Cadet II/Rix SR

The Small Rip Scout

Your commander went Rixian. The best way you can make yourself useful is by grabbing a SR scout. A what?

Note In XC core, all Rixian scouts are rip scouts, and are free rather than costing $500

Rixian Unity is unique in that they have a scout which any other small class ship can rip to (assuming the receiving scout has enough energy reserves). This makes a Rixian team extremely flexible tactically, but it comes at a cost:

1. A SR scout costs $500.
2. It is exactly like a normal scout, but has 120% base sig (as opposed to 75% for a normal sig).

So, we have a ship which is a big threat to the enemy, is easy to spot, is as easy to kill as a regular scout, and hurts the Rixian economy if you lose it. Guess what? You're number one target for every enemy pilot in range.

So Rambo it's time for some caution or you’ll die very quickly indeed.

Low-sig mode

The most obvious solution is to remove your shield, avoid direct paths between alephs, and avoid the enemy at all cost. Get teammates to check alephs before you fly through. Fly way up off the grid, over the side at the sector boundary. Carry nothing but prox so that if someone does chase you then you can hopefully run away and pod them. If you find an enemy miner, sit far away from it and start screaming that you need fighters to rip in.

Sounds great, doesn't it? Now imagine every scout pilot is doing this. Who is probing? Who is deprobing? Who is escorting cons? Who is ramming bombers (yes, Rix bombers can be rammed)?

Too often Rix teams will lose because the scout pilots are more worried about saving their own $500 skin than actually scouting. Heck, I've even seen Palidor's Knights fluff a squad game because of this.

The "Meh, $#@! it" mode

This strategy is to treat your SR scout just like a scout. Carry probes, nan, the works. Don't focus on getting into enemy sectors, just do your job right and chances are you'll wind up in the right place at the right time anyway. Besides, if you do end up somewhere dodgy you can simply deploy a probe to make room to unmount your shield. Furthermore, you will be returning to base more often so you will be able to check F3 and maintain your situational awareness.

Inside the enemy sector

Whichever mode you choose, let's assume you made it into an enemy sector, congratulations! Now let's say you’re even luckier, cause there is an enemy miner/con in the sector as well. What do you do? Well you don’t want to be eyed so you better move 8k away from the miner as soon as you can.

Wrong! We can’t stress this enough: being that far away is useless to your teammates. What are fighters that ripcord in supposed to do? Boost 8k? By the time they finish the miner will have retreated and they'll be out of fuel. Instead you can try:

• Hide behind an asteroid about 3.5-4k away. Ideally you will get a group of figs together before any attack.
• If the miners are progressing to the next sector, get there ahead of them (you can even prox them!). As before, a group camp is better than a solo.
• Do fly-bys past the miner.
• Circle it at about 3k (and be prepared to retreat at the first sign of danger)

Other tasks

You can hide in some back sector and act as a forward rip for sfs. You can make a galv run occur on the other side of the map from where the enemy expect it. You can act as a home rip.

One of the most useful support roles is to act as a nan-rip for bomb runs or con pushes. You don't want to escort it directly because you will be picked off first. Simply trail behind the main push (perhaps one sector behind), where you won't get noticed, and pick up pods and let them rip back to you. In a dire emergency you can even move in to help nan.

Working with teammates

As mentioned before, it is better to accumulate a few fighters before any move into an attack. This can be a bit hit-and-miss with pick-up games, but try PMing anyone that rips in and then hope they're sensible and don't give away your position early. Conversely, when you rip into a SR scout take a moment to figure out what's going on before boosting off!

Sometimes it is important that several SR scouts rip into a sector before any fighters do, so you can have an exponential reinforcement rate. If you're flying a fighter be patient and wait for more than one SR before trying to rip in.

When someone rips in they will be stationary no matter how fast the SR was moving. So if you're flying a SR and being chased, be prepared to do a 180 and fly back to your new buddy so they can actually cover you. Too many times I've seen SR die because they were running from me just as fast as they were running from the enemy! And of course they blame me for it!

XC Core

In XC core all rixian scouts are ripscouts, and rix starts with light interceptors, not fighters. This allows many scouts to rip in consecutively in a short period of time. A common early game miner O tactic is to just rip in as many scouts as you can carrying gat and prox. Pilots who get podded and picked up or podkilled can rip back in with more scouts. I once saw a rixian team kill three defended belters miners at the enemy outpost, by continuously ripping in scouts. At one point 8 scouts were attacking the miner.

It is also possible to rip in a nan scout to miner/constructor defense or a bomb run, but not always. You can't rip to a scout unless it has full energy, and nanning depletes energy quickly.