Serious PVP Question, Not Baiting

Assuming similarly competent builds and piloting, a corvette can out 1v1 any other ship in the game other than the cutter, or certain long range setups in the hands of a pilot that willing and able to carefully control engagement range for the absurd length of time required.

The reason for this is simple: the vette hits harder than anything other than the anaconda, and can take more punishment than anything other than the cutter, while still being agile enough to achieve passable time-on-target against even much smaller and faster vessels. A peer-level pilot in a good small or medium combat vessel will definitely have better ToT, but not by enough to overcome the vette's durability and firepower advantages...at least not without longer range weapons and a willingness to use them near maximum range for the whole fight.

Sure, an idiot in a vette is in real trouble against a solid small or medium pilot, but that says more about the pilots involved than the limitations of the ship.

Anyway, to hold your own 'against the majority of the Open crowd', you'll need a lot of experience. A big ship in the hands of a novice is just a big target.

I would also suggest not starting with a vette. In order to do well against smaller ships, you have to have flown them in real combat yourself, you need to know what they can do. I'd suggest starting with a Viper III or something, then work one's way up through the combat and multi-purpose vessels roughly in order of tonnage.
 
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Here are my two training fights against Paul, judge by yourself if a Vette can hold your own...

 
Thanks again guys, I appreciate the suggestions and the videos.

My goal here is to play occasionally in Open and have a chance to survive, not pick a fight and win against everyone I see. Left alone, I will not be firing the first shot. I have no PP weps/shields and have no intention of grinding those out, however you do that. If I find myself in a fairly even fight, I will engage for a bit. But I want the option to be able to bug out (and have the time to do so) when I'm overmatched.

My last encounter in Open was actually fun, at the start. I was in a haz rez, and had picked up a 'friend' who was having difficulty with the larger/more powerful ships. So I actually started helping a bit, but would not kill the target and leave that to him. He seemed to be enjoying himself, as was I.

Then a Clipper and two other mediums showed up. No biggie, we just kept doing our own thing. Until the Clipper and one of his wingies decided to attack me. Really? So I quickly burned through the shields of the Clipper and rammed the other ship, nearly stripping it's shields. Then I left. A good evening spoiled.

The 'vette I was flying was outfitted similar to the configuration I posted.
 

Powderpanic

Banned
Getting the prismatic shields is cake.

Join the space princess, do nothing for 4 weeks. Just before the end of Thursday UK time, use a conda or your vette in cargo mode, buy a load of the merit cargo and dump it in the right place.
( google how ) . Come back the following day, buy Primatics. Minor effort required.
/end

Powerpanic
The Voice of Griefing
 
Getting the prismatic shields is cake.

Join the space princess, do nothing for 4 weeks. Just before the end of Thursday UK time, use a conda or your vette in cargo mode, buy a load of the merit cargo and dump it in the right place.
( google how ) . Come back the following day, buy Primatics. Minor effort required.
/end

Powerpanic
The Voice of Griefing

Space Princess? Who is that? :)

I have a second vette that I use as a armed trader/mission runner (~360T cargo space). Will this work?
 
As someone who has only just got into PvP, or at least attempted to 'git gud' (it's a work in progress, let's leave it at that) getting someone friendly to have a fight to 20% hull is well worth it.

It will give you a sense of what not to do as much as what to do. I no longer worry that I might get ganked because I know that in almost anything I can get away
 
Thanks again guys, I appreciate the suggestions and the videos.

My goal here is to play occasionally in Open and have a chance to survive, not pick a fight and win against everyone I see. Left alone, I will not be firing the first shot. I have no PP weps/shields and have no intention of grinding those out, however you do that. If I find myself in a fairly even fight, I will engage for a bit. But I want the option to be able to bug out (and have the time to do so) when I'm overmatched.

My last encounter in Open was actually fun, at the start. I was in a haz rez, and had picked up a 'friend' who was having difficulty with the larger/more powerful ships. So I actually started helping a bit, but would not kill the target and leave that to him. He seemed to be enjoying himself, as was I.

Then a Clipper and two other mediums showed up. No biggie, we just kept doing our own thing. Until the Clipper and one of his wingies decided to attack me. Really? So I quickly burned through the shields of the Clipper and rammed the other ship, nearly stripping it's shields. Then I left. A good evening spoiled.

The 'vette I was flying was outfitted similar to the configuration I posted.

sounds like a good evening made better. but to each their own.
 
After watching many vids posted here, it looks to me like the med, faster ships can make mincemeat out of corvette as their speed can dictate the battle.
I mean, I've been wrecked by a vette, but i'm lousy at fighting.
1v1 a vette is the strongest ship in the game. Given pilots of equal skill and balanced loadouts, the medium ship has not a single chance. Period. The difference in effective health and damage output are factors above any medium ship. The highest dps medium ships are the Krait mk2 and the python, and the vette has TWO huge hardpoints on top of that, and a size 8 distributor to match. My prismatic vette has 6.5k shield and 6.5k hull, as well as another 6k in cells. Lastly the vette is agile enough to get its weapons on target even against very good players, enough that there is no chance of the medium winning. Don't get me wrong, I've taken down a few vettes in the mamba, but they were poorly specced to deal with medium ships and poorly flown. All things being on the level, the vette is without a shadow of a doubt the most effective combat ship in the game.
 
