Titan poking for the Unengineered

[Ralph Vargr]

Observations: It took five minutes to penetrate the cloud, at velocities of 180-300 m/sec. You ran into the caustic trails of some mines.

The sensors are unreliable in getting a fix on the titan. You have to fly on visual to the center of the storm.

 

[FrogsFriend]

The sensors are unreliable in getting a fix on the titan. You have to fly on visual to the center of the storm.

"Luke, you switched off your targeting computer - what's wrong?"

 

[Ralph Vargr]

OK. I got tired of trying to build a ship.

I bought the Rescue Python. Happy Holidays, Frontier.

It's 0210 CST. Maybe I should sleep.

 

[Tifu]

OK. I got tired of trying to build a ship.

I bought the Rescue Python. Happy Holidays, Frontier.

It's 0210 CST. Maybe I should sleep.

I'll make the DBX run this Monday with whatever build I have. The Mahon stronghold carrier in Tau Bootis is well equipped with AX stuff, will tweak it's equipment layout there.

 

[zeta]

Really nice write up.

• I would suggest taking a xeno limpet controller (includes repair and caustic in a single controller; available at the rescue ship) and a bunch of limpets as well; you can fire off caustic first, to clear any remaining present, once the cloud is navigated and the asteroid field is reached. Can then run repair, if the hull is a bit beat up.
  
  
• Setting fire groups for the ax torp and missiles, then a second group for the repair and caustic limpets makes it easy to manage both the bombing run and post run repairs.
  
  
• Shields increase heat, so replace with hull re-enforcement; more is better.
  
  
• When boosting in to start the run, dump a heat sink as this will buy you some time whilst you get situated to hit the first vent (silent running imho is situational and best avoided unless one has good situational awareness; the time between forgetting it's on, and being cooked alive is pretty short).

Lastly, once a run is attempted, the core shot, escape is made away from magnetic burst (and ideally the murder flowers have lost interest) one can fly back out to the asteroid field, then back up parallel with the titan and can then remove any caustic/ repair, and decide if you're game for another run, or are ready to get out of dodge. xD

I like your guide, makes titan bombing accessible to beginners.

You need to torp a minimum of 2 vents for the titan to expose its core. Correction: today my torp malfunctioned (@%97 health, that's a first in 25000 hrs of play) and I only torped one vent, trying to keep it simple, and the core was still exposed.

I bombed the titan with a completely unengineered build below. But you need access to Felicity Farseer to buy the 3A Enhanced Performance Thruster.

If you have sirius heatsinks, use those obviously. If you have meta alloy reinforcements, use those, they are better than unengineered hull because of caustic resistance. Once near the titan, hide behind a rock from where you can see a closed vent easily. If a goid approached, turn silent running on temporarily.

When titan vents, approach (pips 042) in silent running, deploying heatsinks as needed.

It is best to turn off fsd, caustic sinks, repair, decontamination limpets, cargo hatch and afmu before approach. This gives %22 resting heat and %26 with thrusters without boost. However boosting will spike your heat quickly.

After having torped 2-3 vents, head immediately to core in SR using heatsinks as needed and shoot it with ax missiles. If you need to try again, get away, synthesize heatsinks and limpets (only 4 synth hence class 2 cargo rack). If you start from a very close system to SOL with a full tank of fuel, you can skip the fuel scoop. Depending on your style, you can swap the mrp for hull or a 1C biweave shield (but your heat goes up during charging it and you won't be able to use SR on approaching the heat vents so prolly need sirius heatsinks to survive) and you can also downgrade the repair and decon limpets for more hull in exchange for longer repair time (though I am unsure if class 1E decon can decontaminate as I didn't need it. My hunch is it can for sure with meta alloy reinforcements). If you get hit and have an mrp, don't forget to repair it with afmu.

The build below is nice because you can easily boost away from all interdictions (unless it's a glaive) and within titan space, the tradeoff is squishy hull.

EDSY

EDSY is a ship outfitting tool for Elite Dangerous

edsy.org

 

[Valorin]

I'll make the DBX run this Monday with whatever build I have. The Mahon stronghold carrier in Tau Bootis is well equipped with AX stuff, will tweak it's equipment layout there.

