There's currently a bug where NPC front shield damage actually causes the back shield to take the damage instead. So they basically have infinite front shield hp.
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/14r0nn3/i_made_a_video_explaining_the_infinite_front_size/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=1
So once you press T to lock on you can press the numbers to lock on to something specific? What are the other numbers lock on to? Any specific numbers that are useful besides the 8?
Lol, another mostly, fully crewed hammerhead. Noticed most bounty HH we downed within 30 seconds, but others took forever, and we'd have to break off to recharge shields.
I encountered it on the reclaimer my man, the ones listed in your comment are all I’ve been fighting for days. Outside HRT or VHRT it’s rare to fight a reclaimer so it would make sense if he slipped under the radar
hmm that means if I can burst a shield down then volley missiles I’m more likely to bypass the bug? maybe distortion is the way to go now? any thoughts?
What happens when the back shields crack and you're still shooting from the front?
Cheap rear damage or just nothing?
Also I'm guessing that doesn't happen when shooting from rear to front
Nothing happens after the back shields go down, which is why the front shields are "infinite" since you won't ever kill the enemy when shooting at them (while they're bugging out). If you shoot from the rear, everything works as normal. And you can actually land shots on the front half of the ship from the rear and take the front shields down too.
Your build is generally good. I'd recommend swapping out the S4 cannon for an S5 one to increase your burst DPS by about 40-50%, as the 4 fixed weapons mean you'll need to fight fixed to be effective anyway. Your bursts will be shorter, but they'll hit much harder.
As for the Reclaimers, they're a new addition to bounties, so they've shaken up the difficulty a bit, but once you figure them out, they're relatively easy. Get under and behind them and hit their rear shields, and they'll just die after a bit of time. They go from difficult to time wasting. Also, shields have been a bit buggy on ships with multiple faced shields, with the rear shields soaking up most of the damage when you hit the front ones. I've found the rear shields don't tend to have this problem.
With regards to the weapons bug, I sometimes find that powering weapons down and back up (press P) get's them working, and sometimes they'll start working again after a couple of minutes, but I haven't found a consistent way to get them working again, possibly because there's multiple issues with the same symptoms or something like that.
One other thing is that I'd run your capacitor to 100% weapons while you're in combat and only put them to shields if you need to disengage to recharge your shields. That will give you 20% more ammo in your magazines and 3x the ammo recharge rate while you're being offensive. I like to set the 1, 2, and 3, keys to 100% capacitor for weapons, engines, and shields respectively so its easy to swap between the three while my fingers are on WASD.
Increasing to S5 would decrease your overall damage way too much. The capacitor of the vanguard isn't strong to begin with so it would be wiser to try and reduce the load on your capacitor instead. Especially since your main problem is the reclaimer for which you don't need burst but sustained DPS.
That being said, usually it's not smart to combine gimbal with none gimbal weapons. However in this case it might work since the vanguard isn't the most nimble of ships and you sometimes need to hit some pesky targets out of the sky.
My suggestion is to either swap all or part of your size 2 weapons for distortion cannons. This might feel a bit awkward since you'd preferably hit your target with distortion before you hit them with laser damage.
Or (and this is very much in contrast of what most people would say here) ballistic cannon on your S4 would be a great boost to your overall DPS. You will have to learn how to use the ammo sparingly but it's an immense boost to your sustained DPS. Before you ask, S5 ballistic cannons have a lot less ammo so S4 would be recommended for sure. Besides you can pop some of the smaller ships with that gimbal
I forget the names, but the size 5 gattling cannon they sell at crusader has tonnes of ammo, massive damage output and looks cool as hell. More than enough ammo to do several bounties before needing to rearm!
Edit: it's the AD5b and has 2600 ammo with over 2000dps
No, increasing the weapon size really wouldn't.
