Ran into an Imp. Cutter with good shields. like...REALLY good shields. Like not even BUDGING shields.

NorthernDevo

NorthernDevo
Yo folks!
I ran into a somewhat curious situation - I'm down in Ackwada having fun with a nice blend of PvP and PvE. Only been killed once fortunately, double-teamed by a pair of Dangerous-level Challengers - though I've certainly had to book it out of there a couple of times. Overall I'm quite pleased; I'm getting GREAT FA/Off practice in, really loving this new HOTAS setup and can honestly say I'm improving quite a bit - finally.

I think you can guess the question from the title of this post; let me recount the details. I am currently flying my beloved G5 MC-equipped Krait II Xeno's Paradox; and loving her more by the minute as I start to REALLY be able to use her. I was in the CZ having a WHALE of a good time - besides NPC's I'd taken out one Dangerous guy flying a Chieftain in a fair fight; no heat sinks or SCB's popped, 3/4 ammo. Next open pip was an Imp Cutter, rank Expert. Shrug - he's a Bad guy so I engage...and run SMACK into a wall.

I've thought that with an Expert rating, the guy could be an Alt, but discounted it as immaterial - someone with Expert could easily be a MUCH better PvPer than me, though he wasn't really flying all that great. (Of course...neither was I. ;) ) I had no problems keeping my guns on him throughout the fight AND staying away from his front arc. The PROBLEM was I might as well have been shooting peashooters at him. Almost NO damage to his shields and I was hosing him down from short range with 3 Lg. G5 Inc/Ovc MC's, 1 Med Inc/Eff and one Corrosive/Eff, all with Premium.

I should have booked when I saw zero damage, but I was curious, so kept on hosing him down. Draining the rest of my ammo took him down ONE ring. He managed to get some hits on me, I've no idea WHAT those cyan beams and bursts were, but he forced me to pop SCB's twice, blasting my shields in just a few minutes. When my ammo was gone I ran - not at all upset, proud of the way my blood-red-baby had stood up but quite curious.
What on EARTH could that guy have been using for shields? Their charge animation was normal cyan so I don't think prismatics, but whatever they were, they were TOUGH. I'd killed at least one other player Cutter (yesterday, IIRC) and he was NOTHING like this guy.

From the description, can you tell what shields he likely had? Whatever they were I WANT ONE! :D

Sorry or the length of the post, I wanted to provide as much info about the duel as possible and am, frankly, totally jazzed - I haven't had this much fun in ED since...well, since I got ED. :D

Thanks, friends!
 

gorankar

gorankar
You were using kinetics against a Cutter. I figure the wall you were hitting was 12-17K worth of shield hit points against kinetic. Cutter is an absolute shield beast when properly outfit/engineered. Most, typically try to deal with them with torps and/or PA's. MC are about the worst thing to go after one of those with. It was just a bad match up for you.

Edit: an example of a cutter build. Ignore the weapons portion it's, one of my funtime PvE ambush builds. https://s.orbis.zone/9m0H
If you think this one is dumb, you should see my one punch Corvette.
 
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Amanojaku

Amanojaku
He probably had class 8 reinforced Prismatic shields with a bunch of boosters. Pretty standard Cutter build for CMDRs who have all engineers unlocked, and it also takes a helluva power plant to run that build.

The best counters are torps with reverb cascade or laser weapons with phasing. Otherwise, get ready for a long fight. Cutters can achieve 11,000 mj of shields and over 20,000 with scbs.

EDIT: Just saw the part where you said the shields looked normal for the color. Class 8A shields can still be very tanky on a Cutter. Though I'm not sure of the numbers I'm sure you could possibly get 7-8000 mj+ with hvy duty boosters.
 