I really hope the Titan lasts until Monday. I expect the weekend to be crazy.
This is Saturday, about 10:00 ingame time, and the third of eight hearts is down to 1/4 already.

 

[Tifu]

I really hope the Titan lasts until Monday. I expect the weekend to be crazy.
This is Saturday, about 10:00 ingame time, and the third of eight hearts is down to 1/4 already.

Just took this snapshot of the DCOH Overwatch page, maybe the completion time projection isn't as long as it says. Honestly, was getting worried a bit.

source: https://dcoh.watch/system/10477373803

 

[Tifu]

OK. I got tired of trying to build a ship.

I bought the Rescue Python. Happy Holidays, Frontier.

It's 0210 CST. Maybe I should sleep.

Btw, I took a good look at the stats for the Rescue Python. Besides having a great looking shipkit, it's built like a bear - really suited for said purpose.

I've read horror stories of commanders losing a lot of money during their Cocijo runs on the AXI Discord. One spent 100 million credits on rebuys - zero successful runs.

You took the right step & the ship suits you

 

[Kzak]

this scares me...

Almost as fast a way is to log out to menu and then back into the game, you'll be placed on the edge of the caustic cloud where you soon can jump to a nearby system for rearm/repairs.

 

[kofeyh]

Size 3 slots are very handy.

They certainly are. Again, virtually every ship has one.

 

[DragonIan]

How do you get a lock on with the Nanite Torpedoes? The vents opened. Tried targeting with my Nanite Torpedoes which have there own Fire Group. But there is something about a lock on? I was so close. Darn! Is it ship controls Targeting select target ahead key?

 

[Nowski]

I tried with an unengineered Orca (I picked the Orca for its unengineered speed and optional modules capacity: build) and made a quite unprofessional and unedited video:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWisCWXF3EU



Here's what I did:

I used hotkeys for Pulse Neutraliser and heatsinks to save cycling between fire groups.

Started from Crook Hub, Toolfa, checked limpets.

Select route to Cocijo from Sol system map. Exit station, jump to Sol.

When hyperdicted: FA off, boost away, silent running, continue boosting, heatsink, watch FSD timer carefully, silent running off, FA on, jump ASAP

Unluckily I didn't get interdicted while supercruising to Cocijo. I would have killed throttle immediately, boost, low waked ASAP.

Arriving at Cocijo: go to 50% throttle 1000 km out, 20% throttle at 400km, exit supercruise at 200km.

Once there: deploy hardpoints (for caustic sink); disable FSD, weapons (for heat, probably irrelevant), aim for center of cloud, untarget Cocijo to avoid distracting fake target

Heading in: pips to engines, cycle to caustic sink firegroup, steer to avoid mines, deploy caustic sink after it reaches 100% (we have plenty of hull), heatsink if close to mine.

The pulse: full pips to system when cloud colour changes, listen for the building thrummm, hit and hold Pulse Neutraliser hotkey when the thrum stops just before the pulse, deploy heatsink, caustic sink, boost.

Arriving in Titan space: no more mines after the pulse; boost in to arrive at the rocks; deploy last caustic sink leaving one caustic ammo; disable caustic sink, pulse neutraliser; limpet repair hull; cycle to weaponss group; enable weapons; head to nearest vent.

Vent bombing: target vent, boost, fire torpedo on the beep, steer to next vent, target, boost, fire, steer, ... hit 3 out of 4 vents

Navigate to flip side of Titan, head for the core, fire AX missiles when pineapple rises, forget to put pips in weapons (I remembered 2nd time around), deploy heatsink, keep firing.

When the core retracts: boost upward to the rocks above, heatsink, keep boosting until clear of Torus Field, repair hull a bit.

1st time around got me just under 2M, second time (with 4 vents and pips in weapons) was over 2M.

Job done: I self-destructed.

 

[Kayvan]

As for flying through the cloud, I don't know. Ideally you'd probably keep bosting while popping heatsinks to avoid the mines detecting you. But it also works if you just sneak without boost. Last night I did it sneaking and my buddy did it boosting, in identical ships, and we both ended up using the same amount of caustic sinks.

