PvP PvP tips - video of my destruction, what to improve

[Nerix]

I'm not that much into PvP but submitted because I wanted to give it a try. Here we go:

Source: https://youtu.be/anzXJvmHgYE


My build: https://edsy.org/#/L=F600000H4C0S00...H0BK_W023u001IM1068MH030_W0,Build_0for_0nerix (might have been slightly altered, I think I hadn't have the HRPs equipped).

First I thought it doesn't go that bad, but when my shield went down it was a matter of seconds.

A few questions:
1. I think my damage output against the shields was ok, but I couldn't scratch his hull. Why is that? Btw, im really bad with my two small rail guns...

2. Why is my hull destroyed so quickly, what kind of weapons did my opponent use?

3. Any general tips what I did wrong / can improve?

 

[Iron Body]

I don't do pvp, but I noticed the following :
1) Did you actually use your shield cell banks ?
2) You didn't use your lateral thrusters and roll to avoid what looked like railguns/plasmas.
3) You brought his shields down in reasonable time, but didn't have or use anything to damage the hull. I use class 4 multi-cannon for that.

 

[Nerix]

1) Yes, I used several (see my heat indicator - usually I use one SCB, one heatsink and then another SCB).

Thanks for 2/3. Also happy about loadout tips (or switching to fixed, but can't imagine I'll be ever good with those in my conda).

Perhaps someone around who has some PvP experience?

 

[Northpin]

Why not firing the rails when the Chief took distance??
I'd say you took too much time to drop Chief's shields. They usually are played as hull tanks with rather low shields (they also recovered their shields in less than a minute - which means the shields were not big indeed - so i'd say 600-700mj raw tops - if they kept 4 pips in shields for the entire minute)
Frag turrets are rather bad - their timing is off most of the time. Switch to gimbaled ones and fire them under 500m,
Try not to waste wep capacitor by firing the beams at 2+ km - by minute 3:30 you were wasting the wep cap and had nothting to fire with during the next 15s
When shields are down, target the drives if you fight alliance ships. Their drives can be hit basically from any angle.
If any other ship type, go for Fsd or powerplant.

Outfitting and engineering wise... you sure that was the build? you dont lose 65% of 7k hull in 20 seconds.
you need at least 2 MRP, 3-4 HRP and certainly not a srv hangar or a slf hangar that is never used
Also, i'd drop the 3rd scb - and if you engineer them do it with G4 rapid charge - they're harder to cancel with 3s spinup time.
Make sure you have some corrosive damage (on frags or mc)

Edit: and switch the A rated sensors for d-rated with long range.
And maybe use a prismatic instead of the Bi-weave

 

[Morbad]

Some issues in piloting:

• Slow and neglectful pip management
• Inadequate use of vertical/lateral thrust
• Poor use of boost and the FA off toggles
• Not using close passes for ram attempts
• Firing through chaff instead of conserving WEP
• Leaving HD boosters enabled even as your shield fell way below the threshold they'd do anything other than hurt your resistances
• Not pressing the attack with the rails (preferably against the distributor or shield gen) as your opponent disengaged to recharge.
• Not leveraging your larger, faster regenerating shield to rebuild while your opponent was disengaged (if you have only a sliver of shield left and your opponent is moving off, reboot your own shield and turn off all of your HD boosters).

All together these reduced your relative time on target, resulted in your ship taking more damage than it needed to, and cost opportunities to both damage one's opponent more.

I don't really like your build, but that's a lesser issue.

 

[SergMx]

Some issues in piloting:

• Slow and neglectful pip management
• Inadequate use of vertical/lateral thrust
• Poor use of boost and the FA off toggles
• Not using close passes for ram attempts
• Firing through chaff instead of conserving WEP
• Leaving HD boosters enabled even as your shield fell way below the threshold they'd do anything other than hurt your resistances
• Not pressing the attack with the rails (preferably against the distributor or shield gen) as your opponent disengaged to recharge.
• Not leveraging your larger, faster regenerating shield to rebuild while your opponent was disengaged (if you have only a sliver of shield left and your opponent is moving off, reboot your own shield and turn off all of your HD boosters).

All together these reduced your relative time on target, resulted in your ship taking more damage than it needed to, and cost opportunities to both damage one's opponent more.

I don't really like your build, but that's a lesser issue.

In other words, it's okay to use non-fix beams.
Next, about the fitting, isn't one little pellet enough to start corrosion?

 

[Nerix]

Thanks for the helpful answers.

Outfitting and engineering wise... you sure that was the build? you dont lose 65% of 7k hull in 20 seconds.

Just rechecked it - as I was on some delivery missions I hadn't equipped my target build, but quite similar. Less SCBs , HRPs and Shield boosters, but some additional Guardian Shield boosters. This is the one I had equipped:
https://edsy.org/#/L=F600000H4C0S00..._W07wv001IM102jwH09G001P000,Build_0for_0nerix

Some Questions:
- What kind of weapons did my opponent use? Curious how he destroyed my hull that fast.

Poor use of boost and the FA off toggles

How is it done right, when should I toggle FA off and boost?