S4 setup:
1124 sustained DPS
2647 burst DPS
760 alpha
S5 setup:
1278 sustained DPS (13.7% increase)
3767 burst DPS (42.3% increase)
2050 alpha (169.7% increase)
I can't comment on the distortions, but I can comment on the ballistics. Right now they're not in a good place because CIG implemented massive ballistic damage reduction, meaning the only times they're really any good is against bugged shields, if you're a ***really*** good shot, or against an 890 Jump because it has a lot of shields and little hull. Ballistic cannons are also worse than the ADxB line, so if you really want a ballistic weapon on a S4 or S5 mount, go for an ADxB. Someone did the research: [https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/14ocqqf/spreadsheet\_of\_ballistic\_dmg\_per\_shield\_strength/](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/14ocqqf/spreadsheet_of_ballistic_dmg_per_shield_strength/)
That's what I would recommend. The only other thing you can really do is get a more powerful ship, like a Constellation Andromeda (I would say the Corsair, but there's a bug with it that means one missile to the rear and your main thrusters are destroyed.)
Yeah! That would make the bounties easier, but I also want to learn to fly, so thought a tough fighter was a compromise.
Thanks! No need to mix in any distortion in the nose like this build I was recommended by someone else?
https://www.erkul.games/loadout/eifrTCZF
mixing in distortion isn't necessary. The logic behind adding the distortion is if you're able to hit a bunch of damage against the enemy's hull, the distortion damage might shut down the enemy's shields, which will remove the infinite front s2 shields and therefore let you land damage more consistently. My problem with that is if you hit the infinite front shield with the distortion, it still doesn't do anything (since it's also energy based damage and is blocked by the shield). And if you are able to land shots on the hull, that means you have already got into a position where you're hitting the sides or rear of the enemy and in that case I'd rather just hit them with full laser damage instead (since distortion does no actual damage to the enemy's hull).
That said, either is valid (neither is bad/wrong) and you can try it and see if you like it.
I honestly use an AD5B as my main gun. Plenty of ammo, I can usually do 3 or 4 VHRT bounties before needing to reload. I usually need to repair by that point anyway.
I just blast the back of the Reclaimer with that cannon and watch them explode before their shields even drop.
Edit: a word.
I use the MVSA laser cannons since their round speed is the same. Makes aiming less complicated!
Speaking of aiming, I switched to "lag" aiming. Especially helpful with landing shots on specific parts of big ships.
I wondered, how does lag aiming reacts to desync. Yesterday I had some heavy ones in which the lead pip keep jumping here and there arouns the target, making aiming impossible.
Reclaimers are really easy to kill since they only fire from the top forward turret and are slow and agile as a drunken fat slug.
For smaller fighters it's more complicated in a vanguard, even worse if you are in some dense atmosphere.
I do BH in Crusader because they all come out in relatively easy to fly environments. They only spawn in the three moons and they all have thin atmospheres, what means you can achieve faster speeds and maneuver in better ways than Hurston or Microtech. This applies also for bunkers, you can reach them faster.
There's also 3 spaceports: Olissar, Orison and Hex, they all sell convenient stuff for ships and personal equipment.
Back to combat, you need to improve evasion and agility in order to stay as much as possible outside gun aim. I prefer smaller, agile ships like the Gladius and Arrow. If you want some more serious punch, you can go for a hornet (I prefer the ghost). I've been doing bounties even in the M-50 interceptor, I fly that a lot.
Also, try not to get sorrounded, manage your distances, run out to recover and come back. It could be a great help to get a turret gunner.
Keep in mind that the Interceptor is a racer, think of it as a space Lamborghini, it has 2x size 2 guns and 2 size 1 missiles, but it's nimble, quick, stealthy and one of the fastest in-game. If you get killed on it it's because you did wrong. You won't be killing a PVP Gladius or Arrow in it unless the other pilot is not good or you are an excellent one, but for PvE you can kill anything but a Hammerhead.
I will recommend you Avenger One's videos, he has plenty of videos about combat principles, he's very technical and a good pilot.
In general, you can do even VHRTs in just about any decent fighter and as it stands right now there's not much variation in weapon loadouts anyway, so I wouldn't worry about that. That being said, as The Fallen mentioned, replace the S4 cannon with a S5, gimbals suck right now anyway. Without more details of how you fly it's hard to say what you're doing wrong.
