I think the combat is fine,I use the so called backrolling tactic and spamming and I still die at the hands of a good combat pilot. A word about the so called backrolling tactic is pilots that complain about it call anything you do besides,charge each other and hope you dont collide and whale away at each other from 50m till you both blow up at the same time in under 10 seconds,is considered backrolling,which personally I consider rather silly.If you constantly roll and strafe right,which I do,that is considered backrolling,even if you turbo towards them and then strafe right and roll,its considered backrolling.Also a note about people who constantly complain about people who run away from them (these people are usually pirates)all you have to do to solve the problem is formally challenge one to a duel,and if it isnt so then the devs should make it that the one that leaves the sector or enters a station for repairs is automatically the loser of the duel,also say at the end of a 30 minute period the one with the most damage would be the loser. To be honest,the combat in this game is what sets it apart from any other games out there,it has to be the most realistic sim on the market,even Earth and Beyond could not compare to Vendetta in the combat category. I actually get dizzy after a ferocious battle.Dont change a thing except maybe the ships and weapons.

No one knows what backrolling is anymore, and so they apply it to whatever they don't like. Backrolling is constantly backing away while rolling until the distance between you and the other pilot is beyond the effective range of your weapons. Anything else, isn't. If someone calls you a backroller and you aren't exhibiting the above behavior, just ignore them.

Intimidator, look.

A. you probably will still die at the hands of a great pilot. But the frustration and sheer pain in their hands from dodging your fire and forget missiles, or from trying to get you within an effective range for their weps to even have a chance, is enough that it makes fighting no fun.

B. A GOOD pilot can beat you, but what about just a slightly better pilot. Someone who's slightly better at dodging, slightly better aim... etc... you'll hose them. This is what makes these tactics frustrating. The level of skill required to use them is nowhere near the level of skill needed to beat them.

C. Backrolling may have whatever meaning it did, "Way back when".
However, in my opinion, what it has COME to mean, is someone who chooses to engage in a fight, and then backs away continuously, with no plan to close the distance at any point. Basically forcing your opponent to (to borrow an analogy from go) come into your sphere of influence, and follow.

There are certainly examples of people backing up during a fight, that's fine, I do it quite often. But I use it as a tactic WITHIN a fight, not as my sole way of winning.

Amarus for example will back up a LOT. But then will come in for a rocket burst. I don't mind the backing up because I know we're both preparing for that few seconds of gauss vs rocket. And he knows I can dodge his rails forever. He just doesn't want to stay in my range for any prolonged period of time, since it makes a prom very vulnerable.

Basically, to fight that way is to try to tire your opponent out to the point where they will not dodge, and that is a bit of an annoyance in a twitch game.

A while ago, I fought in a govbus vs. a Hornet. The battle would have been over in seconds, except after about 20 seconds I noticed something. If I came to a complete stop, the enemy kept backing up and backing up... he eventually realized what was going on, but not until he got to 2.8km.
This tactic did NOT give him a victory. All it did was prolong the duel to be over 10 minutes long. The really annoying thing was that he didn't even accept the outcome... I was NOT about to challenge him to a rematch, as I had better things to do. All I was left with was a playerkill and a taste of frustration and severe annoyance in my stomach.
Ordinarily I am able to counter this strategy fairly effectively, but even my somewhat unusual capabilities are limited when I'm in a freebus.
Of all the "strategies" or "tactics" that players use in combat, I consider all of them fair game EXCEPT FOR that one. It is a pointless tactic that doesn't even work effectively against bots, let alone players. The fact that it is employed by SO many new players just makes me...annoyed.
-:sigma.SB

"or from trying to get you within an effective range for their weps to even have a chance, is enough that it makes fighting no fun."

so bring missles, or better yet lets try to get more weapons with a longer effective range. you can't complain because you bring a knife to a gunfight, or a gun to a howitzer fight.
it is getting real tiring listening to people complain because everyone isn't fighting the way they think they should fight, and looking for some "rule" as the solution.

"so bring missles, or better yet lets try to get more weapons with a longer effective range. you can't complain because you bring a knife to a gunfight, or a gun to a howitzer fight."

Dude, I know this sounds condescending, but I can't help myself.

