Elite: Dangerous PvE - Mobius

Does chaffing actually work ?

Just used it for the first time......Got in a bit of a tussle with a fed gunship and 2 diamondback explorers.....

Code 39 was implemented because I was alone and getting hammered.....

The chaff seemed to do feck all.....

I was still getting shot to shit with it deployed.....

Yeah it does, but i've noticed since 1.4 it's less effective.

Either the NPCs got wise and swapped to fixed guns or they changed how effective chaff actually is.

I think it now depends on the rank of the npc you're gunning for, the lower rank dudes seem to have gimballed and the highers fixed

It works...sorta. There are a couple things that factor into it. The size of your ship and how close you are to your attacker (and, I suppose, to a lesser degree, how many people are attacking you.) Since my ship is pretty large, popping a Chaff is pretty much the difference between taking 100% of the shots fired at me to taking maybe 75-80%, unless I'm facing my target dead on (in which case I'm a smaller target.) Of course, that's totally based on my perceptions, and not any actual hard data...but yeah...

Bug reported a few days ago if using chaff against NPCs.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=193600

TomoRosso wrote:Bug reported a few days ago if using chaff against NPCs.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=193600

Oh, in this case no it isn't working! another thing that went pbbbblt with the 1.4 update then. It's under investigation though which is good.

Ahhhhh...OK

Wondered why I was getting F.U.B.A.R'd............

Pointless buying that then..........

It will still prevent a scan if you're smuggling.

TomoRosso wrote:Bug reported a few days ago if using chaff against NPCs.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=193600

Huh. No wonder.

I heard chaffing only works against the npc you have directly targeted, thus making it utterly pointless against wings and just waste of space in most other instances. ..

I haven't completely verified this but it tracks I have tried it against wings and it's done feck all.
I did type it on my asp running from sothis and I get tackled by an anaconda (just after I got emergency dropped at a star) I would not have escaped that if I hadn't had dual chaff I doubt I would have made it.

TorTorden wrote:I heard chaffing only works against the npc you have directly targeted...

Well if that's the case - it must have been written specifically like that, which is dumb as hell. Most of the time, your target is on the receiving end of your guns, and the chaff should be there to shake off the ships that have you in their sights.

Edit - I've been at the compromised nav beacon with Blazing and Xebeth. It's a lot more manic than I'm used to, and I noticed that NPCs spam chaff quite effectively now. I've been playing a while, but I've only just learned the tactic of deselecting my target if they chaff - my gimballed weps return to forward fire and I can still land hits. I select again as soon as the chaff ends, just because it allows me to lead or lag my target.