Just got Elite Dangerous

Same as yesterday by the sounds of it. Perhaps the tick hasn't happened yet.

Matt

Looked to me like we were over half way to victory. Did it just update at 12pm?

OK something must have just happened, the daily tick or something. Pretty sure influence for NKL and IPP was at 37.6% it's now at 39.8% for both and the red/blue bars have jumped to about 2 thirds full and NKL is on victory and IPP defeat.

edit:

Did it just update at 12pm?

I guess so

I've traded up to corvette with fighter, trying to level my guy Gino Barnes up to deadly. 3 lasers and 2 huge PAs with plasma slug mean I can stay out of the dock for longer, got a small corrosive MC and a rail with feedback cascade when needed (which isnt often tbh), I just go for the med-large ships and only bother tagging fighters if they're already beaten up. Seems to be working well for the CZ wins but Gino isnt levelling up very fast and stray plasma bolts does seem to upset my NKL colleagues, fighting near a capital ship offers you very very big background target to accidentally hit.

If you read the news bit in the main station screen for NKL it’ll give you an update on rhe war and tell you how many days they have dominated the conflict for.

Was one yesterday,should be two today

Seems to be working well for the CZ wins but Gino isnt levelling up very fast

Give him orders to engage at will and he will go off and do his own thing. I use two fighter bays so that I can punt him straight back out if he gets destroyed

I just go for the med-large ships and only bother tagging fighters if they’re already beaten up.

I think I lost a few fighters because I had it set to attack target, and I then targeted spec ops ships which were good enough to take him straight out. I think if I choose engage at will he'll be able to make better choices for himself. Hopefully.

Another one done - hard to find the spec ops ships, although they aren't that hard to kill (one on one - they are when it's three on one.. thanks to the Prof again for saving my bacon) because they keep sitting there showing me their belly, or I keep finding it.

My pilot seems to be learning - he kept losing fighters, but then I heard him say his sheilds were lost and then he managed to recover them and finish the battle preserving his damaged fighter.

I've got two fighter loadouts - MCs and pulse - but it's hard to figure out which is best. Any thoughts?

According to the Status summary at Wylie Dock, NKL have dominated for two days.

All good, off to see if I can see a Cap Ship.

Matt

Just getting up, save some for me!

oops, managed to piss off the federal captain in his 'vette then, but only him, weird. had to avoid him for rest of battle. Also had a capital ship and I couldnt destroy the last heat plate. Said 0% but it wouldnt explode. Grr.

They don’t explode. They just bugger off.
You get a 500000 bond though

I bought a MkIV Viper, kitted it out with upgraded shields, two gimballed Pulse lasers and two Gatling guns on gimbals then went out to a low conflict zone and signed up for NKL.
It didn't go well, no, not one little bit. Now working my way back from a convict ship as I was interdicted on my 2nd trip to the conflict zone by what I assumed was a pirate, but turned out to be a copper. That got very shooty then very explodey..... again.

Maybe not suited to this shooting thing after all. Maybe should just head off again in the DBX with my tail tucked very firmly between my legs.

They don’t explode. They just bugger off.

Yeah I know. The last heat plate wouldnt explode and the cap ship wouldnt leave. Sat in place hammering the heat plate, it was at 0% but not popping. No other active heat plates on the subsystem menu. Swapped to fighter, and tried that, same. eventually won the battle, it left then.

Teamed up with squirrelking in his judged red. Did a few CZs then he had to leave, he was still in the wing as he went back to station and I noticed his shields drop and hull start to go down, hope he didnt get interdicted by bad guys.

Maybe not suited to this shooting thing after all. Maybe should just head off again in the DBX with my tail tucked very firmly between my legs.

As I mentioned previously make sure you stay on the edge of the battle, if more than 1 ship firing on your get out of there. Keep an eye on who is around you. Look for 1 red target with 1 or 2 greens around them, head for that. and help your soldiers in arms. Dont go it alone.

Just noticed another fleet carrier in system. Different one to the last guy.

About to jump in and start with the dakka and the pew. Had a boozy afternoon in the garden and a couple of glasses of wine with dinner. Probably not the best idea.

