You can fight in The Thargoid War without an AX ship.

[CMDR Corlas]

Combat Zones even, if you want to. Kill missions.

You don't need an AX ship or AX or Guardian weapons to kill Scouts. Do you have to run away from interceptors? Unless you have another plan to help, yeah. Interceptors are, lore-wise, SCARY. You've seen what they've done capital ships of all human navies. You're supposed to have to run away from them, unless you have a very specialized build to deal with them.

If you don't want to have to specialized build to deal with them, that's fine. You can still deal with them.

FLEE.

That's not bad game design. That's what you're supposed to have to do unless you have a specialized build to deal with them, and the piloting to back it up.

And if you specialize even a little bit, and put some non-grind-requiring standard AX weapons on your ship, you even contribute to killing Interceptors. It's just hard. As it should be, when your ship isn't really built for that task.

But this idea that people seem to have that you need to have a fully Guardian'ed specialized ship, fully engineered to and playing to a specific narrow meta, to fight Thargoids?

It's utter nonsense. Stop watching YouTube tutorials and try playing the game.

 

[Codger]

Sure, nothing like going into battle with severely inferior equipment. Makes it more fun and exciting.

 

[CMDR Corlas]

Sure, nothing like going into battle with severely inferior equipment. Makes it more fun and exciting.

It's not severely inferior for killing Scouts. You clearly have no idea what you're complaining about.

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

Sure, nothing like going into battle with severely inferior equipment. Makes it more fun and exciting.

Triumph through Adversity.
It builds character.

 

[Wlfric]

It's not severely inferior for killing Scouts. You clearly have no idea what you're complaining about.

yes, yes, rush to your death, John-Bob!!

 

[EdzUp]

Yes we will charge at them then self destruct that is the last thing they will be expecting

 

[Codger]

It's not severely inferior for killing Scouts. You clearly have no idea what you're complaining about.

Huh? I wasn't complaining. I said it was exciting.

 

[Crumly]

yes, yes, rush to your death, John-Bob!!

are you claiming he is wrong?

 

[Crumly]

Huh? I wasn't complaining. I said it was exciting.

you sound like you are disagreeing with him about being able to kill scouts pretty easily without gather guardian unlocks.

are you disagreeing with him? and if you are, what guardian weapon are you suggesting is better for killing scouts than AX MC?

 

[photomankc]

Honestly, If you can find a group of people working the interceptors, being the guy that keeps the damn scouts out of our hair is pretty useful and appreciated. I like having the members of our squad that are less equiped help out that way in CZs. Not having it full of scouts lobbing caustics all the time really does help out a lot.

 

[OrdinaryMan]

yes, yes, rush to your death, John-Bob!!

Although I have 2 solid ships with Guardian weapons, last night I mounted a 2 turreted ax mc on a medium engineered Vulture and hunted scouts in the Axi PG. I even later replaced 1 mc with Salvation Plasma. And I also attacked the interceptors.

I didn't die even once. I went back to my FC with 600M bond.

Of course I don't fight alone and normally use my krait, which I call the Ax Salvation Variant. (all of his weapons are salvation technology) And of course Krait or Alliance Chief with guardian weapons is Ax meta. However, this does not mean that "Ax War cannot be fought with other ships". It just isn't very effective. (but fun!)

 

[Viridian-]

Speaking of fleeing; Did the interceptors get faster, or are they faster in rage mode? I dusted off my Mk2 and went in search of cyclops to kill, since they are the only interceptor that doesn't immediately hand me my own butt. I headed towards the mayhem and had a single cyclops intercept me. So I played chase and started knocking off the swarm with flack as you do, but it was a long fight. It was closing on me at 430ms so I had to turn and boost so often its swarms had time to respawn. I ended up just rushing it for the last 2 hearts and almost got destroyed.

Edit* Nevermind, I put the wrong thrusters on lol.

 

[Martind Forlon]

It all hugely depends if you are used to be a ‘lone wolf’ or playing in team. For first you need skills, time and equipment (imo in that order). … I have Axi chief, but without skills and time I’m happy for cyclop solo kill occasionally. However it’s fun. There are CZs on attacked starports where they offer possibility for rearm/repair (but not buy limpets!). It can give even very inexperienced and unskilled cmdr (like myself) chance to kill interceptor … and survive. Dunno whether enrage in czs works same way for interceptors like in uss, but if yes, that cyclop I destroyed must be enraged most of time.

