a word about PVP training..and maybe some tips

[Stoertebecker]

Greets all!

i am getting more and more requests form players to train them in PVP. Everyone wants to get better thats for sure- but i want to put my 2 cents on that here.

Sure there are a couple of tricks one needs to know to become good in PVP.. things like that CD can shoot down torps and missiles.
But the real skill cant be trained to you by another person.

Ace skills are a very personal manifestation as far as i think. You need to find your own style.. and when you master it you will become (near-) unbeatable. For some this might be the "bomber style" with torpedos and all.. for others a light fighter.

Lets see what aspects make a good pilot:

1. Aim
If you cant hit your enemy you will loose. Plain and simple.
There are pretty few things another person can teach you here- its experience and reflexes. I often have quite a good guess in a fight where the enemy will move, after seeing him fighting for some minutes. So its: be observant.. and be fast! You will also need to find out which weapon fits you the most....

2. Defensive
In my eyes the most important aspect of pvp. If you dont get hit you will win- or at least score a draw.
But what training can one give here? "dont get hit" hardly helps much there...
Watch which weapons the enemy has. Think of what disatvantages these weapons have. Use them!
And of course..whatch HOW your enemy fires. Are there patterns? Moves he always makes?
Most ppl i fought do a couple of moves all the time again. If you find out how to counter that move you will be at a distinct advantage.

3. Maneuevering
Here its some basics again, everything else is just refining.
Avoid straight lines when the enemy is facing you. You are a easy target if you fly straight, and guns deal out a lot of damage!
One tip i can give here: if you fight a enemy which has far more maneuverability (say anubis VS horus, to be extreme) dont try to outmaneuever it. This ship can fly cyrcles around you with ease. Take your time to think...use the engine kill to turn and get away from it a bit. If you manage to get distance you can start a heads on pass again. That way the maneuverability is not that important.

4. Offensive power
even if you master your aim you will have a hard time with only lvl 1 weapons.
Check which weapons you do best with, be it guns or missiles. But always include at least(!!!) one shield braker gun (Tizona del cid or screamer) (or a shield breaker missile like the paralyzer) or you will have a very tough time in PVP.
I for my part like to have every option in a fight, and so choose a combination of missiles and guns. But thats just me.
If you like to snipe taking single shots: Take a high damage low refire weapon like the fear cannon.
If you like to spray around use fast refire ones.
Or take a solid compromise weapon like the punisher.
One tip when many missiles are your way: dont take many launchers of the same type. Because you dont get more ammo for that type then and only run dry of missiles fast.For example take a cannonball and a lancer instead of 2 cannonballs. The lancer does less damage- but that way you got 120 shots per launcher instead of 120 in total.

Well thats it so far.. hope i could help some ppl along a bit

EDIT: and dont forget to aknowledge the winner thats just common courtesy and shows you aint got your brain just for holding your ears apart

[Fracture]

Stoert, I made this an announcement so it will stay on top.
Awesome post!!

Lord knows I need this info as much as anyone.
Thank you!

Scream On!

Frac

[EXXIT]

Nice Becker,vvvvvery nice...

Appendix:
-Also try that out:Move mouse in circles,starting from corner of screen,and make its moves look like spiral ones,where the center of spiral is red cross of your enemy..Make this move that fast,that you will need to point the mouse on his red cross about 100m far from him
While enymy will be chasing your red cross,you will have all guns loaded and at 100-70m just press fire..once..

[EXXIT]

sry 4 double-IE lagged..

[Richi]

I think, yes right, its a few important and never unchanging trues.
- You need cold head and patience.
- If you are in bad position for attack, better think into good defend manoeuvre.
- You can´t win, if you are hiting more then your opponent. Never.

And skills? Lol, its easy. I´m saying: "we will see, after next 50 duels."
How much duels I lost in my first hundred? Many, really many.

_______________
[n*o] Richi - o*nly

[Stoertebecker]

I think, yes right, its a few important and never unchanging trues.
- You need cold head and patience.
- If you are in bad position for attack, better think into good defend manoeuvre.
- You can´t win, if you are hiting more then your opponent. Never.

And skills? Lol, its easy. I´m saying: "we will see, after next 50 duels."
How much duels I lost in my first hundred? Many, really many.

