Novaris wrote:QUOTE (Novaris @ Oct 28 2009, 12:11 PM) i'm new to the game and would prefer to spend a little time in the practice arena fighting AI to get good at dog fighting
AI won't help you at all.
How do you...
AI won't help you at all.
Last edited by IB_ on Fri Oct 30, 2009 4:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
slap wrote:QUOTE (slap @ Oct 7 2009, 01:28 AM) good point, I concede.
I'd say the best dogfight practice is actually to avoid dogfights and follow the advice in Cadet-I, as many of the tasks it presents to you are useful for developing dogfight skills, without as much risk of being podded and while being more useful to the team. For example, nanning - it helps you learn to dodge enemy fire as long as possible to keep yourself alive, easily the least intuitive part of dogfighting IMO, while simultaneously keeping your guns fixed on your target. Hunting miners will provide nice durable targets to get you used to missile flightpaths and how they track, and manning turret is good for getting used to guns since you'll have lead indicators to help your aim and won't have to worry about flying the ship. Running away is also a very, very useful skill to practice - sometimes even if you can take the enemy, it's better to try and shake them in order to go nan a miner or pick up pods or something more important than podding that last fig.
Commanders won't usually expect dogfight skills from newbies anyway, and dogfighting work like clearing camps will usually go to those who are confident in their dogfighting skills, so you shouldn't worry about needing to be able to dogfight right away. Instead, focus on defending miners and cons, attacking miners and cons, being ready to nan anything that needs to be nanned, and scouting/probing the map while avoiding enemies. Those are all vastly more important skills than dogfighting, which rarely comes into play aside from when a camp needs to be cleared, or driving off enemy attacks on your miner/cons (you should leave that task to people in figs/ints, while you nan the endangered ship back to full hull and keep it there!).
Commanders won't usually expect dogfight skills from newbies anyway, and dogfighting work like clearing camps will usually go to those who are confident in their dogfighting skills, so you shouldn't worry about needing to be able to dogfight right away. Instead, focus on defending miners and cons, attacking miners and cons, being ready to nan anything that needs to be nanned, and scouting/probing the map while avoiding enemies. Those are all vastly more important skills than dogfighting, which rarely comes into play aside from when a camp needs to be cleared, or driving off enemy attacks on your miner/cons (you should leave that task to people in figs/ints, while you nan the endangered ship back to full hull and keep it there!).
its funny how thats how my plan has evolved as i've been reading up more about the game, I think i've pretty much worked out my self teaching plan,
I'm going to stick with scouts for the majorety of the time while really getting to grips with ship (scouts) scanner range. Play a more covert style by hunting down enemy miners/cons and/or keeping heads up for miner D, sticking close to our refinery systems. learning the scanner ranges of the diff ships (learning the mini map icons for diff ships!!) while developing an understanding of the diff faction alterations to different (specific, depending on faction/tech available e.t.c.) ship scanner ranges, the alteration of sig strength depending on the situational effect of what 'x' ship 'might' have as a scanner range/ship sig strength due to the tech available/weps/items loaded onto ship.
Twin with that the development of perceptional awareness of my relative position to items of interest in a system, and really practice learning how to position myself well to be able to eye enemies while staying hidden while at the same time eyeing enemy miners/cons and developing a tactic for getting in fast when an enemy miner/con has been spotted by me, taking it out in a maneer that will have my optimum scanner range pointed towards areas of possible miner D interception from enemy, and obviously, make the all important quick getaway to a safe distance if needed, able to eye enemies while being hidden.
I understand that situation is an 'ideal', and i understand the idea is to be able to perform as close to that ideal as possible, and be prepared for 'reacting' to the specifics of a situation rather than trying to develop and stick to a rigid tactic.
Once I'm pretty compotant at miner/con hunting and miner D in a scout, i'm going to move up to stealth fighters as these, i seem to see, are 'the' anti economy ships.
On that note, my prefered faction at this point in time is technoflux, purely for the factional bonus in acceleration/turn rate/sensors e.t.c. It seems to be the faction best suited for my chosen path.
I also understand that allegience is 'essentially' a game of economics and the most effective way of winning is destroying the enemies economy. early game being the best time for offense (personally, not full team all out, i understand con D and probing is as important for full team) of enemy miners/cons as their (and our) economy is very flimsy early game, relying on very few miners for income, and as its essentially a 'race' for tech based on income, ergo miners. taking out 1 or 2 miners early on should give our team the heads up in the 'arms race'.