There's a video just posted here a couple days ago showing 2 vipers pecking at a corvette until it goes buhbye.
Basically the vette can't land a shot.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/2x-viper-vs-vette-fdl-vs-fdl.519694/

Oh ish dats me xD

Killing a Vette does'nt happen often in Vipers, and you usually need more than one unless your opponent is absolute tripe.

However the MKIII can reliably empty its entire ammo pool into said Vette before taking overly significant damage, the ship is simply too fast for big vessels to track when built properly, the only real defence they have vs such a ship is either reverski or sitting there doing nothing with locked pips at 4-0-2. (Usually in the latter case the pilot will just sit there and chat waffle at you about "Not having a real ship" or that you're "Boring" or "Skilled pilots only fly big ships" EtcEtc, the usual swinging crap from bigbois.) The downside for the Viper being a small volume of hitpoints and very limited ammunition.

A Vette should kill the Viper eventually of course but usually not before the Viper has had his fun and flown away chuckling. The most favourable matchup for a small fighter aside from anoher small, is a large ship with a bad turning circle, of which the Vette is not bad for a big ship, but compared to a small one (With the exception of the CMKIV) its an absolute slug.

650mps boost and a good SR rhythm is usually enough to keep most big vessels off a small one, however with emmisive in play you need to get a little creative with how you deal with them. Well timed forceshells can remove the nose of your opponent from the gimbal targeting arc, and is a nightmare for fixed weapon users Dispersal and TLB are a given, you need that. TLB, though not as OP as it used to be is more than enough, when timed well, to give you enough breathing room for a pass or to keep them off if you find yourself in the line of fire. Drag also has a place when fighting larger vessels, though not massively hampering to thier flight patterns all things considered, it can however buy you enough time to reposition somewhere easier to hold.

Another plus for the smaller ships vs big ones is hitbox. Even with fixed hitscan the hardpoint convergence is often not enough to land all the rounds on target, more often than not at sub 1km ranges only one of thier weapons will microgimbal onto the small vessel which effectively nullifies most of thier avalible DPS.

Small ships are underrated when it comes to killing bigger ones, sure solo, it's exceedingly rare to kill one but with even two mildly competant pilots, as in Kyle's video, they can cause serious annoyance and even kill bigger vessels. Get a good wing of four small ships and bigbois will often just run away whilst calling you "noobs".

Also having a conda get tunnel visioned on trying to kill a MKIV thats sat on it's nose tanking for 30 seconds is a joyus experience simply because of thier stupid upfront PP. Flechettes are utterly beautiful for that particular situation as the MKIV can easily tank enough damage to make the PP malfunction.
 
1v1 a vette is the strongest ship in the game. Given pilots of equal skill and balanced loadouts, the medium ship has not a single chance. Period. The difference in effective health and damage output are factors above any medium ship. The highest dps medium ships are the Krait mk2 and the python, and the vette has TWO huge hardpoints on top of that, and a size 8 distributor to match. My prismatic vette has 6.5k shield and 6.5k hull, as well as another 6k in cells. Lastly the vette is agile enough to get its weapons on target even against very good players, enough that there is no chance of the medium winning. Don't get me wrong, I've taken down a few vettes in the mamba, but they were poorly specced to deal with medium ships and poorly flown. All things being on the level, the vette is without a shadow of a doubt the most effective combat ship in the game.

I'd be interested in the specs on your prismatic vette if you don't mind.

I'm still not sure about getting the prismatic shield, as I really don't want to build a ship just for hard-core PvP as that prismatic shield is a power hungry monster. But even without it I should be able to build a vette that I can play in Open from time to time and survive getting attacked.

As I said before, when I play in Open I'm not looking to start any fights. But if I find myself in one where I'm fairly evenly matched, I'll play for a bit. Otherwise I'll just bug out and find somewhere else to play. If that's possible.
 
I'd be interested in the specs on your prismatic vette if you don't mind.

I'm still not sure about getting the prismatic shield, as I really don't want to build a ship just for hard-core PvP at that thing is a power hungry monster. But even without it I should be able to build a vette that I can play in Open from time to time and survive getting attacked.

As I said before, when I play in Open I'm not looking to start any fights. But if I find myself in one where I'm fairly evenly matched, I'll play for a bit. Otherwise I'll just bug out and find somewhere else to play. If that's possible.
You don't need a prismatic 'Vette to survive in open, a reasonable (bi-weave) build does as well.
I'd estimate roughly 1000 mj of shields for a big ship to simply escape a big gankboat like a frag corvette. Against a Wing that gets close, but doable.
Less is of course possible, but that's a rough ballpark. More gives you more room for errors and opportunities to first test your assailant and then run away if you see you don't stand a chance.
 
