A thread for little questions

[Greep]

Regarding hunter killers: should you just always avoid these craft?  It sounds like there's no way to determine which ones are safe to attack until it's too late and you get trashed.  Like, before you could check there image and decide if it was worth attacking, but not these days.  Size doesn't help:  saw a small ship that turned out to just be megapol, then get thrashed by a very small raider.

[JustTheDude/CABSHEP]

Well... In midgame you can get building (I forgot its name, but it is in vanilla too) that lets you to know what vessel, from who and on what mission. Other than that you can have very, very fast ship that can fly to it, check its range (and how the vessel looks) etc and then disengage, where you then decide if it is worth to attack it, or simply stay passive.

You can also use their speed to deduce what ship this is. I'm pretty sure megapol car and smal raider vessel have different speeds and probably different radar sizes.

[Greep]

Well, that's the thing, that very small raider had a max speed of 4k, which is even faster than an airspeeder, so there's no escape, it'll just blow up.  So you can't even really take a look.  So I guess you just have to know ahead of time all possible ships that can spawn at a given size if you want to go after them.

[JustTheDude/CABSHEP]

If something is that fast, then next time you will know that very small and over 4k speed will always be raider.

[Eddie]

Regarding hunter killers:
You can unlock the shark jetbike quite early in the game. That thing has 4k speed. If your craft is faster than the hunter killer, you can still look at it and run away.

Here is a list of the small and very small hunter killers:

Mostly Harmless
Megapol Dropship - small, speed 1000, 280 HP, 39 DPM
Megapol Cruiser - small, speed 1500, 220 HP, 47 DPM
Bandit Wasp - very small, speed 1600, 100 HP, 71 DPM
Megapol Patrol - very small, speed 2000, 100 HP, 39 DPM
Megapol Chaser - very small, speed 3000, 80 HP, 47 DPM

Somewhat dangerous
Raider vessel - small, speed 1800, 200 HP, 85 DPM
Bandit Cobra - small, speed 2400, 240 HP, 78 DPM - high hit bonus
Megapol Interceptor - small, speed 3000, 200 HP, 63 DPM - high hit and avoid bonus
Bandit Mosquito - very small, speed 3000, 100 HP, 83 DPM - high hit and avoid bonus

Quite dangerous
Nazi vessel - small, speed 3000, 400 HP, 81 DPM
Gunboat - small, speed 3000, 550 HP, 111 DPM
Ninja - small, speed 3000, 240 HP, 80 DPM - more dangerous than you think, because of really high hit and avoid bonus
Light Gunboat - small, speed 3300, 420 HP, 77 DPM
Raider Fighter - very small, speed 4000, 300 HP, 94 DPM
Sentry - small, speed 4500, 300 HP, 91 DPM

Really dangerous
Fighter - small, speed 4500, 350 HP, 173 DPM
Viper Fighter - small, speed 5200, 660 HP + shields, 252 DPM


Edit: Now that I look at that list, 3000 speed is the magic number. If your craft is faster than that, you can run away from most dangerous engagements. Too bad the Airspeeder has 3000 speed and thus can't run away. The bounty prize Piranha Airbike has 2750 speed. If that would be buffed to a little over 3000, it would be much more valuable.

[Jimboman]

I'm in the early game and only have Airspeeders at the moment (restarted because of a fuck-up) and what I tend to do is save my game before intercepting a ship, and if I get shot-down then I reload and don't intercept.  Kinda-of cheating, but it's better than having to buy a new craft every couple of (game) days!

[Greep]

If something is that fast, then next time you will know that very small and over 4k speed will always be raider.

Well, I overtook it in an aircar in that instance, so I didn't know the max speed is 4k.  If HK always moved at their max speed things would be a lot easier really.

I could wait and observe a while, but that's still chancing losing a 400k-1M craft + launcher/ammo just on a chance of a mission if it turned out to just be moving slow for a while.

What that chart seems to be telling me, is that attacking hunter killers is pretty much suicide until you get hyperwaves unless you're willing to invest in an airforce capable of taking down anything but a viper fighter and just hoping it's not that, and attacking all at once.  Like even if I had a hawk, there's a chance of raider fighter, fighter, sentry, and viper fighter that will take down the 1M craft with temporarily unique codex weapon just for taking a look.