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NorthernDevo

NorthernDevo
gorankar said:
You were using kinetics against a Cutter. I figure the wall you were hitting was 12-17K worth of shield hit points against kinetic. Cutter is an absolute shield beast when properly outfit/engineered. Most, typically try to deal with them with torps and/or PA's. MC are about the worst thing to go after one of those with. It was just a bad match up for you.
Click to expand...
Thanks - now that I'm getting heavier into PvP I'm certainly looking at new weaponry; it's nice to be able to fly dead-stable in FA/Off now; with my old joystick that was impossible. :) For now, avoidance seems the best tactic lol
Stabby_Dave said:
Multicannons aren't that effective against shields. The one medium incendiary won't have made much difference. You need a combo of lasers for shields and multis for hull.
Click to expand...
Well; to be fair they're all Incendiary other than the one Corrosive lol - they have been chewing up shields quite nicely; I'm working on getting better weaponry, now that I'm seeing the downsides in this fashion. I'll just avoid the big ones for now lol.
Amanojaku said:
He probably had class 8 reinforced Prismatic shields with a bunch of boosters. Pretty standard Cutter build for CMDRs who have all engineers unlocked, and it also takes a helluva power plant to run that build.

The best counters are torps with reverb cascade or laser weapons with phasing. Otherwise, get ready for a long fight. Cutters can achieve 11,000 mj of shields and over 20,000 with scbs.

EDIT: Just saw the part where you said the shields looked normal for the color. Class 8A shields can still be very tanky on a Cutter. Though I'm not sure of the numbers I'm sure you could possibly get 7-8000 mj+ with hvy duty boosters.
Click to expand...
Excellent, thanks - so I have to assume that this was, really, the first seriously Engineered Big Three ship encountered in battle. Bit of an eye-opener!
That said, on anything BUT that monster my current setup seems to be faring quite well, so while I develop both new weapons and the skills to use them, I think I can remain fairly confident in my lovely bird. :)
 

CMDR D Noize

CMDR D Noize
Just ram the b*gger a few times! not even joking, it's what i do with the big ships if their shields give me trouble.
If you've got a decent shield, some boosters and a few pips in SYS it should hold (y)
(I take no responsibility for any accidents that may occur as a result of this advice).

And make sure you've got their engine targeted and some decent armour piercing weapons when the shield comes down.

I find it much easier to pop the engines on big ships rather than rinse all my ammo trying to eat through their hull.

Also I say "pish" to anyone that says Incendiary MCs are useless, mine serve me perfectly well.
 

TiberiusDuval

T
NorthernDevo said:
Yo folks!
I ran into a somewhat curious situation - I'm down in Ackwada having fun with a nice blend of PvP and PvE. Only been killed once fortunately, double-teamed by a pair of Dangerous-level Challengers - though I've certainly had to book it out of there a couple of times. Overall I'm quite pleased; I'm getting GREAT FA/Off practice in, really loving this new HOTAS setup and can honestly say I'm improving quite a bit - finally.

I think you can guess the question from the title of this post; let me recount the details. I am currently flying my beloved G5 MC-equipped Krait II Xeno's Paradox; and loving her more by the minute as I start to REALLY be able to use her. I was in the CZ having a WHALE of a good time - besides NPC's I'd taken out one Dangerous guy flying a Chieftain in a fair fight; no heat sinks or SCB's popped, 3/4 ammo. Next open pip was an Imp Cutter, rank Expert. Shrug - he's a Bad guy so I engage...and run SMACK into a wall.

I've thought that with an Expert rating, the guy could be an Alt, but discounted it as immaterial - someone with Expert could easily be a MUCH better PvPer than me, though he wasn't really flying all that great. (Of course...neither was I. ;) ) I had no problems keeping my guns on him throughout the fight AND staying away from his front arc. The PROBLEM was I might as well have been shooting peashooters at him. Almost NO damage to his shields and I was hosing him down from short range with 3 Lg. G5 Inc/Ovc MC's, 1 Med Inc/Eff and one Corrosive/Eff, all with Premium.

