HunPredator made a comment in suggestions that I wanted to reply to, but I felt the suggestions forum was not appropriate place for it. First their reply:





My reply to this:

HunPredator,

A trader is under no obligation to fully load with XCs. They may load a fighter as well. If someone fully loads with XCs, then they put themselves in a position of weakness.

Also... even if a pilot undocks while attacked by unrats or another player, they will not be dead before they can even turn around.

I don't know if you have capship, but if not, you'll eventually learn that you are invulnerable for a moment after undocking. So you won't be dead instantly. Additionally, with unrats, their attack will be split between two objects once you undock. And if you drop a mine, the unrats will focus on the mine instead of on you, allowing you time to pick them off.

VO is a MMO, which means massively multiplayer online (game). I think that capship pilots need to learn to be escorted by fighters. To use a contemporary term, you need a combat air patrol ( CAP ). So either get your guild to protect you, or pay some pilots to protect you.

Anyone else have thoughts on tactics?

That's kinda dumb ngl.

Say if you were crossing an area with social rejects with your truck full of precious items, wouldn't you hire a few escorts to go with you?

It is exactly the same but the scene is set in space.

I have flown capships long enough to know about the invulnerable time.
Also... I know about escorts. But most of the time I couldn't get anyone to do it. I usually asked around my guild, because I don't trust in anyone. Who I could dont play the game or was busy with their stuff.
Also... most people stack XCs into a capship to maximize cargo space. And you will lose 200 of it for a fighter, what most of the time useless. Because what players with just basic pvp experience can do against 2-3 attackers? Not even talking about unrats hammering them to death 3 seconds after undocking... Because really... By the time you kill 2-3 unrats its possible that the rest will blow your capship up.
Against players its a different story. If you caught by a PCB hound and rags you can kill the hound and pick off the rags...
But when facing a PCB/neut/mposi goli+hound in a dent... Thats impossible to survive. Even if you kill the hound, you cannot kill the goli fast enough if you even can deshield it, while it will make you unable to escape or even fire back, killing you slowly.
I am wrong?
Maybe
But thats from my experience

You could always scout ahead you know.

"Anyone else have thoughts on tactics?"

Currently if you're out of your capship and pm it to attack your target it only shoots large port weapon.

If devs make all turrets and Large port weapon shoot any hostiles nearby or let's say if you pm your capship to attack "PlayerName".
It could help in capship defense.

This could be optional - target nearest hostile or selected player.

Allowing playerbase to save home in their capship is another idea but don't shoot me for posting this :P

I agree in this with Pandoram. Also scouting not works always, because the bad dudes can appear anytime and anywhere.

The crux of the matter seems to be: you are playing a multi player game solo. You need to group up with others. A lone ship is always going to be at a huge advantage. If you can't get escorts, then you need to create a capital ship convoy. As a large group, you can punch through any enemy barrier.

Think of it in another way: If more of you are in capships than your enemy has pilots, then they can't pcb you all. Which means at any given time, at least one of your cap ships has full power to unleash a hell storm of capswarms and cap rails.

"Think of it in another way: If more of you are in capships than your enemy has pilots, then they can't pcb you all."

The way i see it a gunner bot user is at huge advantage :-

A gunner bot user can easily undock from their trident in a Rag or Greyhound to chase people around , while their gunner bots is constantly shooting capital swarms/gems or any missile turret at target.

All they have to do is pm their capship to attack selected target , while they're out of capship , it will auto chase , shoot Large port weapon at target , and all they has to do is /+shoot2 with turretbots , it will keep shooting missiles at selected target.

A single player who plays on android device can't open multiple clients to place gunner bots in their capships.

Another Example - when a gunnerbot user is out of their trident in a small ship and it dies - they go back to their home station. While their trident is still sitting there and gunnerbots still keeps shooting missiles turrets at nearby hostiles.

But when a single player dies , their capship is sitting duck , can't really do much to defend themself.

If the devs allow /attack command to shoot turrets with large port weapon at targets (when you're out of capship) -then this could help some traders & haulers to defend themself.

Pandoram, this is not a suggestion thread. Additionally, in the past month, how many gunner bots have you seen? I'm going out on a limb here, and i'm going to say you have have not seen any in at least the past 2 weeks.

But on that note, why don't you hire newer pilots to be gunners for you? Group up with the gunner pilots and tell them who to shoot while you are undocked. There is a plugin on voupr called SwitchTarget that allows a group leader to switch everyone's target in a group. Run that, and now you are in command of your hired help's targeting.

"Pandoram, this is not a suggestion thread. Additionally, in the past month, how many gunner bots have you seen? I'm going out on a limb here, and i'm going to say you have have not seen any in at least the past 2 weeks"

I know this isn't suggestion thread , so does you - you moved your post from suggestions to general thread to ask players thoughts/opinion on tactics and i gave mine , no need to get hostile.