Have you actually fought in many duels?

The problem is, if you increase the range of weps, the distance from which players will use this tactic will increase. The REASON they stay so far back is so that there's NO CHANCE of hitting them. Meanwhile, the person who is approaching is constrained to dodge and try tactics that often leave them open for shots.

I'm not talking about how someone SHOULD fight. There isn't a rule. What I'm talking about is VERY LONG fights which handicap the player who tries to engage.

So dodge and let them fly away. If they are too limited to do anything else but backroll, they will still eventually have to realize they are just leaving the battle. They will have to eventually come back in to engage, and you can nail em when they do (a sort of reverse backrolling).

Not that I have enough pvp to justify this with experience :)

Let me add. If I undertook this tactic, there is no one who could kill me... I'm sorry, your weapons wouldn't work.

Genka stated once before that ALL fights are just a question of who makes a mistake first. But to lose this kind of fight, you have to make many HORRENDOUS mistakes that no competent pilot could make.

As I've always said, its a strategy of disengaging. A strategy which requires NO skill on the part of the player. Its a way of fighting without committing to the fight. Which is FINE if you're trying to get away, but plenty of players get involved in a fight and then just use this to their heart's content.

It's dishonorable to fight like this, since it is a form of GRIEFING, attacking a target continuously and in such a way that the opponent has no recourse.

I do have my strategies of dealing with it, usually involving just letting the player fly off, so that they have to come back. But this ONLY works in a 1v1 fight.

Let me give you an example of how this strategy becomes incredibly frustrating.

I was fighting 2 pilots in Orion Rev C's. Whenever I turn to target one to attack them, they would back up, while his/her partner would follow and fire on me from behind. If I attempted to approach the other, they would do the same thing. Not being able to catch up with either, or hit them, owing to the distance we were fighting at, I was toast.

I couldn't remaneuver to get them both in one direction, because no matter WHO I attacked, they would move away, while the other was able to score hits...

multiplayer fights are a lot of fun usually. But using this strategy, a 2v1 fight is impossible.

Shapenaji
you are right i haven't dueled much, and right now i don't have much interest in doing so. however, players have called me a spammer or backroller(mostly in my first days of playing) when i was just trying to get away and finish my cargo runs. one reason i put some time into leveling my character was to be able to buy swarms so i could turn around and fire them off and hopefully distract the pirate long enough to get out of range and make a jump. if its only with dueling, maybe just don't duel certain people?
my point is just that, trying to find an "in-game" or "coded" solution is probably the wrong answer since many of us do just want to get away and not forced to engage every person looking for a fight.
anyway, sorry if it is all only about duels, i was looking at it from a running cargo point of view.

Ha, well, if you were trying to get away, then they were just frustrated :), you're neither a backroller, nor a "spammer". Ignore those players. In that situation I don't mind em at all.

Here's a story:

Smittens USED to be an avid backroller (I'm not saying he is NOW, but this was several months ago). He had a bind that constantly moved him backwards, strafed, and rolled. This meant that he was fooling the auto-aim with the barrel rolling, and the constant backwards movement that any opponent would have to chase after him to get in firing range. You'd never be able to engage him because you never got closer than 400m from him (at which range, hits by blasters are next to impossible), missiles were constantly spoofed, and rockets were at the very best tough to use. THAT is backrolling.

That doesn't mean that you can't strafe and roll, just it's more accepted that you strafe and roll only when necessary to dodge. When you roll, you become an unstable firing platform, and really are just spraying shots randomly into space. I like to occasionally roll and strafe so that I'm constantly changing my course while stabilizing to be able to employ my weapons effectively.

Missile spamming in my book is to initiate the battle by launching as many missiles as possible into space without paying particular care to aiming, and then running for the hills when your ammunition is used up. I fought a spammer who flew a quad gemini hornet (meaning a total of 9 salvos of 8 missiles) and he'd sit in a wormhole spraying missiles all over the place. The moment his target got close enough to hit him (ie. he gets hit once), he'd hit activate and use the fact that you're invulnerable while the wormhole animation is running to make his escape. Similar tactics is to take a Ragnarok into a 1v1 battle firing missiles until you run out of ammo, and then escaping as quickly as possible while your target is busy dodging all of the missiles flying around. If I fire on you, and you launch missiles and then boost away to disengage, then I can't really complain, can I? But if I'm flying along and all of a sudden, I see tons of missiles heading in my direction, then I'll naturally fight back to defend myself. It's frustrating when the target who fired first runs because they weren't smart enough to bring a gun that doens't use ammunition.

