Ok, so you've solo'ed your teir 3 missions. Maybe did the vette, made ace, and you're feeling pretty confident and figure its time to try space PvP?
Hold the bus there amigo, its time to take almost everything you learned in PvE, and eject it out the arse end of a chaff tube. Theres several things you better realize before you even press the launch button.
Lets over this by topic.
You the Pilot: (before you even think about going overt) Realize the following:
1.) Your not as good as you think you are. PvE and PvP are totally different.
2.) No matter who you are, or your experience in PvP, there is always someone better than you.
3.) You WILL die. At some point you will die, accept it. While overt, anything you do can get you killed, including nothing! By the very act of going overt, you are volunarily signing your own death warrent. You may not die just this minute, this hour, this day, or even this week, but you WILL die. Death is part of the package, an occupational hazard. If you cannot accept death when it finally comes (sometimes with multiple times in a single game session) , PvP will probably only upset you, don't go overt.
4.) You will have ship/part decay - even if you only intend on going to deepspace. Accept it. Death and decay are inevitable. If your unable to accept this, don't go overt.
5.) Realize your going up against a THINKING human being. Infact, most likely you will be going up against a seasoned, space PvP veteran, who like you, are controlling a ship and are sitting behind a keyboard. Not some mindless mob with a set AI routine. This opponent will do anything and everything to kill you. Realize this, and accept it.
Your ship: (Your sure you want to PvP, but before you even leave the ground....)
1.) PvP favors fast, manuverable ships with a low profile to present as a small target. Think twice before flying that krayt with all those uber guns, It's about the size of a house. Your opponent has a snowballs chance in hell of acutally missing you.
2.) Your Engine is key. If your engine has not be re engineered, don't go overt. You will only be outmanuvered and smoked like a cheap cigar. Check your component screen in flight. Check the bottom three YPR rates. At the minimum, they should be 1.2. If they are not, start looking for a new engine. 1.2 is the bare minimum, 1.3 is ideal, 1.4 is uber.
3.) Know what throttle adjustment you have to make on your ship so you can make the tightest turns possile. Experiment with this, it varies by ship type. If you go blazing through deepspace and try to dogfight in an Xwing at 100% throttle against a Tie interceptor or advance, expect to lose.
4.) You have your overloads in your flight computer right? Right? If you don't know what an overload is, how to load them into your flight computer, or where to aquire them, stop here. Go research overloads here on the forums, you should have been running these already, if your not, you are most defnatly not ready to PvP.
Flying Overt - the very basics: (So you've checked out the PvE attitude, checked into a PvP mindset, have gone over your ship and have finally declaired )
1.) SITUATIONAL AWARNESS IS EVERYTHING. Allow me to introduce to you, your very best friend in space while overt. You'll come to know this guy very well and become close intimate friends. By default, this friend is the Z key. This is target nearest hostile player and is your primary eyes and ears. While overt you should saying hello to your little friend at least every 3 to 4 seconds, (or 2 if your as paranoid as i am).
2.) Knowledge is power - a big freaking tip off, or announcing to the world your looking for a fight. Your next friend (depending on if your looking for a fight or just trying to grind FP and not get caught ) is the command:
/ANON
This makes you anonymous so your not picked up by any /who queries while in sector. Failure to do this, (espeically in a place like deep space) is a garunteed way to let everyone know your there -and could concievably be ringing the dinnerbell for a bloodthirsty overt pilot itching to add another tally to his score. (*cough*). Remember, " /who " works both ways.
3.) Initial engagement: - Flying in a straight line is asking to die. (A common rookie mistake) So you saw an overt pilot by pressign the Z key and you start flying towards him to engage. You have two options, try for a down the throat shot, or evade his attempt at the same. As a general rule, only rookies fly straight at the target and don't try and evade. (remember this is not PvE) If you see someone, and you fly towards him, and hes flying towards you and is flying in a sort of a corkscrew or other evasive flying, you may assume he knows what he's doing.
4.) You and your target are flying at each other faster than you think. This relates to above mentioned number 3. If your flying at 1200 speed, and your oponent is flying at 1100 speed, your acutally closing on your target at 2300 speed. If you wait for a target lead reticle before firing you waited too long. So if your closing on someone trying to get a snap shot at his evasive manuvering, a not-such-a-bright-idea down the throat shot, or closing on someone who has neglected his best friend in space PvP (z key), start firing earlier than you'd normally would.