Just because i haven't seen any gunner bot acitivity recently that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

"But on that note, why don't you hire newer pilots to be gunners for you?"

Why should we play the game your way ? Gunner bots if anything is harming the game - a single guy with multiple pc's and alt accounts is at huge advantage over a single player.

Those gunnerbots users doesn't even purchase premium sub , and use their f2p clients as turret bots.

Maybe devs needs to make PC gameplay charge 10$ again.

i'd rather like devs to make attack command shoot turrets at targets so everyone can defend themself against such gunner bots users.

I won't comment further on it , take a chill pill.

I've thread-muted Pandoram, because this is not a Suggestions thread, and he doesn't seem to understand the difference between "tactics" and "suggestions".

- A Tactic is something a player can do, as it stands right now. An adapted usage of the existing game.
- A "suggestion" is a request for the developers to change something.

We don't write Suggestions in General. If you have a request for the developers to change something, it goes into Suggestions. If you've been banned from Suggestions for repeated bad behaviour, like Pandoram, you don't get to then post your "Suggestions" into General, just because a topic is "adjacent" to things you want changed.

There's already been an official response about turret bots, explaining they're going to cease to be a viable strategy. So, let it go, people.

Back to the actual Topic, as far as I can tell, this is about expectation of risk. People's expectations of risk, in a capship, have been quite low. That's changing. People will have to evolve their tactics, and their expectations.

Pandoram, i am calm. You may be misreading my responses though. By moving this portion of that thread out of suggestions, we went from discussing possibilities to discussing what we have right now. So please limit the discussion of tactics to what we have available to ourselves at this moment.

"Just because i haven't seen any gunner bot acitivity recently that doesn't mean it doesn't happen."

I am using information from the developers to form an educated position . And based on that information, my educated guess is: Since automated turrets have been implemented, gunner bot use has dropped. Farther more, since the activateturrets bugs have been fixed, gunner bot use cases are probably a fraction of what they have been. Are their uses zero? Maybe not. But activateturrets solved a problem that the majority users of the bots had.

Why should we play the game your way ?

You don't have to play my way. You may fly solo through pirate infested waters if you wish.

But...


Sometimes the best weapon to combat the unknown is a group.

As far as fighting the unrats in a trident is concerned as long as they are not right on top of me when I jump in the sector I can kill them all using Gemini homing missle turrets. I am referring to the WH unrats.
Make sure you have throttle at full and try to turbo as long as you can. Make sure you are not pointed at a roid. Hop in turrets and keep switching between turrets shooting at them. I do have a plugin that helps me switch turrets quickly and sorry I am not sure which one it is. (Turret hop maybe). Using this method I can kill all the unrats at the WH. Yes I lose shields and about half my hull but I survive. I can do this without undocking.

This does not work for skilled players because they are better at avoiding missiles. Having a friend scout ahead is a better option for me to avoid players. Yes another player can appear at anytime but if you are lucky your spotter can help you or you are close enough to the jump point you can jump away before they get close enough to follow. Then pick a random empty sector and deepspace until it quiets down. If you aren't lucky the player will follow/pcb you. This is when I drop a tu and hope they hit it or shoot neut turrets at the mine and hope I can hit it.

I think it was Saturday evening I tested using Gemeni turrets on a behemoth with active turrets. From what I could see they do fire at whatever is targeted, until they run out of ammunition. B

They do deplete their ammo stocks pretty fast, but it's easy enough to work around that by hopping into the turrets to reload them. Not the best possible option, but it is something you can do.

Another thing you can do to increase you survival odds is to run an escort mission. You are flying to somewhere anyway, why not get paid for at least part of the journey? They may be largely ineffective VS skilled pirates, but they WILL help VS the WH unrats.

Even if the convoy isn't going to your exact destination, you will still gain some degree of protection along the way, while being paid for the privilege.

Those of you who say "hire an escort" don't seem to realize that hiring an escort is nearly impossible.

1. Traders don't really want to be broadcast on 100 that they're looking for help to haul or trade because that alerts pirates to your activity. So how do you find an escort without letting pirates know that you're looking to move valuable goods and you need protection (and are probably going to be unable to find protection 90% of the time)?

2. You put a giant target on your back by outing the location of pirates, so traders don't work together because they don't want to be singled out. The channel to call out pirate locations is dead. It's not like back in the day when I could out the location of a pirate and VPR would come through and clear a wormhole. Now if I call out the location of a pirate on 100, I get a bunch of messages from salty pirates telling me that they're going to hunt me down.

3. Escorting is boring because an escort is basically a glorified spotter. That makes it hard to recruit people to want to do it when most of the time nothing is happening and they feel like their time could be better spent farming for themselves. I guess it may be useful to establish what should be the going rate to hire a spotter to help you haul/trade?