It didn’t go well

It's all about your ship and the loadout, really. I use beam lasers to strip their shields, and MCs to damage the hull. I have them on different fire groups so I can fire one to get their shields down then switch to the other - in both cases my other fire button is chaff. Until I worked this out, I was using random mixes of weapons that seemed like a good idea but weren't really working. Settling on beams/MCs made a massive difference, I started winning a lot.

Then when they fly towards me I push down on the right stick which is downward thrusters. That way they fly over me I and I can pull back to keep on target and then accelerate in behind them, firing all the while. Once their shields are down they fly defensively, so you can keep them on the run, and they won't shoot at you much.

It really is a case of figuring out the small things you can do that get them on the back foot, then you can just keep doing it and win. And engineering.

In the above scenario if my ship is manoeuvrable enough I can stay behind them all the time and they have no chance. And the way to get a manoeuvrable ship is buy A rated thrusters and engineer them. It really is literally an arms race.

Just went to my first high, it was quite full-on. A capital ship arrived but I think it was ours as I was asked to defend it. I was also told about Spec Ops but I couldn't find them on my radar. Although at one point three ships came after me all at once so maybe it was them. I seriously would be toast if I hadn't been to see the Professor before the war.

I also don't think I would have survived in the Fer de Lance. Not enough shield. I need to get that thing engineered more.

@Molgrips the easiest way to find the Spec Ops is in your left hand contacts menu. Select the ones with the red flag and dakka away.

@Beagleboy It is no indication of your combat skill, the CZs are really tough in smaller ships, even the ships in the Low Intensity have engineering. I will take my Viper III into a low, but it is nearly completely engineered and it takes me forever to get through the hull on larger ships with the relatively smaller weapons. As D0NK says, skirt the fight and join in where the odds are in your favour.

Matt

I know it should be obvious but I've found that pip management is much more important than I'd really grasped in a battle. Getting 4 pips on weapons when attacking made a huge difference to the effectiveness of both lasers and MCs, same for shields and engines where appropriate.

Anyway, you're all doing a good job out there, wish I was able to help, but actually you may be better off without 😉

I got rid of the bi-weave shields in the FdL and put in 5A instead, which I've already engineered and the effect is fast recharge. Much better all round, didn't drop once although spent a fair amount of time with one ring. But I can GTFO easily if I want to recharge in that ship.

I met a capital ship and took out ALL the heat relays by myself, I mean our corvettes were parked up lasering it all over the place but I've no idea what they were pointing at. Anyway taking out the relays seemed to win the battle - does it always do this? I got a large rep increase instead of a small one.

I used the Star Wars trick of getting up really close so they can't hit you. Seemed to work really well, I was able to sit there with my finger on the trigger and not be bothered. Just like asteroid mining back in Borann...

Bit more shield engineering and maybe power distributor and this ship'll be great. Now I'm wondering if it's worth swapping the reactive composite bulkheads for military grade to save the weight, given I appear to be able to manage on shields (so far!)

Getting 4 pips on weapons when attacking made a huge difference to the effectiveness of both lasers and MCs, same for shields and engines where appropriate.

yeah, pip management is very important, the level of charge in the weapon distributor 'tank' makes a difference too, more in the tank the faster they recharge, the less in there the hotter they run. Difference between 4 and 0 pips to engines and shields can be massive too.

Get yourself a shield tank and you can utilise more pips to engine and weapons and just worry about shields when you've lost 1 or 2 rings (run away, SCB etc). Run a shieldless build and you can ignore Sys altogether.

I kinda forget theres all this stuff to do while also keeping an eye on your position in the CZ aswell. So "just stay on the edge of battle" isn't all that helpful. It does get a lot easier with practice.

Getting 4 pips on weapons when attacking made a huge difference to the effectiveness of both lasers and MCs,

It depends on the power draw of your weapons. When I need to drop a target's shields, I have long range beam lasers so I sit 3km away and zap it with full pips to weapons - if I don't do full pips then my weapons bar goes down and they stop working.

However MCs draw far less power than lasers, so once I've switched to MCs I can manage fine with even one pip to weapons, which means I can put more to engines or shields as I want. This is another key advantage of effectively having two separate 'modes': lasers and MCs. Another is that you have to lead your target with MCs but not with lasers, so if you fire both at once you end up having to point somewhere in between the target and the lead reticule and hope that your gimballs can sort it out.