Now i just need to figure out the best way to learn all the diff ships scan ranges e.t.c. and the factional differences that effect ship types.
phew. deep game. i love it
I'm going to stick with scouts for the majorety of the time while really getting to grips with ship (scouts) scanner range. Play a more covert style by hunting down enemy miners/cons and/or keeping heads up for miner D, sticking close to our refinery systems. learning the scanner ranges of the diff ships (learning the mini map icons for diff ships!!) while developing an understanding of the diff faction alterations to different (specific, depending on faction/tech available e.t.c.) ship scanner ranges, the alteration of sig strength depending on the situational effect of what 'x' ship 'might' have as a scanner range/ship sig strength due to the tech available/weps/items loaded onto ship.
Twin with that the development of perceptional awareness of my relative position to items of interest in a system, and really practice learning how to position myself well to be able to eye enemies while staying hidden while at the same time eyeing enemy miners/cons and developing a tactic for getting in fast when an enemy miner/con has been spotted by me, taking it out in a maneer that will have my optimum scanner range pointed towards areas of possible miner D interception from enemy, and obviously, make the all important quick getaway to a safe distance if needed, able to eye enemies while being hidden.
I understand that situation is an 'ideal', and i understand the idea is to be able to perform as close to that ideal as possible, and be prepared for 'reacting' to the specifics of a situation rather than trying to develop and stick to a rigid tactic.
Once I'm pretty compotant at miner/con hunting and miner D in a scout, i'm going to move up to stealth fighters as these, i seem to see, are 'the' anti economy ships.
On that note, my prefered faction at this point in time is technoflux, purely for the factional bonus in acceleration/turn rate/sensors e.t.c. It seems to be the faction best suited for my chosen path.
I also understand that allegience is 'essentially' a game of economics and the most effective way of winning is destroying the enemies economy. early game being the best time for offense (personally, not full team all out, i understand con D and probing is as important for full team) of enemy miners/cons as their (and our) economy is very flimsy early game, relying on very few miners for income, and as its essentially a 'race' for tech based on income, ergo miners. taking out 1 or 2 miners early on should give our team the heads up in the 'arms race'.
Now i just need to figure out the best way to learn all the diff ships scan ranges e.t.c. and the factional differences that effect ship types.
phew. deep game. i love it
Scan ranges are listed in the Academy on the wiki, but are pretty simple to learn, especially for small ships. One thing not mentioned on the wiki, though, is that scan ranges are not a perfect sphere around a ship, but it seems like you know that already. Also, the TEK program is really awesome for fooling around with learning details of scan ranges - reading the core files, it does most of the calculation for you and allows you to see the exact effect of each cargo item upon a ship, as well as scan range at any given angle, and to see how far away any given ship will see any other ship/station (and how far away they'll see you). That said, while knowing the exact details of scan range for those ideal situations can help, you'll probably find more use out of knowing how to gracefully lose eye if you've been spotted. Unless you're flying around with cloak active, you're gonna have to deal with the pretty good chance of a scout that, out of dumb luck, pops out of the nearest aleph and eyes you before you can hide.
Miners have a good bit of shield and hull, though, so you shouldn't get too worked up about the idea to solo them in a scout - they take a lot of ammo and missiles to kill, and more importantly it takes a good chunk of time to kill them (fiddling around in TEK says a minimum of 30 seconds with early-game tech), so it only works if the other team is completely ignoring you and doesn't bother to D their miners; it's especially hard with TF since not only do they not have missiles, but their weapons will run out of energy long before the miner dies. Usually, if you see a miner, it's better to call in a couple of figs/ints/stealths to come kill it, stalk it till either your miner O shows up or their miner D chases you off, then move on. Stealth fighters are more effective, but still function better with help. It's also worth noting that stealth fighters can carry probes.
Miners have a good bit of shield and hull, though, so you shouldn't get too worked up about the idea to solo them in a scout - they take a lot of ammo and missiles to kill, and more importantly it takes a good chunk of time to kill them (fiddling around in TEK says a minimum of 30 seconds with early-game tech), so it only works if the other team is completely ignoring you and doesn't bother to D their miners; it's especially hard with TF since not only do they not have missiles, but their weapons will run out of energy long before the miner dies. Usually, if you see a miner, it's better to call in a couple of figs/ints/stealths to come kill it, stalk it till either your miner O shows up or their miner D chases you off, then move on. Stealth fighters are more effective, but still function better with help. It's also worth noting that stealth fighters can carry probes.
Jimen wrote:QUOTE (Jimen @ Oct 31 2009, 08:28 PM) It's also worth noting that stealth fighters can carry probes.
N.B. This is wrong - only Rix SFs that can probe and drop prox......
rix and tf. much fun was had with proxing tf sfs
to clarify: only rix can select them as loadout, tf sfs have to persuade enemy scouts to drop them
to clarify: only rix can select them as loadout, tf sfs have to persuade enemy scouts to drop them
Last edited by Bathawk on Sun Nov 01, 2009 12:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
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