Leaving HD boosters enabled even as your shield fell way below the threshold they'd do anything other than hurt your resistances

- What is the the threshold where they become useless?

Not leveraging your larger, faster regenerating shield to rebuild while your opponent was disengaged (if you have only a sliver of shield left and your opponent is moving off, reboot your own shield and turn off all of your HD boosters.

- What does rebooting do, do I have a full shield afterwards? How long does that take?

 

[Northpin]

- What kind of weapons did my opponent use? Curious how he destroyed my hull that fast.

Think i've seen Frags, cannons and a super pen rail
So probably 2 large frags, 3 small cannons and a medium rail

- What does rebooting do, do I have a full shield afterwards? How long does that take?

reboot will repair your 0 intergrity modules to 1% and will bring back your shields to 50% as long you dont take any damage during the reboot and your speed is less than 50 (iirc it was 50, but best is to come to a full stop)
and it takes like 25s

 

[Just Paul]

- What kind of weapons did my opponent use? Curious how he destroyed my hull that fast.

Looked like 2 Pacifiers, 1 or 2 speed matched force shell cannons (you went 500+m/s at one point), and some feedback rails.
You could friend them in game and ask. I'm sure they will tell you their load-out and what to do better, probably even help you to git gud.

 

[Morbad]

Next, about the fitting, isn't one little pellet enough to start corrosion?

Yes.

What kind of weapons did my opponent use? Curious how he destroyed my hull that fast.

You should get in the habit of checking the loadouts of opponents on the sub targets pane, preferably before being interdicted.

That said I saw what was probably some pacifiers, at least one force shell cannon, and an MC. If I had to guess the mix I'd saw dual incendiary pacifiers, a corrosive MC and three small fixed force shell cannon to keep projectile velocity up, but I'd need to watch the video again to be sure.

How is it done right, when should I toggle FA off and boost?

FA off use will depend on the situation and how proficient you are with it. A the very least it can be used to open and maintain distance until you can get the target back in your sights, generally when the opponent has just passed you and needs to reverse their own direction of movement.

Boost should be used whenever you want to open up distance, close distance, ram someone, avoid being rammed, or rotate faster (especially in combination with FA off). Being more specific would require me to annotate your video...and is rather subjective regardless. Such specific tips are less important than being aware that you have more tools to leverage in these situations.

- What is the the threshold where they become useless?

When turning them off doesn't reduce max shielding below what you currently have.

- What does rebooting do, do I have a full shield afterwards? How long does that take?

I should probably have clarified a bit.

I wasn't referring to reboot/repair, I was referring to power cycling the shield generator.

Collapsed regen is much faster than active regen and when your opponent ran off to rebuild his shield, you could have power cycled yours, and had more shielding available by the time you reengaged, if you had turned off most of your HD boosters.

Looked like 2 Pacifiers, 1 or 2 speed matched force shell cannons (you went 500+m/s at one point), and some feedback rails.
You could friend them in game and ask. I'm sure they will tell you their load-out and what to do better, probably even help you to git gud.

I'm not sure if I saw a rail or an MC, but I specifically did not see any feedback rails. OP used several banks and none of them seemed to be interrupted.

 

[Northpin]

I'm not sure if I saw a rail or an MC, but I specifically did not see any feedback rails. OP used several banks and none of them seemed to be interrupted.

think i saw some blue weapon effects - isn't that superpen rail default color?

 

[Morbad]

think i saw some blue weapon effects - isn't that superpen rail default color?

Default rail color is blue-white, superpen is gold, while feedback is a blue.

OP's opponent was using the blue weapon color cosmetic. Pretty common in PvP because it's harder to see and obfuscates both projectiles and their effects to some degree.

I just looked at it again, there is definitely an MC and no rails on the Chieftain.

This segment around 2:20 clearly shows the MC:

Source: https://youtu.be/anzXJvmHgYE?t=140


I'm not sure if there were three enforcers and one force cannon, or one MC and three force cannon...I'd need to look more closely for the cannon projectiles...which are hard to see in blue.

 

[Nerix]

Thanks, that helps. Power cycling shield generator means to turn it off and back on, or what?

 

[Morbad]

There are a few issues I noted about your attempt to withdraw:

If at all possible, you never want to expose the tail of your ship (thrusters are a weak spot) to your enemy if at all possible, and if you are trying to escape, don't straighten out until your FSD has almost completed charging.

Also, your power priorities should be set up so a PP malfunction (which is 40% power) cannot shut down your drives or FSD. Hybrid vessels (anything with biweave shields and enough hull to expect to get shields back up before being destroyed) also significantly benefit from being able to keep the shield generator and power distributor below 40% as well, along with thrusters and FSD. If your shields go down and you have any significant degree of hull, power plant malfunctions are almost inevitable, especially in an Anaconda, which has a very exposed PP. So, you want to minimize the impact of those malfunctions...having guns, SCBs, boosters, and life support lose power is way better than losing the ability to maneuver, losing an FSD charge, or losing all the progress toward shield rebuild.