_______________
[n*o] Richi - o*nly

aye.. i renember when i first came here in HK. We had 3 veteran clans instantly at our throats (shadows, mafia and NS) and i died a lot of times. And i got frustrated too sometimes . But it literaly was a "get tough or die" situation, and i opted for the first

[JoeG]

Practice, practice and more practice is needed.
Can't become an Ace over night.
So men's and grils go out there and PvP.
Be a good sport's and say GF even if U lose it's only two letters but mean's a lot.
No U are not the worst there is always some rokie to train on.
Practice lead's to perfection.
I'm not the best but hope die last .
Scream On

[Durango]

Lots of great info here! Thankx everyone, I will be trying out some of the ideas posted here.

[Green_Killer]

nice post i think it will help a lot of people

[Stoertebecker]

Grml the server is ofline

So ill write a little addon instead of playing *lol

I want to put a word concerning missile use and countertactics.
Ill try to put in words how missiles work, so you can adapt that to either evading or using them (or both). Torpedos work the same way just slower so ill use the term "missile" for all of that.

In freelancer a missile is basicaly a fire and forget projectile. Yet they take a lot of skill and training to be used in an effective way.

The first time you look at their stats you will think they suck. Even the heaviest one doesnt do more damage than a good salvo from guns (and they are free!)
What most ppl dont know: the impact speed is added to missile damage. So they do by far more damage than they should if one reads the damage values.
For example: an eagle (around 10k hull) with nomad armour (+150%, equals to 25k hull) is hit by a cannonball in a head on pass. This will destroy around 20k of its hull, despite the cannonball having "only" around 5k damage ratio.
Keep in mind missiles to splash damage too- if you hit a ship repeatedly with them it is very likely that ship will loose mounted stuff like guns etc (and in extreme cases even the shield generator).

This may sound like missiles are the "uber weapon" but they are definitly not. First of, the guidiance system of missiles is rather poor (even on the firestalker). It can guide the missile some degrees in, but wont go in for rapid course changes. the positions a hit is most likely is from the front or rear, which is where ships have the smallest lateral speed.
The best hit rates are generaly archived by using missiles like guns, meaning firing them INTO the flight path of the enemy like they were dumb fire weapons.
The other side of the coin: if you are attacked with missiles try to get as much lateral speed as possible to evade them. Just going at full speed towards the missile doesnt help a thing, just increases its damage (look above for explanation). Try to turn away on high speed, and dont forget your ship can strafe to the sides too....


The best defense against missiles is to shoot them, especialy when they are launched and explode right into your enemies face. There are basicaly two ways to archive that:

1. gunfire. You can hit missiles with guns (i prefer fast refire for that, as even a small amount of damage explodes them). If a missile is launched you will notice it in your hud, marked with a small red dot where you need to aim. Its still a very dificult thing to do, but can save your butt.

2. Other missiles.As we discussed above missiles do splash damage. This means, if you hit your enemy with a missile while he launches his, the entire projectiles blow in his face doing great damage. This will work best with cruise disruptors, which are in fact very fast micro missiles. But it works with other missiles too (i once exploded an enemies missile load with a well timed torpedo, making for a REAL big bang).
A word adressing "spamming" CDs: it may be tempting, but dont do it. First of your sight will get confused, reducing your aim. Second, if you fire constantly a smart enemy will fire his missiles BETWEEN your CD shots. Besides.. it often causes horrible lags, as every projectile needs to be calculated by the server.
Try to get a feel for the missile users firing patterns, and just launch 1 or 2 CD just in time.


Another important thing to use against missiles is your countermessure launcher (short: CM).
If you set it to active (mark it as green) it will save your hide hundreds of times, and wont cost much.
I dont realy know why so few ppl use them. On active mode they launch a flare a) when a missile is fired at you and b) if you fire your loadout.
b) will waste your flares, but as they are rather cheap i dont realy care.

They are not safe-alls though; first of missiles have blast area. so even if a CM flare gets the missile of path, at close range it can detonate near enough to your ship to damage you.
And second..most ship launch their CM straight behind. So if you just fly straight towards the missile, it may have locked on the flare.. but still hit you (as you are in the path of the missile).

An afterword for missile users:
Accept that they are very chancy weapons. As a rule of thumb: the busier the server, the worse they will track. This is for a reason: if the server is idle it calculates the missiles positions (and tracking) say 10 times a second. If its busy, maybe just once (and the missile gets confused by the sudden changes of the target).
In heavy lagg even the point of firing may vary.. you may find that your missiles launch with up to 2 seconds delay in lag.

If you got that far in this rather long text you are a patient guy (or gal of course)

Thats it so far.. maybe ill post a bit next days about gunfire

[Stoertebecker]

geez after all that heavy missile stuff a quick general advice. Use your brains for something other than keeping your ears apart! There are scores of different methods of fighting around, and im sure no one knows em all.
Try new things.. evaluate how they work, perfect them if they are good, scrap them if they aint.

