Cadet II/Scout offence

Combat Scout

It's finally here. The time to stop using your scout for all those incredibly useful support functions, and start using it to devastate the enemy. Kind of. Not really.

Historically this lesson has focused on how to kill a miner with a scout and since that covers most of the basics we'll jump straight to it.

Loadout

Gatling gun, rack of dumbs loaded, a prox in your mine slot (or rescue beacon if your faction has them), nan in cargo (always carry a nan!) and the rest dumbfires.

This isn't the perfect loadout - you may want to keep your missiles and shield in cargo to lower sig, or carry an extra prox. I carry two probes (or one and a rescue probe/beacon/sanctuary), a nan, one prox mine, shields and dumbfires mounted, more dumbfires in cargo. This way I can go low sig by dropping both probes somewhere useful and dismounting shields and missiles.

Basic technique

Find the miner, hide (lowered shields, lowered missiles) about 3k out and wait for it to start harvesting a rock (so that it's a stationary target), then fly in, approaching the miner from behind where it has the least scan range, fly past the miner and drop your prox so the miner completely enveloped in mines, THEN turn around, arm missiles and shields and lob two dumbfires and start firing. It'll start retreating and hit your prox. Position yourself directly behind the miner to ensure 100% dumbfire accuracy and fire everything you got. It is better to take a second or two to make sure you are in position for 100% hit than to miss a missile because you were impatient.

Proxing through an aleph

This is a technique most easily performed when someone can call a 'drop' for when prox should be deployed on the incoming miner. This is not usually the case in most pick-up games, so you will have to determine when to drop for yourself. Hide in a sector where the enemy is actively mining and determine where your target of choice will travel after it has a full load. Do remember that IC miners rip home, and are not caught traveling through alephs after mining very often. Camp behind the aleph in question and wait for a miner to head your way. Once the miner is about 3k away, go ahead through. Once inside, you should have enough time to turn yourself around, line up squarely in front of the aleph, about 200m away, and then wait 6-7 seconds before dropping your prox while back thrusting. You may as well load your missiles and shields at this point as well. With a good drop, the prox will be able to rip through the miner's shields and a bit of hull. Start shooting with your gat until you are well positioned behind the miner, then fire missiles. The optimum distance for this is about 300m-400m behind the miner, make sure to match your speed to the miner with the match speed key (M for unaltered key mapping). If you find yourself too close to the miner, or if defense is coming from behind you, you can ram the miner to 1) damage the miner, 2) move the miner away from defense, and 3) create room for your dumbfires to hit. Dumbfires sometimes miss when too close.

Dumbfires

Your Gatling gun is not your main weapon vs miners and cons, your Dumbs are. They do a ton of damage and although they can be quite difficult to learn how to use, the AI fly in straight lines making them perfect practice targets. Three things you should know when using a dumb:

First: dumbfires do not act like rockets. They don't travel in straight lines, and they do aim for the enemy. Unfortunately their tracking is rather primitive - they always aim for where the target is (lag-tracking).

This means that - contrary to intuition - you should never lead your target with dumbs, as the dumb will just pull in and miss as illustrated in this animation. Instead you should aim behind the target like this.

Secondly: All missiles launch facing the direction you're facing, but more importantly traveling in the same direction you are. So when I say "aim behind" I mean aim your momentum behind the miner. Use your side thrusters to get your momentum vector behind the miner, don't just point your crosshairs in that vague direction.

Thirdly: miners and cons will attempt to dodge missiles by side-strafing, and if you fire your dumb from too close they will probably succeed. You need to sit about 400m back to ensure the dumb has time to compensate for their dodging. Alternatively, I've found that slamming on the back thrust for a second or so just before I fire works just as well, as it effectively increases the range between me and the miner.

Extreme range

You can fire missiles outside their maximum range, since the speed that you're going when you fired is added to their launch velocity. Dumbfire 1 has a four sec lifetime and a range of 900m. If you're doing 100mps when you fire it'll go an "extra" 400m, giving you an extreme range of 1300m. If you're doing 180mps you can hit things from 1620m!

This doesn't work so well if the miner is travelling away from you, or if the dumb has to travel in a curve. So it's best used when the miner is sitting stationary at a rock, as shown here. The green circle represents your missiles "given" range.

Don't be a Hero

Well, that just about covers it for killing miners with a scout but, let's face it, the chances of you getting some quality alone time with a miner are pretty slim. Your scout is weak and against a competent defender you will be podded far faster than you kill the miner. That's why a scout whore has to be smart about the fights they pick.

• Try and get to their miners when they are one sector from the nearest base. For instance most commanders will build the ref between their outpost and their garrison and if you can get in there near the start of the game you can wreak some real havoc.
• Take along a friend. Two scouts will kill a miner twice as fast as one.
• Collary to above: If you are attacking a miner in a group, please don't sit directly behind it! You're just blocking everyone else's missiles.
• Trying against insurmountable odds is not heroic, it's stupid. All you achieve is padding the enemy's KB - contrary to popular voice chats, ripcord is the first resort of the desperate, not the last.