So my question is - what would happen if we weren't fighting here? I mean, the war's not for our benefit as we are officially independent pilots not actually NKL. So if we did nothing there'd presumably be some dice rolling that determined the outcome. But is it just dice? What determines the outcome of a war if no players are involved? If it's finely balanced, then our presence should push it strongly in our favour surely?

And what happens to CZs that we don't go to? Nothing, I think. I think a CZ is basically just a mission for our entertainment and you're awarded rep and inf as per normal. The only difference is there must be a tally of who's won what.

Thinking about it, there's SO much they've missed here - the war state could be a game all on its own, and being all background based there'd not be much coding to do. But a decent bit of thinking. I hope they open-source this one day 🙂

Seemed to work really well, I was able to sit there with my finger on the trigger and not be bothered

yeah stupids NPC fighters will ignore you while you singlehandedly disable their capital ship.

Routing the cap ship wont always win the battle but I assume it has a significant effect on the "battle meter".

reactive and military armor weigh the same, reactive matter because it has 2 resistances built in so you can manually add the third (thermal) with engineering, military/reinforced offers more HP than standard but no extra resistance and mirror only helps thermal at a loss to kinetic&explosive. Swap to standard or reinforced to save weight - if you're sure you're never going to drop shields.

Does saving weight then improve shields?

I do like a bit of armour because when I had 5C and my shields got dropped I also took a bit of a pasting rather quickly before I could boost out.

However MCs draw far less power than lasers, so once I’ve switched to MCs I can manage fine with even one pip to weapons, which means I can put more to engines or shields as I want.

+1 I do the similar pips at 2 Eng 4 Weap (or 3/3) to take out shields, then stick more in sysonce Im on to MC. The only difference is if im taking on a much bigger ship than I might be able to manage in my current ship in which case having 4 to Eng permanently to stay in it's blind spot and keep plugging away at it.

My FDL Build you may be interested in Mol. No issues with losing shields, quick recharge. I'm considering swapping thermal G5 shield for reinforced G5 and swapping those shield boosters around, would give me even more MJ and still have decent resistances.

Does saving weight then improve shields?

no, does improve handling tho and 38T for your armor is quite a chunk to drop (more if you've heavy duty engineered it). You can drop to a D rated FSD to save a bit of weight (ajust make you can highwake far enough to a nearby system in emergency)

I'm on reinforced shields but only G3, I didn't look into it very carefully, but thermal shields could be an interesting idea. I also haven't engineered shield boosters at all. I downgraded life support and sensors to save weight but I'm not going to do the same with my FSD as you have - it's enough of a pain to get it to an engineer as it is! 🙂 The ship looks deadly though with all that engineering.

@crewlie this is where you win fights - on forums discussing loadouts; on deserted moons in your SRV shooting geological features; and scouring systems with your FSS. And then figuring out the best way to use what you have created.

Actual flying battle tactics are fairly minimal, and because there's always more config changes you can make being a great pilot is very much secondary to understanding your kit.

this is where you win fights – on forums discussing loadouts; on deserted moons in your SRV shooting geological features; and scouring systems with your FSS. And then figuring out the best way to use what you have created.

Cutting throught the heart of it with your insights there Mol. Of course a talented PvPer would make mincemeat out of me however much I engineered. Tactics & talent would make up for a lot of engineering, but I do certainly err toward the grind to get awesome gear to turn the odds in your favour kind of games/gameplay rather than "git gud" generally 🙂

@Beagleboy - that's a top tip from D0NK, look for mini-battles where the greens outnumber reds or pick softer targets (lower rank and shields down/hull damage). I usually turn up, float at the edge sussing out what's what before I jump in.

I've been trying a bit of pip management too. Usually go 2 Eng/4 Weap but hadn't considered a bit of Sys when I'm on the MC's. I seem to end up in a lot of jousting battles and struggle to get behind opponents. Any top tips for getting out of that position? Should I be trying some Flight Assist off tactics?

I was only on for a short time tonight, I was wiped after a bike ride earlier (remember that hobby??!) but managed 2 wins in Low out at planet 11A. Took out two Cutters too, kerrrchiing!

