Elite: Dangerous PvE - Mobius

See, this is why I hate PvP. It's also why I hate NPC pirates and, by extension, my own abject uselessness when it comes to fighting games.

Accept freight contract, launch, jump to target system, line up, supercruise, interdiction, canopy breached, explode.

This is how my combat experience generally goes. Tonight I barely got a look at my attacker: I was wreckage before I'd managed to turn more than about 90°, and she was still dead on my six when all the exploding started.

So, as proud as I am of the exclusiveness of my position as Elite's worst combat pilot, does anyone have any good tips on how to be killed by someone in front of you rather than someone behind you?

Practice, practice, practice. There's no substitute for practice I'm afraid.

The more you do the better you get.
Don't buy any expensive ships, until you're happy with the basics. The Sidey with its 2 lasers is capable of killing most of the easier NPC's.

Try one thing at a time, don't rush! and don't worry about loosing a free ship.

If your not cutting it ingame, try the tutorials and spend time perfecting the combat ones.

Soon it will become second nature and you'll look forward to your next interdiction

Interdictions always leave you in front of your interdictor, and these days they seem to fire first and think later, if ever. So my strategy with interdictions is to give maximum power to my engines before entering SC, boost straight ahead as soon as I'm out of SC, and then another couple of times as soon as possible. This gives me enough time to see in the contacts tab what kind of ship is attacking me and decide what to do. Then I can either enter SC again a few seconds later, boosting again while the FSD loads, or deploy my weapons, balance the power equally, and turn around to face the interdictor.

And like Somerled said, use the tutorials. They're very cool to practice, because when you're killed you can restart immediately (as opposed to starting again from a station). And of course, it costs nothing.

You need to win the interdiction. If you do that you shouldn't have any probs with pirates (since there's no fire zones around stations). Trying to fight in a hauler with 22T and no shields isn't fun.

I have yet a failed Interdiction to loose. Once they pulled you out, 4 pips to Engine, 2pips in sytems. Turn hard right or left. Scan your Opponent (Happens automatically).....
Head straight on, decide to fight or leave at the Moment of pass....

Ok, you decided to run...all pips in engines, boost and jinking,.... Until you can SC out of trouble.

Oh, we have a fighter, see below,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OCFMX5z-ed4

..this is valid. Even in Elite. Takes some time .

I have also discovered - while getting annoyed that someone tried an interdiction while I was bothersomely close to a planet - that actually being tackled closer to a planet can be quite useful.

As I skimmed too close the frameshift shut down before the interdict was complete - I never saw my attacker, and fondly imagine him cannoning off into the void at half the speed of light and wondering where I'd gone.

First tip, never push a bad position. If an enemy has the jump on you, leave. If you can out turn them, then turn and fight but try and make erratic turns to throw their aim off. The rest is just practice, and there is no simple one stop solution to win a fight. Read up fighter pilot tactics too (my old falcon 4 manual is great for tips).

Useful vid for the required mindset: http://youtu.be/OCFMX5z-ed4 (it's old and cheesy, but it helps.

Ah, Falcon 4. I used to be quite good at that - though it's been many years since I played anything that requires direct, active combat. I've been purely strategy, exploration or building games for years now - hence my disinclination to get involved in Elite's PvP.

But I'm sure as time goes on and NPCs continue trying to kill me, some of it will come back to me.

That is the hardest part with interdictions. You either need to win or submit, since if you submit your FSD is ready again almost instantly. If you win then you can always target their exit point and try and get the jump on them.....

G