Silly me, I didn't use my Valk I can't get. Although maybe I was a bit lame as I was fighting with tachs (cos I can't get sunflares anywhere, yet I can get Gauss!?!?).

PS: Iceflares and Starflares are the suckiest weapons in the entire game. Who do you see using them? Thats right.. no-one... why? cos they are totally useless...

PPS: I'd prefer to get attacked by numerous average capabilty ships than a few uber-ships... In Elite2:Frontier the Police ships were standard Vipe Defense Crafts, not the best ship in the game by any menas, but they would just keep coming at ya... This made it fun cos at least you could take a few of the suckers out before being taken down....

(cos I can't get sunflares anywhere, yet I can get Gauss!?!?).
You cant get sunflares?

They are availible in sol 2 at the skycommand station.

I tend to agree with you on the neumerous average ships thing BTW. I liked nothing better in elite2 than to line up on the station from time to time with my military lazer and open fire, slaughtering half a dozen or so vipers as they undocked before i ran like a chicken when my lazer overheated.

I repeat for emphasis: please implement a larger strike force with less powerful ships. Especially in the outer sectors. Its fine if Sol II is protected by 500 uber-vults, but at the Itani border the strike force should be no match for an experienced pilot.

Just to put things in perspective I can take out an entire squad of def bots without getting hurt 4 out of 5 times. The Tracker is easy, just leave it tell last and keep shooting tell you get a hit, it only has 1k hull anyways. (Just for the record I don't think it takes much of any skill to take out def bots, you just have to know how to use their poor intelligence to your advantage).
(When I'm flying a valk, vult, or probably a cent/hog/maud)

So they're not god ships, but I completely agree that the damage is ridiculous... if you can't do it without getting touched at all, you have no chance of doing it at all... which makes a pretty boring fight/learning period.

Aah, but can you do it with energy weapons. :P

Eldrad can, I can't. I can take them out with sunflares, but thats about it.

Rog yes, gauss/tachs. I haven't tried with flares or homers... only with guass/tachs. I could probably do it with swarms, and many people can/could do it with flares (though I'm not sure I could do it well with them).

Eldrad, from what I've tried it seems really damn hard to not get hit by defbots, if you try to run they catch you, and if I turn into them to take them down, one always manages to get hits on your ship as they are at a slightly different angles to the one you may be targetting (and trying to avoid)... I really don't see how you can present the smallest profile of your ship (and dodge) 5-6 bots at once when they fly spread...

You are not using your uber-binds are you?

I'm always using my "uber binds"... but I don't think being able to zoom in to see something clearly 10km away helps any, and I've pretty much stopped using rolls so that bind isn't giving me any advantages either.

Well, I managed to take out a strike force today with gauss. I don't think I would be able to do it in anything else then a valk with a heavy engine. First you have to collect them by flying circles around a roid or a station. They should all be close together, otherwise the next move is not going to work. Now turbo away like no tomorrow and turn around when the bots are ~ 400m away. Press S and R or F (doesn't really matter), to fly backward and down. The bots will keep a constant distance and their tachs will just miss you (actually you can see that all bots shooting at a point slightly above you because all the tachs meet there). Now use mouselook to kill the bots one by one. When doing so, move the mouse off center only for short periods to fire, and then compensate to the opposite direction. Changing the direction of the ship changes where the backward thruster propell you and the angle to the bots changes. If you are not carefull, that angle changes enough for the bots to hit you, in which case you are dead instantly. Another hint: if the tachs get too close, you can't simply change directions and fly up instead of down. The momentum of your ship gives the defbots enough time to wipe you out. Instead, start flying sideways (lateral thrusters) and then up. In other words, if you were holding down S and F, press (A,S,F), then (A,S) for a second or so, then (A,S,R) for another second, then finally (A,R). Sounds tricky, but you will get used to it. It would be a lot more fun to fight defbots if a single hit wouldn't take me to 58% (hint! hint!).

Actually, that doesn't sound tricky at all. Sounds pretty easy, in fact.

hehe, genka you only find it easy since you've had enough practice to do it in a bus before... and though they do more damage then when you took them out in a bus, it's not like you had any health.

ahhh... so using Arcade mode you got no chance... now I understand why I have such problems with them...

Eldrad, I wasn't criticising you for using your binds I was just wondering if they were helping with the dodging cos I thought you had some crazy roll and strafe combinations bound.

Mind you, there was only one defbot when I killed him ina bus. These strike-forces are a bit beyond my bussing abilities at this point.

I like Icarus' idea of having turrets, and then having a strike force come to chase you out of the sector in, say 120 seconds.

Icarus, I don't have any roll/strafe combo... I do have a pretty crazy roll bind which allows me to have the same amount of control over my rolls as Joystick users. I also have a simple dodge pattern which only uses strafes, but allows me not to be a sitting duck while typing (it sucks in combat, but is really nice when you've hidden vendetta, or are doing lots of talking and aren't in a station).

Arcade actually even sucks if you use flares against defbots, because you have less time to aim and fire as your ship immediatly starts to accelerate towards the target. With physics you release the turbo, turn around (still flying away from the bots), aim, hit turbo to propell the flares and then get the hell out of there.

I've never had much of a problem using Arcade mode with sunflares against defbots, its energy that sucks... ;-)

You forget that defbots are faster now. The additional 10 or 20 m/s makes quite a difference when trying to dodge their tachs. You also want to make sure you really HIT the bot with the flare, not just have it explode near by. Otherwise it takes too long to kill them all.

Well they ain't really tachs now, are they :-/

I'm sure I can manage to hit the bots directly with flares if I tried... However, I really can't be arsed to try anything with the defbots at this moment in time cos they are unbalanced pieces of ****!