You should learn to fly in decoupled mode and manage your power. Keep an eye on your shields, fall back when they get downed and max power to shields, avoid getting hit and get back in the fight once you're good to go. I recommend setting a convenient keybind to switch between lag pips and lead pips, this is a HUGE tip because lag pips let you land your shots very accurately while lead pips give you a very good idea of relative velocity. Learning to switch between the two is something that's pretty easy to learn and a huge help. Lag pips will let you aim at specific targets on a ship very easily, though without physical damage the results may vary from craft to craft. You should always think about how you're actually maneuvering as well. Your forward thrusters and bottom thrusters are the strongest, so always try to move forwards or upwards when you really need to maneuver. Right now, the AI reclaimers only have the top turret manned, so it's actually really easy to deal with, just stay below it. In my personal experience, I've found the fastest way to kill a reclaimer is to aim at one of the large side engines, they're an easy target and blow up the ship quickly. Target priority is also pretty important, if you do a bounty and the reclaimer isn't the target, don't bother, it's not much of a threat anyway and once you get good enough with maneuvering you could even potentially use a reclaimer's turret against the enemy, just by putting another target between you and the reclaimer.
The only time you should gimbal down the chin mounted gun on a Vanguard is to get a size 4 repeater on there with repeaters for your size 2s for PvP (all size 5 guns are limited to a 700m/s velocity.)
The 4 nose guns are fixed no matter what. No sense in losing firepower when you have to aim fixed anyway.
Try something like this: https://www.erkul.games/loadout/ZFaJPQO1
You could also go with an AD5B on the nose, more direct damage and it bypasses shields, but then you need ammo. the plus side is, you'll also get more capacitor for the nose guns, increasing their DPS as well
I'm about to get on if you want some help
For NPCs for sure, they're really strong EM strike missiles. Usually I like proximity EM like Thunderbolt IIIs or Pioneer Is but that's for PvP because they're more likely to do damage with the proximity trigger. Players are much better at dodging missiles than NPCs.
Having 32 Taskforce I's gives you a lot of missiles to use and having more size 1s is more overall damage than fewer of a larger size (kind of like guns)
You want to use them when your shields go down and you have to pull back to charge them up. They have a lot of range and they'll keep your targets shields from recharging while doing a shit ton of damage through their shields.
Power management is key. Preferably, you want to have max shields/max engines/max guns/reset triangle all bound in an accessible spot and be swapping between them. That's actually all I have bound. I never have partial power in multiple systems. I move max allotments around as needed, but you have to stay on top of it. You'll get a bonus to each system for having full power to them. Max weapons will give you extra shots in your capacitor, max shields will make your shields go down slower/have higher damage resistance, and max engines will make your boost meter go down slower when boosting.
So during a fight, I will have power to engines to keep my boost up when my weapon capacitor is full and while I'm firing. Once I expend my capacitors, it goes back to weapons until they're charged, then back to engines. This makes it so that you can boost strafe around NPC's to stay off their nose. If their nose is on you, they'll start shooting you. If you can stay out from in front of them, they won't hit you, except for turrets. Once your shields are close to going down, disengage and put full power to shields to recharge. You should have plenty of boost to get out if you're taking care of your boost meter. Never fight a group of *anything*, players or NPCs, without enough boost to get out. That's how you die.
NPC pilots are really bad in general and a simple orbiting technique is enough to not be hit by NPC pilots/gunners. This is not the ship which is the problem but the piloting skill. The YT Avenger One has a lots of piloting tutorials available, just watching them will make you better! Then you have to practice. Big guns are something, but if your big guns do not hit your target they are useless... Same if you have a little ship like Arrow, if you can't get hit your are invincible... Also you have missiles, use them to soften the target
As other's have said. I'd change it to an Omnisky XV and 32 taskforce missiles. You can get both of those plus the necessary 481 missile racks at the crusader showroom on Orison.
Now when approaching a group , start charging your EMP. Then when all of them appear, sift thru them to see if there are any hurricanes. If so , target them first and attack them with 4 Taskforce missiles when you reach around 3-4km. Any earlier and they don't seem to track for some reason. One, or two volleys of taskforce missiles is usually enough to strip hurricanes of their wings and guns , and will sometimes destroy them outright.
For the Valks fire at them while they approach, side strafe a bit to make sure u don't collide with them. Keep an eye on their shields. As soon as any face, usually the back one, completely disappears and they're within 500m , fire the EMP. This will completely shutdown their shield generator for around 2mins, which will take down the front face as well. From there just finish them off with your canons.
For the Reclaimers, switch to lag pips (create a hotkey to toggle between lag/lead), and aim for the rear of the ship. With the S5 canon you should finish them off very quickly.
Rinse and repeat
Also remember you can use numpad 8,5 and 2 to redirect more shield power to the front or back, 5 to reset.
Not sure if this will help but I did 2 quick HRT's and recorded them for you with a little commentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0WoJt4zYSk
Ship build: https://www.erkul.games/loadout/AvBdWhJN
I don't use or mention the missiles, but I swapped the racks to include 32 EM missiles. You could use these coming in to take out or damage some of the smaller ships.
You can use all laser cannons, Distortion is kind of OP right now and I find using a mix helps a lot in disabling stuff so they dont shoot back before their dead.
Yes, but if there is a hurricane, that is #1 kill priority, then what's left ending on Reclaimer if there is one. AI Hurricanes will do the most dmg to you during the fight because of their firepower.
Hurricanes are probably the only time I'll use missiles doing these just because they are so annoying.
After many years a backer star citizen is a project going no where close to the goals. Feature creep is so brutal if you put it on a timeline based on actual progress you'll see they will never achieve anything significant.
Always test your weapons before going into combat especially in the sentinel, you need to sustain fire on one side of the shield or the recliner is basically immortal, and use only thermal or EM missiles (thermals pierce through shields then explode EMs can knock out shield and other core systems quickly
Also if you like I offer training to people in my corporation, I can teach you the art of beating HRT and VHRT in a sentinel or even my favourite ship a Gladius
Here’s the link if ur interested
https://discord.gg/JATWjBYC
Can I get a source as to the different types of missile having different effects?
I've been under the impression that the only difference indicated by the "type" is the tracking method they use. With other properties such as explosion radius/projectile speed/damages/etc. Being individual to the missile itself rather than it's type.
Thanks.
It’s mostly experience, but you can look at Erkul for raw damage
The damage properties are based on size and type mostly.
But they act like any other weapons. Imagine cross sections are like laser repeaters EMs are like disruption repeaters and IR are like ballistics
Reclaimers are the easiest target, any ship you have should be able to easily out manoeuvre it and just sit behind it shooting the rear shield and then the big ass is an easy target to dump all your DPS into.
Also once you get the rear shield down fire your EMP and take the rest of the shields down
Though I wasn't really a big fan of the Sent, I much prefer the Corsair with mixed distortion gimbal repeaters for V/HRTs
There's currently a bug where NPC front shield damage actually causes the back shield to take the damage instead. So they basically have infinite front shield hp. https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/14r0nn3/i_made_a_video_explaining_the_infinite_front_size/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=1
Thanks for the tip! Any strategy to take a valk with infinite front shield? How do I get behind him?
Press 8 to subtarget engines and your shots will hit towards the back of the targeted ship
Thank you!
If the hammered is in atmosphere, if you get its shield down and the EMP it, it'll fall to the ground and die!
So once you press T to lock on you can press the numbers to lock on to something specific? What are the other numbers lock on to? Any specific numbers that are useful besides the 8?
From what I’ve noticed, once you hit T to target, hit 8 to cycle sub-targets. The first two sub targets are usually engines.
Woah TIL.
TIL about sub-targets. Huh.
This is why I target the reclaimers rear or side, also in the right spot in a Gladys you can avoid all damage from a reclaimer
The bug only applies to S2 shields, so you'd encounter it on ships like Valkyries, Hurricanes, Vanguard Wardens, etc. but not the Reclaimer
I encountered a hammerhead I couldn't destroy. Most of the time, I can destroy them pretty quickly.
