Way too many interdictions. I lost count of how many times I interdicted on the way to a station 2200ls in from the sun. I think it was something like six times. Not fun. I just don't see any sense in trying to pickup pods as it takes too long to fight them off and make it to the station.
Tone down the Scythe
- Thread starter Pville_Piper
- Start date
While I have yet to be interdicted more than twice per system while running evacs, if it is happening that much, I would be inclined to agree it's a bit much.
However, I have found that if you fit an ECM, you can literally just ignore them. When they fire the first reboot missile, ECM. Right after they fire the second, ECM is ready again. Rinse and repeat until FSD cooldown is up, then wait for them to fire a missile, ECM, stow hardpoints and jump. They will fire another missile but it has never hit before my FSD spooled up, and I don't have fast charge.
However, I have found that if you fit an ECM, you can literally just ignore them. When they fire the first reboot missile, ECM. Right after they fire the second, ECM is ready again. Rinse and repeat until FSD cooldown is up, then wait for them to fire a missile, ECM, stow hardpoints and jump. They will fire another missile but it has never hit before my FSD spooled up, and I don't have fast charge.
I would guess that blowing up the interdictor prevents it from, you know, following you back into supercruise again. As you would expect.
That is one case where NPCs seem to retain some level of persistence. I have had instances where a hostile pirate jumped in because I had a kill contract, and began fighting with some of the other local pirates in a signal source(don’t know how, didn’t care to ask).
When I abandoned said instance because I didn’t care to fight the engineered Vultures as well, the second pirate followed me out with some hull damage and a shield at around 38%. I’d assume the same principle goes for the Scythes.
They also do not sound like a hard kill so if you have appropriate weaponry, you’d save yourself more time just blowing it up - if you’re willing to, of course.
Compared to the Glaive, the Scythe is more forgiving.
In all my interactions, facing two Scythes at once has been better than a single Glaive. My ship is not set-up to fight glaives (or interceptors), but can get rid of scouts and scythes (a cold, shieldless Clipper with AXMCs), to the point that I now willingly travel with some escape pods in my cargo to force interdictions by scythes to avoid glaives as much as I can.
In all my interactions, facing two Scythes at once has been better than a single Glaive. My ship is not set-up to fight glaives (or interceptors), but can get rid of scouts and scythes (a cold, shieldless Clipper with AXMCs), to the point that I now willingly travel with some escape pods in my cargo to force interdictions by scythes to avoid glaives as much as I can.
Nope.. I was in a system the other day and had occupied escape pods on board. Every. Single. Time I jumped to supercruise I was interdicted by a Scythe. This happened about 6 or 7 times in a row and only stopped because I finally got to the station.
I killed them every time they pulled me, so while a logical hypothesis, this doesn't/didn't help. Luckily I was in a bug squishing Annie so I was happy to farm the mats this way but if I hadn't been it would've been bleeding awful.
Right… I guess it’s just because the interaction might have been designed with the idea of doing evac runs in mind, where you’ll quickly build up distance to the territory where Scythes roam. If they perpetually respawn otherwise, for any kind of pod or cargo container, it does sound like it’d get pretty annoying rather quickly.
Could just be their point, whether you’ll agree with it as a design choice or not. They really seem to want those pods, no matter where from.
(Remind me to test if they will drop into a place like a haz res from destroyed pirate ships after I… ‘volunteer’ some of their kin for it. And by volunteer I mean meet the end of whatever I have mounted in the huge hardpoints of a Corvette at the time.)
I've found the best way to deal with Scythes is to find a system with a station close to the star, 1200ls or less is best, to keep the number of interdictions manageable. You really have to think through the and plan ahead.
Also, jumping to an alert system that has been cleared is a good pitstop if you need repairs as the Scythes won't bother you there.
A single Glaive is a fight that I can win. But the other day I got jumped by one with 4 scouts, I made it out of there with 4% Hull... I tried the tactic of running a bit to lure the Glaive away like I do with Scythes when running with scouts, hammering the hunter, then running a bit more and repeating until the hunter is dead and then finishing off the scouts.
This works well with the Scythe, but the Glaive just chews you up. The best tactic there is to fight the Glaive, but draw it away and focus on killing an individual scout as it comes into range.
Also, jumping to an alert system that has been cleared is a good pitstop if you need repairs as the Scythes won't bother you there.
A single Glaive is a fight that I can win. But the other day I got jumped by one with 4 scouts, I made it out of there with 4% Hull... I tried the tactic of running a bit to lure the Glaive away like I do with Scythes when running with scouts, hammering the hunter, then running a bit more and repeating until the hunter is dead and then finishing off the scouts.
This works well with the Scythe, but the Glaive just chews you up. The best tactic there is to fight the Glaive, but draw it away and focus on killing an individual scout as it comes into range.