Did a few CZs then he had to leave, he was still in the wing as he went back to station and I noticed his shields drop and hull start to go down, hope he didnt get interdicted by bad guys.

I did get interdicted but won that and landed safely. Turns out Tennyson doesn't sell ammo which is why I missed it first time around. Need some serious engineering on my weapons, TTK is far too low against anything with decent build, I'm finding I'm running out of ammo for my MC's halfway through a battle. But that's a job for next week, those scramblers should sort me out for shield killing and free up an extra spot for a corrosive MC.

And yeah, those capital ship naval architects need shot, so easy to just sit and pour lead into them. The Cutter pilots aren't much better to be honest, I just cruised after them and lit them up whilst they presented their bellies.

Keep an eye on who is around you. Look for 1 red target with 1 or 2 greens around them, head for that. and help your soldiers in arms. Dont go it alone.

Just make sure it's not a fellow CMDR that upset his own side before you go in guns blazing 😉

Any top tips for getting out of that position? Should I be trying some Flight Assist off tactics?

I usually just keep throttle in the blue, certain ships joust without exception and all you can do is either get lucky in getting behind them or smack into them then stick to their tail (oh yeah, Cutters like to ram lots), I managed to get a couple of Asp's and Cutters stuck on my deck with that tactic (and a few low flying D0nk's) and got the chase on a Viper.

Thinking more about "preparation is everything", after some thought I do feel inclined to add some loadouts look great on paper but when you fly the thing it doesnt work out, bad convergence, overheating, jitter, inability to hit a barn door with rails etc or what works for one CMDR wont work for another. Corvettes arent as powerful as they are on paper due to weapon placement (but shields & maneuverability make up for it), clippers weapon placement are MILES apart. So it's not just spreadsheets/prep you need to use what works for you.

I managed to get a couple of Asp’s and Cutters stuck on my deck with that tactic (and a few low flying D0nk’s)

ahem, yes, Im still new to wings so situational awareness of my wing men still isnt great. "Pinning" enemies with the nose your vette/conda can be a great tactic.

Lol its fine, I think we were as bad as each other.

Weapon placement is definitely a thing, I'm also going to go against what Matt said and recommend at least one fixed of each type to negate the chaff spamming. Yes, you can deselect by finding another target but its too easy to end up hitting someone else by all accounts. I have my forward or centre weapon fixed and others gimballed, works well.

Hardpoint placement can be ridiculous. Last night I flew between the plasmas fired from the nacelles of a courier, he must have been so mad.

The solution to chaff is to get close, really close. If you can see whether the pilot had a shave this morning you are just about close enough. Then they can chaff all they like, gimballed weapons still hit.

The guy who was hanging around yesterday was from Lavigny's Legion. I hadn't thought about what will happened when it flips, as it is currently a Lavigny exploited system.

[Edit] It seems it may 'cost' them slightly more to keep Akuntsu as an exploited system with NKL in charge. It depends whether that is more effort than keeping us out. I would guess not.

Matt

Regarding flying tactics - the right hand knob (on PS4) is absolutely crucial.

When ships are flying towards me I use down thrusters, then as they shoot over my head I hit boost which flips me around. Then I hit the gas to try and follow them. It doesn't work as well against agile small ships when I am in my Anaconda, as you'd expect, but then it has turrets on top so it can keep firing even when I'm not lined up. However if they are in a larger ship such as the Cutters we are facing then they seem to be ponderously trying to turn to get weapons on me as I dive underneath. And because they are large they expose their underbelly and gleam white in the starlight. I am essentially circle-strafing them - and I have to feather the forward throttle to keep close and to keep underneath them.

In the FdL as an agile ship I can use sideways thrusters and roll whilst they are firing at me. I can dodge most of their fire and their plasma bolts this way. But that is a lot less useful in the Anaconda.

Anybody checked the result after todays BGS tick?

Just in case that Fleet carrier contained a massive squadron of crack Imperial Stormtroopers or something

Yesterday it was at 12pm.

Thinking about the war mechanics (or total lack thereof) I hope they revamp it in Odessy at some point. They have suggested that for missions there'll be co-ordinated multi-role attacks, so one would hope this would extend to wars. There's SO much that could be done here.

