This is exactly what I am lacking. Over the course of the past 2 days I have played vendetta thoroughly and rapidly gone through the levels. Thoroughly enoying myself along the way, botting, trading, having a whale of a time.

But now I have found myself lacking the skills to carry on and the frustration of being killed over and over is destroying my motivation to carry on.

Its come to a point where collectors are no longer a challenge, obviously. I can take on 1, maybe 2 at a push Aputech-5 Guardians at a struggle. I find it near impossible to dodge their shots having to return to base every 1 or 2 kills. On my first day I seem to have got the hang of it and spent nearly 20 mins killing nothing but these guardians for a while and was enjoying myself. But come back today to find the Advanced Combat Practice no longer lists the Aputech's as a valid bot for the mission, so I go seeking other types.

Frankly, I suck. The other guardians totally kick my ass. Everything I try from other peoples suggestions to trying to figure it out myself just isnt working. The strafe+roll technique people have been trying to explain to me, I havent got the hang of it. After dieing so many times, I have just lost the will to go out and try again :( Even going back to Aputech's I seem to have lost the knack and can never dodge the bullets. I used to simply strafe left and reverse and was OK, but it seems this doesnt work for me anymore so I get pwned in 2 mins.

I have been searching for a decent explanation on killing bots without success and was hoping someone here could explain what it is im doing wrong.

This is a make and break situation for me. I have paid for a month, and love the game, but not being able progress any further is killing my enthusiasm. Going to take a break and perhaps try again next week.

OK: you're facing the Guardian. You keep pressing the strafe key, and at the same time roll slowly. Keep firing at it and if you're rolling slowly enough you'll hit continuously, making fine scraps of it. If you roll too slowly it'll hit you back, though.

Ask for an ingame mentor sometime. There are plenty of us who'd love to help. Course, there is the ulterior motive that we get benefits for helping other players.. But if you're Serco, I'd be happy to take you out to a botting sector, and show you the ropes.

The bots beyond the Collectors require at least a dual-vector thrust, plus a roll. If you go triple vector (flight-assist mode, perhaps) plus full roll, they can't hit you. You can't really hit THEM either, but them's the shakes.

Hit up someone in game for some help next time you're in.

I usually just go in circles(changing strafe directions all the time - rightdown to down to leftdown to left etc) and the bots almost never hit, while I am able to catch them in a tach stream pretty easily.

some things take a lot of practise, thats why death has few draw backs. As long as you have money you can keep trying.

Finding a long time player to show you some tricks will help, also finding the right ship/weapon combination for your own style is important.

Some people cannot hit anything with tachyons where others cannot hit anything with gauss. Some prefer energy and others prefer rockets.

You must try new things and find your own style, then improve yourself with practise. Finding a mentor is definately a good idea.

the best way, if you can't move fast, is to buy a wraith (trade 1) and some missiles. best for lazy ppl and n00bs ;)

Ignore your auto aim and fire straight at it when your straife/rolling(Never let up on this for a second)...you wont land all hits but you will constantly hit it...and he won't hit you...just watch out for asteroids...oh ya, and put both of your cannons on different fire buttons so that when you fire they're alternated(reduces battery usage and sends more shots into space..)

And practice practice practice. Since I'm now at the same stage I have to kill guardians to progress further, and though the first 6 were very hard it's now becoming easier and easier.

Practice is the most important thing. The more you practice against a bot, the more effective against that type you will be. I haven't practiced against the ApuTech-5 and the ApuTech-17 in a long time because, frankly, they don't give enough experience to be worth the effort. Instead I've been fighting primarily against assault-type bots. I've gotten to the point where I can stay in an single-type sector and kill between 14 and 20 bots easily before having to leave the system to repair. If you work in a group like ZeroCount, DaMaGe and I were this morning, if two players have repair guns, the entire group can stay in a single sector for a heck of a lot longer.

Yep practice, and remember that dying is part of the learning process. Or try doing somehting things like roleplaying so you don't get burntout.

There have been a lot of remarks along the lines of "Keep practicing!", and although that's friendlier encouragement than you usually see in online game communities, I think it sidesteps the underlying problem which is that VO has an extreme learning curve. I'm old-school enough to have been an experienced gamer when Privateer first came out. I've played a lot of space sims. But frankly it took me a very long time to figure out how to fight collectors. I think it's normal to sink some time getting over the initial hump of figuring out how a game works, so I was OK with that. Once I got it I thought "Great! I've learned the basics of combat." And I expected those skills to pay off.

They don't. I have an even worse success rate than the original poster: I can fight one Aputech-5 and that's it for me, I'll be limping my smoking ship back to base, and that battle takes maybe 7 or 8 minutes. After around 5 minutes I think "Am I having fun?" It's OK when playing a game requires a large time investment. It's not OK when learning the game requires a large time investment. The fact that all the work of developing what I thought was a useful skill set was wasted is, as the original poster said, killing my enthusiasm.

At the risk of going too long on this subject, an analogy: Suppose you attempt to play an arcade game for the first time, and within 2 seconds you are dead and the game is over. How would you feel about continuing to plug quarters into that machine? You might try a second time, or maybe a third, but if you continue to get absolutely massacred you'll just stop playing.