… nothing better as trying to dock with angry interceptor in your back

 

[HRDiagram]

My first AX ship was a Krait with turreted AX multicannons.
It was excellent to learn how to fight scouts (and even experiment with FA Off).
When I became more confident vs scouts, I replaced one of the AX multicannons with one fixed weapon and ventured into AX CZs, doing mostly scouts, but also joining the bigger fights vs interceptors together with many other CMDRs, and I contributed to interceptor kills.
Yes, you can kill interceptors with basic builds.
Most YouTube videos show how to build ships to solo interceptors, and the required training.
It's not mandatory. During the salvation events I brought a friend of mine into the czs, where groups of cmdrs were fighting interceptors, and my friend with his "puny" MCs and no guardian modules contributed to the kills, got hundreds of millions in bonds, learned something about interceptors and most importantly had fun, and decided to build a stronger AX ship

 

[Northpin]

You can "fight" the thargoid invasion in any ship that can boost close to 500, can fit rather decent shields and can run supply/delivery missions to attacked ports then evacuate personnel (escape pods actually) on the way out.
Phantom is the safest bet due to speed, but Python can carry more.

 

[Astaran]

Combat Zones even, if you want to. Kill missions.

You don't need an AX ship or AX or Guardian weapons to kill Scouts. Do you have to run away from interceptors? Unless you have another plan to help, yeah. Interceptors are, lore-wise, SCARY. You've seen what they've done capital ships of all human navies. You're supposed to have to run away from them, unless you have a very specialized build to deal with them.

If you don't want to have to specialized build to deal with them, that's fine. You can still deal with them.

FLEE.

That's not bad game design. That's what you're supposed to have to do unless you have a specialized build to deal with them, and the piloting to back it up.

And if you specialize even a little bit, and put some non-grind-requiring standard AX weapons on your ship, you even contribute to killing Interceptors. It's just hard. As it should be, when your ship isn't really built for that task.

But this idea that people seem to have that you need to have a fully Guardian'ed specialized ship, fully engineered to and playing to a specific narrow meta, to fight Thargoids?

It's utter nonsense. Stop watching YouTube tutorials and try playing the game.

well, it depends on how this type of "hit&run" participation is calculated in the new war system. In the old system, we were handing in combat bonds in CGs and FDev decided "arbitrarily" if we had succeeded or not (depending on how many combat bonds were handed in). Since FDev is now out of the loop (they don't manually place the Thargoids and "remove" them again), there must be a new war system at work behind the scenes. If the new systems calculates a human "win" by completing the AXCZ successfully and counts it a "loss" if the AXCZ has not been completed, such hit&run tactics might actually harm the overall war effort.

Still, I think the easiest and most appropriate way for "Newbie AX combat" would be the introduction of "Scouts only" CZs, so new players can participate without having to run from interceptors very single time.

 

[Arindor]

Is this a misinformation thread? When I return to the bubble I'd like my unengineered fighting ship to blast bugs to smithereens.

 

[Treya]

In the old system, we were handing in combat bonds in CGs and FDev decided "arbitrarily" if we had succeeded

In CGs it was disabled, yes, but outside of these the actual system was a semi-hidden kill counter shown in GalNet. Infestations started out with (IIRC) 'severe' Thargoid presence and would gradually get lower according to how many kills where reported in that system. The neat part is that Scouts counted the same as Interceptors so if a CMDR wanted to specifically push back against the invasion they would be exclusively going for Scouts - very beginner friendly.
It's still early days obviously but as long as Scout kills still count in the new system there should be ample opportunity for even the most rookie CMDR to take part (please don't make me eat these words FDev ).

 

[NUSQUAM]

You can solo a Cyclops with an unengineered Anaconda shield tank using AXMCs and if you're brave, the AX missiles. No advanced maneuvers needed. Scouts are easy as well lucrative for credits and rank. If you're in a wing or just in the AXI PG you can contribute.

Fighting at ports you can dock and repair/rearm.

Sirius tech brokers are finally in so if you have some materials you can get pre-engineered AX missile launchers and heatsinks.

AX combat is at it's all time easiest right now. No grind required of any kind required. No synthesis needed when you can just dock. Fighting at surface ports the interceptors don't even deploy swarms. The only thing I would recommend is a either a ship that can boost over 350 or a large ship with a lot of shield and hull. If you see a spiky interceptor avoid it if you're alone.

The YouTube tutorials are good but inadvertently paint an air of "grind Guardian or GTFO". If you want to solo anything beyond a Cyclops you will need to grind. But just chilling in AXCZs you just plug in AX weapons and go to town. Even if you can't take out a heart easily you can help exert it.

 

[SpaceGibbon]

I've been doing passenger evacuations in my type 7, and i've deliberately only engineered the thrusters to level 4, so I can't fully outrun the interceptors, and it's it's more fun / exciting because of that.