Advanced Combat Guide

Advanced Combat Guide
Combat is as easy as clicking a few lasers, but there are a few tricks that you'll pick up on as you go that come with experience. Maybe this guide will help you realise those things exist and that everything you do in combat is a deciding factor of who wins the fight, or by much you won the fight by and encounter much less 'close call' situations.


Preparation
* Picking your ship
There is a lot of ship options in eternity. The ship types are
* Cargo - the best cargo ship is the Frog

* Mining - the best mining ship is the Warmonger

* Combat - the best combat ship is the Baminator

* NPC Combat - the best npc combat ship is the Deputy, or Baminator depending on play style



Suiting up your ship
A vanilla ship will not help you win battles. Look at the maximum it can handle and make sure you overclock it as much as possible. Currently there is no scanner restrictions, so there is no reason why you shouldn't kill Kengi for the best scanner you can possibly find. If you want the Kengi Galactic, that can be won from swarms.
Make sure you give your ship the best engine and shield for the job. As well as max out the amount of weapons it can carry (and pick weapons that work for you).

* The Best Engines (opinion, may vary for play style)
R5 - Trailian
R4 - Trailian, Ma'kai is also good

R3 - Trailian, GCF is also good

R2 - Legion

R1 - Trailian



* The Best Shields (opinion, may vary for play style)
S5 - Depends on play style, no ships currently use S5
S4 - Groak

S3 - GCF

S2 - Groak

S1 - GCF



Actually freaking fighting real players
Now that you have a ship, which is probably a Baminator suited with a Groak, Trailian R5, and the best scanner you could get your hands on, you will need to know all the tricks


The "Holy crap a battle is about to happen" part
Even if someone is out of your range, you can still see your name, immediately you should be prepared for a fight. Click on their ship and see what type of ship they are using, that way you will know if it is an easy gank or a full fight. Make this decision extremely fast, you better know if you're going to gank or have a full fight in a matter of seconds. If you can see their name, they can see you.
*The Gank

If you are going to gank them, hyper drive towards them, you're not fooling anyone by continuing at them casually, get over there and get something done. 3 things can happen.

-They stand there and get ganked, perhaps firing back futilely

-They hyper drive to the nearest portal / trade station.

-They cloak

If they stand there and get ganked, congratulations. If they hyper drive to the nearest portal / trade station, continue the chase, you can't win every chase but it can't hurt to try. If they cloak, they're probably now heading back to the nearest portal, so cut off your hyper drive as soon as the cloak goes down, wait for your energy and then cloak yourself. They say fight fire with fire, well fight cloak with cloak. Now it's time to go in their mind. If you were them at this very second getting ganked and you cloaked, where would you go. Sometimes they go off to the sides of space, sometimes they stand still, sometimes they take the obvious route. Most people you gank will take the obvious route, and this part is pure chance and based on the personality of the player you're ganking, if they are a complete noob assume the obvious. As soon as they uncloak, turn off your cloak as well, you've got nothing to hide you want them to know you're not far off and then hyper drive as soon as possible and get them, if they cloak again, rinse and repeat.

*The Actual Fight that takes some sort of skill

So you spot the guys name, you decide that this will be a battle. Look around and be aware of where the portals are and trading stations, you want to be closer to these then your opponent if possible. Approach very carefully, target their ship while approaching, and make a break in either direction horizontal to them once you meet up and cloak,

# is normal, @ is cloaked

1 ) # ---- > <---- #

2) # -> <- @

after step 2 is when you would go up or down in either direction

Now that you've breaken their target lock (cloak does that) you want to uncloak and fire a few shots at them and back off, this will be kind of like a fadeaway shot in basketball. Unload your energy and back off so you're out of their range. A few things can happen here.

- They hyper drive towards you

- They cloak

- They hyper drive away from you, or casually fly away from you

If they hyper drive towards you, turn off your lasers as soon as they are in range and try to cloak, also head towards the nearest portal. Going to the nearest portal is incase they energy bomb you, which would be extremely ballsy and will not happen most of the time. Once you cloak, go to the edge of your scanner again, unload and do the fade away shot technique, also called sniping. If their shields are down by this point don't be afraid to go near them. At this point you 'want' them to fire back at you, because you will win the battle, and this will drain their energy for an escape. If they cloak, treat it as if you are ganking them. Fight fire with fire, fight cloak with cloak. Cloak also and predict their movements, then once you are both uncloaked, treat it as if the battle just started and approach them again and try to blink your cloak and fade away shot them. If they hyper drive away, chase them! They will have to stop eventually at a portal and you will have time to poke them with your lasers. Be careful that they don't stop their hyper drive half way through, blink their cloak and hit you.



