It would have helped against seeker missiles, and don't underestimate how strong a DBS can be with engineering: the hull can easily exceed 2000 kinetic/thermal HPs with two MRPs fitted, and it's not so easy to snipe modules if you don't run away in a straight line but head towards the attacker while randomly using lateral thrust.
To the wing who jumped me in Shinrarta Dezra (and whomever else wishes to care or share)...
- Thread starter Mersozz
- Start date
the only solution to this other than avoidance is to be a bigger threat (fly in pvp wings or set your own ship for a better pvp build) or try to be a bigger tank.
when you can fly "military" grade ships along side toyota corolla's ...there's not really a workable strategy there for the corolla except hoping the deadly ships flying all around them dont care about them enough to bother.
That's never going to change because that's the "freedom" designed into the game allowing min-maxed ships to be as trivial (albeit time consuming) to build and fly as average ships.
when you can fly "military" grade ships along side toyota corolla's ...there's not really a workable strategy there for the corolla except hoping the deadly ships flying all around them dont care about them enough to bother.
That's never going to change because that's the "freedom" designed into the game allowing min-maxed ships to be as trivial (albeit time consuming) to build and fly as average ships.
The defender has a significant advantage, and in most cases an engineered ship should escape even a determined wing of gankers. Bear in mind that:
- A lot of gankers are nowhere near top tier PvP in skill and mostly fly in shield tank frag builds, so a small ship that is faster WILL escape
- You have about 15 seconds to high wake out, and it takes probably 5-10 seconds for a full wing of 4 to drop in one by one
- a while ago a ganker cmdr organised training sessions on how to avoid ganks; you passed the test if you reliably escaped a 1v1 gank in a non engineered Cobra MKIII
- most of the judgements passed on the forums about you 'not standing a chance' are by players who either got killed once and gave up, or have just read other stories and parroted them.
yea, but when you're attacked by a wing, at least one of the ships from the attacking wing can position at long range (4+ km) at which point the target cant evade the long range rail spammage
Doesn't reflect the OP
Doesn't reflect the OP
Obviously every experience is different and most of the time you're not going to get killed by other players in open and when you do get pulled over, you can probably escape.
But we're talking about what could have been done here in this scenario. Not one where the other player(s) were crappy and average and you had time to run away.
In the above scenario where you're being missile spammed within seconds of interdiction and have no chance of running away without min-maxed builds to specifically oppose against such attacks, there is no "standing a chance". It's trivial for someone to be min-maxed for killing ships and the only real defense requires building your ship to deal with those builds either thru extreme speed or shield tanking or equal or better offensive ability (and involving other players).
The idea that pvp builds aren't nearly insta-kill for un-engineered setups is just not a realistic one. It's like trying to argue that piracy is a viable role in the game and pointing to an example where the victim played along and the pirate followed the entirely optional rules. Even when you're not being insta killed, it's too easy to disable a ship so they can't jump away or evade by damaging thrusters or the fsd thru the magic effects of engineered weapons.
Every opponent isn't going to be good or even using good equipment, but you have to assume they are at least as threatening as the experiences you've had in the game yourself and plan every interaction according to that potential. Unless you just dont care or the cost is too high to do so. But the OP asked what they could have done differently. And the answer is, what i posted. The only solution is to change the pieces used in the game or avoid the game, because the game is definitely favoring the antagonist due to engineering.
I have a Courier which I sometimes use for those wing assassination missions: torpedoes to take out the shields followed by a size 2 rail with super pen to take out the PP - even if the NPC target is over 4km and starts moving around I start missing half my shots. A player could move enough laterally in a small ship I think to be quite difficult to hit, and by then you would only have around 8-10 seconds max to take them down, probably with 2 or max 3 rails.
I would like to think that if a wing destroys my ship in such a scenario they would have at least 'earned' it, via reasonable skill level and not just engineering.
In summary your point is valid, but I don't like the way a lot of the forum threads take an example of a new player getting splattered in 5 seconds maxed out cargo ship with no engineering, and that gets extrapolated by others into a 'you don't stand a change whatever you do' narrative.
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Not sure I get your point
This isn't true at all.
Missiles are not effective against shields and a heat sink could have helped at avoiding target lock - if that didn't work the OP correctly faced the attacker (thereby avoiding getting his thrusters destroyed), and could have fitted two ECM modules, which would have been effective against missiles.
It also helps to know what you are facing: there are a number of ships that can simply outrun missiles.
