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Is it really that hard to just lower your shields if you see someone boosting after you? Seriously, how bad is your situational awareness?

LANS wrote:QUOTE (LANS @ Dec 14 2010, 12:13 AM) IIRC, ints have a scan of 400, heavies 500. Not 350. Don't quote me on that though. I'd like to see someone effectively nan a miner or con without being eyed against a group of heavy ints.

Not that I'm clever enough to pull this kind of tactics when my scout is about to be carnaged by rabid hvy ints, but I remember having partial success landing on the opposite side of the asteroid so you barely see enough of the miner to nan it. The rock hides you and part of the blue donuts stream. I think a lot of people switches to direct vision mode when they are in range, so if dropping shields keeps you hidden until then, you may have a chance of exploiting ninja positioning.

Shiz nailed it and there are many other good points that mean at least carrying a shield is useful in this specific circumstance. But it comes down to situational awareness and what job you have to do

But in the situation specifically that annoyed me enough to post was

Pinned in our own adv exp sector
Having dreg heavy ints patrolling but not camping our exp
The occasional enemy shielded scout coming in to eye stuff (and then being raped itself for being eyed)

The result was that every scout that launched with shields would get eyed and chased down on launch
Those that made it to the aleph with shields would get eyed by the ints coming through or a enemy scout in sector. This just fed kb and made our own whores have to work harder

In relation to stealth nanning, having shields is helpful but in reality on a htt run you are loading it at 2.5k and it doesn't really get much of a chance to charge up befoe brood does his 3 nan pass. I could concede loading a shield but only to be used when hiding is no longer an option

Mastametz wrote:QUOTE (Mastametz @ Dec 13 2010, 11:43 PM) Another example of how the people who crunch the numbers of the game fail miserably at actually playing it.

+1 to that post, and +2 to my ignorelist.

vogue wrote:QUOTE (vogue @ Dec 14 2010, 01:30 AM) hopefully we can just spike it when its 500m from our expansion!

FreeBeer says: "Spike drinks, not bombers!"

Vanaka wrote:QUOTE (Vanaka @ Dec 13 2010, 07:05 PM) But, how many people do you know that can cross nan?

*Tentatively raises hand*

FreeBeer wrote:QUOTE (FreeBeer @ Dec 14 2010, 07:43 PM) FreeBeer says: "Spike drinks, not bombers!"

Hmmm, I assume you are covering late-game probing. Howabout Early? Is the addition of a shield and a full load ( all probes in cargo ) and the basic weapon+missile enough to effectively probe two sectors and potentially kill one miner or opposing team scout?

No one probes at the start, it's an offense to see who can strike the other first. After that opening confrontation you probe. If you're probing with missiles/shields, after you drop a probe, put shield in cargo. Drop another, missiles into cargo.

For initial sortie, it helps to know what you are going out for. If you are con d, bring a nan and all prox. If you are scouting / probing, bring a nan and all probes. If you want to do a little of both, bring some of each. Take a shield along in any case. You're unlikely to meet anything you can't outrun, you can unmount it later if need be -- and, if you are nanning, the shield DOES give you extra endurance against basic tech.

Once you get a bit more experienced, you can start to equip yourself for more offensive tasks like miner O. But for the time being, just assume you won't be killing anything except with prox.

PS: join @AFS, if you haven't already. There is a special forum there for asking these sorts of questions.