T-6 interdictions & mines: what am I doing wrong?

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T-6 interdictions & mines: what am I doing wrong?

Postby Ethan Harris » Fri Jul 21, 2017 7:34 pm

I've been playing PC since the beginning, but since the other half has been monopolizing the PC for MMOs lately, I thought I'd give the PS4 version a try. It's been nice to start from the beginning again, though it shocked me how much time I apparently spent learning stuff the first time around, I got to the credit/ship-progression point that had taken me nearly a year over a weekend. (My rankings are still low, though; I've just learned what's lucrative and what's not, and I don't mess around or make stupid and deadly errors as much.) I'm pleased to see Mobius is active there—I've actually talked to more players on PS4 than I ever have on PC—the newness, I suspect; still, it's nice.

Anyway, I thought I'd try at piggybacking the haulage community goal with missions—in the past I've found that, if you can make a triangle route with a commodity being delivered and intertwined factions so that you never have to leave that route and can stack missions, you can just hack away at your CG level while making a good amount of lucre on the side, accelerating as your reputation with those local factions increase, and the mission stacking makes play a bit more interesting than pure trucking, between the "we need it NOW, can you get from jump point to pad in 3 minutes?" and "hey, go over to that other system and drop the cargo on a planet instead of the outpost you're about to dock with" interruptions.

And, of course... the hostile NPCs. Here's where I am utterly confused. I know with my Vive and Voice Attack and HOTAS I have much greater control and situational awareness in combat; so that's at least part of why I decided to go the trading route starting over this time on the PS4.

But I never deleted my old builds from Coriolis (and have now ported them over to new Coriolis). I went with the same build that worked quite well for me a year or so ago pre-Engineers (since, as yet, I don't have any Engineers unlocked on PS4): https://eddp.co/u/aMityy7T

What I used to do is stack missions and trade commodities on a route and just deal with the interdictions—sometimes multiple ones, back-to-back—until there got to be too many of them. Once you get to 6 or 7 hostiles tailing you, you can actually get into a cycle of continuous interdiction when you slow to come into port, as you have the first one recovered and interdicting you again by the time you escape the last one. (I know some advise you can deal with this faster by submitting, but when you're low-waking out in a T-6, this isn't true, at least if you're good at the minigame—especially in the T-6 with its rapid yaw that lets you home in on the escape vector easily.)

Even with such near-continuous interdiction, you can usually still get into port. With each interdiction evaded your supercruise velocity is slowing, so you're almost certainly slow enough for a safe drop, you just need to get within 1 Mm of port—but the interdiction escape vectors are generally leading you away from your destination. However, you can make it by throttling up to 100% even into the < 5 s ETA "loop of shame" zone, once you're so close to the station that you can't overshoot it at any speed provided you're quick on the drop button. (I believe, but won't swear to it, that you can even do this during an interdiction provided your blue minigame pips outstrip the hostile's red pips enough that he can't complete interdiction by the time you drop.) I would do that sometimes when I'd gotten one of those speedrun bonuses in my comms, or the particular NPC's interdicting me were fearsome.

Then, an NPC (or sometimes, more than one) pops out by the station, shoots at you in the no-fire zone, and before it has any chance to do more than ding you gets killed by the station's weapons. Unfortunately, it doesn't count as a kill for mission-bonus purposes, and the NPC so killed will continually respawn until the mission is handed in, unlike when you, the player, kill the NPC in combat. (Is this a bug or a game balancing issue to prevent too much mission stacking? I don't know. This also seems to be true if you evade in normal space long enough for police to come along and destroy the hostile; at least if you didn't get in a hit, it just respawns.)

So, here's how I dealt with it a year or so ago on PC: once I got too many hostiles to deal with by minigaming, I would submit to the interdiction of a "Competent" or below NPC, lock target, wait until they were just within firing range and directly on my six o'clock and in-plane with my ship's horizontal, set pips to SYS and WEP, drop mines and chaff, set pips now to ENG and WEP, and boost, dropping as many more mines as I could while I boosted, and then if I started to lose him, pips out of ENG and into SYS just enough to let him catch up again, rinse and repeat. Usually no more than three such rounds were required for my mines to destroy the guy, usually without my Lakon taking a scratch.