I didn't see a solution in your post at all, just a suggestion to try with a stronger ship.
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Your posts were that you have plenty of time to escape, but obviously that isn't the case. The OP did not have time to escape and this doesn't appear to be the first time they've ever had this happen to them. So your comments there are irrelevant and contradicted by the OP. That's the point.
Missiles are slower than lasers and something obviously disabled his ability to high wake out and escape. It's easy to volley missiles immediately because they will take time to reach the target while using near instantaneous lasers and faster projectile weapons to git rid of the shields or bypass shields and take out modules.
Could he have fitted ecm modules to confuse the seeking missiles? sure. But if this all happened in the span of less than 15 seconds and we know missiles aren't going to take out appropriately sized shields, then obviously other weapons were used in conjunction with the missiles and those weapons would not have been affected by the ecms.
It seems more likely that the missiles were used as a distraction and hopeful bonus if actually effective to the real attack. Since as you say, the missiles couldn't have done the job on their own.
Not every ship interaction is winnable. a pvp build vs a dbs non-engineered setup ..potentially not even pve setup... is easily in the non-winnable category. The solution is to change your game piece or avoid the situation or bring bigger badder friends.
IF the OP had used a heat sink followed by ECM he would probably have escaped, that's my advice and I think it's eminently 'relevant'. You are entitled to your opinion but so am I.
The OP stated that his ship was engineered, but we don't know the build.
I agree that a non engineered cargo loadout stands little chance, but a DBS even with G3 engineering stands a good chance of escaping most scenarios with the right build.
A lot depends on the build of the attackers: if they use frags a DBS should be easily fast and mobile enough to survive for 15 seconds if it has the required HRPs.
As @Northpin pointed out, I would fear LR super pen rails the most, but they require skill that a lot of gankers may not have.
It would help if you shared your build
Yeah, I'll post that up when I can .... it will be pretty clear to see it wasn't designed to withstand a wing interdiction.
I take with a pinch of salt any statement that is saying "i was killed in 5 seconds" simply because it takes 4-5 seconds only to deploy hardpoints
I dont think the op said he was killed in 5 seconds from the start of exiting interdiction.
It takes 10 seconds for a cooldown on non-evasive interdictions. That's before you can even start your fsd. Charging the fsd takes an additional 15 seconds.
The real question is, is 20 seconds enough time to stop a player from being able to finish high waking or outright kill them?
can 1 or a wing of players quickly take out non-pvp engineered builds of ships in an interdiction?
Prior to engineering, this was almost always an escapable experience. You simply couldn't do enough damage to do anything to stop someone from getting away if they wanted to and didn't hesitate and make mistakes about it. 100% surviveability. no matter what ship unless you were running around in ridiculous configurations purposely designed to be coffins in anything but pve encounters.
Post engineering, that's not the case. There are weapon combinations available to anyone with enough time to grind that will lay out common trader and even pve ships extremely quickly. Be them penetrating rails or reverb effects or scramble effects or pulse disruptors, or high dps short range weapons, etc .... you dont have to land many hits to get a random fsd module malfunction or do enough damage to disable a module temporarily or slow/weaken it. it's a numbers game for such random chance malfunction effects but you have no way of knowing if you're going to draw the short straw. but if you can solo with such weapons and strip shields from a ship the size of an anaconda in < 5 seconds, then it's well within their ability to do it in less time on smaller ships.
5 seconds of weapon fire from 2 other player killer ships at the same time. It's easily non-winnable at that point. The total attack may not span just 5 seconds, but the distance in time between being just fine and being dead can be 5 seconds. That's not an exaggeration.
I'm not in the camp that suggests it's hopeless all the time. But it's extremely misleading to think that the victim of such encounters has the power to determine their own fate thru skill or just practiced reactions. That ship sailed years ago. Unless you're suggesting flying ships without being engineered or under engineered is their own fault. When you take a non-combat ship into a combat scenario with players engineered to shred player ships you aren't relying on skill and practice to escape and survive. You're relying on luck. Luck that they make mistakes or that the game doesn't pick the module module to fail, etc.
I think what you do is far less meaningful than what you have brought in such interaction when it comes to surviving modern pvp encounters.
It takes 10 seconds for a cooldown on non-evasive interdictions. That's before you can even start your fsd. Charging the fsd takes an additional 15 seconds.
The real question is, is 20 seconds enough time to stop a player from being able to finish high waking or outright kill them?
can 1 or a wing of players quickly take out non-pvp engineered builds of ships in an interdiction?
Prior to engineering, this was almost always an escapable experience. You simply couldn't do enough damage to do anything to stop someone from getting away if they wanted to and didn't hesitate and make mistakes about it. 100% surviveability. no matter what ship unless you were running around in ridiculous configurations purposely designed to be coffins in anything but pve encounters.
Post engineering, that's not the case. There are weapon combinations available to anyone with enough time to grind that will lay out common trader and even pve ships extremely quickly. Be them penetrating rails or reverb effects or scramble effects or pulse disruptors, or high dps short range weapons, etc .... you dont have to land many hits to get a random fsd module malfunction or do enough damage to disable a module temporarily or slow/weaken it. it's a numbers game for such random chance malfunction effects but you have no way of knowing if you're going to draw the short straw. but if you can solo with such weapons and strip shields from a ship the size of an anaconda in < 5 seconds, then it's well within their ability to do it in less time on smaller ships.
5 seconds of weapon fire from 2 other player killer ships at the same time. It's easily non-winnable at that point. The total attack may not span just 5 seconds, but the distance in time between being just fine and being dead can be 5 seconds. That's not an exaggeration.
I'm not in the camp that suggests it's hopeless all the time. But it's extremely misleading to think that the victim of such encounters has the power to determine their own fate thru skill or just practiced reactions. That ship sailed years ago. Unless you're suggesting flying ships without being engineered or under engineered is their own fault. When you take a non-combat ship into a combat scenario with players engineered to shred player ships you aren't relying on skill and practice to escape and survive. You're relying on luck. Luck that they make mistakes or that the game doesn't pick the module module to fail, etc.
I think what you do is far less meaningful than what you have brought in such interaction when it comes to surviving modern pvp encounters.
Agreed
Yes, I forgot to count that
The answer is: it depends - on many factors, but I have experience as a pirate and as a trader, and there are many scenarios where the defender escapes
I would fancy my chances in an A-rated non engineered Viper MKII, MKIV, Cobra MKIII, and most of the faster medium ships, but it would be touch and go.
If the defender has engineering at G5 and so does the attacker(s), I think that in a lot of cases it's even easier for the defender now. The courier for example with advanced thrusters is pretty well un-gankable. I do agree that engineering went to far though.
The defender does need at least G3 engineering in many cases, sure, but that is highly accessible now.
Also, there are still many players that fly in open with now hull protection at all and no shields, and then play victim on the forums.
Agreed.
In Elite most ships can do most roles according to the outfitting and engineering, the 'victim' can certainly survive in a cargo ship such as a T9, even at CGs. I have done many CGs as a trader in open, and have rarely been destroyed. A well outfitted and engineered trade Cutter is virtually impossible to gank, but even a T9 can hold its own. I did the Alcor CG in a shieldless but heavily engineered T9 and was never destroyed: 752t cargo capacity with over 6000 kinetic HPs and well protected modules. All I had to do was remember to high wake. I will get destroyed sooner or later, but most times I will survive.
playing victim is a pastime here, for sure. I dont think the OP was doing that fyi, it's just a more convenient label than interdictee.
There's nothing stopping people from defending themselves against engineered threats, and certainly there are effective ways to do so.
I just dont think the non-engineered variety, even A-class, can rely on that a-class hit point and resistance to survive very long at all against an engineered player killer build.
Some amount of engineering will negate the offensive engineering of their opponent, but for some of the magic special effects there are no defensive options. Especially once shields drop. And most players who are playing without the expectation of having to duke it out with a player killing setup aren't equipping their ships to be shield tanks.
Your hull tank isn't going to counter a spectrum scrambler or pulse disruptor from their random chance at causing a module malfunction. They may still survive this malfunction, but the favor is decidedly flipped in the attackers favor with engineering. Especially if they get lucky and what malfunctions is your fsd or thrusters.
If i were to re-imagine engineering and not remove it entirely or in part, I'd do this:
Update defensive module engineering to have magic abilities that negated the magic abilities of offensive weapons. These defensive module magic abilities would be mutually exclusive with any offensive modules having the magic ability they are negating. So you couldn't use a magic feature and be immune to it. This immunity would be a direct mirror of the effectiveness of the magic ability. If it's rng, then the defense against it is equivalent rng, if it's not rng then the defense is not and it's ability is in effect until the module it's attached to hits 0. The hull, hull reinforcements, shields, shield boosters, power distributor, reactor, thrusters would all have the ability to be set with these defense magic negation abilities and they would be effective for the whole ship so long as the module exists and would not need to stack. they are absolute against the magic effect when active.
