Thargoid hunt

Cmdr Isson Kiporto

Cmdr Isson Kiporto
Hello everyone, With a friend, we have been playing Elite on PC for two years. Lately, we decided to try Thargoids hunting to see if it was more profitable than bounty hunting. Unfortunately, every time we get to a 5 threat, and engage the Cyclop the way we've seen on several tutorials, it destroys us, every time. After the loss of our ship more than four times, and some anger over the game, we asked ourselves the question: Did we miss something? I put you below the fit of our ships (the only difference between our two ships is that the pulse lasers fit for the shield bonuses, are replaced by cooling laser beams for my comrade). If you have any advice to give us, it would be appreciated.

my ship fit
 

Factabulous

Factabulous
Your hull is very weak - I'd go Military with Heavy Duty/Deep Plate. Also the shield - go for a Bi-weave. Mostly AX builds won't bother with jump range or fuel scooping, to me that size 6 for a range booster is not useful.

Someone who is an actual expert will be along shortly - a vid of the encounter would help advise if you can make one.
 

Drelthar

Drelthar
Basics to get started -

Smash out one heart - then boost away and FA off flip over so you are going backwards - Shoot the swarm down with the flak launcher.

Another swarm will probly spawn if you took out a heart already. Kill it the same way.

Then move in and smash another heart. And repeat.

Use heat sinks to keep heat low when close up, and keep moving, they cant aim at cold targets that are moving laterally from them.
 

CMDR Saigon

CMDR Saigon
Cmdr Isson Kiporto said:
Hello everyone, With a friend, we have been playing Elite on PC for two years. Lately, we decided to try Thargoids hunting to see if it was more profitable than bounty hunting. Unfortunately, every time we get to a 5 threat, and engage the Cyclop the way we've seen on several tutorials, it destroys us, every time. After the loss of our ship more than four times, and some anger over the game, we asked ourselves the question: Did we miss something? I put you below the fit of our ships (the only difference between our two ships is that the pulse lasers fit for the shield bonuses, are replaced by cooling laser beams for my comrade). If you have any advice to give us, it would be appreciated.

my ship fit
Click to expand...

As already mentioned by other CMDRs here, hull too weak. My AX build based upon very similar to The AXI recommendations here CMDR:
 

Northpin

Northpin
Cmdr Isson Kiporto said:
Hello everyone, With a friend, we have been playing Elite on PC for two years. Lately, we decided to try Thargoids hunting to see if it was more profitable than bounty hunting. Unfortunately, every time we get to a 5 threat, and engage the Cyclop the way we've seen on several tutorials, it destroys us, every time. After the loss of our ship more than four times, and some anger over the game, we asked ourselves the question: Did we miss something? I put you below the fit of our ships (the only difference between our two ships is that the pulse lasers fit for the shield bonuses, are replaced by cooling laser beams for my comrade). If you have any advice to give us, it would be appreciated.

my ship fit
Click to expand...

Sorry to say but that ship fit is crap (you need military hull and Bi-weave shields, you dont need fuel scoop, nor fsd booster - the 3b xeno limpet will not help much since you have really low hull)

You also dont seem to have any engineering.
And engineering is needed for both ways of killing thargoids ( fast cold build or strong shield tanks) - sure, maybe some of the top AXI pilots could kill Cyclops in non-engineered ships, but well... they're rather special.

You also need to be able to aim with fixed weapons and to understand the how the encounters work.

I can kill Cyclops with a Conda, but with very strong shields - basically i take all the damage, lighting included - but for that you need engineered shields, Power plant, SCB, Shield boosters, etc

I can kill Cyclops and Basilisks using a cold build (no shields) even tho i cant really cold orbit and my FA Off aim is rather pathetic - still i can kill Basilisks like 8 out 8 attempts without losing a ship
But for cold builds you do need ships fast enough to outrun the Interceptors and a lot of heatsink - or good enough piloting skills to manage to use Basilisk inertia and fly past it while taking little to no damage.


Edit: honestly, it seems you are not ready for one of the biggest challenges in the Elite's PVE
You can still try, but it will get frustrating sooner than later.

Edit2: the Krait Mk2 cold build i used
 
Last edited:

[VR] Orodruin

[VR] Orodruin
Factabulous said:
a vid of the encounter would help advise if you can make one.
Click to expand...
This. Very much this.
Cmdr Isson Kiporto said:
If you have any advice to give us, it would be appreciated.

my ship fit
Click to expand...
To be perfectly frank, that is not a good build. There are several glaring weaknesses. If you want me to go through them one by one I can do so when I find the time, but the best would be to look up proper builds on the AXI wiki or similar.
 

[VR] Orodruin

[VR] Orodruin
Cmdr Isson Kiporto said:
Our ships were fitted fsd because doing 50 jumps to reach Evangelis is cool, but long
Click to expand...
AX ships need to be highly specialised. Fuel scoops and similar have no place on an AX ship unless you want to handicap yourself. The way to get your AX ship to where they need to be is to use a jump ship to get there and then transfer the AX ship.
 

Cmdr Isson Kiporto

Cmdr Isson Kiporto
[VR] Orodruin said:
Les navires AX doivent être hautement spécialisés. Les écopes de carburant et similaires n’ont pas leur place sur un navire AX, sauf si vous souhaitez vous handicaper. La façon d’amener votre navire AX là où il doit être est d’utiliser un navire de saut pour y arriver, puis de transférer le navire AX.
Click to expand...
o7
 

DemiserofD

D
Are you using heat sinks while moving laterally? The only real trick with thargoids is staying cold and moving sideways/up/down so their bullets don't hit you. Figure that out and you've figured out 9/10ths of AX combat.

Oh, and don't forget to kill the swarm. It does about 4/5ths of the damage in a Cyclops fight, so if you kill that first, you'll have a MUCH easier time.
 

Northpin

Northpin
Cmdr Isson Kiporto said:
There are probably other ways to say this but ok
Click to expand...

As i said... sorry... 😇

But compare your build with no engineering to the builds posted here or on AXI website...

As i said, i'm not sure if you guys can manage to kill Cyclops in non-engineered ships.

I used this Conda for my first Cyclops kills and failed the first 4 attempts (lost the ship after the 3rd attempt - as in i run our of air while slamming the pad - funny, but really noobish story)
Barely managed a kill at the 5th attempt, then failed the next 2, then got the hang of it and then it was kill after kill. Most of the time :)

But that Conda is rather strong - and the aim was to take the damage while trying to frag the Cyclops after the first or the second hearts. There is a delay from the moment you kill a heart till the shields come up - and if you manage to put out enough damage you can gib the Cyclops right after the first heart is removed.

Maybe, if both of you are decent shots and manage to keep cool and not panic - maybe you could do it using 2 non-engineered Conda's like this - but failing would get rather expensive (kinda steep rebuy on that Conda.)
As i said, one should attack and try to drop the heart - and take all the initial damage (don forget to pop a heat sink then use a SCB) and right after the heart is removed both of you should hit the cyclops with all you have and it will crumble
And no, you dont need premium ammo

Here is one of my "early" attempts about 2 years ago.
Early but still after i was getting proficient at fragging Cyclops - however, this is not the good tactic, it's the bad one since it works only on Cyclops (well with enough firepower, even Hydras can by instagibbed - iirc took 40 commanders to gib a Hydra)
 

Cmdr Isson Kiporto

Cmdr Isson Kiporto
We have money, materials an time so we will try to fit our ships better and then we will try again, thanks for all your advice and I will post on this thread when we are successful. o7 and thank you very much for your help and your constructive tweets.(y);)

Edit2:Elite has a really good community
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom