When it's an assassination and up against tougher/more ships i usually rush them at cruise speed - kill the engines, maneuvre around them with strafe while shooting then start engines, hit afterburner and first make a wide turn (by combining strafe and normal turning [i.e. if you're turning right, strafe let) and cut in with a sharp one half-way through the apex (if turning right, strafe right). if there's a debris field i try to use the debris for cover and as obstacles - most AI pilots manage to smash into debris pretty often.

Alas, if only one could roll and strafe vertically... *sigh*

/demo/
If a ship fly head on towards me, I'll usually try to dodge it's fire and launch a pair of javelin missles once it's approaching 500 meters away from my ship. After that, reduce my speed so once the opponent flew over, I can make a sharper turn to engage it's tail, or I'll killengine, uses suppressive fire while my ship is gliding away from the enemies and prepare for the next rush(I doubt it'll work against players online). It's not really necessary since the enemies in the demo are pretty weak. I wouldn't do that if there's more than 3 enemies attacking my ship also.

From my experience, mines usually work better from turret view, when you have a few ships chasing your tail. Drop a few seeker mines helps to break the chase.

I usualy try to kill thier shields on the 1st pass, or at least do some respecatble shield damage to as many ships as possible on the 1st pass. As soon as I have passed them, go to a full stop and turn sharp, and pick the weakest target and take them out with a good blast of main guns, then maybe finish them off with a windstalker missile, and move onto the next.

After exploring the Tau systems I have changed my tactics slightly when serriously outnumbered, I use the engine kill tactic, and drift backwards as fast as I can while pummeling them with my guns, once shields are restored, full power and boost at them guns blazing, and repeat until they are dead. This is a good tatcic if they are equiped with cruise disruptors, and running away is your best policy.

Hah get yourself out to the border worlds and fly through pirate space and beat the hell out of 20-25 enemy fighters and then make it to the jump point in one piece.

VE3D.COM Staff Member

Turn towards the big red arrow and shoot at it! Crude but effective.

Nah seriously,

1. Afterburn when you're getting shot at, AI shoot like drunken hillbillies when your on the gas.
2. Reverse thrust is very handy when you're in a frieghter using turret mode. Enemy ships generally like to follow you and this way you can bear your big guns on them.
3. Don't drop counter measures until the missile is in close.
4. If your in dire trouble, charge up your cruise engines and live to see another day.



I don't really run this place but I have an understanding with the people who do.

Basically, I aim for the red cross. Of course, there will be uses of Afterburner to get closer to a target for maximize my guns. I might lunch a missle of the enemy is running away. Like Mustand said, Use Cruise speed to get out of a trouble area, although I hate those who use Anti-cruise drive missiles... which travel faster than your and disable your cruise engine for a few seconds.

When trying to "flee" a dangerous area by dockying a trade line, I'll usually hit the turret view (I like flying heavy fighters ship) and use the turret to fire at incomming enemies... dropping a mine right behind me will do the trick also, until I dock the trade line ring.

Classic Air Combat Maneuvering(ACM) but in space. Turn hard use thrusters to close and only energy weapons to save on the expense, mix my weapons btween shield burners and hull busters. Batteries are relatively cheap and keep me alive when pursued by a mob.

I live for that windy twisting chase on the enemies tail, love hearing their cries that they cannot shake me. Great Game! Thanks to cockpit perspective, w/o that I would not buy it! Cannot wait for tomorrow!
Cheers,
Lynx

So some of you have some problems with take their shields down-easy way with less cost: Stunpulse....

I've come up with two extremely viable tactics thus far. The one I used first uses an EMP missle (I forget it's name). This works best when three enemies in formation are coming at you. Fire the missle as soon as you are in range, and the splash damage drops the shields of all enemies. This doesn't work later on when the enemies are more difficult. On the missions with 16-18 difficulty (where I am now) I find it easiest to bring along a catapult missile. It packs quite a punch to shieldless units. As I approach the group of enemies, I target one, and start pounding it on the first pass. As long as you drop the shields (which is not that difficult since you're flying straight on them) you can launch a missile and the enemy will die. When you're fighting the higher level ships taking one out is essentual because these guys will tear through your shields and hull like nothing. But two is much more managable. Stay on your targets six, and you'll only be taking fire from his wingman.

lol i just case and gun them down plain and simple

Duck and weave, never stay still long enough to have them pound you.

I usually, have the whole piano-player thing going with the keyboard, swapping between afterburners and right and left slide. This way you are always changing vectors and speeds, and the AI seems to have difficulty with this. If I get in trouble, charge those cruises, but keep on the right/left slide keys, these still work.

Otherwise I concentrate on one enemy at a time, Usually get the most damage on them from the side, as they fly by I am already trurning in anticipation, engine kill, slide the opposite direction turn then thruster to get you going. If they're just about to go down, I'll lay off the dodging for the momnet to go in for the kill, this may mean I take a bit of a beating for a little while, but that's one less bandit to worry about.

"If this is what you want to do, you'll do it, no matter how long it takes..........and usually the longer it takes the more fun you've had!"

Well in the demo where the enemies die fast, i have a rhino, with an assortment of turrets (at least one stunpulse turret) and all three forward guns are javelin missiles. I fire 2 volleys of my missiles while taking down their shields with the turrets. Rogue shields suck anyways so its not too hard. Anyways i can usually take out at least one of those little fliers on my first pass, and put the hurt on another one, if not destroying it.

*If you have a cat and a dog in the same house, will that be a problem? Of course not, you might just have solved world hunger*

I found that I can often lead ships into planets and make them explode. I don't know if they do it on higher difficulty levels, but in the demo I keep making the bounty hunter ships crash into manhatten by fighting really close to the atmosphere and waiting for them to try to afterburn out of my range, into a planet

Well, most of the AI's are dirt dumb, and poorly equiped. maybe its from being in the best possible ship with best possible armaments, but most of the time you can just fly straight at them, not shooting. Unless they git hit, they wont maneuver. So just fly right at em, then open up once oyu are like 200-400 m away. They get wasted before they even think toi turn.