When using a frigate with heavy blasters, sometimes it can be hard to hit an opponent when used incorrectly regardless of spread levels.
I personally use curved reflector without the use of any spread reduction passive modules and crew implants, so we’ll speak about the usage of curved reflector ammunition with heavy blasters as the base of this post, while others with experience with longer range heavy blasters without curved can post their comments as well to fill the gap.
When using heavy blasters it’s important to note that your gun has to heat up before getting to optimal damage levels, so make sure that you start firing the weapon in a direction away from the enemy before enemy contact is made so that your gun may reach those optimal levels at the start of the fight and give that much more damage to the enemy in a shorter amount of time and perhaps get you that kill you’ve been planning on while revving those guns while ‘surprising’ them.
At close range, it may seem like you’re aiming directly at the enemy cursor, but you’re not hitting anything right? well that’s because of your misuse of the weapon.
Pay close attention to where the shots are actually firing behind the enemy ship that’s doing so well at ‘dodging’ your shots and adjust your cursor that much further ahead of the enemy cursor and you’ll see the difference regardless of ship size. This technique is absolutely needed when fighting smaller ships. Adjust as needed.
When fighting against someone of high strafe capability, you may notice that they are hard to hit. that’s true.
pay attention to their movements more than their actual cursor position, and aim where the cursor/ship will be in a few seconds instead, usually in the opposite direction of their current trajectory, and you’ll score a few hits here’n there depending on how well you do this. The key to this is to focus on the enemy ship itself and observe properly.
When wanting to hit a small object that requires lower spread, like a small recon module just sitting there looking pretty or an enemy interceptor fading into the distance, simply allow your reticle to rest to 0 spread and fire at the object for up to 5 to 6 shots, and you’ll get some decent hits in.
In the event where you’re being circled by certain ships where you can’t return fire, back your frigate’s rear against a large object to reduce their points of attack, and it will give you a much better vantage point to either fire at them, or missile them.