Quick question on this ganker's ship

[Deleted member 182079]

Came across this CMDR in a Phantom earlier today (and a few days ago), who appears to camp Farseer's base. Since he was wanted, I decided to help a couple of other goody-two-shoe CMDRs earlier to give him a slap on the wrist. I was running a shieldless hulltank FAS with 4x Plasmas in our initial engagement a few days ago, and since replaced the medium slots with a couple of packhounds (to match his loadout in that regard - they're darn annoying alright).

Now, I'm not sure if it's fishy or not but today we were 3 against him on his own (one Chieftan with feedback cascade rails, the other in an non-engineered ship so probably doesn't count for much). We couldn't for the life of us bring his shields down. Because his flying skills weren't that fancy, mostly jousting then straight-line reverski to charge his shields via SCBs, I managed to hit more often than not, and got his hull down to 70% or so before I ran out of ammo, and patience. He kept spamming SCBs while being hit by the feedback rails CMDR (and I think he ran bi-weaves, they glow purple, right?).

I don't want to accuse him of cheating, but am wondering if it's actually possible to build a Phantom that can resist such constant battering - maybe pack all your internals with SCBs in case they get shot by feedback cascade, and add lots of shield boosters (I unfortunately forgot to check out his internals on the scanner)? I'm not a good/experienced PvP pilot so maybe this is normal - just want to understand what I'm dealing with here.

 

[Fett_Li]

Topics like these are very hard to discuss without a video to judge by. This obviously seems fishy but this just might be the case because you missed something which would explain everything. One CMDRs perception isn't enough to form an opinion for me.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

Yeah understand. It was really more a question of "could this be possible" rather than "did this Cmdr cheat".

Fwiw though, my sort of wing mate found it odd, too. But yeah, didnt make a video as I'm already struggling with performance and it was very much a spur of the moment engagement to keep him away from the base at least (in that we did succeed).

 

[Phisto Sobanii]

The Phantom has a lot of power and internals for SCBs and Guardian Shield Boosters. Did you get a look at his load out? If he had low draw weapons, like frags or missiles, then he could've been running PIPS at 4-2-0 the entire time.

How many phasing weapons did you have? 70% hull strikes me as someone running very heavy shield tank.

I hear people joke about the Krait II being the "Cutter of mediums." Phantom wouldn't be far behind. Without video we can't say for sure but what I wrote above makes me think it was probably legit.

 

[Sethiest]

Krait is great. And you know it's true because it rhymes.

Also, do you use any software that records? Vido evidence is the best.

 

[cmdr Ramius007]

Bi-weave kraits are very hard to get down with only short range weapons, especially phantom, due to crazy regeneration of c6 bi-weaves along with guardian boosters, expect long fight vs those ships, and all plasma FAS without cascade rail have little chance vs those.

 

[Powderpanic]

The easiest test to spot a cheater is to look at the shield percentage. Hit him again a few times and then immediately look at the shield percentage.
If it hasn't moved at all, he's cheating. Doesn't matter how strong the shields are, you hit it enough times it will lose a %.

It would be nice to expect the development team to stop this sort of cheating but hey ho.

Powderpanic
The Voice of Griefing

 

[LeKeno]

I think I know who that is. I've run against him and I don't think any cheats are involved. It's a reverski Phantom with really good shields and scb but it's possible to drop them with the right weapons and a fast ship.

There are several of them, same squadron whose name is indicative of a specific PvP style

 

[Deleted member 182079]

The Phantom has a lot of power and internals for SCBs and Guardian Shield Boosters. Did you get a look at his load out? If he had low draw weapons, like frags or missiles, then he could've been running PIPS at 4-2-0 the entire time.

How many phasing weapons did you have? 70% hull strikes me as someone running very heavy shield tank.

I hear people joke about the Krait II being the "Cutter of mediums." Phantom wouldn't be far behind. Without video we can't say for sure but what I wrote above makes me think it was probably legit.

My initial loadout was 2 large PA's, G5'd, with phasing effect, and 2 medium PA's, also G5'd, with target lock and dispersal field effects. Actually made less of a dent on him during that first encounter. I play with a pad so hitting a ship with those weapons isn't easy for me, yet I landed quite a few hits during both encounters.

The loadout in my last encounter was the same 2 large PA's, and 2 G5'd high cap packhounds, one with drag, the other with thermal cascade (I think - had them lying around and just used them rather than applying effects to suit the fight at hand).

He was using packhounds and I -think- rails, but I couldn't tell you his loadout unfortunately (normally I check this but I guess in the heat of the moment it didn't cross my mind).

 

[Deleted member 182079]

Krait is great. And you know it's true because it rhymes.

Also, do you use any software that records? Vido evidence is the best.

I'm afraid I don't as I'm playing on a laptop and am already struggling with performance. Don't want to drop visuals for the sake of being able to record, as I hardly ever get into PvP (or the need to use video proof). Do appreciate though that people will struggle to comment due to lack of visual evidence.

Edit - love your Musha Aleste avatar pic by the way!

The easiest test to spot a cheater is to look at the shield percentage. Hit him again a few times and then immediately look at the shield percentage.
If it hasn't moved at all, he's cheating. Doesn't matter how strong the shields are, you hit it enough times it will lose a %.

