Illegal combat missions.

[Morgan]

Hello folks, I was just wondering if I was missing something. Is there a way to not get caught on illegal combat missions? I’ve just taken one and my target is sat in space with lots of police. If I open fire they’ll attack, but the target isn’t moving so isn’t going to jump out of the area. I was assuming I’d be able to follow him through a jump and get him by himself.

[Genitor]

sounds like an assasination, right? Unfortunately the game has no system whereby you can simply kill all withnesses and get away without bounty. Its like all things frontier does, half-thought-through and halfbaked.

Unfortunately there is absolutely no reason to do these missions. They are only trouble and the pay isnt making up for that. If you want to do these missions anyway, because of fun i would suggest you build a ship, specifically for assasinations. Frag Cannons (double shot-screening shell, if you want to engineer them) work very well since you can just sneak up and delete the target with 1 or 2 hits. then you park the "tainted" ship somewhere, wait until your notoriety is down (max 10 stacks; 1 stack per murder, goes away 1 stack every 2 hours of time spent ingame) and then go and clear the bounty on interstellar factors.
That is the best strategy to do this i know of, at least.

[Morgan]

Originally posted by Genitor:

sounds like an assasination, right? Unfortunately the game has no system whereby you can simply kill all withnesses and get away without bounty. Its like all things frontier does, half-thought-through and halfbaked.

Unfortunately there is absolutely no reason to do these missions. They are only trouble and the pay isnt making up for that. If you want to do these missions anyway, because of fun i would suggest you build a ship, specifically for assasinations. Frag Cannons (double shot-screening shell, if you want to engineer them) work very well since you can just sneak up and delete the target with 1 or 2 hits. then you park the "tainted" ship somewhere, wait until your notoriety is down (max 10 stacks; 1 stack per murder, goes away 1 stack every 2 hours of time spent ingame) and then go and clear the bounty on interstellar factors.
That is the best strategy to do this i know of, at least.

Cheers, it's a shame because that make assassination missions worse (ans simpler) than what was in Elite 2: Frontier almost 30 years ago.

[Genitor]

yeah. Thats a general problem with frontier, as mentioned above. They made a great game (it almost seems by accident) but they always manage to halfbake their stuff and create a lot of dissatisfaction. Its a strange talent they, apparently have. ^^

[JL::Jose-Juan Kenobi]

The mission should state if you are going to increase notoriety or not. Most of them it states you won't increase notoriety.

Yes, you want to take them as fast as you can while tanking some damage. The fun part is making a very dedicated build with a very clear target in mind. Pay is usually higher than regular pirate assassinations (not Elite ones though maybe).

Frag cannons is a good suggestion. Be fast, tanky, strong shields, SCBs maybe, heatsinks, all pips to weapons and blast target as fast as you can then bail.
Head to the nearest Interstellar Factors :-)

It can be "fun" if you role play as a hitman :-)

[Genitor]

i would opt against heatsinks. NPCs ignore stealth when in combat and when you are grabbing them because of the SCBs i would just pick a thermal vent beam or 2 in my loadout. A fully engineered shield booster just gives so much tankyness that it makes up for an scb/heatsink-combination. But yeah. If you want to do these missions just toy around a bit and I am sure there are lots of buildideas on the internet too, if you want impressions. I recently saw a dude in a challenger with full-fixed-cannon-loadout on force shell (push back on hit) doing assasinations. That also looked pretty funny and effective, for example.

[Dolphin Bottlenose]

Originally posted by Genitor:

Unfortunately the game has no system whereby you can simply kill all withnesses and get away without bounty.

There are such systems in the game: Anarchy systems.

[Genitor]

by system i meant "game-mechanic". Are their assasination-missions in anarchy-System? I would think not but i dont know for a fact. In any chase they are not "illegal combat missions", which is the topic of this post.

[JL::Jose-Juan Kenobi]

Originally posted by Genitor:

i would opt against heatsinks. NPCs ignore stealth when in combat and when you are grabbing them because of the SCBs i would just pick a thermal vent beam or 2 in my loadout. A fully engineered shield booster just gives so much tankyness that it makes up for an scb/heatsink-combination. But yeah. If you want to do these missions just toy around a bit and I am sure there are lots of buildideas on the internet too, if you want impressions. I recently saw a dude in a challenger with full-fixed-cannon-loadout on force shell (push back on hit) doing assasinations. That also looked pretty funny and effective, for example.

Heatsinks do work against AI as they can't lock you, so gimballed and turrets don't work. They can't sub-target your modules either.

When doing PVE on my hull tanks (Chief, Fed Gunship) I rely on heatsinks more than even chaff when my shields go down and I barely get hit while doing so.
Do the same on shieldless cargo to help me escape (T9) while barely taking handful of shots even on my slow T9, or actually engaging in combat (Cutter).

Thermal vents work of course, but you need to stay on target for a while, and hull damage is very very low, and for this thread the focus is on "kill them as fast as you can" :-)

a lot of this also comes with personal style and trial and error, and that's what I've tried and worked for me before.

[CaptainNebulous]

Originally posted by Morgan:

Originally posted by Genitor:

sounds like an assasination, right? Unfortunately the game has no system whereby you can simply kill all withnesses and get away without bounty. Its like all things frontier does, half-thought-through and halfbaked.

Unfortunately there is absolutely no reason to do these missions. They are only trouble and the pay isnt making up for that. If you want to do these missions anyway, because of fun i would suggest you build a ship, specifically for assasinations. Frag Cannons (double shot-screening shell, if you want to engineer them) work very well since you can just sneak up and delete the target with 1 or 2 hits. then you park the "tainted" ship somewhere, wait until your notoriety is down (max 10 stacks; 1 stack per murder, goes away 1 stack every 2 hours of time spent ingame) and then go and clear the bounty on interstellar factors.
That is the best strategy to do this i know of, at least.

