Cadet II/Prox d

Defence using the scout

You're hopefully aware at this point that by far the most potent attribute of scouts when it comes to defending is its ability to drop prox. They are the only ship that can drop prox mines (with the exception of the bios fighter, giga patrollers and certain capital ships). Most of this article is therefore devoted to dropping proxes.

However, as with everything in allegiance, the execution is only a small part of the solution. Situational awareness and being in the right place at the right time are much greater skills and take longer to master.

Scout vs. bomb run

First question.... should I even be in a scout?

Have you ever been on a bomb run about to enter the enemy sector and you all have to slow down, go through the aleph carefully, then get slaughtered by prox and gunfire? Now imagine that there is no prox, your bomber can simply blaze through the aleph guns roaring. This is why, as the defender, you want to be in a scout and be proxing the aleph.

Being the proxer on the aleph can net you a lot of kills and really inflate your kb, which is why it is a popular task. Sometimes this can mean that there are too many scouts trying to prox, and not enough ints & figs doing the actual killing. So take a look in F3 before you launch to see what your team mates are flying and make your choice appropriately.

Second question... can I get to the aleph in time?

If the enemy bomber is eyed take the time to check the sector it is in to determine if you can get to the aleph before it does. Judging speeds and ETA is something that comes with experience, and keep in mind that the bomber will probably be getting rammed by scouts that aren't even eyed. If you can't make it in time consider taking a ship with more firepower. Or not, even an open-air prox can really devastate a bomb run.

Third question... how do I prox?

You press d. Nah, just kidding. Ideally you want the enemy bomber to come through the aleph just as your prox goes active, so it is doing maximum damage. The best way to do this is type "Call drop" in the team chat. Hopefully someone in base will be able to watch the bomber and tell you when to deploy your prox for max damage (they will reply "Drop!").

Sometimes you will lose eye on the enemy bomber, or it will pause just outside the aleph and you will be unsure when they will enter. Sometimes the bomber will wait until his ints have cleared the aleph - and you definitely want to prox them! In this case you want to perform a "Rolling Drop". This boils down to dropping a fresh prox just before your old one expires, and obviously requires a cargo-full of prox. You may want to work in shifts with another scout so you can return to base to reload while they cover the aleph. This is an example of someone dropping prox at an aleph in exactly the correct position.

Fourth question... what next?

If the bomber doesn't die instantly when it comes through, and neither did you, then there's a few more things you can do:

1. Drop more prox on the aleph to harass enemy in the area and any reinforcements.
2. Dive through the aleph to save your own skin. You may be able to distract enemies there, eye what is going on, or act as pod pickup.
3. Shoot the bomber and/or nans with your gat and missiles.
4. Ram the bomber! The bomber is probably sitting pretty stationary at this point in the midst of your prox. Depending on where you are in relation to the bomber, it may be that you can run into him within a couple of seconds. It's quite rare that this opportunity presents itself, but it can be quite lethal to the bomber, as you will be hitting him through prox causing him damage, and disorientating his nans at the same time.
5. If he escapes your prox cloud, drive ahead of him and start dropping prox on his flight path.

Or the bomber may not come through at all, and you lose eye. In this case people will call for someone to "peek". If you volunteer (or are volunteered ;)) then drop a prox just before you fly through. Fly through slowly, and try and memorise as much as possible before you die. Most importantly how far the bomber is and whether it is advancing, retreating, or holding position.

Optimum aleph coverage

You may have noticed some scout pilots parking with their nose right up against the aleph so that the mines they drop cover the area in front of the aleph (mines deploy behind you). However this has a few downsides.

• It's easy to accidentally fly in the aleph or get pushed in (where you will likely die from the incoming bomber)
• Once the enemy comes in, you are a sitting duck.
• You can't actually see what is going on around you.
• You have to turn a lot to use your guns/missiles.