It would be nice to expect the development team to stop this sort of cheating but hey ho.

Powderpanic
The Voice of Griefing

That's a good tip, never thought about that (only ever look at the rings which aren't as accurate). Funnily enough I do take this approach when fighting Interceptors, so duh.

His shields did suffer but I was just thinking of how many SCBs you'd have to stack - the fight lasted for maybe 10-15 minutes (which I guess isn't that long) and not all my shots hit. If you consider damage falloff (is there any with PAs?) then yeah could well be legit, and probably is. Definitely will need to pay attention to his loadout next time. No idea why I didn't this particular time. Do SCBs show in the left hand panel, by the way? As I believe HRPs don't.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

I think I know who that is. I've run against him and I don't think any cheats are involved. It's a reverski Phantom with really good shields and scb but it's possible to drop them with the right weapons and a fast ship.

There are several of them, same squadron whose name is indicative of a specific PvP style

Yep I think we're talking about the same person, squadron name checks out

What sort of weapons would you recommend? LR beams?

 

[Phisto Sobanii]

Yep I think we're talking about the same person, squadron name checks out

What sort of weapons would you recommend? LR beams?

If they're rollin' heavy SCBs consider rapid fire phasing lasers. Burn down the hull inside the shield.

 

[Sethiest]

If they're rollin' heavy SCBs consider rapid fire phasing lasers. Burn down the hull inside the shield.

This is good. Long range MAYBE if theyre always keeping that 3-4kmish distance. If you can get up in their grill rapid fire phasing is awesome. Just remember that pulses actually outdo burst when using rapid fire. Furthermore a phantom has space for hull, but if they have 2 SCBs their hull won't be amazing. 5 seconds of fire should show a drop to 99% at least.

Edit - love your Musha Aleste avatar pic by the way!

Criminally underated!

 

[dm06]

How much torpedo pylons with reverberating cascade does it require to destroy shield generator?..

 

[cmdr Ramius007]

My initial loadout was 2 large PA's, G5'd, with phasing effect, and 2 medium PA's, also G5'd, with target lock and dispersal field effects. Actually made less of a dent on him during that first encounter. I play with a pad so hitting a ship with those weapons isn't easy for me, yet I landed quite a few hits during both encounters.

If you run shieldless or hybrid FAS or even bi-weave shield tank with guardian stuff, as long as you use armoured PP consider squeezing more firepower from your harpoints, SR mod provide extra 50 damage vs efficient c3 PA, with single one you should not run into heat issues, but you may add 2nd or even 3rd, but then extra HS to cool down your guns become essential, this way you make place for railgun or other weapons in medium slots without losing your short range firepower and make more balanced build. Cancelling shield regen even with low DPS weapon is worth more than stats show.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

How much torpedo pylons with reverberating cascade does it require to destroy shield generator?..

3 IIRC... but you got to get them to hit first

 

[Morbad]

How much torpedo pylons with reverberating cascade does it require to destroy shield generator?..

Depends on the shield generator integrity. 3-4 hits will do it for most any medium, but hitting a pilot, that knows what they are doing, with torpedoes is not easy.

 

[dm06]

but hitting a pilot, that knows what they are doing, with torpedoes is not easy.

So what do we have left here to do with the dude(s)? Swarm of sidewinders/vipers/eagles with long range phasing sequence pulse lasers?..

 

[Aashenfox]

As lekeno points out we know exactly who you're talking about, there are three pilots with the same mo from the same squadron. They execute reverski very well with rails and seekers, there isn't much you can do. Every time I face them I fought to the death and let them destroy me, trying to learn as much as I can. Anyone can execute this with a bit of practice, it is quite simply the most effective fighting style in the game, though deadly boring to fly and to fly against. Some will remember me going on about this a fair bit the last few months. The Phantom simply has too much speed and capacitor.

P.S. They aren't cheating. I believe

 

[Morbad]

So what do we have left here to do with the dude(s)? Swarm of sidewinders/vipers/eagles with long range phasing sequence pulse lasers?..

When I've had major issues against all rail phantoms while flying a decently fast medium (anything faster than a FAS) it was usually because I had torpedoes or some other overly specialized (for other purposes) weapon equipped and simply couldn't deliver competitive damage at any range.

All of my mediums that aren't experimental or 'meme' builds have decent thermic resistance and good regeneration; most also have at least one long range weapon of their own. Generally, I try to stay as close as possible for as long as possible. If they manage to break away and get into fall-off/frequent miss distance of whatever weapons I'm using, I duplicate their reverski, or just turn and run, until they start to close the gap again (preferably dumping a sink on the way back in to break their target lock until I'm ready to fire), then I start the cycle over. It's tedious and not always workable, especially if they have bigger bi-weave sheilds and you can't suppress enough of their regeneration, but the saving grace of an opponent that has only railguns is that they have no absolute damage component, no emissive, and will usually melt themselves if they just fire as fast as possible.

A shieldless FAS is at a huge disadvantage in a battle of attrition against a heavily shielded target (or even one where regeneration cannot be locked down) with long range hitscan weapons that it's only barely able to keep pace with.