I beleive that covers the very very bare bone basics, if anyone has anything to add, its listed below as a response
Message Edited by Ducimus on 04-08-200511:32 AM
Major Rapax Victis - Commando Time wasted playing MMO's: Meridian59, Ultima Online, Everquest, Asheron's Call 1 & 2, Dark Age of Camelot, Anarchy Online, Earth & Beyond, Eve Online, Planetside, Star Wars Galaxies "I'm really bored." ...has mastered the Pilot profession
Also note that the values in the FAQ may not be correct as some are just guessed. For example Reactor Overload 3 gives 1.6 times the normal reactor energy and Reactor Overload 4 1.9 times.
I also think that Weapon Overload gives just 2x damage on top of the reduced energy usage bug and not 2.5x but i havent tested that yet.
If you are rebel you can totally avoid decay by flying to Deep Space and back (rarely that will not work entirely but going there again usually fixes that. If your engines are destroyed you can use /vrepair to get your engines running again without decay and jump to DS and out again.
Also note that if you only have small damage (like damage from overloads) you can repair without decay by doing 25%, 25%, 50%, 100% repair in that order.
1: The best ship to start pvping in is the A-wing. Get your lvl6 reward engine RE'd, Add a mk4 player crafted shield and a mk4 gun.
You can upgrade the shield and gun as you get the parts to RE. The only thing you NEED to RE before pvping is the engine.
The X-wing can be a used for pvp too, but only after EXTENSIVE re-engineering of top quality parts.
The rookie should stick to the A-wing.
2: When in deep space its easy to lose yourself in pve while there are no imps around to shoot at. As mentioned previously you will want to use the 'target next enemy player' button often.
In fact bind it to a button on your joystick. Use a button that is easy to get at. Hit that button once every few seconds.
If youre not hitting that button every 3 or 4 seconds, tell yourself off and demand that you do better.
And use target next enemy player. Not nearest. Next. If you are in a showdown with two enemies at once you need to concentrate on the biggest threat. (You dont want to be locked onto the tie bomber just cause its the closest when theres an advanced coming in just behind it)
3: When you find an enemy drop whatever pve you are doing and turn to face him. Boost away from whatever you were engaged with if you need to. What you do next should depend on what ship you are facing:
Oppressor / Firespray / Krayt / Anything Big:
These ships pack a lot of firepower and shields/armour. They are great at killing gunboats. But they are generally slower than you in the turn.
DO NOT joust with these ships, they will kill you. They have much better firepower and pack better defenses.
Aproach at full speed, maybe with booster on, while doing large barrel rolls and jinking all over the place. Use all three axis of movement. Head towards them but NEVER directly at them. The aim is to close the gap without taking a hit from there huge guns.
They will be shooting at you every chance they get in the approach. Make no mistake about that.
When you get parrallel to them go to attack speed (best turn speed for A-wing is 85-90 percent or so)
When you see them in the turn its time to make a decision:
If they are not going to hit you before you get a shot off, take a shot or two at them and continue turning towards them at attack speed.
But if you think that they might get a shot off, roll away at an angle, and come back around for another pass.
You should be able to take shots at these beats without taking fire in return. Make sure you take advantage of this.
Killing them will most probably take 2 or 4 well placed shots. But if you let them they will most probably kill you in 1.
If you see one of these guys in deep space then you should assume they know what they are doing.
You can approach them a lot more aggressively, because they will have trained themselves to approach with caution also.
Maybe get a couple of early shots off, but I would still advise not flying straight at them.
These guys will turn as well as you. When you are close to them (before being completely parrallel) decelerate to attack speed and intititate the turn. The first one into a good turn will sometimes win outright.
You wont hit these as easily as you did the big ships. In fact against good interceptor pilots, its possible to go 30 seconds or more without a hit on either side.
If you get hit its not the end of the world. Cap to shield shunt. Then decide whether to boost away to get the shields back up or stay in the fight. Whatever you decide make yourself a hard to hit target.
Other than that there isnt much I can say. To kill one of these ships takes good flying and good use of shunt. You just have to practice.
Whatever happens out there though, make sure you learn from it. If you get vaped work out what you did worng. Learn from it.