Maybe I could try baiting them with expeditions just to see what they are.  So like use a expedition radar network, which is useful in it's own right, and then just getting revenge unless it's something powerful, and just be like "okay fine then" if it is xD

[Dakkdakk]

Like people said, use the shark, you'll be able to have a look before engaging. I ~think~ you could take down a hunter killer early on by having a skilled lok'narr piloting a shark bike being escorted by slower craft with decent weapons, like a shadowbat with that one 100% accurate weapon that uses seagulls.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

Combat shields on the left? Are you playing a different game?

Shields that are part of the armor always add to front armor. Sidearmor is always equal on the left and the right.

I hadn't yet used riot shields in Piratez, but the coding is there for it to affect side armor unequally. I figured that's how it would be in Piratez.

[Eddie]

@Reaver of Darkness
Apologies then. I have only looked at the piratez implementation of shields so far.

Regarding identification of hunter killers:
Just take a close look at the speed. A speed that is not the maximum will always be some odd looking number, like 2115. You can follow the shipping outside of it's radar range and then wait for it to go to full speed again. A shipping always arrives at full speed and will leave at full speed. If you can't catch it when it's at full speed, it is probably too dangerous anyway.
Also, shippings follow a set pattern. Greep mentioned getting trashed by a Raider Fighter. The Raider fighter is not the first shipping of a raid mission, the first shipping is the Raider vessel. So once you see a Raider vessel, you know for sure a Raider Fighter will soon follow in this area.

One more example: Identifying a Fighter that comes with an Alien Terror mission. Alien Terror missions spawn with a 35% chance each month once you are in the mutant alliance.
The mission starts with a sequence of three Fighters, which all follow trajectory P0. They don't land, and the speed sequence of P0 is: 100%, 74%, 28%, 47%, 100%.
So these three Fighters will only fly at speeds: 4500, 3330, 1260, 2115, 4500.

Conclusion: if you see a small shipping flying at 2115 speed, it's 100% a Fighter.
(I haven't actually checked if no other trajectory + small shipping can produce this number, but the chances are pretty slim.)

I could go ahead and write out all the possible speeds of each shipping. The Raider Fighter for example only flies with the PX1 trajectory (100, 75, 60, 50, 30, 45, 70, 100). But this will most likely just lead to Dioxine adding a random factor to trajectories and speeds (quite easy to do).

[Greep]

That's pretty cool, looks like there's a good way to pick your battles then  

I don't see why hunter killers should be hard to identify, though, so hopefully we won't need voodoo ship theory in the future.  I mean, if you have to risk losing a ship to take a look, then they're not worth engaging, and why bother having all those codex weapons and interceptors then?  Plus I thought megapol were supposed to be really early game targets.

Either way, seems like shippings of XY00 speed traveling under 3000 are safe "enough" to risk checking out.

[Rubber Cannonball]

Players shouldn't have to resort to metagaming or ruleset diving in order to come up with effective strategies to determine whether it is safe to intercept a ship.  I'm playing an older version that doesn't have hunter killers, so I don't have experience for good advice.  Too bad there aren't other options between the basic radar detection info and the full hyperwave detection.  For instance, if there was another way to get the ship silhouette (can be seen in the intercept window) without intercepting, then the player could compare that to the shippings in his bootypedia and decide if he wants to engage it.  Just like silhouette charts that were used by military personnel in world war 2 to identify enemy ships and planes.

Edit:

Or maybe most craft would be required to have ship model transponder that would only identify the type of craft when in radar range.  This would only id the ship type, but not mission, mission zone, or faction.  If ship type is too specific, maybe just a class like commercial, law enforcement, civilian, militia, and unknown (for those without transponders)

Edit2:

Or what about a small mod for a camera drone?  A battery powered low range but fast craft.  No pilot, no crew, no radar, no weapons, no slots, fast enough to have a decent chance to intercept before leaving base overcharged radar range.  It would be used just to get the silhouette from the intercept window.  Its range would only be enough to cover one base and of course it would tie up a hanger.  It wouldn't be too expensive to replace so that losses from being shot down by hunter killers wouldn't discourage its use.  And prior to hyperwaves there should be enough room in each base for another hanger to house it.

[Cristao]

That is why the Hyperwave detector exists.

[Rubber Cannonball]

That is why the Hyperwave detector exists.

Well yeah, but the idea was for the early game before hyperwave decoders were researched and built.

[Eddie]

Just be thankful radar circles are drawn for hunter killers. At least this way you know it is one before you approach ^^

As I said, early game solution is to get a shark jetbike. It can run away from most small hunter killers, so with this craft you can peek at the siluette.


By the way, megapol are quite easy to identify by their flight path. They travel from continent to continent like civillians.