4. You have to sacrifice tons of cargo space if you want your escort to be able to dock on your capship to R/R.

5. Most players who like to PvP play as pirates. That means most of the people who would be willing to help a trader are not pvp-oriented and so would rather use their time online to do pve content.

6. Unless someone has been changed, you don't receive credit for an escort mission if you're inside a capship the whole time. So that basically makes look...no hands suggestion a moot point for a thread on capship defense tactics.

7. I find mines to be pretty terrible for capship defense. Making the TU mine target-able by NPCs has made it a nearly useless weapon. It used to fit a nice defensive niche against NPC pirates, but our all-knowing devs decided that since people were using lightning mines inappropriately that all mines needed to be nerfed. Mines are one of the few purely defensive weapons and it is a shame that they're being neglected.

EDIT: I was wrong about this. TU mines have been buffed with a lot of concussive force and thus may be worth using again against npcs. At the very least, it may distract unrats briefly due to targeting priority of mines.

I am following this thread carefully because at this moment, surviving a surprise unrat attack at a WH is possible, but only if you're able to accelerate before the unrats get too close to hit you with their PCBs. Like rolflor said, accelerate immediately out of the gate and pray you aren't pointed at a roid. To switch between turrets quickly, bind a key to swap between turrets -- no plugins needed. I forget the exact combo, but it's something like /bind "!" enterturret1 to make it so that the "!" key puts you in your first turret.

If you run into player pirates, I would like to know your defense tactics. Here's the usual scenario. Pirate is in a hound. Follows the capship until backup pirates arrive in a swarm rag or X1 with PCBs. Hound pirate usually has a PCB to try and stop you from jumping at a wormhole and now with the turret changes, can also stop you from firing your weapons. Forget trying to deepspace because they'll just follow you. Can't shake the hound in a capship, cant hit the hound with any of the capships weapons, so basically your only option is to try and dock your capship and do something else. Imagine I have a fighter on my capship, I can try and get out and get the player pirate to chase my fighter briefly, but guaranteed the pirate is better at PVP than me and if I die, my capship is completely vulnerable. So, pirates have a ton of offensive tools in the form of fast ships, strong weapons, and a PCB that can go right through my shield for some reason. What are my defensive options here?

Even if you don't get paid, the convoy will provide more targets for unrats and may take some out. I haven't tried running an escort mission while flying a capitol ship, so I'm not certain if you get paid for it or not. Does anybody else know?

VS a PCB hound, you can still use Gemini missiles. Also, do firecrackers use energy? Dodging two different types of missiles with different maneuvering characteristics is much harder. Sure firecrackers don't do much damage, but they do a little. Mostly they bounce light ships around, throwing off their aim, and possibly, allowing another weapon to hit them.

What are my defensive options here?

Have you tried firecrackers? They don't require energy. The biggest issue with them is that they go empty fast. If you do something like this:

alias turretOn "+ActivateTurrets; echo turrets on; alias turretToggle turretOff"
alias turretOff "-ActivateTurrets; echo turrets off; alias turretToggle turretOn"
alias turretToggle turretOn

Then do something like this:

alias t1 "enterturret 1"
alias reload "t1; wait 1 activate"
bind F1 reload
bind F2 turretOn

(LNH may need to check the aliases, but you get the idea). Every time the turrets go empty, you hit F1, which will have you enter turret 1 (this reloads the turrets), then it leaves the turret, then you reenable Luxen's alias for the activateturrets command via the F2 key.

This way, you can keep a constant stream of firecrackers on your target.

Firecrackers being fired at a light ship looks like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj9sMZowhYY
And an encounter with unrats could look like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEgDLkeg0tY

This is a very effective way to keep light ships from PCBing you.

Close WaF, only issue I see is you want

Bind F2 TurretToggle

Instead as that is the alias that is remade over and over.

"That's kinda dumb ngl.

Say if you were crossing an area with social rejects with your truck full of precious items, wouldn't you hire a few escorts to go with you?

It is exactly the same but the scene is set in space." - SIGTERM

Honestly this guy really summed this entire mind set up.

I would like to add that even if you don't have friends or an "escort" with you. Traders are not immune to PVP in grey. With /+ActivateTurrets capital ships can now defend them selves with near 100% turret usage.

We are all used to having huge blocks of time where grey space is dead empty of anyone hostile. Like Incarnate said it's about our perception of risk people in capital ships think they are immune to everything. This is starting to change for both sides. There are plenty of counter tactics to getting PCB's off of you. Bottom line is. No counter tactics beat the group with the most people and coordination.

Greyspace is becoming more risky. AND with that risk should come the reward. That last sentence can spiral into another thread all it's own.

I should probably note that this whole thing cuts both ways. Anything you do to make a Capitol ship better able to defend itself, makes it a better offensive platform as well. What would you do then if ambushed in your trident full of xc's by a pair of goliaths?