I don't expect to be an ace right out of the gate. I do expect to be able to participate in the game.

So participate! Nobody said you have to get 9/9/9/- in the first week to enjoy the game.. Leave the poor Aputech-5's alone and work on other things. Stockpile your cash, work on your piloting skills, get some PvP in, and the bots will gradually become easier. Work on your trade licence (as I will soon do). Go exploring (ever heard of Corvus?). Wait for improved content - missions, features, etc. This is still kind of in the beta stage, in that there is a large amount of content still in the works.

Botting is not intended to be the be-all-end-all of the game. It's just the "level treadmill," as some people have called it. Sure, it helps raise your levels and therefore the strength your weaponry, but it does little to help your fighting skills against real (good) pilots. PvP and other interaction is going to be a huge part of the experience, as in every other MMO game.

I experienced this way back in Descent 2, when they hacked it to be playable over the internet (remember Heat.net?). I was great at blasting bots, but the real pilots were insane. Fighting them eventually taught me so much more than botting ever could. I expect this will be the case in VO.

Botting will be so much easier once PvP piloting is "mastered." So if you don't want to trade or do anything else non-violent, go fight real people. There are many who would gladly duel against you, and most would even be patient enough to teach you rather than continually destroy you. And in the past, if you run low on cash, simply say so and someone will give you enough to get back on your feet (as long as you aren't rude or demanding).

And if you bot in a group, the other pilots can cover you, shooting at bots to keep them from ganging up on you, since bots tend to attack whoever shot them last.

Well, I know I should not have posted late at night when I was tired and crabby ;-) Your points are all well taken. I'm going to partly blame the tutorial and the in-game responses I've received with regard to this topic, both of which very strongly suggest that botting is, in fact, the end-all of the game. So my expectations were not quite right.

I did try exploring. The first thing that happened was that I encountered lots of guardians, who promptly exploded me into little firey bits. This encouraged my belief that you have to be able to fight guardians to play this game. Are the guardians only in asteroid fields? (I can't remember exactly where I went.) If I can reliably avoid bot fights that will help me a lot.

Well, dieing means you're trying. Keep it up and in no time bots will come easy. Try strafing down and to the right at the same time. When the bots shots start to track you give it a slight roll CCW. Well, that's what I do anyway :) What ever you do, don't get lined up straight with them. If he has a partner, keep tabs on him until you finish the first one. If you have to, sprint out away from both of them, and get them both on your forward radar scope. Never let one of them get around behind you or under you.

What ever ya do don't give up. Guardians and Assaults are just collectors on steroids. You'll get the hang of it I'm sure.

Cheers!
~GW

As long as you learn something each time you die, then that death was not in vain. (Kinda like: "As long as you learned something, then it's not a mistake")

I've only put a 4 or 5 hours into the game, and have gone from barely being able to hit Oruns, to rough fights with Denteks, to being able to wax Dentek collectors,

I've found that the more directions you move at once the less you get hit, strafing helps keep enough distance that you can still rotate fast enough to shoot the right way, rolling a little bit helps keep you on an even strafing axis with them. Constantly rolling opposite your strafing seems to be the best defensive way to attack something, but makes it hard to keep a bead on them.

The more I play the more I find that switching flight assist on/off is important. Normal flying is easier with flight assist, but once you get within range switching it off helps (I switch around 7-800m). With FA off you can move in a smooth arc around your target. If you get disoriented or confused about where you're moving (more likely if you're flying defensively) you can flip it on, get straightened out, and turn it off again.

All that being said, I've found the early stages of the game a little tedious, as with all the bot fighting I've done, I'm still closer to a commercial license from selling the salvaged cargo off than any combat license. I love the game conceptually, and am getting a hang of the combat, but can also relate to the frustration. I'm also getting adjusted to the whole leveling system that seems a little incongruous with a 'twitch' based combat system.

-> wylfing:

Yes, the art of exploring safely is one well worth learning. Right now bots only occur in asteroid-infested sectors. I heard that hive queens roam the empty sectors, but I haven't run across any yet (haven't tried either).

Storms will catch you if your course goes over a sector with a storm. Storms are only dangerous in occupied sectors (I don't think they even hit empty sectors), so plot courses that only go over empty sectors.

And when you see a bunch of bots that you know you can't take, run like crazy. If you can't outrun them, fly frantically around roids and let your battery recharge. As soon as you can, get the most expensive battery available, as well as a ship with a higher top speed.

Tip: easiest bots I've found in Advanced Combat Mission are Tycorp Assault. Hog with gauss and whatever, been said elsewhere but- head out from roids two or three will follow, assist off, target left one strafe left and just pop away with gauss or other big hit/low rate wep. Warp away when shields get to 40% and repair. Dont get blase cos youll hit a roid or a third will get you from behind (nasty)
6/8/7/4

Except the gauss is only available at higher levels - so by the time you can get gausses, you're on to bigger and better bots than TyCorp Assaults..

What's the level req's for the gauss now?