Reliabe way to Counteract Banshee Missiles while in Ship ?

[RaketeMike]

Hi, I know that ECM works for that, but it is not very reliable. Has anybody had success with other countermeasures? The annoying thing about them is the resulting short ship shutdown. Will thus a shutdown neutraliser or a TG pulse neutraliser be of any use against them ?

TIA, Mike

 

[Rat Catcher]

Flying away fast is the only way I've found to 'counter' them - which, of course, depends on seeing each salvo launched to succeed... I'm maybe celebrating a 60% success rate!

Once multiple hits happen, it can be a long time spent knocked out of commission, it is true!

 

[Kira Goto]

Shutdown field neutralizer does not work against them(personal experience). I’ve yet to test the pulse neutralizer, but given its extremely high distributor draw, I’m not sure how reliable it is.

The other good answer to the missiles (as above) is speed. With a Krait, around 300 m/s forward has been sufficient to evade their AOE(they act like airburst rounds, so will detonate a certain distance from your ship), and reversing at somewhere above 50 m/s will also do the trick. May of course depend on how long your ship is. I’m not sure an Anaconda or Corvette, for example, could avoid disruption by boosting through the missiles.

 

[RaketeMike]

Once multiple hits happen, it can be a long time spent knocked out of commission, it is true!

Thanks ! Yes true, and that gets way more probable when you are solo in a spire site ! I played around there in this Anaconda build:

EDSY

EDSY is a ship outfitting tool for Elite Dangerous

edsy.org

This is a build with 6 Azimuth pre engineered MCs.

On the plus side, this shreds scouts in 5 seconds and eliminates Glaives without problems. I wanted to use it to farm Orthrus kills there, and it is able to kill an Orthrus without problems in principle. The downside is I always get shut down by the Banshee missiles and spend one third of my time tumbling around with all systems offline. All scouts and banshees all over the site focus on you in solo. So I get too less time to focus on the Orthrus spawns. Therfore I can only kill one of them per solo visit :-(.

The other good answer to the missiles (as above) is speed. With a Krait, around 300 m/s forward has been sufficient to evade their AOE(they act like airburst rounds, so will detonate a certain distance from your ship), and reversing at somewhere above 50 m/s will also do the trick. May of course depend on how long your ship is. I’m not sure an Anaconda or Corvette, for example, could avoid disruption by boosting through the missiles.

My Krait Mk 2 with 5 Azimuth MCs was unable to kill the Orthrus variants there, it was always just a little bit too slow to destroy them before they waked away. In the Anaconda build I posted above this was possible but I got the impression that large ships are just too big solo targets and you cannot outrun the missiles. Or I am doing something wrong Maybe the spire sites are designed for groups of CMDRs rather than solo players, at least when you are playing in ships there (?).

Builds with multiple AX missile racks are not feasible there in practice in my opinion because you fumble around clumsily with them when dealing with local scouts and also with glaives / cyclopses on the way to the site. The Azimuth MCs really excel there.

I even tried killing Banshees with the 6 MCs but this was not possible. I just positioned myself closely in front of them and unloaded the Azimuth dakka-dakka at them, but they did not explode :-(( In my opinion, they are way too difficult to kill. Only with a Tormentor pistol from their downside , really ??

 

[Unknown Zombie]

Flying away fast is the only way I've found to 'counter' them - which, of course, depends on seeing each salvo launched to succeed... I'm maybe celebrating a 60% success rate!

Once multiple hits happen, it can be a long time spent knocked out of commission, it is true!

At least it seems the missiles themselves don't do a whole lot of damage.

Well, not as much damage as I cause by myself from having my hull-tank FAS coast into the side of a spire wall at 400 m/s after I get caught out by a stray missile!

 

[RaketeMike]

Met two other random CMDRs at a spire site and in a group orthrus killing was by far easier! Is there some kind of overview of spire sites to find the ones where there is much player activity? I cannot find something like that on the DCOH site.

 

[Kissamies]

I have noticed that they have a predictable way of responding to lateral thrust that can be sometimes exploited. They try to mirror the lateral movement so exactly that I have used to make them hit into things, even the ground. Not really practical when trying to do something else, but I think I've managed to avoid a few by just strafing when I hear them close to me. Speed is also a good defence too.

 

[R4dioS1lence]

Met two other random CMDRs at a spire site and in a group orthrus killing was by far easier! Is there some kind of overview of spire sites to find the ones where there is much player activity? I cannot find something like that on the DCOH site.

Your best choice at guessing is looking up the Spire Locations spreadsheet, and looking up the systems on Inara to check their traffic. While going for systems with spires close to the arrival star and with low gravity might seem straightforward, some CMDRs left carriers on orbit of spire sites before the systems became controller/invaded, and haven't moved their Carriers since, so these spots will be the most popular.