I got quite good at it, to the point where bounties became a lucrative part of the runs as well, and to where I rose two or three levels of combat rating without ever doing "real combat". A bit after that, I got interested in things other than trading, so I haven't used a T-6 or mines since. But I felt like I had a handle on using mines on mission-hostile NPC's with low enough combat rating.

But now... on PS4, this tactic seems to have utterly failed me. The NPC's swoop over or below the line of mines every single time—at this point, in seven confrontations, I've seen exactly one mine detonation. And so, I've tried to let them get closer to give them less chance to evade, and closer, and closer—and then they've killed me. (That one hit I got, it was immediately followed by a rebuy.) And I'm only submitting to "(Mostly) Harmless" and "Novice" NPC's (I thought maybe the "Competent" ones I used to handle this way were now too much on post-2.2 Elite Dangerous, with the AI buff I've heard about).

I've tried regular rather than biweave shields (I used biweave before because usually what happened was I'd take a few hits right before boosting, then be in the clear, and biweaves would regenerate before the NPC got close again, so it was just a way to get in more rounds of mine-laying without waits for my shields to replenish). I've tried another shield booster instead of the PDC. I've tried outfitting two regular mine launchers, and I've tried outfitting one regular and one shock. I was thinking about a turreted gun of some sort, but my understanding of how turret autofiring works means that I won't shoot the guy behind me unless one of my mines touches him (maybe that's not true—but even so, the turreted weapons available for a small hardpoint don't seem like they're going to do much for me). I've fiddled with my technique and watched and re-watched Vindicator Jones' combat tips video on mines.

Yet—every single time I've tried to submit and mine, rather than evade, it ends up with me rebuying—five times now, meaning my effective profit is getting close to zero.

And—after you rebuy, if you don't abandon the mission, that same NPC will just be coming at you again!

So... what the hell am I doing wrong? I know FD made NPC's smarter, but have they made them so smart that mines are simply useless ordnance now until I can engineer them? If so, is there another option in terms of T-6 defensive weaponry, or is my only choice to just stack fewer missions to the point where I can evade every interdiction?

If this just doesn't make sense to you at all and you need to see what I'm doing, let me know, I can stomach a couple more rebuys in the name of uploading video. It's always possible this is just a PS4 oddity—I'm not in a position in my PC game right now to return to civilized space to try it there to find out.

I'm growing more than a bit frustrated here, I'd appreciate any suggestions.

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Re: T-6 interdictions & mines: what am I doing wrong?

Postby Xebeth » Fri Jul 21, 2017 8:33 pm

Basically they taught them how to avoid mines, the old drop a shed load of mines tactic no longer works I'm afraid.

On the plus side, they also made the interdiction mini-game much easier to win, but if you are stacking a bunch and getting chased by a load of NPCs, then it's still going to be a pain.
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Re: T-6 interdictions & mines: what am I doing wrong?

Postby Ethan Harris » Fri Jul 21, 2017 8:36 pm

Xebeth wrote:Basically they taught them how to avoid mines, the old drop a shed load of mines tactic no longer works I'm afraid.

On the plus side, they also made the interdiction mini-game much easier to win, but if you are stacking a bunch and getting chased by a load of NPCs, then it's still going to be a pain.


Well, that's unfortunate... engineered cascade mines still work, though, right?

How about dropping mines while rolling? Can you create a dispersal pattern that the NPC's can't avoid as easily?

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Re: T-6 interdictions & mines: what am I doing wrong?

Postby Ethan Harris » Fri Jul 21, 2017 8:40 pm

Xebeth wrote:Basically they taught them how to avoid mines, the old drop a shed load of mines tactic no longer works I'm afraid.


Oh, and on the other question: does that mean there's some other defensive weaponry you can effectively outfit a Type-6 with?

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Re: T-6 interdictions & mines: what am I doing wrong?

