lemme give you the heads up on the cheese.. first you gotta get your grubby hands on at least heavy thruster preferably the advanced thruster (assuming you bought up from a starflier)- the ai is predictable.. lock on your target and afterburner strait at him till he turns- all you gotta do is lay off the afterburner and turn into him blasting till he starts barrel rolling strait away.. hit the afterburner and it's free shots down a pipe- can usually do major damage with that move and keep repeating.. keep on the burner if your getting hit alot and helps to turn some till they pass- also you don't have to use your shield batteries everytime your shields go out.. this is the best tip I can think of for missions other than having mad skills.. strafe does'nt do too much but I use it when shooting in that barrel roll sometimes.. you'll take less hits

oh yeah and pay the toll!!

I have a better one!!

(assuming they will come after you, AND that they're not directly behind you! works best if the're ~90 degrees from you ) won't work so with them directly behind you because you will end up afterburning into them! maybe the strafe keys will help a tiny i dont know.
this is the one I use.

Ok what you do is you hit the Z key, then hit the afterburner. then turn towards them, and shoot! while occasionally pulsing the afterburner(VERY SHORT PULSES)and USE strafe keys(switch directions often), both of which screw up their aim.

works pretty good against players too! This move will produce an effect similar to erratic circle strafing in 3d!

this is what i do when attacking large craft:
from a long range i fly a heading that takes me pass them,cruise speed,i kill engines,after that your ship slowly decelaretes and cant change direction. so i'm bassicaly strafing past the large ship.

when someone is chasing you in players vs player. Just drop a mine which will have a similar effect to hitting one of those small rocks in asteroid clouds. They will be thrown of course, you turn around, and shove a few sunslayers up their ass

For aiming:
You may notice a small red cross that appears when you highlight an enemy. Always move your cursor to highlight this, rather than highlight the body of their craft only. You have to account for the delay from laser fire to actually travel the distance and hit the target. That's why you should aim at the small red X that appears infront of their travel path, as this will put your laser fire into their oncoming path.
Also move your cursor as quickly as possible to their red arrow if they attempt a fly-by.

Lock onto their craft properly:
Take the time to hit space bar and autopilot. Quickly highlight their craft in the bottom left of the HUD and keep clicking to highlight the part of their ship you wanna target. This helps focus your attack. Then switch back to free-fly mode and chase them down!

Use Afterburn:
Use the Afterburn (shift key) to catch them up and keep up with them. Use it sparingly because you'll need the gas to evade other fighters trying to blow you to hell. It's a valuble tool to help you maneuvre. Look closely at their movements. They speed away, and fly towards you, speed away and fly towards you. Use the afterburner to your advantage.


Get outta there!
Finished the job? Taken out your target? Why hang about? Hit the spacebar key and go into autopilot for a second. choose the "go to" icon for you next waypoint. This disables your weapons but makes you move at speed to get out of a tight situation. Hit the space bar again to assume control (while staying in the fast speed mode). Keep strafing left, right, up and down and get clear of any danger. They'll find it hard to catch you up.

Hope that helps.

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see you, space cowboy...

I love fighting in the asteroid fields especially those with the explosive gas clouds those who have been there know why! LOL

I use the kill engine slide and gas and go manuvers. Offence, Defence.

First come at them with your afterburners on full then highlight the ships and fire missles and guns at them. As they pass hit the z key to kill engines and quickly turn around (Slide in reverse) and let them have another blast of cannon fire and missles up the pipe. This usually takes a bunch of them out and weakens the rest for easy clean up. Hit your engines and persue and mop up.

For defensive moves the gas and go method works for me. I gas the afterburners and head straight for the thickest part of an asteroid field. (when available, it works just as well in space use whatever is around trade rings jump gates, space staitons, etc.)

Use the strafe keys and mouse moving your ship back and forth to throw off their aim, and when you reach a large rock, push straight up to loop back around as the AI usually hit them head on, and bounce off. You can get a great shot at them while they try and regain control.

This method also helps keep his buddies from locking onto you as the rocks keep most of their shots from a direct lock on hit.

The other part is to drop some mines around a couple of the asteroids as you go along as this creates a pocket of them in the small space they followed you into.
"I have a lock on my target I'm going in" BOOM "AHHHHHHHhhhhh!" Boooom! "I've lost one of my men!" LOL

Don't forget to hit your space bar once in a while as it gives you a sort of false barrel roll manuver to keep them off balance.

Just some observations from the edge of space!

all the news that no one reads

When you've got someone on your tail, here's a move that will put you on their six quickly...

Check your rear view (V key) quick to make sure they're nearly behind you, then hold down your X key to go into reverse thrust. Within a second or two their speed will take them right past you and right into your sights. Let go of the X key, put your guns on them and blast away until you hear them scream

For SP I afterburn right at em full-blaze, this limits the time you spend in front of their guns, as soon as they have just overshot me, I go into reverse thrust [X, this allows you to spin round a lot faster and lock on to them, I continue to afterburn after my targets to about 200m or so, using reverse thrust to make sharp turns whenever the try to double back on me.
Sharp interchanges of afterburn and reverse thrust also helps if other pilots are gunning your tail, when you go into reverse thrust suddenly, dropping from about 199 to -15 in speed in less than a second, they end up overshooting you.
I have no idea how useful this is in MP tho, since i've yet to try it, I'm guessing that the constant changes in distance that the lead reticule would make would throw off many pilots tho.

Usually if there's too much figth (my drome vs 8 hammerheads) I'll fly up to the nearest station, if any is around, and stay close, real close to the bigger ships/station.

Mine field works too.

Planet don't, but hiding behind a docking ring works to charge up your shield.

Another really good one, if there's an ally around, I fly into formation, and use turret mode. This way, my ship don't fly straight, occasianally use thrusters, and I get full use of my turret. Works until your ally blows up..

but of course, you can alway run...

..and I just wonder, where do I buy one of those?...

If you have to run and they have cruise disrupters, kill your engines (make sure free flight is enabled) and hit/tap your thrusters. Then providing your ship is actually stronger than 1 of theres, just swing around so your guns are facing them and watch them chicken off and drop out of range. Then just turn back around and head off on thrust until they get bored and go and pick on someone else!

just like most of you, in a mission killing ships, afterburn at them, give them a crapload.. let is splatter nicely.. then turn around and start cruising (i.e. stay on their tails)
but i don't stay right behind them, normaly, at 5 clock to them, or 7, not next to, or behind them. this means that when they do a sharp turn, hopefully, it brings them right in front of me to give them another crapload straight down teh pipes. and it also brings you away from the mines that they launch, and most of the time, the lasers that you dish out can blow up the mines before they get moving, so damaging their ships.

i like flying through the minefiels in omega-5. its definietly good if you know what you're doing.. i flew in with my falcon and took out 5 sabres without batting an eyelash..

normally, i just keep chasing them, when i'm in an asteroid field, and there's quite a few of them to do big damage to me (example: en route to tekagi's base in a defender) i hide behind a big asteroid facing them. so they can shoot as much as they like an i'm not hurt, and when they come around the asteroid, i can just feed them nice.

presently, my world is upside down, so if u do not mind, u'll have to tok to my a$$

time to put an end the floating blue bastards[![!

I usually strafe around while attacking multiple bogies. It throws off their aim and allows me time to get in the hits.

or just get a human wing man in a ship eqeul to yours. Missions will get pretty dam easy.

Man you must be nuts, really nuts, you are reading my signiture[!

i tap on my afterburners in 1-second bursts while spiraling in their general direction. i use this tactic to take on heavier, but less mobile, enemies. works all the time in throwing off their aim, especially if they're using low-ROF guns.