I should have booked when I saw zero damage, but I was curious, so kept on hosing him down. Draining the rest of my ammo took him down ONE ring. He managed to get some hits on me, I've no idea WHAT those cyan beams and bursts were, but he forced me to pop SCB's twice, blasting my shields in just a few minutes. When my ammo was gone I ran - not at all upset, proud of the way my blood-red-baby had stood up but quite curious.
What on EARTH could that guy have been using for shields? Their charge animation was normal cyan so I don't think prismatics, but whatever they were, they were TOUGH. I'd killed at least one other player Cutter (yesterday, IIRC) and he was NOTHING like this guy.

From the description, can you tell what shields he likely had? Whatever they were I WANT ONE! :D

Sorry or the length of the post, I wanted to provide as much info about the duel as possible and am, frankly, totally jazzed - I haven't had this much fun in ED since...well, since I got ED. :D

Thanks, friends!
Click to expand...
Well my cutter has something like 11 000 mj against certain types of damage. Cutter can be VERY VERY shield tanky...
 

TiberiusDuval

T
CMDR D Noize said:
Just ram the b*gger a few times! not even joking, it's what i do with the big ships if their shields give me trouble.
If you've got a decent shield, some boosters and a few pips in SYS it should hold (y)
(I take no responsibility for any accidents that may occur as a result of this advice).

And make sure you've got their engine targeted and some decent armour piercing weapons when the shield comes down.

I find it much easier to pop the engines on big ships rather than rinse all my ammo trying to eat through their hull.

Also I say "pish" to anyone that says Incendiary MCs are useless, mine serve me perfectly well.
Click to expand...
Usually it is the Cutter that rams :D And it can give a very big kiss....
 

Jingseng

J
Basic 8e shields is 600pts. You could stack 8 boosters, on top of upgrading the shields, and engineering resistances and strengthening boosts(on both). So you are looking at potentially huge numbers, whereas multicannons are DoT weapons... the damage per hit as an absolute value is low.

of course, if on pc, could be a hack. I guess.
 

Guyperson

Guyperson
Assuming they weren't cheating (very little Fdev can do to prevent this with the P2P network model), there's no guarantee that thermal damage will be effective against a player's shields. Once all the engineering is done a PVP shield tank will often have balanced resistances, if not inverted.
 

Dillon Fallon

Dillon Fallon
Had an example of this a couple of nights ago. I was in my trade Cutter, so only a class 6 prismatic but with 7 boosters. Got pulled and the guys attempted to attack me. Seeing they had frag loadouts I decided to low wake out to see who would get bored first. 7 interdictions later I lost that battle and high waked out. My shield was still just over 60%, with most of the damage coming from the time spent spooling up to get out the system.

So you can imagine that if someone has a class 8, basically you need a loadout tailored to killing big ships.
 

Just Paul

Just Paul
Retropolitan said:
They take some killin'. But they're nothing to the Cutter an Enemy Captain flies. I poured everything I had into one of those guys, and when I finally had his shields low he just waked out and went in for cocktails.
Click to expand...

You just need the right weapons and the Captains are not a problem at all. You can also snipe the FSD once shields go down to make escape impossible.

My Cutter has a normal A shield and 6900MJ raw shield strength. With 4 PIPs to system the thermal resist is close to 25k MJ. Thermal is also usually the lowest resist on any non-biweave PvP build with a value around 30%. The incendiary MCs do 90% thermal damage and 10% kinetic. For simplicity we count all damage as thermal. The 3 OC large and 2 EFF med MCs do 87 DPS. It takes roughly 86 sec of uninterrupted fire to lower my Cutter's shield by 30%, which is the value of the first ring in the HUD. For a Prismatic with 8 boosters that time increases to 120 sec.

In this video you can see the difference between a better build prismatic Cutter and a PvE bi-weave Cutter. My Conda does 680 damage per salvo or 1100 if the heat is over 100%. I still had to run in the end as I only have 3100 HP shields and the Cutters can just boost away to pop SCBs or reboot. The prismatic one did just that. But it was still fun.

 

MPL3D

MPL3D
Some premium ammo for your multicannons and a couple of synthesis later you will discover that such a big shield is like a hull, it never recovers.
 
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