On May 26 2014 13:07 Ramiel wrote: Slicer is kne of the best frigate to frigate combat ships in the game, properly flown very few ships can match it. However after kronos the succubus will be the only thing worth flying.
With the somewhat important fine print that you actually need to be skilled to fly it or have a huge links advantage over your opponent. Otherwise you're likely to have shit results with a Slicer.
Slicer has a very, very high skill ceiling. The margin for error is small. However I stand by the statement that the slicer is hands down, one of the most superior Frig vs Frig platforms when in the hands of a competent pilot. 99% of slicer pilots are pretty shit. As you said, links help, but are not necessary,
I found that when I soloed with the Slicer, it was actually harder to fly it with links as I got better at frig v. frig engagements. Frigate acceleration is completely ridiculous and very suddenly going 6km/s without heat is too hard to handle. Keeping yourself inside that optimal envelope and flying at the right angle is a fine tuning exercise whereas throwing up links is just a big fucking sledgehammer. But if you don't do manual flying, if you don't plan out your flight paths before the engagement actually starts, if you don't do all this small adjustment type stuff and just hit orbit, links will make it practically impossible for you to be scrammed while you take your sweet fucking time trying to kill your target before your cap runs out.
Most other frigs are "easy" because they are generally scram or scramweb platforms. It's less about flying and maneuvering and more about knowing what precisely you should do against your opponent's weapon type and ammo type (if they're turrets). Slicer is 10x harder to actually handle, but man you can own other frigs so hard if you fly it just right - and you feel fucking amazing afterwards like you actually earned your kill. But don't even look twice at Jaguars and run away from Wolfs for sure.
How do you learn exactly what angle to make when manual piloting? Can you give a rundown of your thought process whilst performing the maneuvers or how to perform it in general? It's been something I've been trying to learn in frigate pvp, but I find it really easy to suddenly be too close or far away from the target.
I figure that the flying path should ideally look like an ellipse, but its something I haven't managed to pull off in an AB scram rail atron yet; I generally end up losing scram because of heading too wide, and then having to correct and approach.
(Just for reference I'v pretty much got the hang of the other basic stuff like slingshotting and spiralling)
Your opponent is moving. If you are trying to orbit your opponent, you should plan your orbit around your opponent's movement to compensate for your opponent's movement. It will look more like a spiral or vortex when viewed from another person's point of view, but it will allow you to keep much better orbits around your opponent. Basically, you need to watch this.....
Try to emulate what that video shows.
Or do what I do with rail atrons, and fly parallel to my opponent, reducing transversal to 0, and I make adjustments as my opponent makes adjustments as well. I use "keep at range" as an "oh shit too close, better pull range" button, and "approach" as an "oh shit too far, better get closer" button, but I mostly try to follow their flight path to keep transversal as low as possible.
Um.. that video is nice, but I can visualize elipses and orbits already.
Reducing traversal is completely different and comparatively easy to do. I only start to attempt to orbit if I need to reduce damage for a couple of cycles of reps. Problem is staying in that 1-1.5 km zone between too close and losing scram; automatic orbiting tends to be too erratic and unreliable.
On May 26 2014 19:58 hiromi wrote: @DefMatrixUltra
How do you learn exactly what angle to make when manual piloting? Can you give a rundown of your thought process whilst performing the maneuvers or how to perform it in general? It's been something I've been trying to learn in frigate pvp, but I find it really easy to suddenly be too close or far away from the target.
I figure that the flying path should ideally look like an ellipse, but its something I haven't managed to pull off in an AB scram rail atron yet; I generally end up losing scram because of heading too wide, and then having to correct and approach.
(Just for reference I'v pretty much got the hang of the other basic stuff like slingshotting and spiralling)
There isn't a way to "learn" what you should do when manual piloting other than getting to know EVE mechanics better. If you know what all the ships' capabilities are, if you know what all the modules' capabilities are, then you will know what you should be doing when manual flying. To give a more detailed answer would just be me giving examples like "if you have so and so autocannons and they have so and so lasers then..." and so on. Your goal with asking "exactly how should I fly?" is to maximize your dps and minimize theirs. What should the numbers be for a favorable situation for you? When you can know that, you'll know what to do. Experience helps you know how to read what fit your target has, but you need the knowledge in the first place to know what to do on paper against such and such fit.
As far as my thought process, I am working under the assumption that my target is mashing the Approach or Orbit button depending on their flavor of ignorance. Work out a plan based on this assumption. I'm a Slicer and my target is a Taranis. The Taranis is one of the few frigs capable of simply running straight at me and catching me. So I try to "lure" them into a straight-line race where I'm firing on them while they're gaining. I'm getting in free shots while they're taking free hits before we actually get into shitsville up close when I get scrammed. I made this plan by comparing the capabilities of our ships. Differences in speed and acceleration combined with differences in weapon system gave me a good picture of what an optimal flight path would be. The straight line race maximizes the time that I'm farther away (but in damage and point range) of the target.
I know who you are. Nobody knows what you want. If you are looking for ganks, I can tell you I am the wrong target. You see what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my oracles go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.
On May 27 2014 06:09 KwarK wrote: I know who you are. Nobody knows what you want. If you are looking for ganks, I can tell you I am the wrong target. You see what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my oracles go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.