Postby DarkMere » Fri Jul 21, 2017 8:47 pm

You can always run away :)

So many people have said that you can win the mini game, but I have still not tried that as I did not want to make the first attempt in a slow unarmed Conda. But that being true, then you can escape that way. Or you can submit and boost away. I have had no problem escaping in the Conda and that's slower than the boost speed of the T6. But yep still a pain.
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Re: T-6 interdictions & mines: what am I doing wrong?

Postby Xebeth » Fri Jul 21, 2017 8:49 pm

Ethan Harris wrote:
Well, that's unfortunate... engineered cascade mines still work, though, right?


I've never tried them so can't comment.

Ethan Harris wrote:How about dropping mines while rolling? Can you create a dispersal pattern that the NPC's can't avoid as easily?


I had the same thought when they first changed them and it didn't work, plus I kept hitting myself with the mines that was in a cutter mind you).

Ethan Harris wrote:Oh, and on the other question: does that mean there's some other defensive weaponry you can effectively outfit a Type-6 with?


For a T6, no, I don't believe so, but then it's a log time since I last had one, so others may be able to offer something
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Re: T-6 interdictions & mines: what am I doing wrong?

Postby Ethan Harris » Fri Jul 21, 2017 9:14 pm

DarkMere wrote:You can always run away :)


Oh, I know... just as I wrote above,
  1. when the number of hostiles gets too large, all you're doing is running every time you slow to approach a port, which can turn docking at a 10 Ls from jump point station into a 10-minute ordeal
  2. the previous game balancing allowed for combat kills via mines, which would
    • give you a bounty and mission-kill bonus
    • stop the NPC from respawning, reducing the total number of hostiles tailing you
    • enable you to level up in combat even while trading—which could help you get better missions
    and
  3. running from normal space into high-wake is easy, but into low-wake is harder. When you're getting repeatedly interdicted on approach to a station tens or hundreds of thousands of light seconds out from the jump point, that took you dozens of real-life minutes to get to, it really sucks to high-wake out
  4. evading the interdiction via minigame lets you continue your approach, while submitting and evading to low-wake requires you start approach over again

So many people have said that you can win the mini game, but I have still not tried that as I did not want to make the first attempt in a slow unarmed Conda. But that being true, then you can escape that way. Or you can submit and boost away. I have had no problem escaping in the Conda and that's slower than the boost speed of the T6. But yep still a pain.


(Not trying to be pedantic, but some folks reading may not know this.) The blue-throttle-zone maneuverability applies in supercruise, so it applies in the minigame; if you're at 100% throttle, you're in the yellow, so pitch and yaw are going to be slow and the minigame will be hard. You should throttle back into the blue while trying to evade interdiction. And even when you aren't on a rapid-yaw ship like the T-7 or T-9, it's important to use yaw, not just pitch and roll.

On PC, I've found evading in an Anaconda perfectly doable, though not exactly easy. My T-9 Heavy, when I lost yaw control once (my rudders got disconnected inadvertently)—that's the last time I've lost the minigame for any reason other than letting my attention wander, going to get a drink or something, and not noticing the moment I got interdicted.

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Re: T-6 interdictions & mines: what am I doing wrong?

Postby TorTorden » Sat Jul 22, 2017 7:17 am

DarkMere wrote:You can always run away :)

So many people have said that you can win the mini game, but I have still not tried that as I did not want to make the first attempt in a slow unarmed Conda. But that being true, then you can escape that way. Or you can submit and boost away. I have had no problem escaping in the Conda and that's slower than the boost speed of the T6. But yep still a pain.

Dear Lord why not?
Poorly defensive, like dedicated traders, is what that's for.

Also beating an interdiction will remove the npc from the area same as killing it would, just no bounty to cash out.

Also how many missions are the op taking?
When I grab 3-5 or so I still only get interdicted no more than every five jumps and since most missions are done in less than three.
And that's with python with twice the cargo capacity of a t6.
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Re: T-6 interdictions & mines: what am I doing wrong?