I've not had much luck with bi-weave builds, so my vette would have about 4k normal shields, 3k armor, 6k cells and a couple of module reinforcements.

Given your suggestions, it should survive for a bit. Thanks. :)
 
I've not had much luck with bi-weave builds, so my vette would have about 4k normal shields, 3k armor, 6k cells and a couple of module reinforcements.

Given your suggestions, it should survive for a bit. Thanks. :)
Yep, that takes about 10 minutes to chew through, if you don't put all pips to weapons or get hit by 5 or 6 reverb torps 😂
Seriously, don't fly into wing attacks (situational awareness whoooo) and even if you get reverb'd you still have enough time to highwake out.
 
My Prismatic 'vette (very recently acquired - Aisling has finally given up the goods) has enough shields to face-tank pretty much every conceivable PvE encounter bar the stronger Thargoids. Elite wing assassination missions? Pathetic. I only popped two of my six shield banks (which are currently unengineered), and that was with very few pips in SYS as I attempted to joust an FdL with her buddies constantly slinging plasma shots at me.

Engineered Prismatics are stupid powerful. If you are interdicted once, you are pretty much guaranteed to escape it - and the Corvette's hull is so thick and has so much room for module reinforcement that unless you're being systematically Grom bombed, dragged, and torpedoed in your vital areas, you can just ignore everyone, put full pips to Sys and high-wake out even if your shields are res-cascaded.

If you can ever be successfully ganked in a combat ship, you are either a) facing a wing gank in a ship that only does well 1v1, b) facing a very good squad of gankers, or c) attempting to stand and fight rather than run away.
 
While my vette is configured so I can just run around in it and play in haz res sites, I going to try adding a little something on the class 3 hardpoint for those pesky open squares. Not sure if it will help, but I'll give it a try. :)

 
I wouldn't bother with the torps. 4 wont be enough for the big 3 that stack shields. You need about 6. Smaller ships (and even the bigger ones) will out run torps. They move at 250 and that's slower than a t-9 with clean drives. And you cant re-synth them, so if they miss you've got a wasted 3rd hardpoint.
 
Oh ish dats me xD

Killing a Vette does'nt happen often in Vipers, and you usually need more than one unless your opponent is absolute tripe.

However the MKIII can reliably empty its entire ammo pool into said Vette before taking overly significant damage, the ship is simply too fast for big vessels to track when built properly, the only real defence they have vs such a ship is either reverski or sitting there doing nothing with locked pips at 4-0-2. (Usually in the latter case the pilot will just sit there and chat waffle at you about "Not having a real ship" or that you're "Boring" or "Skilled pilots only fly big ships" EtcEtc, the usual swinging crap from bigbois.) The downside for the Viper being a small volume of hitpoints and very limited ammunition.

A Vette should kill the Viper eventually of course but usually not before the Viper has had his fun and flown away chuckling. The most favourable matchup for a small fighter aside from anoher small, is a large ship with a bad turning circle, of which the Vette is not bad for a big ship, but compared to a small one (With the exception of the CMKIV) its an absolute slug.

650mps boost and a good SR rhythm is usually enough to keep most big vessels off a small one, however with emmisive in play you need to get a little creative with how you deal with them. Well timed forceshells can remove the nose of your opponent from the gimbal targeting arc, and is a nightmare for fixed weapon users Dispersal and TLB are a given, you need that. TLB, though not as OP as it used to be is more than enough, when timed well, to give you enough breathing room for a pass or to keep them off if you find yourself in the line of fire. Drag also has a place when fighting larger vessels, though not massively hampering to thier flight patterns all things considered, it can however buy you enough time to reposition somewhere easier to hold.

Another plus for the smaller ships vs big ones is hitbox. Even with fixed hitscan the hardpoint convergence is often not enough to land all the rounds on target, more often than not at sub 1km ranges only one of thier weapons will microgimbal onto the small vessel which effectively nullifies most of thier avalible DPS.

Small ships are underrated when it comes to killing bigger ones, sure solo, it's exceedingly rare to kill one but with even two mildly competant pilots, as in Kyle's video, they can cause serious annoyance and even kill bigger vessels. Get a good wing of four small ships and bigbois will often just run away whilst calling you "noobs".

Also having a conda get tunnel visioned on trying to kill a MKIV thats sat on it's nose tanking for 30 seconds is a joyus experience simply because of thier stupid upfront PP. Flechettes are utterly beautiful for that particular situation as the MKIV can easily tank enough damage to make the PP malfunction.

Just a lovely breakdown here indeed.
 
I wouldn't bother with the torps. 4 wont be enough for the big 3 that stack shields. You need about 6. Smaller ships (and even the bigger ones) will out run torps. They move at 250 and that's slower than a t-9 with clean drives. And you cant re-synth them, so if they miss you've got a wasted 3rd hardpoint.

Thanks. After looking at that choice a bit I kinda came to the same conclusion. Even my vette can outrun a torp, if I see it in time. ;)

So this is my current config for the War Wagon. It's not even close to a PvP boat, but my understanding (from folks here) is that it's a survivable config for occasional play in Open.

 
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