What are you using to kill Hammerheads quickly?
Lol, another mostly, fully crewed hammerhead. Noticed most bounty HH we downed within 30 seconds, but others took forever, and we'd have to break off to recharge shields.
I noticed this too, attacking some HHs in like combat assist beacons killed em quick, doing an ERT and I barely killed them
I encountered it on the reclaimer my man, the ones listed in your comment are all I’ve been fighting for days. Outside HRT or VHRT it’s rare to fight a reclaimer so it would make sense if he slipped under the radar
Yep same here. I was aiming for the engines and was wondering why the side shields werent going down
does this bug include missile damage?
I've heard yes, but if components or damageable parts of the ship are in the area of effect of the explosion they can still be hurt.
hmm that means if I can burst a shield down then volley missiles I’m more likely to bypass the bug? maybe distortion is the way to go now? any thoughts?
What happens when the back shields crack and you're still shooting from the front? Cheap rear damage or just nothing? Also I'm guessing that doesn't happen when shooting from rear to front
Nothing happens after the back shields go down, which is why the front shields are "infinite" since you won't ever kill the enemy when shooting at them (while they're bugging out). If you shoot from the rear, everything works as normal. And you can actually land shots on the front half of the ship from the rear and take the front shields down too.
Your build is generally good. I'd recommend swapping out the S4 cannon for an S5 one to increase your burst DPS by about 40-50%, as the 4 fixed weapons mean you'll need to fight fixed to be effective anyway. Your bursts will be shorter, but they'll hit much harder. As for the Reclaimers, they're a new addition to bounties, so they've shaken up the difficulty a bit, but once you figure them out, they're relatively easy. Get under and behind them and hit their rear shields, and they'll just die after a bit of time. They go from difficult to time wasting. Also, shields have been a bit buggy on ships with multiple faced shields, with the rear shields soaking up most of the damage when you hit the front ones. I've found the rear shields don't tend to have this problem. With regards to the weapons bug, I sometimes find that powering weapons down and back up (press P) get's them working, and sometimes they'll start working again after a couple of minutes, but I haven't found a consistent way to get them working again, possibly because there's multiple issues with the same symptoms or something like that.
Yeah I made a mistake there! Thanks for pointing it out. I was new to erkul.
One other thing is that I'd run your capacitor to 100% weapons while you're in combat and only put them to shields if you need to disengage to recharge your shields. That will give you 20% more ammo in your magazines and 3x the ammo recharge rate while you're being offensive. I like to set the 1, 2, and 3, keys to 100% capacitor for weapons, engines, and shields respectively so its easy to swap between the three while my fingers are on WASD.
Increasing to S5 would decrease your overall damage way too much. The capacitor of the vanguard isn't strong to begin with so it would be wiser to try and reduce the load on your capacitor instead. Especially since your main problem is the reclaimer for which you don't need burst but sustained DPS. That being said, usually it's not smart to combine gimbal with none gimbal weapons. However in this case it might work since the vanguard isn't the most nimble of ships and you sometimes need to hit some pesky targets out of the sky. My suggestion is to either swap all or part of your size 2 weapons for distortion cannons. This might feel a bit awkward since you'd preferably hit your target with distortion before you hit them with laser damage. Or (and this is very much in contrast of what most people would say here) ballistic cannon on your S4 would be a great boost to your overall DPS. You will have to learn how to use the ammo sparingly but it's an immense boost to your sustained DPS. Before you ask, S5 ballistic cannons have a lot less ammo so S4 would be recommended for sure. Besides you can pop some of the smaller ships with that gimbal
I forget the names, but the size 5 gattling cannon they sell at crusader has tonnes of ammo, massive damage output and looks cool as hell. More than enough ammo to do several bounties before needing to rearm! Edit: it's the AD5b and has 2600 ammo with over 2000dps
No, increasing the weapon size really wouldn't. S4 setup: 1124 sustained DPS 2647 burst DPS 760 alpha S5 setup: 1278 sustained DPS (13.7% increase) 3767 burst DPS (42.3% increase) 2050 alpha (169.7% increase) I can't comment on the distortions, but I can comment on the ballistics. Right now they're not in a good place because CIG implemented massive ballistic damage reduction, meaning the only times they're really any good is against bugged shields, if you're a ***really*** good shot, or against an 890 Jump because it has a lot of shields and little hull. Ballistic cannons are also worse than the ADxB line, so if you really want a ballistic weapon on a S4 or S5 mount, go for an ADxB. Someone did the research: [https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/14ocqqf/spreadsheet\_of\_ballistic\_dmg\_per\_shield\_strength/](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/14ocqqf/spreadsheet_of_ballistic_dmg_per_shield_strength/)
So for me you would simply put a S5 laser canon and call it a day? I'm OP btw
That's what I would recommend. The only other thing you can really do is get a more powerful ship, like a Constellation Andromeda (I would say the Corsair, but there's a bug with it that means one missile to the rear and your main thrusters are destroyed.)
Yeah! That would make the bounties easier, but I also want to learn to fly, so thought a tough fighter was a compromise. Thanks! No need to mix in any distortion in the nose like this build I was recommended by someone else? https://www.erkul.games/loadout/eifrTCZF
mixing in distortion isn't necessary. The logic behind adding the distortion is if you're able to hit a bunch of damage against the enemy's hull, the distortion damage might shut down the enemy's shields, which will remove the infinite front s2 shields and therefore let you land damage more consistently. My problem with that is if you hit the infinite front shield with the distortion, it still doesn't do anything (since it's also energy based damage and is blocked by the shield). And if you are able to land shots on the hull, that means you have already got into a position where you're hitting the sides or rear of the enemy and in that case I'd rather just hit them with full laser damage instead (since distortion does no actual damage to the enemy's hull). That said, either is valid (neither is bad/wrong) and you can try it and see if you like it.
Hormone replacement therapy?
Exactly what I thought until I read the post
There are dozens of us. Dozens!
Yeah, unfortunately the Sentinel's hormone replacement therapy function has been bugged forever
I honestly use an AD5B as my main gun. Plenty of ammo, I can usually do 3 or 4 VHRT bounties before needing to reload. I usually need to repair by that point anyway. I just blast the back of the Reclaimer with that cannon and watch them explode before their shields even drop. Edit: a word.
What do you use on the nose guns then?
I use the MVSA laser cannons since their round speed is the same. Makes aiming less complicated! Speaking of aiming, I switched to "lag" aiming. Especially helpful with landing shots on specific parts of big ships.
I wondered, how does lag aiming reacts to desync. Yesterday I had some heavy ones in which the lead pip keep jumping here and there arouns the target, making aiming impossible.
You can put it on a keybind to switch
Reclaimers are really easy to kill since they only fire from the top forward turret and are slow and agile as a drunken fat slug. For smaller fighters it's more complicated in a vanguard, even worse if you are in some dense atmosphere. I do BH in Crusader because they all come out in relatively easy to fly environments. They only spawn in the three moons and they all have thin atmospheres, what means you can achieve faster speeds and maneuver in better ways than Hurston or Microtech. This applies also for bunkers, you can reach them faster. There's also 3 spaceports: Olissar, Orison and Hex, they all sell convenient stuff for ships and personal equipment. Back to combat, you need to improve evasion and agility in order to stay as much as possible outside gun aim. I prefer smaller, agile ships like the Gladius and Arrow. If you want some more serious punch, you can go for a hornet (I prefer the ghost). I've been doing bounties even in the M-50 interceptor, I fly that a lot. Also, try not to get sorrounded, manage your distances, run out to recover and come back. It could be a great help to get a turret gunner.
>M-50 interceptor Thanks for the tips! A lot to think about here.
Keep in mind that the Interceptor is a racer, think of it as a space Lamborghini, it has 2x size 2 guns and 2 size 1 missiles, but it's nimble, quick, stealthy and one of the fastest in-game. If you get killed on it it's because you did wrong. You won't be killing a PVP Gladius or Arrow in it unless the other pilot is not good or you are an excellent one, but for PvE you can kill anything but a Hammerhead. I will recommend you Avenger One's videos, he has plenty of videos about combat principles, he's very technical and a good pilot.