Pay attention here. Proximity mines will always deploy in the opposite direction your ship is moving, not the way your ship is facing. With a bit of skill you can drop prox in front of you, beside you, below you - anywhere you like.

If you have plenty of time to set up on the aleph, it is important you do it right so that you have the best mine coverage.

• First target the aleph. Your targeting brackets will create a grey box around the aleph
• Get in front of the aleph and adjust your position until the glowing "tip" of the aleph is in the center of your targetting box.
• Now you are exactly in front of the aleph and on the vector of almost every ship that comes through.
• Recall that if you are moving, mines will appear opposite the direction you are thrusting. So instead of sitting with your nose up against the aleph, sit back at about 150-200m and thrust back for a second before deploying - this will cause the mines to deploy in front of you, covering that 150-200m gap!
• This also has the advantage of leaving your guns pointing in the right direction,
• and giving you a bit of breathing space to back away from anyone who does come through.

Full steam ahead!

So that's what to do if you have time to set up. But sometimes you simply don't have time to slow down and park - the enemy surprised you and you need to get prox on that aleph 2k away now. The only 100% sure way to do this is to fly full speed through the aleph and drop prox behind you just before you pass through. Of course, that would mean you're now in the enemy sector with the bomber ... and pretty soon you'll be in a pod. So what do you do?

You may have no choice but to go through - if you've lost eye on the bomber and your team has no real idea how much time they have, then it may fall upon you to sacrifice yourself to get more info for the team. One of four things will happen:

1. The enemy pass through just after you, they all die on your prox. Awesome!
2. The enemy is close and the turrets pod you. The enemy bomber will slow down to avoid your prox, giving your team more time. You also know how far it is. Okay result.
3. The enemy is a long way away - you don't get podded and can now eye the bomber, giving the rest of your team more information on the bomber, when to drop and how big a defence is required. Good result.
4. The bomber comes through before you get to the aleph. If you can skim past him and get some prox on the aleph before you die then you may prox some of the staggling nans. Poor result, but you did your best.

Alternatively, you can not go through. As your prox deploys opposite you, you can use your side thrusters to "skim" across the aleph and plant one bang in front of it. Unfortunately this tactic means you are going at high speed past the aleph, and it is almost impossible to get back and plant a 2nd prox before the first one expires. See this slideshow for a pictorial explanation.

Which of these two strategies you go for depends on a few factors - how far is the aleph from the base? Is there much d in the sector already? How important is the base? Are you the leading scout?

Open air drops

So, for one reason or another, the enemy bomber is in your sector and speeding towards your base. What can you do?

Drop prox in front of him. It'll either kill him, kill his nans, or force him to slow down and move around it, buying you more time. There's two ways to go about doing this, the "Chicken" manuoever and the "Zig-zag". For the first, simply get in between the bomber and the base and fly full speed towards him. Once you're 300m in front of him (or 500m if he is being rammed) drop the prox, then side-thrust out of his way - after all you don't want to ram him away from your prox! Don't forget to throw some dumbfires and gat down his gullet for that little extra something.

That's how you play chicken with a bomber. You're a sitting duck for the turrets, the pilot might even launch an AB at you to blow you out of the sky, and if you go screaming past at full speed you're likely to plow into enemy prox and/or overboost too far away for a second chance. All in all, not a perfect solution.

The other option is to zig-zag in front of the bomber, preferably staying out of comfortable turret range, say about 1000m, and successively drop prox in front of the bomber & its nans, staying alive to drop further prox. This is the natural thing to do if you are not already between the bomber and its target. The disadvantage is that it's harder to drop the mines directly in front of the bomber. Keep an eye on the ship's image at the bottom of your screen to determine when you're in front of its nose.

Proxing galv runs

First question as ever - should you be doing this? Only if you have a chance of saving the base! A decent galv team can quickly destroy a base. If you have no warning, there are a lot of them, most of your team is busy elsewhere ... chances are you're going to fail. On the other hand, if it's your only forward base, you know they'll be galving it soon, etc ... chances are good you should be doing a rolling drop on their aleph already!