As you can tell by the user name, that is KwarK. I am Viceorvirtue. While it is true that everyone in eve that isn't you has a statistically good chance of being kwark, this is not always true and likely explains your confusion.
On May 27 2014 06:09 KwarK wrote: I know who you are. Nobody knows what you want. If you are looking for ganks, I can tell you I am the wrong target. You see what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my oracles go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.
On May 26 2014 13:07 Ramiel wrote: Slicer is kne of the best frigate to frigate combat ships in the game, properly flown very few ships can match it. However after kronos the succubus will be the only thing worth flying.
With the somewhat important fine print that you actually need to be skilled to fly it or have a huge links advantage over your opponent. Otherwise you're likely to have shit results with a Slicer.
Slicer has a very, very high skill ceiling. The margin for error is small. However I stand by the statement that the slicer is hands down, one of the most superior Frig vs Frig platforms when in the hands of a competent pilot. 99% of slicer pilots are pretty shit. As you said, links help, but are not necessary,
I found that when I soloed with the Slicer, it was actually harder to fly it with links as I got better at frig v. frig engagements. Frigate acceleration is completely ridiculous and very suddenly going 6km/s without heat is too hard to handle. Keeping yourself inside that optimal envelope and flying at the right angle is a fine tuning exercise whereas throwing up links is just a big fucking sledgehammer. But if you don't do manual flying, if you don't plan out your flight paths before the engagement actually starts, if you don't do all this small adjustment type stuff and just hit orbit, links will make it practically impossible for you to be scrammed while you take your sweet fucking time trying to kill your target before your cap runs out.
Most other frigs are "easy" because they are generally scram or scramweb platforms. It's less about flying and maneuvering and more about knowing what precisely you should do against your opponent's weapon type and ammo type (if they're turrets). Slicer is 10x harder to actually handle, but man you can own other frigs so hard if you fly it just right - and you feel fucking amazing afterwards like you actually earned your kill. But don't even look twice at Jaguars and run away from Wolfs for sure.
Why is it bad to just hit orbit with the slicer? Honest question, I'm trying to learn. Do you guys use "look at" target to decide your next move?
My slicer flying at this point has just boiled down to orbit, approach, and keep at range 100km. Only if there's more than 1 pilot on field do I start to try and manually fly the slicer, lure them into a straight line etc.
On May 26 2014 13:07 Ramiel wrote: Slicer is kne of the best frigate to frigate combat ships in the game, properly flown very few ships can match it. However after kronos the succubus will be the only thing worth flying.
With the somewhat important fine print that you actually need to be skilled to fly it or have a huge links advantage over your opponent. Otherwise you're likely to have shit results with a Slicer.
Slicer has a very, very high skill ceiling. The margin for error is small. However I stand by the statement that the slicer is hands down, one of the most superior Frig vs Frig platforms when in the hands of a competent pilot. 99% of slicer pilots are pretty shit. As you said, links help, but are not necessary,
I found that when I soloed with the Slicer, it was actually harder to fly it with links as I got better at frig v. frig engagements. Frigate acceleration is completely ridiculous and very suddenly going 6km/s without heat is too hard to handle. Keeping yourself inside that optimal envelope and flying at the right angle is a fine tuning exercise whereas throwing up links is just a big fucking sledgehammer. But if you don't do manual flying, if you don't plan out your flight paths before the engagement actually starts, if you don't do all this small adjustment type stuff and just hit orbit, links will make it practically impossible for you to be scrammed while you take your sweet fucking time trying to kill your target before your cap runs out.
Most other frigs are "easy" because they are generally scram or scramweb platforms. It's less about flying and maneuvering and more about knowing what precisely you should do against your opponent's weapon type and ammo type (if they're turrets). Slicer is 10x harder to actually handle, but man you can own other frigs so hard if you fly it just right - and you feel fucking amazing afterwards like you actually earned your kill. But don't even look twice at Jaguars and run away from Wolfs for sure.
Why is it bad to just hit orbit with the slicer? Honest question, I'm trying to learn. Do you guys use "look at" target to decide your next move?
My slicer flying at this point has just boiled down to orbit, approach, and keep at range 100km. Only if there's more than 1 pilot on field do I start to try and manually fly the slicer, lure them into a straight line etc.
Using the orbit button is fine. Actually orbiting is not. Orbiting in a Slicer will ruin your damage because it ruins your tracking. Think about if someone was orbiting you - the angular velocity would be very high and thus you would have great difficulty tracking them. It's very nearly the same if you're orbiting them.
I used my orbit button as a keep-at-range button by setting it to the maximum possible value. I used Keep At Range at about 26km. Using these buttons is fine if there is 1 opponent and no obstacles in the area (stations or asteroids). When against multiple opponents or in a more complex arena, you want to manually pilot to mirror the functions of those buttons. But there are some situations (like the Taranis vs. Slicer one I talked about) where you don't want to use these buttons even 1v1 - you want to do something very specific that they can't necessarily replicate.
But just to reiterate, orbiting in a Slicer absolutely ruins your damage.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://i.snag.gy/jcPd1.jpg)