[Mad-Max]

Now I see why u r so good, but I will asimillate many tactics and add some of my own and then practice, practice... .
I was interested in ur opinion for the best ship, not only the fast, but strong and with alot of firepower, I'm flying an Anubis MK2, but I'm not so satisfied, so I looking better.
I can't decide between Sabre and Eagle-Titan droped out in a first run because it has turet without use-it shoots only backwards.
Cya in space m8's

[Stoertebecker]

time to revive this a bit and make my promise true to tell something about guns
Guns are perhaps the best offensive weapon you can have if you use them right. They arent as much affected by lag as missiles/torps, you dont run out of shots, and the amount of damage you do can be quite great.

Well first you need to know there are 2 basic styles of using em, which are vastly different. I will call them "Sniper" and "Brawler". Both have their pros and cons, and neither one is per se superiour to the other.

Ill explain how both of this work, along with suggestions for some guns.

The Sniper
He takes care to aim carefully, and if hes good archives very good hit rates. Most propably he will prefer to be at longer range, though this aint always true. He will pop out far less shots than his cannons will be able to, instead trying to make every shot count. A side effect of this is that a sniper hardly cares about the energy drain of his weapons, as he doesnt fire that often. The best weapons for that style of play are high-damage low-refire ones. Fears and nomad lasers come to mind then.

The Brawler
He will try to stay close to you. He will fill the space around you with as much projectiles as possible, trading in accuracy to fire volume. A good brawler will always keep his targeting reticle ahead of the enemies nose, peppering his shields and hull for as long as possible. If he can keep you in sight, the amount of damage he can do is quite astonishing, and he kills much faster than a sniper then. The usual weapons are high refire ones, at least refire of 4. Vulcans, Punishers, Annihilators and Painkiller come to mind. As the brawler relies on long sustained fire, a non energy using nomad blaster or two wont hurt his style either.


Keep in mind these 2 are more conceptual that reality- in space you will find most ppl will use a mix of both styles.

So how to use your guns effectivly? you have to do some thinking. There are more factors to a gun than just damage (in fact, damage is one of the more unimportant things).
A fact most ppl underestimate is the projectile speed. This is the speed your shots are traveling at. As a rule of thumb: the better this speed, the better this gun hits. This is because it travels the distance to your enemy faster, and gives him less chance to evade (for this reason i never use that awesome slow nomad VHF turret).

You have that nice aiming cross on your hud- use it. But use it smart. This cross shows where you need to aim IF your enemy flies straight.
there are 2 pitfalls in using it though:

1. it just shows the "aiming point" for your fastest projectile speed weapon. For example if you have a screamer (1k speed) and a nomad VHF turret(500 or so) and you aim at the cross while the enemy goes straight.. well most likely the screamer will hit, but the nomad gun will miss. So, if you want to archive a great number of hits per salvo try to use weapons of the same speed. SIDE NOTE: if you have weps with many different speeds you will create a shotgun like spread, which might come in handy now and then too.

2. Smart pilots never fly straight. This means, if you just shoot at the cross you always miss. Try to anticipate where the enemy will move, and where the cross will be when he does his moving. Fire there instead of directly at the cross


A final word to gun loadouts. Smart pilots always include at least one shield breaker, like screamer or tizona del cid. Without them you will need much more hits of your guns to down the enemy shields. I prefer my guns to hit hull instead of shields, so i always mount at least one.
Which one to choose.. well they both have pros and cons.

Screamer: uses comperativly less energy. Does far more damage. Has the highest projectile speed, which is both boon and bane (it may mess your targeting with other guns, but its easier to hit with it). Its refire is a p*** in the a**** so smart pilots will try to evade your screamer shot to go for you during the eternity it takes to fire it again.

Tizona: Highest refire shield breaker. This means you will prolly score more hits with it, and its harder to evade. It has a slow projectile speed and shorter range (see above, slow speed CAN be advantage).
SiDE NOTE: due some weird physics the tiz shots are invisible, dont get messed up by this. If you want to track flight path of your guns, add a nomad blaster. That has the same refire, range and projectile speed as the tizona.


As for the rest of the guns, well you can read the values and choose which suits you best. If you compare guns, dont forget to multiply their energy usage and damage with the refire. A vulcan does less damage than a nomad laser per shot, but fires much more for a bigger overall damage.


Well thats it so far, if you read that far your realy patient with me