Having Trouble Aiming? (on Interceptor)

Ships
#1

Hey everyone, so I have about 40-50 hours in this game I would say. I love the game, but I am getting frustrated by my own terrible aim. I generally fly a tier 2 Hawk-M. My aim is terrible, I generally rely on my modules to get kills and do damage. VS frigates of course I can hit with all my shots, but someone usually takes me out before I can burn through their huge defenses. VS a fighter I can hit with some of my shots and slowly work down their health, but if the pilot is good I even have problems killing them. VS an interceptor, I usually just give up, because I know there is little to no chance of me ever hitting them consistently enough to kill them.

 

My question is this. Do I just suck at this game or do you guys have the same problem? Is it just hard to aim in this game because maneuverability is so high? And does anyone have any tips for me as an interceptor pilot? Maybe I should just be ignoring fellow interceptors and focusing on frigates and fighters?

#2

I find projectile speed to be the most important factor when it comes to hitting fast targets. What weapon are you using? If plasma, try out the booster mod. You can always try lasers, pulse preferably. Also, don’t aim directly at the lead indicator, if your target is turning sharply.

#3

I find projectile speed to be the most important factor when it comes to hitting fast targets. What weapon are you using? If plasma, try out the booster mod. You can always try lasers, pulse preferably. Also, don’t aim directly at the lead indicator, if your target is turning sharply.

 

Agreed. Projectile speed is very useful. If you happen to be jericho, pick up their rank 6 implant that gives the projectile speed bonus. It is super useful. If that isn’t an option, seeing how you are federation, try using railguns or lasers. Railguns rounds fly faster than plasma, and lasers obviously hit instantly. Plasma weapon mods can also be useful.

#4

I am using assault plasma. I would have gone with rapid fire plasma, but I had the tech for tier 3 assault which I assumed would be worth it for the extra dps. I have not seen the booster mod at all when buying mods. Is this available at tier 2? And I haven’t done much lasers either. Heard their dps was kind of bad in tier 2 because resistances are up so high. I guess it doesn’t matter though since I am not hitting anything anyway. Thanks for the suggestions, I will try to find booster mods and try out the pulse lasers. I will try the rapid fire plasma as well.

#5

About weapon mods:

I forgot. Weapon mods that increase projectile speed are only avalible in T3. You can still get them from an experimental T2 drop, but the chances are pretty small.

#6

Ah, okay. I will give the lasers a shot, I feel like that might help me a lot.

#7

Lasers in interceptors are horibles. I like use the rapid fire plasma  + jericho project speed skill. Try use the energy absorver to slowdown your target, work fine to me.

#8

Other thing which helps me aiming a lot is reduced mouse sensitivity and using keyboard for steering the ship - mouse only for shooting and very slight flight corrections. When in a dogfight with fast moving target just try to get some distance from it, cut throttle to 50% and provoke him to start aiming at you (which means his flight path will be less jerky) then burst-fire him while trying to dodge his attacks. That’s when I fly fighter against interceptor. In inty vs inty fight I jsut try to keep same speed as my opponent and just tail him with using short burst shots when possible. 

 

Thing is, most of those frantically flying pilots do a lot of positioning mistakes (as they don’t look at map / surroundings) and often after initial epic dodges they loose momentum or start getting tired.

 

My 2 cents. 

#9

Thanks for the tips guys. I tried the burst laser last night and I loved it. I also turned down mouse sensitivity a bit. It might not be the best weapon in the game for interceptor, but I can sure aim a lot better with it. I was getting tons of kills and barely died. I plan to go for rank 6 with Jericho next to get that projectile speed enhancement and then try out the rapid fire plasma.

#10

I also noticed that if you and your opponent start flying in a death spiral. Slow down to a dead stop, let him pass you and fly behind him. you have no idea how many people I get that way.

#11

Not a big fan of rapid fire plasma. It manages to combine the slow projectile speed of assault plasma with the short range of pulse laser; it’s essentially a pulse laser that does slightly less dps and can miss. Instead of fixing two things, I’d say get a range upgrade on pulse laser or a projectile speed upgrade on assault plasma.

#12

i personally quite like rapid plasma, while flying a 'ceptor i need to be within 2km anyway, so required leading is minimal…

but i’m new and xxxx in this game, so take that with a grain of salt

#13

Learn to track your targets ( not kidding or flaming here ) , i use assault plasma with the damage / spread charges and i have no problem hitting people in my BB.

 

Even rails are a tad more dificult to master but also very reliable weapons try them out but try to track and observe your targets movements, most people are predictable in their evasive maneuvers and you can get to them easely. 

 

Or… use what everyone uses these days… lasers…  :crazy:

#14

Interceptors are to be debuffed, drained, lured into minefields, hounded in range of pulsars, repelled from area’s of operation. Not to be chased down indefinitly or follwed into enemy firezones.

#15

For an interceptor, the assualt really are not worth it

 

Number one, the DPS score does not account for loss of firing due to overheating. 

 

IE: you can fire for 4 seconds at better DPS, but then you have to wait 2 seconds for cooldown. etc. 

 

so really, the rapid fire which do not need to cool down are far better. so over a 6+ second time frame the rapid fire will do better. over a 2-4 second time frame, the assault will do better simply because you have to wait for overheating guns. 

 

as an example say you have a gun that has 400 DPS, can sustian fire for 4 seconds, then has a 3 second cooldown due to overheating. and you have a weapon that does 250DPS but does not overheat. 

 

Over 4 seconds, you will do 1600 damage with the first. and 1000 with the second. However over 7 seconds you will still only do 1600 damage with the first, but 1750 with the second. as time goes on this compounds. 

 

If you’re going for alpha burst damage, the rapid railgun outclasses all other weapons. the charged shot-gun like burst is a blessing. outside of this, however, the rapid railgun is quite terrible. 

 

Number two, the only reason to take assault over rapid fire, or sniper over assault, is for the increased range. on an interceptor you’re not likely to do any sniping. so you don’t need range. 

 

so it largely depends on what you want to do with your weapon. 

 

weapon mods can also help a lot. i like to take a more ‘shotgun’ approach to close range interceptor combat. I prefer to increase my fire rate as much as possible. while this increases spread, i don’t always find this hurts. especially at close quarters. sometimes, especially against fast target, high spread helps, especially if you have a lot of projectiles going out in a general direction. 

#16

The lack of overheating is the exact reason I’m using the rapid fire plasma, nothing else puts out the hurt as fast or consistently in comparison.

The other weapons now feel like lances, like I’m supposed to line up for one burst then take evasive, before lining up another burst.

#17

I am using assault plasma. I would have gone with rapid fire plasma, but I had the tech for tier 3 assault which I assumed would be worth it for the extra dps. 

 

Don’t bother with Mk3 upgrades until you have experimented.  

 

I tested Rails out using Mk1 and they worked better than my Mk3 Plasma and Lasers because I was getting into fights where my Plasma or Laser team mates had stripped shields and it was Rail Time.  

 

The Mk3 gear are nice to have but they don’t do that much.  

 

Use the right tool for the job.  

 

When you are up against a lot of Empies with their big hulls, especially their Interceptors which are hard to hit, Rails will rip up their hull quite dramatically.  A lot better than Plasma on kinetic mods does.  

 

Also give Rails a while to get used to, the burst fire makes them look really good or really bad until you start timing your shots.