The problem with consecutive bombing runs is that the security keeps getting ever tighter. First run, no problem. If you wait a bit afterwards, it may cool down to "green" in a reasonable time. But after 3 runs or so, it just wouldn't de-alert at all, and everything was chock full of interceptors and scouts. It's not my idea of good time to sit still in a corner for 20 minutes waiting for the guards to say "Ah, I guess it was just the wind". So after 3 runs or so I bailed.

 

[Tifu]

The problem with consecutive bombing runs is that the security keeps getting ever tighter. First run, no problem. If you wait a bit afterwards, it may cool down to "green" in a reasonable time. But after 3 runs or so, it just wouldn't de-alert at all, and everything was chock full of interceptors and scouts.

Picked this up from the AXI Discord, now I understand what's happening:

 

[Nowski]

How do you get a lock on with the Nanite Torpedoes? The vents opened. Tried targeting with my Nanite Torpedoes which have there own Fire Group. But there is something about a lock on? I was so close. Darn! Is it ship controls Targeting select target ahead key?

Just point your nose at the top of the vent, and when the little square appears use the hotkey to target the thing in front of you. You have to get fairly close, and because the vents are huge they appear nearer than they really are. Once targeted, there's a wait for a second or two then the torpedo will beep "ready", and you can fire at that point. (See 11:15 in the video I posted above for an example)

 

[Tifu]

If the deadline turns out to be tight come Monday, we may have to go in little teams in our own PG's to maximise our chances. Experienced players do fine in solo but most of us here aren't experienced by a long shot.

A rag-tag little army of AX combatants

 

[Moirai]

Purely a personal preference here:

Fire group 1
Primary: Nanite torpedo launcher
Secondary: Caustic sink launcher

Fire group 2
Primary: All other AX weapons
Secondary: Caustic sink launcher

That way I'm not wasting any ammo firing situationally irrelevant weapons

You could swap the caustic launchers for heat sink launchers if you find that more useful. I'm running engineered at 15% heat anyway, so not so important for me.

An extra group, as suggested, for limpets works as well.

 

[Tifu]

If the deadline turns out to be tight come Monday, we may have to go in little teams in our own PG's to maximise our chances. Experienced players do fine in solo but most of us here aren't experienced by a long shot.

A rag-tag little army of AX combatants

Fleshing out the idea of teams, basically two separate roles : bombers & escorts

source: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...-target-systems.612125/page-369#post-10508911

Escorts (AX MC's + other weapons) basically protect the bombers (the ones w/ Nanite torpedoes) so they can bomb the vents (relatively) unmolested.

It doesn't mean that the bombers don't have AX MC's, the escorts simply have more of them plus other weaponry.

Once the vents are adequately bombed, everybody heads to the side where the exposed core is with the escorts being rear guard.

This is why hardly anyone wants to be in the escort role

 

[Titler]

How do you get a lock on with the Nanite Torpedoes? The vents opened. Tried targeting with my Nanite Torpedoes which have there own Fire Group. But there is something about a lock on? I was so close. Darn! Is it ship controls Targeting select target ahead key?

Need to be reasonably close, select the vent with Torpedo on an active fire group, you'll see the target semi circles like this;

When the Torpedo is locking on, a second set of semi circles will appear, and rotate to the right; when they both appear vertical like above, it's locked and you can fire. You can be somewhat off centre when it does, and fire when you can't even see the vent, so be already boosting to the next vent when the lock on animation starts.

 

[Titler]

Regarding people being swamped and heat management, I think people are worrying too much about staying cool during the vent stage; ignore that, just boost like crazy to get as many vents as you can, and more firing time on the core...

Use the heat sink when approaching the core instead. This not only keeps you cool from core heat, and weapon firing, but it means the Thargoids are mostly still above the disc trying to see where you went; so when you boost away from the core vertically down, you've a lot more space to escape. Fire a second heatsink if it runs out and they're chasing you post core, if you absolutely must. Doing it like this, and using limpets to put my hull back again between vent appearences, I'm only dying now when I need to go back for ammunition.