Cheers, it's a shame because that make assassination missions worse (ans simpler) than what was in Elite 2: Frontier almost 30 years ago.

I do them because they result in pretty fun space battles. But as has been indirectly suggested here, you want a ship with a good engineered shield before messing with them too much. There is a few that aren't as hard to at least complete without much interference. The ones that have the lower danger levels usually either are ships by themselves or ships with easy and/or few defenders.

[Morgan]

Originally posted by CaptainNebulous:

Originally posted by Morgan:

Cheers, it's a shame because that make assassination missions worse (ans simpler) than what was in Elite 2: Frontier almost 30 years ago.

I do them because they result in pretty fun space battles. But as has been indirectly suggested here, you want a ship with a good engineered shield before messing with them too much. There is a few that aren't as hard to at least complete without much interference. The ones that have the lower danger levels usually either are ships by themselves or ships with easy and/or few defenders.

Thanks, though to be honest A big part of the issue for me is the role playing aspect. I don't mind the odd illegal mission, but to me if you’re getting caught it should be because you’ve fudged up. These missions are the sort of thing I’d expect to find in an early access game.

[Veeshan]

Originally posted by Morgan:

Originally posted by CaptainNebulous:

I do them because they result in pretty fun space battles. But as has been indirectly suggested here, you want a ship with a good engineered shield before messing with them too much. There is a few that aren't as hard to at least complete without much interference. The ones that have the lower danger levels usually either are ships by themselves or ships with easy and/or few defenders.

Thanks, though to be honest A big part of the issue for me is the role playing aspect. I don't mind the odd illegal mission, but to me if you’re getting caught it should be because you’ve fudged up. These missions are the sort of thing I’d expect to find in an early access game.

You're confusing your preferences for design quality. That's like me thinking Mario is a poorly designed game because I dont like twitch action.

[Morgan]

Originally posted by Veeshan:

Originally posted by Morgan:

Thanks, though to be honest A big part of the issue for me is the role playing aspect. I don't mind the odd illegal mission, but to me if you’re getting caught it should be because you’ve fudged up. These missions are the sort of thing I’d expect to find in an early access game.

You're confusing your preferences for design quality. That's like me thinking Mario is a poorly designed game because I dont like twitch action.

No I'm not. Having a ship sit in space and never move until it's attacked does not give the feel of a living environment. It’s simplistic, more simplistic than what Elite 2 offered almost three decades ago.

[Veeshan]

Originally posted by Morgan:

Originally posted by Veeshan:

You're confusing your preferences for design quality. That's like me thinking Mario is a poorly designed game because I dont like twitch action.

No I'm not. Having a ship sit in space and never move until it's attacked does not give the feel of a living environment. It’s simplistic, more simplistic than what Elite 2 offered almost three decades ago.

The mere existence of games that don't even bother with movement, just show images, proves that false. Careful with your language.

What you meant to say is that most people prefer it to move realistically.

And to be clear, I'm not objecting to you finding it unrealistic that they don't move, you stated that that was your opinion. I'm objecting to the claim that that sort of design would be found in An Early Access game, implying some sort of failure of design, or incomplete design.

[Morgan]

Originally posted by Veeshan:

Originally posted by Morgan:

No I'm not. Having a ship sit in space and never move until it's attacked does not give the feel of a living environment. It’s simplistic, more simplistic than what Elite 2 offered almost three decades ago.

The mere existence of games that don't even bother with movement, just show images, proves that false. Careful with your language.

What you meant to say is that most people prefer it to move realistically.

And to be clear, I'm not objecting to you finding it unrealistic that they don't move, you stated that that was your opinion. I'm objecting to the claim that that sort of design would be found in An Early Access game, implying some sort of failure of design, or incomplete design.

I said it's the sort of thing that would be found in an early access game because it feels (to anyone which more than 20 seconds of PC gaming experience) like a placeholder for a proper system. I’m guessing this is your first experience of an Elite title and that you have very limited gaming experience. I’m going to leave it here because you seem more bothered about telling me what I “mean to say” than considering the objective simplicity and shortcomings of the system when compared to other relevant titles.

[Genitor]

Originally posted by JL::Jose-Juan Kenobi:

Heatsinks do work against AI as they can't lock you, so gimballed and turrets don't work. They can't sub-target your modules either.

I personally never use them for combat as i think that nothing is better than a booster even if heatsinks work. The information that NPCs are not affected by heatsinks and silent running i got from here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI976wPNddo

That vid is from 2018 so maybe frontier changed it but exigeous is a very reliable source and if he says NPCs ignore heatsinks and silent running you can be sure that he did a lot of testing to figure that out/verify this information.

As for your personal experience: Did you collect any data? Because subjective feelings can mess with your perception quite heftyly. Did you do any "blanks", so the same thing with and without heatsinks?

Originally posted by JL::Jose-Juan Kenobi:

Thermal vents work of course, but you need to stay on target for a while, and hull damage is very very low, and for this thread the focus is on "kill them as fast as you can" :-)

Oh thats not what i tried to suggest. It, not only doesnt make sense from the "kill em as fast as you can"-perspective it also doesnt make sense since you wont charge an SCB before killing your target (unless their are several). The gameplan, if you want to use an SCB (which i wouldnt btw.) you would put 1 or 2 turreted beam, thermal vent on, set your turrets to "fire at will", sneak up on your target and kill it. What happens next is that all defenders will come after you and your turreted beams will automatically shoot these and cool you down should you overheat from SCBs or whatever. Thats how i would do it if i wanted to use an SCB. Ofc you are "sacrificing" hardpoints for the beams. I mean their damage isnt bad but their are much better weapons for burst ofc.