Cadet II/Scout offence

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 shoot it with dumbfires and your gattling gun.

Dumbfires

Dumbfires do a ton of damage and although they are difficult to use. Three things you should know when using a dumb:

First: dumbfires are tracking 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 you launch inherit your speed. 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. 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.

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. If your target is moving away from you with 100 mps you "loose" 400m.

Don't be a Hero

Your scout is weak and against a competent defender you will be podded far faster than you kill the miner.

• Hit the miner when it is far from bases and defending enemies. More time you have before defense arrives will increase chances.
• Take along a friend. Two scouts will kill a miner twice as fast as one.
• When the miner is defended, keep it eyed and ask your team for help.

Guerrilla Warfare

Even if you're not equipped to take down a miner you can still stop the enemy from mining. When there is no defense near to it and you start attacking it will fly back to the nearest base. At least you can stop it from earning money and also you keep their defense busy. Again: don't be a Hero.

Spotting Stuff

Of course, one of the most useful functions of the Scout is to scout! Having better scanners than the ships with more firepower: fighter, interceptor and stealth fighter. Your job is spotting, their job is killing.

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.