After working my way up to a Viper on the safe Sol-Barnard's Star route I got bored and decided to put my lovely new ship to better use. Now I've found out why people complained about the FE2 combat model.
It started with my acceptance of a military delivery mission from Ross 154 to Altair. At about 2AU away from my destination I was "attacked" by what looked like a Cobra Mk III. I say "attacked" because, while it tracked me and kept darting for me like a mother bird defending young birds in a nest, it never actually fired anything. So I tried to track it myself using my (admittedly rusty) Elite I skills and found that my coordination really isn't up to fighting with FE2's combat model. While my beam laser was constantly beaming and slicing swish-swish across the Cobra's hull, it was always at too long a range to do any damage. There's absolutely no way I could keep it in my sights during its regular fly-bys at less than 8km range. It outran the four missiles that I fired at close range before I tried again with the beam laser.
A few times it appeared to retreat, far enough to allow me to ignore it, set the autopilot for my destination and activate the Stardreamer for a little while, but it kept coming back. Once I noticed that, if I left autopilot on, the Cobra would sweep slowly past my sights once or twice at a reasonable range and settle somewhere a little off-centre in front of me. Switching autopilot off and on again would cause it to veer off and then repeat the process. In this way I managed to destroy it by firing as it swept past my sights. Serves it right for coming to stare at me.
Before long I was attacked by a different ship with real weapons. I tried to track the ship properly but never scored a single hit. For some reason its lasers didn't appear to be having any effect on me. So after getting bored of the repeated swish-swish I tried the same tactic as I did with the Cobra. It started to do the same trick of passing through my sights, but destroyed me before it ever passed through my sights.
It strikes me that, when fighting properly, the other ship had as much trouble as I did actually hitting anything. It was only when I sat stock still - or more correctly, stayed at a constant heading and speed - that it managed to get any hit on me. At that rate I suppose I could have sat firing at it for several days until reaching my destination, but that doesn't strike me as an entertaining game.
All this has taken me about three hours of practice, without me being able to "get" the proper combat method. It didn't take me that long to master combat on the original Elite. Is there a trick I'm missing? If it's just practice, practice, practice, then I think I've got an awful long time of boredom and frustration before I get to enjoy the game again!
It started with my acceptance of a military delivery mission from Ross 154 to Altair. At about 2AU away from my destination I was "attacked" by what looked like a Cobra Mk III. I say "attacked" because, while it tracked me and kept darting for me like a mother bird defending young birds in a nest, it never actually fired anything. So I tried to track it myself using my (admittedly rusty) Elite I skills and found that my coordination really isn't up to fighting with FE2's combat model. While my beam laser was constantly beaming and slicing swish-swish across the Cobra's hull, it was always at too long a range to do any damage. There's absolutely no way I could keep it in my sights during its regular fly-bys at less than 8km range. It outran the four missiles that I fired at close range before I tried again with the beam laser.
A few times it appeared to retreat, far enough to allow me to ignore it, set the autopilot for my destination and activate the Stardreamer for a little while, but it kept coming back. Once I noticed that, if I left autopilot on, the Cobra would sweep slowly past my sights once or twice at a reasonable range and settle somewhere a little off-centre in front of me. Switching autopilot off and on again would cause it to veer off and then repeat the process. In this way I managed to destroy it by firing as it swept past my sights. Serves it right for coming to stare at me.
Before long I was attacked by a different ship with real weapons. I tried to track the ship properly but never scored a single hit. For some reason its lasers didn't appear to be having any effect on me. So after getting bored of the repeated swish-swish I tried the same tactic as I did with the Cobra. It started to do the same trick of passing through my sights, but destroyed me before it ever passed through my sights.
It strikes me that, when fighting properly, the other ship had as much trouble as I did actually hitting anything. It was only when I sat stock still - or more correctly, stayed at a constant heading and speed - that it managed to get any hit on me. At that rate I suppose I could have sat firing at it for several days until reaching my destination, but that doesn't strike me as an entertaining game.
All this has taken me about three hours of practice, without me being able to "get" the proper combat method. It didn't take me that long to master combat on the original Elite. Is there a trick I'm missing? If it's just practice, practice, practice, then I think I've got an awful long time of boredom and frustration before I get to enjoy the game again!