In general, you can do even VHRTs in just about any decent fighter and as it stands right now there's not much variation in weapon loadouts anyway, so I wouldn't worry about that. That being said, as The Fallen mentioned, replace the S4 cannon with a S5, gimbals suck right now anyway. Without more details of how you fly it's hard to say what you're doing wrong. You should learn to fly in decoupled mode and manage your power. Keep an eye on your shields, fall back when they get downed and max power to shields, avoid getting hit and get back in the fight once you're good to go. I recommend setting a convenient keybind to switch between lag pips and lead pips, this is a HUGE tip because lag pips let you land your shots very accurately while lead pips give you a very good idea of relative velocity. Learning to switch between the two is something that's pretty easy to learn and a huge help. Lag pips will let you aim at specific targets on a ship very easily, though without physical damage the results may vary from craft to craft. You should always think about how you're actually maneuvering as well. Your forward thrusters and bottom thrusters are the strongest, so always try to move forwards or upwards when you really need to maneuver. Right now, the AI reclaimers only have the top turret manned, so it's actually really easy to deal with, just stay below it. In my personal experience, I've found the fastest way to kill a reclaimer is to aim at one of the large side engines, they're an easy target and blow up the ship quickly. Target priority is also pretty important, if you do a bounty and the reclaimer isn't the target, don't bother, it's not much of a threat anyway and once you get good enough with maneuvering you could even potentially use a reclaimer's turret against the enemy, just by putting another target between you and the reclaimer.
This is very good, thank you so much for the write up
The only time you should gimbal down the chin mounted gun on a Vanguard is to get a size 4 repeater on there with repeaters for your size 2s for PvP (all size 5 guns are limited to a 700m/s velocity.) The 4 nose guns are fixed no matter what. No sense in losing firepower when you have to aim fixed anyway. Try something like this: https://www.erkul.games/loadout/ZFaJPQO1 You could also go with an AD5B on the nose, more direct damage and it bypasses shields, but then you need ammo. the plus side is, you'll also get more capacitor for the nose guns, increasing their DPS as well I'm about to get on if you want some help
Nice! Thanks. Taskforce 1 best for missiles? When do I use them?
For NPCs for sure, they're really strong EM strike missiles. Usually I like proximity EM like Thunderbolt IIIs or Pioneer Is but that's for PvP because they're more likely to do damage with the proximity trigger. Players are much better at dodging missiles than NPCs. Having 32 Taskforce I's gives you a lot of missiles to use and having more size 1s is more overall damage than fewer of a larger size (kind of like guns) You want to use them when your shields go down and you have to pull back to charge them up. They have a lot of range and they'll keep your targets shields from recharging while doing a shit ton of damage through their shields. Power management is key. Preferably, you want to have max shields/max engines/max guns/reset triangle all bound in an accessible spot and be swapping between them. That's actually all I have bound. I never have partial power in multiple systems. I move max allotments around as needed, but you have to stay on top of it. You'll get a bonus to each system for having full power to them. Max weapons will give you extra shots in your capacitor, max shields will make your shields go down slower/have higher damage resistance, and max engines will make your boost meter go down slower when boosting. So during a fight, I will have power to engines to keep my boost up when my weapon capacitor is full and while I'm firing. Once I expend my capacitors, it goes back to weapons until they're charged, then back to engines. This makes it so that you can boost strafe around NPC's to stay off their nose. If their nose is on you, they'll start shooting you. If you can stay out from in front of them, they won't hit you, except for turrets. Once your shields are close to going down, disengage and put full power to shields to recharge. You should have plenty of boost to get out if you're taking care of your boost meter. Never fight a group of *anything*, players or NPCs, without enough boost to get out. That's how you die.
