Cadet II/Scout offence

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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 - but it will do quite well for your practice.

Basic technique

Find the miner, hide about 3k out and wait for it to start harvesting a rock (so that it's a stationary target), then fly in and lob a couple of dumbs at it from extreme range (see below). It'll start retreating, making it a difficult target to hit for your next rack of dumbs. So while they're reloading you want to swing in behind the miner and get on its six, from there you can lob the rest of your missiles straight up its tailpipe while gatling it too.

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.

Proximity Mines

Ahhh, prox. The single greatest weapon a scout can carry. Most of the time, this is what you will be killing other pilots with. Pity that it masses so much that it destroys the single greatest asset a scout has - maneuverability. It is always a delicate balance between the two, and it is up to you to discover how much prox you feel comfortable carrying for any given task. I suggest next time you are sitting in the F4 loadout screen try adding more prox and check how it affects your acceleration stat.

Prox is a defensive tool, and using it offensively takes a lot of skill. As with dumbs, there are three things you should know:

1. Prox does damage proportional to how fast you travel through it.
2. Prox gets weaker the older it is.
3. Prox takes 5 seconds to activate after you drop it.

Now some people say it has a four second activation time, but I've also heard 4 second activation plus 1 second deployment time. I'm not sure what's true but I stick with 5 because it's easier to multiply by 5 than by 4. You see, whomever you are trying to drop in front of, you want to multiply their speed by 5 and that's the distance you should drop in front of them. If you manage that then the prox will be just activated (at maximum strength) as they enter it, and it gives them the least time to react and avoid it.

Example Your opponent is doing 80mps (metres per second). In the next five seconds they will travel 400m (80*5). So you want to drop the mines when they're about 400m away.

If you're not good at math, try multiplying by 10 and halving it - may not sound it, but it's much simpler.

Tip: Prox drops to the rear of your scout, unless you are side-strafing. If you are thrusting back they drop in front of you, strafing right and they drop to the left, etc etc.

The Aleph Drop

You are probably familiar with this tactic already. Someone is chasing a scout, scout flys through an aleph and drops on the other side, enemy chases at full speed and dies. The only tip I have is that you should wait a second after passing through the aleph before dropping. That way the mines are in front of the aleph, not through it, as shown in this picture.

The Red Door

Drop prox on the red door of the enemy base so that everyone launching gets damaged. Useful in all sorts of scenarios.

The Green Door

If the miner is trying to dock you want to ram it aside and at the same time drop prox in front of the green door. It'll turn around and head straight into them! And you can ram it through them the other way and then drop some more!

This can also be used against cons, as they always try to line up on the same spot on rocks.

The Open-air Drop

Great fun if you pull it off against an int or such. What happens is an enemy is flying in a straight line and you get directly in front of it. Keeping a careful eye on their speed and their distance, drop smack bang in front them at the 5 second distance. Take care if they're accel- or decelerating though, dropping further or closer respectively.

Most useful against enemy bomb runs and htts. It can be done on miners and cons, but be aware that they are extremely good at swerving in time - good way to delay them for the rest of your team though! This trick is best pulled off by Bios scouts, due to their cloaking device your opponent doesn't even know you're right in front of them. The ultimate version is the Pook-manuever, where you drop prox in front of the enemy then get behind them and ram their ship through it.

The Pied Piper Drop

Most players know that if they're chasing a scout they shouldn't follow directly behind, since they'll end up eating prox. They follow parallel to the scout. To counter this I spin around and start back-thrusting, so I'm still flying away but I can now see them on my screen. Then I drop prox and side strafe to line up my prox between me and them. Back-thrusting also allows you to lob dumbfires down their throat.

Mine packs vs. Prox

• Mine packs take the same time to reload, arm, and activate as prox do.
• However you can carry two MP for every prox, giving you double the ammunition and you have to reload half as often.
• Two MP weigh more than one prox, meaning an even greater detriment to your acceleration. (someone double check this) I checked - 1 prox and one mine pack both have the same mass: 3
• When an enemy fly through MP it does more damage per metre than prox.
• But a deployed MP has a smaller volume than prox. In fact, it's so much smaller Seymor calculated that if an enemy were to fly all the way through a MP field they would take less total damage than if they were to fly all the way through a prox field at the same speed.
• MP have a shorter duration than prox.

Plasgens

A note on plasgens - they are similar in prox in that they need to be dropped in front of your target or near a stationary target, as they only have a 150m range (plus splash) and take 5 (or is it 4) seconds to activate. Flux scouts are the only faction that can carry two nans (adv and heavy versions only).

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 Supremecy. Take a friend or two, one of you kill the nan that rips in while the other continues pounding the miners.

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