Portal Fighting
A lot of fights happen near portals, you're not a coward for portal hopping, you are using the envirionment. A lot of people will call you a noob for using the portal, but what are you supposed to do, stand their for a pokemon battle and die? The best way to Portal Hop is to cloak, target them, unload and go through before they can target you. If they chase you through the portal, go back through the way you came until you can cloak again. If they don't chase you through, wait until your energy is back, go through cloak really quick and then unload and go through. Repeat until a chase happens, if you are the one who needs to escape, cloak and act is you are running away, but in actuality stay right where you are at the portal and go through once your energy is about to go out, then make a getaway.
PROTIP***********************************

When someone cloaks and goes through a portal, you will see their name vanish, never follow until you see the name drain down the space toilet. If you see someone's name go and you are cloaked, away from the portal, immediately uncloak and hyperspeed toward the portal, you have nothing to hide from.



PROTIP2**********************************

Your shield does not regenerate while cloaked or hyperspeeding. If you need to regain shields during a portal fight, don't cloak, and keep hopping through once you see them go through, once they catch up make sure your cloak though.



Station Fighting
The first thing about station fighting is... Don't station fight, you will rarely get the kill, it's only good for pissing people off. So here's how to piss people off
Step 1 - Dock

Step 2 - Switch out your shield, this is done by unequipping it, going to the warehouse, and equipping it again, this will bring it to full recharge, do this step as quickly as possible

Step 3 - Undock

Step 4 - Cloak

Step 5 - Unload your weapons at them

Step 6 - Rinse and repeat



PROTIP***********************************

If the battle is going on for awile, cloak and go about 1 square away from the station, just out of reach of the person you're fighting. Dangle the carrot out infront of them and it is possible to turn it into a real fight. If the person cloaks, cloak also and go out farther.



Cloaks
Can only be used when your ship has full energy and has a 5 second delay before you can use it again after deactivating it.


Hyperspeed
Can only be used when your ship has full energy, you may attack while hyperspeeding


Zoom
When you go through a portal or undock it will zoom all the way out and all the way in, you can move during this time and cloak or hyperspeed. Be aware of this while Portal Fighting.


Swarms
Swarms are a good place to get easy kills, you can get them while they are drained of their energy and sometimes when they have low shields. Make sure to get at least 1 kill on an NPC to see the scoreboard so you know who you're dealing with, be aware of how to escape to the portals in Omicron at all times. Never go to the corners, that limits your escape routes, also make a hexagon shape when you're scouting for people.


This guide has been written by Zeme and even though I wrote it, I do not follow it, I simply attend my bitches. Everyone in the game has a personallity and it shows when they fight, when I attend bitches I try to treat them as Player 2, and I'm Player 1, I don't give a damn who I'm attending I still attend everyone the same way. If you're active in the chat box, or at least lurk, you'll know people's personallities, and this can sometimes help you make your decision of where you think they went if you're trying to track them down when they cloak. Get in their skin and walk around a little bit kinda like Atticus Finch says. The fighting is extremely simple but there's tons of little things you will pick up on, know as many simple things as possible, like to go from Lianize Major to Lianize HQ, Lia 3 is the better portal to choose and Lia 4 is longer distance. That's just an example, but you learn these small things by going out there and getting experience with it. If you are going to taunt someone you defeated in the chat box, make sure everything you say has a back bone, if you get that one lucky kill after 5 deaths don't talk major shit to them, keep quiet and wait for them to say "WTFZ y did uk ilezdz me?!?" If they don't say anything, you get the quiet satifaction of knowing that you created a twist somewhere in their brain. And the flip side, if you die, don't bust a nut in the chat box, just say "good one" or something simple. Punch your pillow he cares way more then anyone else cares that you died. I wrote this at 1:30 in the morning so some parts are probably crazy sounding and there might be typos and I already know this page is gonna get trolled by random people but that's ok I got it backed up on a notepad and on my forum. If you have more to add about combat though seriously don't hesitate just make your own section or edit whatever that's what a wiki is for.

That was actually helpful WOW