The Old Stupid Questions Topic™

[FreeBeer]

You can put a single waypoint (Alleg doesn't support multiple waypoints) by right-clicking (I think it's the right mouse button - it's just so automatic for me at this point), holding and dragging up or down.

You can only get on a turret if the ship (bomber, hvy scout, etc.) is in base. You'll see it in the Transfer Station area. (Small note about turrets - especially heavy scouts - unless the pilot is actually calling for turrets, don't jump on - you might find yourself on a little tourist ride. Some pilots will disable the turrets, but you can still hop on them. Since the turret is disabled there's nothing you can do except go for a joy ride. You'll have to wait until he gets back to base or you eject from the turret.)

[Axel Kolle]

I find turret gunnery very confusing, and, at least with a joystick, it seems to track extremely slowly. I never even saw the guy who polished us off. Chasing the target arrow did not help. Any tips? Is a mouse better for turrets?

[FreeBeer]

Absolutely. Switch from JS to mouse when you turret. You can still use the JS throttle for zoom, but use the mouse to aim and fire, for sure. (Zero on the numberpad toggles between mouse and JS, FYI.)

[Axel Kolle]

How do I most effectively support an SB run as a Scout Nan?

In general, I need to stay at least 600m away unless low sig. I have heard 500m already being "too far away" on Miner D. Opinions, please.

Do SB's need a scout sensor suite in support, or is their Radar good enough? Should I stay strictly away from SB run target sectors?

[FreeBeer]

For the most part, one doesn't nan SBs. As a scout, you generally help them get into the sector - usually by going through an aleph first and signaling if it's clear.

Once they set up and are ready to go, you could also then act as a distraction, trying to pull any D away from the SBs by focusing on you. Attacking a miner, for instance, tends to draw them out. You could also prox the red door, forcing the launching D to slow or die. If you're proxing and have the opportunity to nan an SB, that's fine but that SB shouldn't be near the red door in the first place.

[Axel Kolle]

Rescue probes:

1500m off grid is a lot of flying time. I lean toward dropping medium distance away from the dogfight and then Nan. (I am always late to such affairs.)

Should one aim to deploy one sector away? Given the time.

Does one aim for a rescue probe net or drop on a case by case basis? A net could be VERY expensive and subject to interference. Getting podded and losing an RP is not a good idea either. Opinions are, as always, welcome.

[StatsGuy]

Yesterday I had a fun situation with a 2nd round con just so happening to be exactly where I went to do my second round of probing. It was undefended and all I had to do was to keep it from planting until firepower arrived. What can I say: i ***ed up royally.

Can someone explain in detail how to gain a minute or more of time by well executed ramming? Should the first ram be full-speed? Should I ram middle or one of the ends? How to make the second and consecutive rams work good, even though the ship doesn't amass as much speed? Basically I need a exhaustive tutorial on good ramming (cause apparently, besides sucking at Alleg, I also suck at rams).

[fwiffo]

QUOTE (Balmung @ Jul 21 2011, 03:45 AM) Rescue probes:

1500m off grid is a lot of flying time. I lean toward dropping medium distance away from the dogfight and then Nan. (I am always late to such affairs.)

Should one aim to deploy one sector away? Given the time.

Does one aim for a rescue probe net or drop on a case by case basis? A net could be VERY expensive and subject to interference. Getting podded and losing an RP is not a good idea either. Opinions are, as always, welcome.

the fact that theres a rescue probe as an alternative to podding all the way home or having to go to sector boundary is already a benefit, so use your judgement on where to put these (ie. if going to sector boundary is faster than getting to the rp, then that rp is useless). rps have lower sig than probes so they arent found easily.

i usually deploy rps in sectors where my teamates are likely going to die. these would be sectors where enemy is currently mining or will be mining next.

[fwiffo]

QUOTE (StatsGuy @ Aug 18 2011, 11:10 AM) Yesterday I had a fun situation with a 2nd round con just so happening to be exactly where I went to do my second round of probing. It was undefended and all I had to do was to keep it from planting until firepower arrived. What can I say: i ***ed up royally.

Can someone explain in detail how to gain a minute or more of time by well executed ramming? Should the first ram be full-speed? Should I ram middle or one of the ends? How to make the second and consecutive rams work good, even though the ship doesn't amass as much speed? Basically I need a exhaustive tutorial on good ramming (cause apparently, besides sucking at Alleg, I also suck at rams).

hi statsguy,

love your name btw, i love stats too! check out my website: http://www.spathiwa.com and have some fun w/ the stats ive collected from the allegiance leaderboard.

back on topic.. when you are ramming a con with your scout, it's important to know when to ram and where to ram. otherwise you may end up taking too much damage for a very small gain which makes additional rams difficult to survive.

first of all, you cant ram large cons. well you can but it wont do anything other than a little bit of damage.

lets start with the ideal case.

you are next to con, in your scout, con is spinning to line up.
rather than being next to the con to ram its broadside, get to the tail end of the con. timing is critical here cuz as soon as it stops spinning, you have about a 1 second window to ram it on its end and INTO the rock. this will cause the con to have to realign itself and take the most time spinning again to find that correct positioning.

somewhat easier to do, because timing is not as critical is to ram the con on the side. dont ram it at the center of mass though... pick one and, either the head or tail and ram it to make it spin. this will make your ship get hurt a bunch, depending on your speed, but you will delay its construction.

if you got a bunch of probes still.. and you've got your keymapping set up in such a way that you can move your ship in all 3 dimensions, then you can try to position your ship between the rock and the con and ram it on its head while deploying a bunch of probes. with any luck, your probes and you will keep the con from planting for a long long time.

also important is recognizing when it is TOO LATE to ram. there is an animation sequence of the con entering the rock.. its final straight path into the rock after it has lined up. in this case.. no amount of ramming will do anything so you might as well save yourself the podride.

[cashto]

QUOTE (StatsGuy @ Aug 18 2011, 11:10 AM) Can someone explain in detail how to gain a minute or more of time by well executed ramming?

Fwiffo covered this pretty well. The key thing is if you are trailing a con, you want to push it from behind just before it reaches its line-up point. Cons are stupid, and this will cause the con to overshoot, turn around 180 degrees, walk back to the original spot, and try to reline up. Pushing a con towards the rock gains you a lot more time than bumping it away, as it has to go through a longer sequence of moves to establish its line-up.

Once the con has lined up and begins entering the rock, it will build no matter what you do it. For some reason TF cons seem particularly hard to stall.

Also, again, this only applies to outpost or tele cons (and ref cons too, but killing those is usually just a waste of time). Techbase cons can't be rammed; they have ridiculous amounts of mass that it does almost no good.

QUOTE Should the first ram be full-speed?[/quote]

No, you'll just get podded.

QUOTE Should I ram middle or one of the ends?[/quote]

It actually doesn't matter. Allegiance doesn't do angular momentum. You're all just a bunch of billard balls as far as ramming in Allegiance is concerned. If you're coming from the side, hitting it on the end will not impart any spin to it; you will simply move it sideways as if you hit it dead center.

QUOTE How to make the second and consecutive rams work good, even though the ship doesn't amass as much speed?[/quote]

You actually don't need a whole lot of speed to stall a con. You can stall a con indefinitely by tapping it every 5 seconds or so at 20mps. This is one of the reasons its good to map forward and backwards thrust keys in addition to sidethrust keys.