If it's a surprise, chances are you won't get to the aleph in time to prox them. However, open-air proxing them can be very successful due to a number of reasons:

• Your average fig pilot will be much less aware to the threat of prox mines than your average bomber pilot
• The fighters will be boosting and so will kill themselves that much quicker
• With their lower scan range (they don't normally have nan escorts) they have a lot harder time spotting prox
• Lower hull and shield means they will vaporise quicker.

So, where to prox them? Well, you could play chicken again. But you don't want to get eyed because they will instantly start dispersing to avoid prox. Instead, think like a galver - they will fly straight from the aleph to your base, right? Wrong. They will fly from a spot about 200-500m in front of the aleph because they normally come in at high speed and need to reorient, then once they reach 1000m from the base they will start side thrusting around it as they fire their blasters. Therefore, the best place to prox them is more than 1000m from your base.

If I have time after dropping my first prox, I like to move to the side of the first prox and drop another one. This is because it is better to cover a larger area that those figs can run into - as as soon as they hit the prox they are pretty much dead. This is in contrast to bombers, where you often need 2 prox and supporting fire in order to kill it.

Finally, what to do after this? You have to play it by ear, but options include running back to the base and changing ship (or transferring away if it's a goner), dropping prox around the base while you nan it, or running away to pick up pods later.

Proxing galv runs is not seen all that often and doesn't get all the glory, however it can still be useful - it is not uncommon at all to kill or damage 2 or 3 figs on a 9-man run, which can easily mean the difference between saving the base and losing it.

Proxing capital ships

Capital ships are HUGE and, due to the way Allegiance spawns ships emerging from an aleph, emerge a hundred or so metres in front of the aleph. So, if you're going to prox the aleph, then do it about 500m away from the aleph.

Note A single prox isn't going to do all that much damage to a cap, so team up or get a stronger ship!

If the cap ship is already in the sector then don't try to prox it. You'll almost certainly get blown out of the sky first. Go back to base and get a ship with more of a punch to it.

Factions

Giga

There are two things to note about giga scouts. The first is that giga scouts are amazingly easy to kill so you really want to avoid fights wherever possible. The second is the possibility of luxury scouts - these cost $500 each and are available if you have researched heavy scouts. Perks include:

1. An incredible scan range
2. It has 5 missiles per slot instead of 4
3. It has a full AC turret instead of a mini AC turret. Your scout will be able to dish out SERIOUS damage now, even more so if you have AC2 or AC3
4. The mines/probes per slot is perked even further. If you have prox3 or ews3, you will be able to fit a gargantuan SIX of these in every slot. That's a possible total of 36 in a loadout! I'm sure you can imagine the fun you can have with one of these - the enemy can basically kiss bye-bye to anything being uneyed or any aleph being un-proxed.
5. And most important of all, a sweet paintjob.

Technoflux

Nearly this entire lesson has been about using prox and wouldn't you know it, TF doesn't have prox! Instead they have plasma generators (plasgens).

These are deployable, short life probes that will fire a projectile at the closest target. They have a very limited range, but are accurate and do splash damage. The generator will fire once every second, to a maximum of (4?) projectiles.

The advantage to plasma generators is that they will damage a target as soon as it is in range making it easier for you to use them, the disadvantage is they don't do damage based on speed. Many players will ignore a badly placed plasgen and instead boost past it.

The only effective way to defend with plasgens is with numbers. You need a lot of plasgens active and ready to fire upon the first thing to come through the aleph, they can often "spike" it by themselves. They also become great in furballs, where you can just spam them out and be guaranteed to hit someone. Finally, they make excellent galv defence. Simply launch a dozen scouts with nans and spam plasgens to kill the galvers while you nan the station.

Bios

Bios scouts have the ability to cloak. Timed well, this can allow you to open-air prox a bomber without it even knowing you are there.