@molgrips basically in the CZs the cutters are rubbish. They don't have the fire power to do more than annoy and 90% of the time they can't even get that on target. A combination of Vultures and Pythons is the most dangerous for me so far.

I agree about the BGS. I would gleefully swap ship interiors for improved mission and BGS mechanics.

As for the tick.........Three days to nil

The Lavigny's Legion carrier is still in system.

Matt

@donk I finished my wing bounties so 12m for you and anyone else on PC who wants to claim them. But later, I need a few hours sleep...

I finished my wing bounties so 12m for you and anyone else on PC who wants to claim them.

I completed my 63 ship mission too (only 3 or 4 CZs I think) I think thats a 40M payout 🙂
we'll need to arrange something, should be able to get online sometime 6-9pm

@D0NK & @Squirrelking - I could be free this evening too. Probably 9-11pm(ish). I might venture out of Solo if you want to wing up but my combat skillz are atrocious 🙂

Wait a minute. You can accept massacre missions at the same time as playing BGS? Of course you can ... FFS I've missed out on a lot of cash!

Are there any stats available to see how many people you've killed during the war?

the payouts vary a LOT, try to grab missions with a payout that works out atleast half a mill per ship. You can take on more than 1 at a time aswell, but as squirrelking and I found yesterday, 2kills from the same CZ could count toward different missions, not sure how it works, maybe for multiple wing missions its which pilot tagged them first?

Oh and if you're in a wing outposts may be an issue. I docked at tennyson yesterday (and went below deck) and SK couldn't get landing permission. Dunno if they only have 1 medium parking space or it was a glitch, or lots of other NPCs parked up

Dunno if they only have 1 medium parking space

Yep. Only 1 medium pad and only 1 CMDR at a time.

NPC's can block the pad whilst taking off and landing but disappear when they enter the hangar but, as long as CMDRS are logged on and in the hangar then it's considered full to other CMDRS in the same instance.

I think.

and bizarrely, always check the wing missions even if you're not planning to wing up. They tend to give a better price per kill than the solo ones.

Matt

They tend to give a better price per kill than the solo ones.

sometimes yeah. They also sometimes offer you a lot longer timeframe to fulfill the mission (not so much with the CZ ones) typically a week for pirate massacre missions. I always look at payout per ship and (if credits is your aim) go for the smaller ships when you're out shooting, not much point wasting time killing a conda when a sidewinder is worth the same towards your payout (you do get a higher bounty/bond for the conda but probably not worth the time)

same goes for CZ killing, you get a nice bonus for routing a cap ship but it's little compared to a well paid mission.

Be wary of wing assassin missions tho, I hear they can be tricky 😉

In other news; ‘something’ is happening on Thursday. The word in the black is that Galnet will be returning; and a new Dev Diary episode date will be released.

Is anyone up for a bit of combat practice after the war? How about we fit a class 1 pulse laser and dogfight each other a bit, in a controlled environment just to see what sort of flight tactics work? A bit like CQC but with our own ships and a bit of cooperation from our squad mates?

Why not use a mining laser? You can zap someone all day with one of those?

Yeah I'd be up for that, but just use your normal hardpoints, with only 1 of them powered on and stop when you've dropped shields? or maybe after a couple of "shield only" rounds do a bout down to 50% hull? Same handling, aiming/leading trail etc as normal. After all not much point practicing mining/pule lasers if you normally use kinetic/plasma/rail etc

<edit> on reflection you're not going to get the realism of pip management for weapons either, but if you're playing "tag" PVP yeah minimal weapons.

TBH I'd be up for some proper stop at 50% hull PvPs coz I've done almost zero PvP

Shame you're not on my platform 🙂

Would be good for the pros to share tips with the noobs.

aslong as you're not expecting "pro" tips from me
Trading standards would have a field day

engineer your ship to the nth degree is my best tip 🙂

engineer your ship to the nth degree is my best tip

n+1th degree surely?

I'd go for some 50% hull action. I think we're at the stage where no-one is going to get blown up from a misplaced PA at 51% hull.

We have a big enough range of ships between us that we could switch from fighters to bigger ships, attack and defend.

Rumour is that it's GalNet. There was an image of developers with GalNet logos on the bottom of mugs! I do hope so!

