit on the PP has the chance to trigger a catastrophic failure in the PP, making the ship go boom. I think it used to be pretty much guaranteed, but now it is more or less random. It will happen eventually, but it might take a few (or a few more) additional hits on the PP to trigger it. I have had Anacondas explode with 40% hull and more when pelting their power plants with MCs. But you have to keep shooting the PP module.
 

Helmut Grokenberger

Helmut Grokenberger
aRJay said:
You say you are usually between 1 - 2 km from target, your guns start to falloff ie be less effective at 1.8 km so try to get a little closer.

If you can switching one to the Corrosive round should speed up dealing with the hull.

As has been said ships in CZs are built for war so there will be no space not used for defences or weapons. This does mean that frequent disengagements to reammo and repair are quite normal.

I have made some tweaks to your build adding reinforcements engineering the armour and changing/adding special effects.

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous
coriolis.io coriolis.io

Personally I wouldn’t use a Vulture but that’s just me.
Click to expand...
One thing to do to that Vulture would be swapping the 4E MRP to a 4D. I would generally do the shields differently if materials and engineer access alow for it, but there are a few philosophies about that. Here's what I'd probably do to that Vulture, again, mats and access permitting.

Edit: Oh, and as soon as I had access to long range engineering, I'd swap the sensors for D-Class LR ones.
 

aRJay

aRJay
Helmut Grokenberger said:
The severity of a Conflict Zone (low/medium/high) doesn't really impact the difficulty of the enemies. It's more how many ships need to be destroyed and what, if any, additional challenges are present; low CZs have none, mediums and highs can have Spec Ops, War Corrospondents, enemy captains and capital ships in addition to the "normal" cannon fodder. The enemy ships in a low CZ will still be heavily armed and possibly engineered. If anything, low CZs might have a bias towards smaller enemy ships.

It's been a while since I've been in anything other than a Hazardous RES, but a RES site in general is much less dangerous than a CZ. Unless you have cargo, the pirates will not attack you unless you shoot them first. Also, in low, medium and high RES sites the cops will help you and also be constantly engaging wanted ships on their own. I am not too sure about enemy scaling, but I imagine enemies in a high might be a bit tougher and maybe a few ranks above you than in a low one. Wanted ships in a RES site will not be engineered though.

If you are quite new to NPC combat, even low CZs will be a significant step up from any RES sites. I remember when I was starting people were saying low CZs are actually more dangerous than medium and high, because, depending on your rank, you might be the highest threat in the CZ and thus be a prime target, whereas in medium and high it might be more balanced out. I don't remember if that is true though.

If you seek guidance and mentoring, maybe NEWP could be something for you. I have no personal experience with them though.
Click to expand...
I can't remember when the switch came but before the current 3 tier system CZs used to only come in Low and High the major difference between them was the number of ships present on each side. The risk in a low CZ was that your side would eliminate all the enemy ships at a cost to their own numbers at which point the next full wave of the enemy would jump in and you would soon be the target of almost all the ships present. Highs were much safer as you were one ship among many so much less likely to be ganged up on.

Inertia and old guides being what they are the advice would persist for a while.
 

aRJay

aRJay
StumpyMat said:
Where do you go to source you pirate kills, as I could not take on CZ currently?
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You don’t get pirates in a CZ which is why I removed the Kill Warrant Scanner from that Vulture build.
Personally I go to the Resource Extraction Sites, usually nowadays Hazardous or High, because all the rocks around make the flying interesting. Compromised Nav Beacons as well but I find them less interesting. Starting out I would use the other levels more.

There are also various signal sources with pirate activity but I have rarely if ever visited them.

Note I don’t usually do missions so wouldn’t know where they would send you.
 

tolm

tolm
I found CZs and HAZRES combat far too hard before I engineered my ships. But Low/Med/High RES were okay even without engineering and could be a good place to get some target practice in?

I think something like a Chieftain could be worth a go: highly mobile, lots of hardpoints, great hull and can even have decent shields if you unlock the Guardian Reinforcement Modules. Cheap too - compared to the FDL/Mamba.

If you’re struggling with hull damage (and CZ ships can be a real pain for that, IME!) then prioritising your larger hardpoints for projectile weapons and - if you have access - putting corrosive on a multi-cannon can really help.

For example, my standard PvE combat Chieftain would be running 2x C1 / 1xC2 Long Range Beam Lasers and then 2x C3 / 1x C1 multi cannons, with corrosive on the small MC.
 

Factabulous

Factabulous
Factions at war will give you missions to take part in those wars. If you choose a system with factions not at war they are more likely to be bothered with the local pirates.

edit: Faction states can be found in the right tab of the right HUD panel - or the system map has a faction list with their states (but doesn't show all the states sadly)

edit2: Ofc factions can still give missions for pirates even in a war, but they might be distracted by the war. Same goes for many other faction states - it's complex!

edit3: Personally I would steer clear of those massacre missions until you have combat sorted - they often ask for large numbers of kills and I always get bored before I have done them. YMMV
 
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