Thanks, that helps. Power cycling shield generator means to turn it off and back on, or what?

Yes.

Note this is only beneficial if you have some breathing room (otherwise your opponents will knock it out and save you the trouble) and are at such low shielding that you won't lose much by starting a rebuild from scratch. It's utility is pretty niche and I don't do it often.

 

[Morbad]

I looked for some videos where I was fighting hostile chieftains in a large ship. I don't do much combat in the Anaconda, but the same principles apply to the Corvette:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVsDL9XIrkc

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAFB_2Necjc


Might help put your encounter in context if you can see someone else's mistakes (and I certainly made plenty) and successes (didn't explode) in vaguely similar circumstances.

Second one is probably more useful, as the ship my CMDR is in doesn't have shields in the first one.

 

[SergMx]

I looked for some videos where I was fighting hostile chieftains in a large ship. I don't do much combat in the Anaconda, but the same principles apply to the Corvette:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVsDL9XIrkc

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAFB_2Necjc


Might help put your encounter in context if you can see someone else's mistakes (and I certainly made plenty) and successes (didn't explode) in vaguely similar circumstances.

Second one is probably more useful, as the ship my CMDR is in doesn't have shields in the first one.

These ships cannot be compared. The Corvette is much more maneuverable than the Anaconda.

But I'm more interested in the shotgun and corrosion question. Either I misunderstood or I want to hear what percentage of shot must hit for the corrosion to work.

 

[Morbad]

These ships cannot be compared. The Corvette is much more maneuverable than the Anaconda.

They have almost identical thruster acceleration and boost profiles. I'm pretty sure they have almost the same blue zone response (Edit: the conda is flatter, which is better and why the ship is more forgiving in FA Off than most). They are fairly close in ENG pip response, with a small advantage for the vette. The Corvette wins in pitch and roll, but not by a huge margin, especially since a combat vette is several hundred tons more massive than a combat conda while using the same thrusters. The Anaconda has significantly better yaw.

Overall, they're quite close.

But I'm more interested in the shotgun and corrosion question. Either I misunderstood or I want to hear what percentage of shot must hit for the corrosion to work.

Corrosion is entirely binary. Any hit from any corrosive weapon applies the full effect for the full duration.

 

[SergMx]

They have almost identical thruster acceleration and boost profiles. I'm pretty sure they have almost the same blue zone response (Edit: the conda is flatter, which is better and why the ship is more forgiving in FA Off than most). They are fairly close in ENG pip response, with a small advantage for the vette. The Corvette wins in pitch and roll, but not by a huge margin, especially since a combat vette is several hundred tons more massive than a combat conda while using the same thrusters. The Anaconda has significantly better yaw.

Overall, they're quite close.



Corrosion is entirely binary. Any hit from any corrosive weapon applies the full effect for the full duration.

Very surprised to learn that the Anaconda is as maneuverable as the Corvette ...

 

[Morbad]

Very surprised to learn that the Anaconda is as maneuverable as the Corvette ...

The main thing people tend to focus on is middle of blue zone pitch rate, which, while important is far from everything. Even with regard to pitch, the Anaconda ties (or slightly beats) the Corvette at full speed due to the way the different speed vs. rotational multiplier curves work.

I'm not saying they are the same--and tend to prefer the Corvette myself--but they are roughly equivalent, when configured similarly, if that makes sense.

An Anaconda can usually keep a bead on smaller ships nearly as well as the the vette can, but the vette can be more defensive as it has better low-end acceleration (important for changing movement direction) and it's high rate of roll goes well with it's thin profile for protecting internals from damage.

Some references:

Effect of engine pips on agility

I just decided to mix things up and take my AspEx to a fight (for the first time). I ended up having to run away because it was sooo different to my Vulture. I had used Coriolis to spec it out and ensure that it wasn't too horribly compromised wrt my Vulture. So it had better DPS but somewhat...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Pitch Roll and Acceleration for (nearly) Everyship.

Pitch Roll and Acceleration for (nearly) Everyship. (UPDATED for 1.5Beta) {Disclaimer: These figures are intended for comparison and reference only. There is no substitute for hours in the cockpit finding out what your ship can and can't do. Clever use of FA-off and thrusters can achieve...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Max Speed, Boost, Pitch, Roll & Yaw for Every Ship in Game [Official FDev Stats]

Status: Up to date for Live 2.2.03 The table below sets our every ship's (unmodded) official maximum cruising speed, boosting speed, pitch, roll and yaw stats. I have catalogued the data directly from in-game Outfitting using the best available unmodded thrusters and applicable minimum mass...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Note the unusually flat speed vs. rotational curve on the Conda. This is why people often comment on the ship feeling right FA-Off...it needs much less thruster micromanagement to keep rotationals acceptable and can drift at full speed while still being able to rotate around, even without a boost (though boost makes it much better, of course).

 

[Nerix]

Interesting. What is the general recommendation for pips and thruster micromanagement?

Usually I tend to put most pips to SYS and WEP, and then just go to 50% throttle to stay in the blue. Probably not the best strategy.