Matt

I dunno about hull, my ship costs a fair bit to repair!

We could also dogfight with our own SLFs - they are cheap to replace after all.

This is basically Fight Club.

2kills from the same CZ could count toward different missions, not sure how it works, maybe for multiple wing missions its which pilot tagged them first?

I think the wing missions get everyones kills counted so long as different people started them and they are the current active mission for the holder (if you have a load stacked). So if we both had a wing mission that we were both on we would both count the kills. The exception being my kills wouldn't count for my mission if I had another mission stacked before it.

I can make a short bit of time for bounties tonight but doing a quick turnaround to a dayshift tomorrow so won't be doing any flight time beyond station hopping for hand ins (mine are both for Wylie so it should be quick to do them). Plus I need to work on my wife Rep++++

Two more fleet carriers in system from the same squadron...

Ominous

Since Akuntsu is an exploited system it will appear on Lavigny lists as a system which is at risk of changing hands.

The net effect should be small for them, but there would be a negative effect.

If we lose day 4, I suggest we choose a specific day and concentrate all of our efforts on that day, we only need to win 1.

Matt

Today is that day surely?

Who's flying tonight?

just firing it up now, not sure how long I'll have tonight might be a short session, RL

CONTACT!!!

Guy in a conda just turned up to fight for IPP, he battered my shields, must confess I bricked it, so I ran. Going in fopr another shot now

Another Lavigny legion fleet carrier inbound

Bugger!

Move 'ZIG'!

For great justice.

How do you know who owns the carrier?

They are setting us up the bomb!

If you click on it in the nav panel it tells you who the CMDR and squadron are

CMDR Enchiz prime
I went back and the CZ was till ongoing, enchiz had taken a beating from one of our spec ops FdLs so he went back to dock. We won CZ. Next battle he turned up halfway thru but didnt engage me, we won that one too.
Seems a decent chap, said he wouldnt engage as he didnt want to greif, I told him all's fair in war, so he may kick my arse again later, see what happens, got RL stuff to do now tho

Charles, get the rifle out. We're being ****ed.

Oops. Better get online. You XBoxers just need to slow them down so the rest of us can rack up more victories than they do.

I’m already 6 high CZ’s in

We would seem to be doing ok with CMDR Perchy on our side. Glad to have you with us commander.

D0nk and are are PC. We just won the battle I crashed and only one CMDR on the other side.

just checked status and it says NKL "total victory". Is tha form this mornings tick, todays activities (well done all, I know I've not done much today) or have we won the war now?

@squirrelking - what's your CMDR name? I found a CMDR Squirrelking - active 60months ago. I'm CMDR Eisler in game. Feel free to send me a friend request. I'm busy Tue & Fri nights this week.

just checked status and it says NKL “total victory”.

It’s a prediction of the result if nothing else happens in the 7 day period. We’re currently 3-0 up

If we lose today it’s 3-1 and it’ll go back down to just Victory.

If we win today, we win the war.

I'm Squirrelking. with the full stop, I'll add you later though.

Total victory?!?

I'm sure those massacre missions didn't hurt. If it is then well done all!

Total victory?!?

Not yet. It just means 3 up.

Still 4 to play.

Yeah your post got lost in the usual STW desynch murk. Oh well, best keep at it!

I'm about 6 or 7 High Intensity to the good. I've scared off two Cap ships and seen off War Correspondents by the boatload.

We better win today, my wrists are aching!

Matt

me and CMDR Eisler hit a couple more CZ, spec ops nearly made toast of us, those phase sequence lasers really rip into unarmoured shield tanks like mine. Had another capital ship that refused to go, last heat relay stuck at 0%, annoying.

Ive killed so many IPP Ive gone from allied (due to all the bounties I'd handed in previously I guess) to unfriendly, wylie dock has now turned red, does this mean they wont let me land there again once I've departed?

Fingers crossed for victory today, think we'll stuggle to compete against those groups/squadrons that have moved in now theyve gotten organised.

<edit> ARRRRRGH!! The absolute gits. I had just thought sod it, 1 more CZ before bed, logged back in and Ive been bumped from wylie to the Champion of Piety in the arse end of nowhere in my 10Ly max FdL, grrrrr.