 

[Unknown Zombie]

Your best choice at guessing is looking up the Spire Locations spreadsheet, and looking up the systems on Inara to check their traffic. While going for systems with spires close to the arrival star and with low gravity might seem straightforward, some CMDRs left carriers on orbit of spire sites before the systems became controller/invaded, and haven't moved their Carriers since, so these spots will be the most popular.

I thought FD godhanded all the carriers out of the way by now?

 

[R4dioS1lence]

I thought FD godhanded all the carriers out of the way by now?

I thought the same (would make sense, since none of the crew would want to stay in a high xeno risk area when carrier weapons are for ship-combat, not AX), but I saw one video from a new player who's logging their learning curve (

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHLy6dp1biA
) and it showed him departing from a carrier into a Spire site. Another CMDR in the comments also says they left theirs above a Spire site open for everyone. The video is 4 days old, which means it might have happened before weekly server reset (when a forced carrier travel would be most likely to occur).

They might have done it now, since these two carriers aren't on the system they were on video, nor are in systems listed on the Cannon spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zetAjIi8dPcbt7j3KK30vUsIx_vuyxDatq3_P8Kg-Co/edit#gid=0

 

[Ned Flandalorian]

Carriers got left in the systems when the update happened (Monday) then chucked out when the weekly maintenance happened (Thursday).

These missiles definitely aren't dumbfires like some people are saying, they actually behave more like torpedoes (accounting for your movement to plot an intercept path) so I would agree with the comments above that using their guidance to run them into obstacles is the best bet.

 

[RaketeMike]

I have noticed that they have a predictable way of responding to lateral thrust that can be sometimes exploited. They try to mirror the lateral movement so exactly that I have used to make them hit into things, even the ground. Not really practical when trying to do something else, but I think I've managed to avoid a few by just strafing when I hear them close to me. Speed is also a good defence too.

Ok, thanks! Have you got the impression that running cool is also of benefit?

 

[Unknown Zombie]

Ok, thanks! Have you got the impression that running cool is also of benefit?

I've been bopping around in a cold-as-ice FAS and it doesn't seem to help much, if at all.

 

[RaketeMike]

I've been bopping around in a cold-as-ice FAS and it doesn't seem to help much, if at all.

Well, being fast and dodging the „torpedoes“ by strafing seems to be the solution then.

 

[RaketeMike]

Your best choice at guessing is looking up the Spire Locations spreadsheet, and looking up the systems on Inara to check their traffic. While going for systems with spires close to the arrival star and with low gravity might seem straightforward, some CMDRs left carriers on orbit of spire sites before the systems became controller/invaded, and haven't moved their Carriers since, so these spots will be the most popular.

Now I wish we could still legally park our fleet carriers near a spire site, that would be awesome!

 

[Ned Flandalorian]

We might be able to again in the near future; some of the spire systems have full progress bars so they may fall out of thargoid control at the next weekly tick. We don't know what changes (if any) that means for those spire sites though.

 

[Davos IV]

I have a shardcona that I have been using to kill the orthrus fairly quickly. On a good run I can make about 400 bil credits. If you only shoot at the ones flying around scanning spires they won't activate an anti-guardian field. Don't shoot the ones coming out of the spires because they do have anti-guardian fields. The only thing that really kills me are the banshee's torpedos that cause my thrusters to go offline and I hit the deck. The trick with the anaconda is to not fly very fast so that when you get hit you either dont fall fast enough to hit the deck or if you do hit you won't receive much damage.

 

[Ned Flandalorian]

On a good run I can make about 400 bil credits.

That would have to be an extremely good run... or you meant millions rather than billions.

 

[Darrack]

400 bil credits

? Typo?

O7

 

[Lu-v H8-2020]

Depending on how many are incoming to you at different angles, in the case of heading outwards of the site I am not on an exact number but it feels the missiles go about 225-250 speed; however the detonation itself seems to expand a tad slower than the missile's speed itself.

If you're in a situation where can't use terrain to "guide" them to collide into the environment to your advantage, try to get as close as possible to their speed while "kiting", only slightly slower. That way once the missile reaches the proximity triggering the explosion (seems not based on target speed, more of a fixed detonation range), the deflagration will barely reach you. Once you get the feel of it, your ship's acceleration taken into account next will allow you to let them catch to you faster by flying even slower and just-about-right get enough speed again as they are about to explode and miss.

Can come in handy as an extra way to get rid of some of the volleys while following up with a boost maneuver afterwards if the other incoming ones do not allow you to get rid of them via intended "deflagration wiff" for example. I like doing this for the first incoming missiles to have less to handle. Again not on exact numbers, possibly their reload after two shots per banshee is around 10 seconds?

If anything feels unfavorable to maneuver the good old boost should get you out of trouble. But taking out orthrus with missile banshees targeting you alone will indeed potentially put you out of your required time on target to take them out before they wake. I personally go about in a medium ship for this. (Krait or Chief) Never liked fat boats anyway (not that it's a wrong choice!)