Simply using swarms doesn't necessarily make you a spammer. I occasionally take swarms to complement my energy weapons. They have greater reach and cause my target to concentrate on something other than me while I close and blast them with my guns. That is what I consider a good tactic, and not spamming. Conservation of ammunition is important so that you don't run out of missiles at critical times, and bringing energy weapons so that you'll have something else to fire when you run out of missiles is important. It's important that you are able to switch between different fighting styles for guns, rockets, and missiles in battle, because it throws off the timing of your opponent. It's like they say in tennis, you can win while pounding from the baseline, but if you throw in lobs and drop shot, it breaks your opponent's rhythem and forces him (or her) to react to you, and you can then control the match.

A paced fight can become annoying if you're just two rather good and even fighters. Looking at the outcome of Shape and me when I got back ingame was a typical example, the fights were long, but followed a certain trend. I'd outmanouver Shape repeatedly, then make a mistake (dodge the wrong way a moment, or steer towards a shot while misjudging the distance) and he'd get a hit, as we both reached towards 40% the fights became more standoff, since we couldn't afford another mistake and live.

It became a slow pace thing that tore on my patience, enough that I provoked it into a kill.

Adding that frustration to a backroller and I usually decline the fight. The backrollers are the reason I don't do duels anymore.

let me add that in that particular fight, I was using rails. And so I was tryin to keep a little distance between us, him being mcuh lighter and with better close range weps. Had I run out of rails, the sporting thing to do, which I would have done, would be to let him finish me off.

Aye that be true.

You start it, you finish it. Even if you do run out of ammo.

After all, it's not like dying is anything to be afraid of.

Yeah. However, we all know what would happen if that fight was gauss vs. gauss instead....

*Waits*
*waits some more*
*shoots* *dodges*

*waits*

...repeat ad nauseum

lol, waits? Methinks you are thinking of the way I used to fight back when I started pvp'in in beta

And then compare those fights to the Hog vs Vult fights that Shape and I had today.

Fight 1:
The Hog manages an early Gemini hit as range closes to under 100m. The Vult tears the Hog to pieces. :(

Fight 2:
The Vulture tears the Hog to pieces and takes no damage. :(

Fight 3:
The Hog manages an early Gemini hit, and range closes to under 70m. The Vulture repeatedly retreats to 100m and fires neut salvo, the Hog fires geminis and l port gun. The Hog manages only two hits before the Vulture cuts it to pieces. :(

Fight 4:
The Hog manages an early Gemini hit, and range closes to under 70m. The Vulture follows similar firing pattern, often colliding with the Hog as range drops quickly. The Hog eventually manages enough hits that the Vulture succumbs to the damage. The Hog escapes with 5% health. :)

None of these fights lasted more than 1 or 2 minutes.

No, wait is due to the bloody energydrain of the SVG and gauss, you don't have that much to move with for a dual salvo anymore :)

CrippledPidgeon - Although I think you were commenting on combat style, the only thing I was thinking was that small port weapons severely outclass large port weapons.

use a plasma devestator and a gauss on the hog and it will have the same problem as the vult.

So really don't complain about the tactic used to score a hit since using gausses demands to wait or use a non streaming energyweapontactic. A gauss has the exact same tendencies as a skilled sunflarefight. The only difference is that the hittingchance on a sunlare is higher due to the proximitydetection. But you never run out of ammo on the gauss.

So if you don't like the wait wait wait type of fights, then choose another loadout, simple as that. I like them since I have low accuracy and need to do as much damage in 1 hit, which the gauss helps me with. Not to mention that it shows patience and cunning to wait for the hit that makes you able to score a hit, just like a sniper needs to wait on the hit. While the other type is just dumbfire.

The streaming weapons (like neutrons) are used as a deterrent or when your energyaccuracy is high or when you are fighting a biiiig ship and therefore easy to hit.