Of course its possible you were up against a fantastic pilot. But if this is the case you should be able to learn even more than if you were fighting a new pilot. If you cant take being killed a few times, you wont get better as a pilot.
Remilliod Chimaera Master Spy Acex6 Proud member of JEA, best guild on the server
1 - Listen for the BLEEP that says you targetted something/someone.... when you didn't! That means someone / something just targetted you. Could be an NPC a-wing... but could be a player.
2 - Know You Connection! Watch your ping, on a good day I can target another player at over 5km. Other players, or bad conn days, I can't see them until they are 1200m from me... and 1200m is exactly 2 seconds away. If they are incoming I am in the need to react *now*.
3 - Evasion, Evasion, Evasion The #1 thing you should have learned grinding out your pilot tree is "The best defense is don't get hit"!
So true! Now when you're in DS facing 24+ B-Wings & A-Wings and a Vette or 2 shooting at you, NOT Getting Hit is paramount... Throw another player in the mix, and you need to keep flying mister... and still not get hit! Don't let yourself get caught biting off more than you can chew.
4 - Come Back for More! Got killed? SUCK IT UP
Go straight back. Talk to your opponent... send him a tell, be friendly... LEARN FROM YOUR KILLER
He whooped you did he? That means he has something to teach you. If he won't talk to you, you can still learn by seeing what he is doing to kick your hiney. Tucking in your tail and peeing all the way home will get you absolutely nowhere.
5 - Who's Who? Add your enemies to your friends list....
Think ill edit in that everytime you win or lose, its a learning experience later (at work atm, post is too large). But ya, PVP your always learning.
Everytiime i win a fight, i ask myself, "What did he do wrong?"
Everytime i lose a fight, i ask myself, "What did i do wrong?"
Win or lose, theres a lesson to be learned from every encounter. (albiet some lessons are remedial )
Major Rapax Victis - Commando Time wasted playing MMO's: Meridian59, Ultima Online, Everquest, Asheron's Call 1 & 2, Dark Age of Camelot, Anarchy Online, Earth & Beyond, Eve Online, Planetside, Star Wars Galaxies "I'm really bored." ...has mastered the Pilot profession
4.) You have your overloads in your flight computer right? Right? If you don't know what an overload is, how to load them into your flight computer, or where to aquire them, stop here. Go research overloads here on the forums, you should have been running these already, if your not, you are most defnatly not ready to PvP.
I really wish the devs would design missions in each tier that encourage or mabye even forces new players to learn how to use these. Considering how important they are new players really need more help in learning how to use them. With the new interface it's gotten a lot easier but it's still really confusing and unclear. I think most pilots don't even realize you can use other factions programs.
/ANON
Hope they remove this from JTL while overt. Doesn't add anything to the game. In fact adding a little box with names of players who are overt in your sector would probably make a lot of people more willing to pvp in space.
>>In fact adding a little box with names of players who are overt in your sector would probably make a lot of people more willing to pvp in space. >>
Honestly i think those of us who do PvP in space are of the smallest minority group in the game. (heh all the more reason why anon should be removed probably ). But think about it, the majority of people PvE. Of the minority who does PvP, most of them are stackers, and something as visceral as space PvP to them, is "gh3y" - which makes space PvPers, that much more of a minority group.
Major Rapax Victis - Commando Time wasted playing MMO's: Meridian59, Ultima Online, Everquest, Asheron's Call 1 & 2, Dark Age of Camelot, Anarchy Online, Earth & Beyond, Eve Online, Planetside, Star Wars Galaxies "I'm really bored." ...has mastered the Pilot profession
know how your radar works. you should be able to instinctively tell when someone else has arrived at your little faction grinding party. how? well first of all he's going to appear as a small red dot against a sea of large red dots. secondly it will become clear as he approaches that he's rapidly getting larger. people may scoff at being able to tell that sort of thing at a glance, but let me assure you, it's definately possible.
aim is KEY. if you want to fly a big ship, you'll have to know 2 things. one, how to evade and evade well. two, you HAVE TO HIT YOUR SHOTS. you can't afford to miss 1 of 10 in a big ship, you just can't. practice with tiny shields on the droid fighters. if you can survive them with level 4 or 5 shields you'll be well on your way to figuring things out.
know how and when to use your booster, you can be a very difficult target to hit while boosting but there are times to use it and times not to use it and those times vary ship to ship. practice, practice, practice.