Postby DarkMere » Sat Jul 22, 2017 8:01 am

TorTorden wrote:
DarkMere wrote:You can always run away :)

So many people have said that you can win the mini game, but I have still not tried that as I did not want to make the first attempt in a slow unarmed Conda. But that being true, then you can escape that way. Or you can submit and boost away. I have had no problem escaping in the Conda and that's slower than the boost speed of the T6. But yep still a pain.

Dear Lord why not?
Poorly defensive, like dedicated traders, is what that's for.

Also beating an interdiction will remove the npc from the area same as killing it would, just no bounty to cash out.

Also how many missions are the op taking?
When I grab 3-5 or so I still only get interdicted no more than every five jumps and since most missions are done in less than three.
And that's with python with twice the cargo capacity of a t6.

Okay you convinced me. The very next time I am going to play the mini game. If it gets me to the station quicker, all is good. I am just a coward till I know it works :)
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Re: T-6 interdictions & mines: what am I doing wrong?

Postby Ethan Harris » Sun Jul 23, 2017 2:18 am

TorTorden wrote:Also beating an interdiction will remove the npc from the area same as killing it would, just no bounty to cash out.


That's definitely not true, at least, not an PS4, as I was getting interdicted and evading, and the moment I suceeded a different NPC interdicted me, and once I got to 6–7 NPC's interdicting me in a chain, the first would interdict me again right after. So, again, at least on PS4, they aren't "remove[d]... from the area same as killing it would", it appears more like they're removed from supercruise for a period just as a human player who can't successfully interdict and then after cooldown can return to supercruise in the same area.

Again, this isn't something I can test on PC right now.

And I think even on PC it's not the same as killing it, because if you have multiple hops the NPC can come back to harrass you in a different system. And, as I noted, if the system police or a station destroys the mission-hostile NPC, it can still come back in that case too. (I took particular notice of this because I had an NPC called "Mofo" tailing me, so that's a memorable name, and so I took notice when a station killed him and was surprised when he turned up again later.)

TorTorden wrote:Also how many missions are the op taking?


I'm taking quite a lot... basically, my decision-making was to take any that didn't require me to stray from my triangle route, didn't require more than half my cargo capacity on the final leg (since I want to continue progressing on the CG), and whose effective profit was ~10 KCr/T or more once counting any commodity costs in "source and return" missions. But in source-and-return missions, the hostiles don't get called out until you purchase the goods, so just keeping a bunch of those in the transactions tab doesn't expose you to more risk.

Since I take breaks after two or three loops, and check the mission board before logging out and again after logging in, they stacked up quickly.

I found having more then 6–7 "active" missions (meaning data delivery, haulage, or cargo I'd already sourced) was when things got hairy.

TorTorden wrote:When I grab 3-5 or so I still only get interdicted no more than every five jumps and since most missions are done in less than three.
And that's with python with twice the cargo capacity of a t6.


Not my experience—unless you mean "jumps" literally rather than "legs", and are counting any number of interdictions on a single apporach as just one. My triangle route right now has 4 jumps then 3 jumps then 1 jump. I got the comms "coming to get you" traffic when I was just cooling down for my next hop in a route, but I wouldn't count that since they can't make the interdiction before I wake out.

I was getting interdicted at 2 out of 3 station approaches, so that's at least 2 interdictions in 8 jumps, but if I got interdicted once, I would get interdicted at least once more on the same approach, and on average more like 3–4 times, so that's 6–8 actual interdictions for every three approaches or almost 1 interdiction per actual frameshift jump.

In any case, the initial question on the thread is moot now because I just stopped submitting and took the time hit of multiple minigames rather than risking rebuys, and I've now made enough profit to upgrade to an Asp Explorer.

But right now, my Asp Explorer buid is just shields and shield boosters—no weapons at all. I'm wondering if anyone has a fighting trader Asp Explorer buildout they might suggest? Evading interdiction is definitely more difficult in the Asp than the T-6 (due to the slower pitch and much slower yaw, I assume, unless the minigame just gets harder with ship progression), so I'm a bit worried that I won't have a 100% success rate on the minigame anymore.


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