Phew, I'm glad I'm not the only one! I travel to my destination using the autopilot and set the time to pass at its fastest.
I usually do it this way as well, but not always. Today I've just returned from a very lucrative passenger trip involving four guys on the run from some assassins. The problem was, I had to strip my ship of some essential equipment to make room, as the shipyard wasn't equipped to handle removal of the shieldgens which would allow me to simply remove some of the generators rather than stripping my ship of nav equipment. The result? I had to fly the ship without scanner, without autopilot and with minimal amount of fuel. I've successfully fended off several pirate intercepts and carried my passengers safely to their port of destination, but it reminded me
why I fly on autopilot most of the time - I wasted two or three days yoyo-ing around, trying to intercept the planet (that I hadn't thought it through when deciding to land on the innermost inhabited planet, was another thing).
Sometimes when I'm under attack I don't even have the time to get the pirate in my crosshairs before I'm blown away!
Well, you shouldn't try to get the pirate in your crosshairs before you successfully evade the initial attack run. The first thing you should do when attacked is giving full burn away from the enemy fire (your movement should be perpendicular relative to the beams) if you don't know which direction enemy comes from, and away from the beams, but towards the enemy otherwise.
When I do have some time I can't get the hang of manoeuvring at all. There are occasions when I can't seem to change my speed with engines either off or on. Does anyone have any advice?
Ignore both the vector sight and velocity readout when engaged in deep space combat. They are irrelevant, and, if you're moving several thousand km/s it'd take you many hours to visibly affect your trajectory and velocity.
I notice a lot of people like the Asp but I find I'm destroyed before I can get out of the way. The solution I found was to buy a Griffon and load it up with shields and a plasma.
At the moment I've got the Imperial Trader though as the Griffon was too sluggish for photograph missions. I'd really appreciate an insight on how to use the Asp effectively.
Thanks all,
Mike
Asp is well liked, because it's Frontier's little-big ship. It's small enough to effectively avoid most of enemy fire, fast and maneuverable enough to match or outmaneuver even much smaller ships, it's range is long enough to make it an effective assassin's ship and it's large enough to be fitted with both shields and heavy armament without having to compromise on jump range or essential equipment - hell, you can even do some small time trading should opportunity arise. Skilled commander can easily fend off concerted attack by multiple craft equipped with 1MW beam lasers. Attacks by multiple craft equipped with 4MW beams are trickier, but ships carying such weaponry tend to be relatively large targets and Asp can usually outmaneuver and destroy them without having to absorb more than few hits.
Heavier weapons, like 20MW laser, can destroy Asp easily, but ships able to carry those, are too sluggish to pose a significant threat - even Imperial Courier lacks the manuverability necessary to do anything about an Asp circling it's hull.
So, if you're flying an Asp, you still have to evade enemy lasers if you want to stay alive, but you no longer have to worry about non-sustained 1MW beam fire, as well as ocassional grazing hits from 4MW beam which gives you the time to seriously mess the enemy up with your laser. There are two Asp-specific combat tips:
1) Don't rely on missiles - you can carry only one, and you might have to reserve your only pylon for the nuke.
2) Avoid the situations when the enemy can attack you from above or below - Asp is very flat which makes it difficult to hit from the sides, rear and front, which gives you great advantage during the attack runs, but it has large dorsal/ventral surface.
As for Griffon, I'd rather fly Boa or Panther - at least they have fully operational turrets (in FFE, in FE2 Boa's bottom turret is broken), plus Boa is really fast for it's size. Still I'd prefer not to sit in a large trader that is attacked by Imperial Courier or Explorer, no matter how many shields it would have - 20MW beam burns through the shields really fast, and I don't have to elaborate on the risks of sitting in a large, sluggish freighter when the enemy has plasma accelerator. On the other hand, Imperial Explorer is extremely ill-suited for dealing with small, nippy craft - I poked my first Explorer to death with 5MW pulse mounted on Adder.