you have to know how to turn fast. if you havent figured out you turn faster while rolling yet, you need to start practicing. i'm willing to bet half the PVP complaints out there stem from someone being turned on in a heartbeat and exploded. it's not just frustration at getting hit, it's frustration at getting thoroughly owned by someone who turned on you and aimed better.
you don't need to go out in your ubership. decay sucks, so just get a crappy chassis that you like to fly, put a decent engine in it and throw some junky REs in for the rest of it. yeah, you'll be at a disadvantage. so what? you'll still win.
don't be discouraged at dying quickly. stop and analyze what you did wrong. if you got one shotted, why? if you got turned on, why? if you got snuck up on, why? think for a moment about it then go back to where you were and give the person who got you another try. maybe you die again. hell, maybe you die 10 more times. unless youre truely clueless though you just got some valuable information. maybe you need to work on just analyzing a fight after it happened, maybe it's so quicky you don't remember where you went wrong. that's fine, it's another skill like anything else to do that too.
know how your ship works. know at what speed it turns fast, know what you really need/don't need to have on it. if you have a tiny ship you don't need a 2555 shield for PVP. you just don't. put that mass to good use.
learn moves. you gotta have some kind of move for when you finally learn situational awareness and turn on an attacker. if you really want to dogfight, you are going to need to stop and think "ok, i want to be an in fighter, but how do i get there?" the answer is to have a move. corkscrew your way in, boost and jump your way in, force a chase perhaps, circle your opponent instead of flying directly in... there's really a million moves you could think up. practice some kind of 180 corkscrew turn, there's literally a billion things to do and 99% of pilots just fly straight or do a simple corkscrew. it's sad.
Ducimus wrote: >>In fact adding a little box with names of players who are overt in your sector would probably make a lot of people more willing to pvp in space. >>
Honestly i think those of us who do PvP in space are of the smallest minority group in the game. (heh all the more reason why anon should be removed probably ). But think about it, the majority of people PvE. Of the minority who does PvP, most of them are stackers, and something as visceral as space PvP to them, is "gh3y" - which makes space PvPers, that much more of a minority group.
that's a very good point and one of the primary reasons if you start a thread on your individual server boards asking why people don't pvp, you'll get 1 of 10 people saying it's because of damage.
the most common answer it seems is "i'm overt all the time in space!".
so the problem isn't mechanics, it's really that alot of people just don't get into space.
^^ Hence why i said, "take most everything you learned in PvE, and eject it out the arse end of a chaff tube"
Most... not all
PvE, to me at least, is trival. Its like, why even mention the game basics to someone whos presumably advanced enough in the game to want to PvP to begin with?
Message Edited by Ducimus on 04-04-200505:27 PM
Major Rapax Victis - Commando Time wasted playing MMO's: Meridian59, Ultima Online, Everquest, Asheron's Call 1 & 2, Dark Age of Camelot, Anarchy Online, Earth & Beyond, Eve Online, Planetside, Star Wars Galaxies "I'm really bored." ...has mastered the Pilot profession
YO Monsofo...Sticky this thread, add it to the FAQ.
And for the love of all that lives on this planet, everyone point the whiners and the PvP newbies to this thread. Maybe they can glom something useful off of it and they will stop making posts about how PvP damage needs to be reduced to 10% so that they can be "ub3r l337 d3wds"...
PS did I spell that right? my leet speak isn't so good!!
Fear leads to anger, anger leads to stress stress leads to doobies, doobies lead to twinkies
Not disagreeing with you m8, just didn't want you to be misinterpreted.
Yea, easy to do with me. I have a habit of being very deliberate, yet sublte with my wording sometimes. Habit i got into after one too many flamings on other forums in other games
Plausable deniabity for teh win!
Major Rapax Victis - Commando Time wasted playing MMO's: Meridian59, Ultima Online, Everquest, Asheron's Call 1 & 2, Dark Age of Camelot, Anarchy Online, Earth & Beyond, Eve Online, Planetside, Star Wars Galaxies "I'm really bored." ...has mastered the Pilot profession
). But think about it, the majority of people PvE. Of the minority who does PvP, most of them are stackers, and something as visceral as space PvP to them, is "gh3y" - which makes space PvPers, that much more of a minority group.