I think that would go a long way toward bringing back more balance between attacker and attackee in engineering. Without forcing the victim to have to rely on running away using the same speed mods that the attacker has available or having to shield tank hard enough to withstand a wing attack.
There's nothing stopping people from defending themselves against engineered threats, and certainly there are effective ways to do so.
I just dont think the non-engineered variety, even A-class, can rely on that a-class hit point and resistance to survive very long at all against an engineered player killer build.
Some amount of engineering will negate the offensive engineering of their opponent, but for some of the magic special effects there are no defensive options. Especially once shields drop. And most players who are playing without the expectation of having to duke it out with a player killing setup aren't equipping their ships to be shield tanks.
Your hull tank isn't going to counter a spectrum scrambler or pulse disruptor from their random chance at causing a module malfunction. They may still survive this malfunction, but the favor is decidedly flipped in the attackers favor with engineering. Especially if they get lucky and what malfunctions is your fsd or thrusters.
If i were to re-imagine engineering and not remove it entirely or in part, I'd do this:
Update defensive module engineering to have magic abilities that negated the magic abilities of offensive weapons. These defensive module magic abilities would be mutually exclusive with any offensive modules having the magic ability they are negating. So you couldn't use a magic feature and be immune to it. This immunity would be a direct mirror of the effectiveness of the magic ability. If it's rng, then the defense against it is equivalent rng, if it's not rng then the defense is not and it's ability is in effect until the module it's attached to hits 0. The hull, hull reinforcements, shields, shield boosters, power distributor, reactor, thrusters would all have the ability to be set with these defense magic negation abilities and they would be effective for the whole ship so long as the module exists and would not need to stack. they are absolute against the magic effect when active.
I think that would go a long way toward bringing back more balance between attacker and attackee in engineering. Without forcing the victim to have to rely on running away using the same speed mods that the attacker has available or having to shield tank hard enough to withstand a wing attack.
Wow, can you post that build please? Mine is nowhere near that.
Hopefully you can see this...
Coriolis EDCD Edition
A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous
s.orbis.zone
I managed to avoid a couple of gankers in Diaguandri by using silent running as soon as I dropped out when I was flying an unengineered shieldless Sidewinder. I don't know how good they were. One had an FDL and I'm not sure what the other had, but it was a smaller ship. The FDL was doing the interdicting. I thought it was good fun, so as soon as I'd arrived at the station (didn't want to have to do the long journey again), I came back out to play. They soon found me again, interdicted me an got me that time and the third, but then I won the last three. After that, they must have got bored and wouldn't interdict me again. I counted a win as getting back into supercruise.
Last week I was ganked by a wing of 3 (2 FDLs and a Mamba with dps frag builds no communication - just your classic gank and spank) while I flew into Shin with Dolphin.
A little disappointed that one of the players was on my Block List, but I was still instanced with him. Maybe since he wasn't the interdictor, just a nav-locked follower onner the Block didn't work. I expanded my Block list accordingly - but it is clear that Block is not foolproof.
Maybe there is some bug where there is a lack of carryover between Horizons and Odyssey for Block Lists?
Maybe the Block lists don't work in Odyssey?
One nice accommodation that was available in Odyssey is that you now get the choice to respawn in the system where you are ganked, and choose the station you want to spawn in. I take that as an acknowledgement that PVP kill / respawn mechanics were less than friendly to the targeted player.
The game is 7 years old and this gameplay is still a draw for folks. Old habits die hard I guess. I suppose this will be more prevalent for a while now that ED is F2P.
A little disappointed that one of the players was on my Block List, but I was still instanced with him. Maybe since he wasn't the interdictor, just a nav-locked follower onner the Block didn't work. I expanded my Block list accordingly - but it is clear that Block is not foolproof.
Maybe there is some bug where there is a lack of carryover between Horizons and Odyssey for Block Lists?
Maybe the Block lists don't work in Odyssey?
One nice accommodation that was available in Odyssey is that you now get the choice to respawn in the system where you are ganked, and choose the station you want to spawn in. I take that as an acknowledgement that PVP kill / respawn mechanics were less than friendly to the targeted player.
The game is 7 years old and this gameplay is still a draw for folks. Old habits die hard I guess. I suppose this will be more prevalent for a while now that ED is F2P.