Guerrilla Warfare

Even if you're not equipped to take down a miner you can still stop the enemy from mining. When a miner is left to its own devices it will retreat or not depending on a complicated comparison between how many enemies and friendlies are in the sector (if you're good, you can tell the difference by hearing the woman's "Miner detects enemy" versus the grumpy man's "I've got enemies on my scope").

If you're all alone in the sector (and the miner hasn't been given a direct order) it will run the instant it spots you. Of course once it gets through the closest aleph it goes "phew, no enemies. Guess I'll go mine some more. Oh, hey! There's some helium in the sector just on the other side of this aleph." All you have to do is sit in the mining sector and when they enter fire your guns to give yourself eye, spooking it again. Rinse and repeat indefinitely.

This only works against poor commanders, anyone who knows what they're doing will order the miner to a rock instead of leaving it to its own devices. Then again, it can be used as a double-think against better commanders - you spook the miner a couple of times until they think you aren't a real threat and order the miner to stay in there.

The other aspect are "Hit and Run" attacks. A dumb here, a dumb there, enough to get the miner to retreat all the while keeping your speed up so that defenders can't catch you from a standing start. You should try to get the miner's hull damaged if possible as this will cause it to go to "Repairs needed" mode and will head back to base every 20 secs, even if it is nanned back up.

If you're managing to lose eye between runs, approach from a different angle each time to confuse the defense, and hit different miners so they waste time and fuel trying to cover them all.

Spotting Stuff

Of course, one of the most useful functions of the Scout is to scout! Sometimes your team will know which sector the enemy are mining in and a large group of figs and ints will head there to kill them. Then they get in there and realize they can't see anything, and start bitching and moaning about how every other fig except them should have taken a scout.

You can supply the eye. In this case your duty isn't to attack, but to spot everything while staying hidden for pod pickups. If you do want to get in there and mix it up your best bet is to nan your teammates and/or use prox to hamper the defenders, such as dropping on the red door.

Miner AI

Both the best commanders and the best miner killers know how the miner AI works. It lets them control them better for the first, and lets them find them easier for the second. Miners may seem retarded at times, but really they are quite logical:

• Miners will never enter an uncontrolled sector unless ordered to.
• Miners will always mine the nearest rock that they can get a full load off.
• If miners can't finish a rock in one go, they will return to finish it even if it only has 5 more units of he on it and the one next door has 90 units.
• When they finish a rock they will look at other rocks in the same sector and if they can scrape them completely clean in one go then they will (i.e. units of he on the rock is less than their remaining capacity). If they can't then they'll unload their current load instead.
• When the two above points are combined it means miners can be incredibly slow to finish a sector if left by themselves (they mine one rock, unload 85 units, finish the first rock, unload 5 units, move onto the second rock, repeat).
• A miner is less likely to retreat if it has been given an order to carry out.

What does this mean for you, the miner hunter? Well let's see:

• When you're sitting in base trying to figure out where they're mining, consider the sectors that they have bases in and which one was most recently mined out, and try and think where you'd send the miners next, and/or where they would travel to automatically.
• If you're sitting in base and they are mining you can find exactly where they're mining by watching the he levels. Simply expand the minimap and flick between the sectors until you see the he count going down. Note that there has been discussion about removing this feature/bug/exploit.
• When you enter a sector you think they're mining, head to the rock closest to the aleph that the enemy miners entered from.
• When a miner is approaching a rock, allow the "lightning bolts" to appear before attacking it. If it has been ordered to the rock it won't stop mining until its shields are down, whereas if you attacked before it started it would retreat immediately.

Adv & hvy scouts

If you are lucky, if you are bios, or if your commander wishes to reward you for Excellence in the Field of Scouting, you might get access to advanced scout or heavy scouts. Lucky you!

Advanced scouts can be used in the same fashion as regular scouts. They simply have more scan, more hitpoints, and a little more ammo/missile slots.

Heavy scouts are where the real fun is. For starters, their dispenser slot is twice as large, meaning you can carry twice as much prox. They get even more missiles, and more importantly they get Quick-launch versions. These QL missiles rearm twice as fast. Finally, they have a mini-AC turret which dramatically increases the firepower of your scout (if you get a decent gunner that is).

Note Prox3 takes less cargo space, so a heavy scout can carry four prox3 per slot! (And the same is true for EWS3)

Having a gunner makes it easier to camp alephs, to kill stealth pilots, to kill enemy miners/cons. With a skilled duo you can even take on enemy fighters or hvy ints. You need to concentrate on flying smoothly so that your turret gunner has a steady aim, on avoiding coming into combat range of the enemy, and drawing them through your prox. Don't bite off more than you can chew!

Factions miners

Iron Coalition miners can ripcord out and generally will manage it before you can kill them. You should try to sneak up on them, take a friend, and ram them into the asteroid as they ripcord out. Getting someone else on the team to camp their teleporters can work wonders too.

Technoflux miners can be ripped to by defenders, making them quite dangerous - especially if the TF team went Supremacy. Take a friend or two, one of you kill the nan that rips in while the other continues pounding the miners.