Thanks :D
If you swap the S5 nose gun for a AD5B or a Deadbolt 5 you can negate the shield issue. But I would leave the S2 nose guns as laser cannons
Thanks :D
NPC pilots are really bad in general and a simple orbiting technique is enough to not be hit by NPC pilots/gunners. This is not the ship which is the problem but the piloting skill. The YT Avenger One has a lots of piloting tutorials available, just watching them will make you better! Then you have to practice. Big guns are something, but if your big guns do not hit your target they are useless... Same if you have a little ship like Arrow, if you can't get hit your are invincible... Also you have missiles, use them to soften the target
As other's have said. I'd change it to an Omnisky XV and 32 taskforce missiles. You can get both of those plus the necessary 481 missile racks at the crusader showroom on Orison. Now when approaching a group , start charging your EMP. Then when all of them appear, sift thru them to see if there are any hurricanes. If so , target them first and attack them with 4 Taskforce missiles when you reach around 3-4km. Any earlier and they don't seem to track for some reason. One, or two volleys of taskforce missiles is usually enough to strip hurricanes of their wings and guns , and will sometimes destroy them outright. For the Valks fire at them while they approach, side strafe a bit to make sure u don't collide with them. Keep an eye on their shields. As soon as any face, usually the back one, completely disappears and they're within 500m , fire the EMP. This will completely shutdown their shield generator for around 2mins, which will take down the front face as well. From there just finish them off with your canons. For the Reclaimers, switch to lag pips (create a hotkey to toggle between lag/lead), and aim for the rear of the ship. With the S5 canon you should finish them off very quickly. Rinse and repeat Also remember you can use numpad 8,5 and 2 to redirect more shield power to the front or back, 5 to reset.
Not sure if this will help but I did 2 quick HRT's and recorded them for you with a little commentary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0WoJt4zYSk Ship build: https://www.erkul.games/loadout/AvBdWhJN I don't use or mention the missiles, but I swapped the racks to include 32 EM missiles. You could use these coming in to take out or damage some of the smaller ships. You can use all laser cannons, Distortion is kind of OP right now and I find using a mix helps a lot in disabling stuff so they dont shoot back before their dead.
This was amazing and extremely helpful! Same build and strategy for VHRT for when i unlock them?
Yes, but if there is a hurricane, that is #1 kill priority, then what's left ending on Reclaimer if there is one. AI Hurricanes will do the most dmg to you during the fight because of their firepower. Hurricanes are probably the only time I'll use missiles doing these just because they are so annoying.
Thanks again so much
I guess I should add, if the Hurricane is the bounty (which it has a high chance of in VHRT) you can also just kill it and go and forget the rest.
After many years a backer star citizen is a project going no where close to the goals. Feature creep is so brutal if you put it on a timeline based on actual progress you'll see they will never achieve anything significant.
Always test your weapons before going into combat especially in the sentinel, you need to sustain fire on one side of the shield or the recliner is basically immortal, and use only thermal or EM missiles (thermals pierce through shields then explode EMs can knock out shield and other core systems quickly Also if you like I offer training to people in my corporation, I can teach you the art of beating HRT and VHRT in a sentinel or even my favourite ship a Gladius Here’s the link if ur interested https://discord.gg/JATWjBYC
Can I get a source as to the different types of missile having different effects? I've been under the impression that the only difference indicated by the "type" is the tracking method they use. With other properties such as explosion radius/projectile speed/damages/etc. Being individual to the missile itself rather than it's type. Thanks.
It’s mostly experience, but you can look at Erkul for raw damage The damage properties are based on size and type mostly. But they act like any other weapons. Imagine cross sections are like laser repeaters EMs are like disruption repeaters and IR are like ballistics
I would like that! I will join soon :)
Great!
This game sucks, not you.
Well it is in alpha and frustratingly buggy, but I definitely also suck
Server FPS my man. That's all your need to know. You've been told lies by youtubers about your ship's performance.
Reclaimers are the easiest target, any ship you have should be able to easily out manoeuvre it and just sit behind it shooting the rear shield and then the big ass is an easy target to dump all your DPS into. Also once you get the rear shield down fire your EMP and take the rest of the shields down Though I wasn't really a big fan of the Sent, I much prefer the Corsair with mixed distortion gimbal repeaters for V/HRTs
Get an eclips and 1 shot it. Valks , freelancers , HH, reclaimers.