Since the latest patch I have tried to make covert ops work, but again and again I die trying. I used to use ECM things on all my Interceptors, and i would wreak almost anything i came across. My current setup is a Kite with Plasma Arc, White Noise Jammer, Adaptive Camo, and a Shield Booster. Along with rapid fire Plasma cannons, prox mines, and em missiles. I don’t know if this is a good setup but every time i go out and sneak up on a lone ship Ill get killed or ill have to run.
Well, i use:
=Orion target complex
=Withe noise
=flares
=adaptive camo
-Never trow yourself on furballs of enemys, try atack when the enemy is distarct.
-Use the adaptive camo to make sneak atacks on lone ships, capture beacons ,carry bombs in detonation( use camo no make you drop the bomb) and protect allies in danger.
-Keep eyes on radar, if you feel outnumber just flee and to friend group.
-Dont atack frigates solo, you will only kill yourself. Try atack empire fighter(comand) is suicide too, they have too much hull(strange thing one time i deal only 16-20 damage for a emp fighter)
-plasma arc is useless(at least for me), he have low range and require you “ram” another ships.
Well, i think is only this, when i can play more i wil test more(my internet is actualy a junk, 23000 ping with 60%loss)
Well, i use:
=Orion target complex
=Withe noise
=flares
=adaptive camo
-Never trow yourself on furballs of enemys, try atack when the enemy is distarct.
-Use the adaptive camo to make sneak atacks on lone ships, capture beacons ,carry bombs in detonation( use camo no make you drop the bomb) and protect allies in danger.
-Keep eyes on radar, if you feel outnumber just flee and to friend group.
-Dont atack frigates solo, you will only kill yourself. Try atack empire fighter(comand) is suicide too, they have too much hull(strange thing one time i deal only 16-20 damage for a emp fighter)
-plasma arc is useless(at least for me), he have low range and require you “ram” another ships.
Well, i think is only this, when i can play more i wil test more(my internet is actualy a junk, 23000 ping with 60%loss)
I find the Plasma Arc extremely useless as well. I don’t attack groups and Im probably going to switch to Jericho because the combat ability on covert ops is poor, where as in ECM you can solo about anything in game.
Just looking through the covert ops designated ships and I notice they all have 30% Crit chance increase, because of that I’ve been messing around with the rapid fire plasma cannons and have a build to increase their range/flight speed, it actually works quite well for me because of how fast you can spin around and direct shots into your enemies asses/undersides so they can’t shoot back.
I’ll probably fraps a video of it later, it’s actually fun as heck when you’re going nuts flying all over an enemy and permanently holding down fire, the fact that the rapid cannons don’t have a cooldown period more than makes up for the xxxx range for me. I’ve been purposely hiding behind ridges for people I can kill to wander near before zipping on out :D.
Mostly though, yeah, I feel like support. I can tear apart shields easily, or keep them from regenning while doing next to nothing to the hull on the larger ships, but that’s why I engage targets already fighting someone else. Really I’m in love with the how easy it is to sneak yourself right up against an enemies bum and stay hugging it while they try desperately to turn their guns towards you, yet they just can’t because of the speed differences. On alot of fights against fatasses that don’t loop with me I’ll end up taking more hull damage from ramming into them from beneath then I will from their guns.
Though those empire fighters are fricking scary, but oh well, if he burns his cooldown on me it’s a frigate he’s not melting.
I found a lot of success with adaptive camo and plasma arc at T2, but T3 seems to be absolutely brutal for recon and covert ops - you die in one or two hits, so if you attack someone and a friend shows up, you often don’t seem to have time to run away much less accomplish anything. And you can more or less completely forget about trying to fight at contested objectives (which is awkward since you get a bonus to capturing them).
While I’m warming to the patch in general (I think my earlier experience was colored by the terrible way they did refunds), it seems like ints overall need some adjustment (especially recon - given such wide sightlines and shared radar with large numbers of allies in every game, more detection just isn’t worth how bad their modules are otherwise).
I think the biggest problem is that the game seems balanced around the idea that fast ships will be very hard to hit (hence low survivability and low damage), but given how many modules there are that disable, slow, or outright kill you without actually needing to aim them, that balance doesn’t work quite so well.
Yeah I figured this was some sort of t3+ problem. I’ve already been kindof introduced to the one shot kill types as it is, but they’re extremely rare, it’s usually some t3 missile or long range sniper variant, even if you close to engage on a sniper with the epic hailgun they can still splat you in one shot while you take forever to kill them. As it is where I’m at now I don’t think I’ll be progressing beyond t2, and will probably cut my team down to to Dagger V and Machete S and only raise my implants if I can.
Right now I’m just sortof killing frigates I see on their lonesome or following other interceptors to ping their targets, the plasma arc is actually how I’m getting a decent chunk of solo engineers since you can kill them no fuss if you get at least 2 ticks of your plasma arc onto them, and they have a hard time doing anything other than dropping a minefield to stop you, it’s their friends who are a threat, but active camo helps put you close by them.
About all I can add about the subject of Covert Ops is that I don’t get why the t2 Jericho ship Dagger V has this awesome passive to increase shot flight speed by 40%, but every CO after has nothing of the sort.
Oh yeah, and energy consumption down on mod innates just feel lame as crap. Who has ever found they couldn’t just let up on their afterburners just a little during a fight to activate whichever Covert Ops mod they want.
I’m a dedicated interceptor pilot in T3 ( atm i use a kyte, Hawk-M was just as good if not better for some things )
I personaly fit Plasma Arc / Flares / Camo / Suicide, altho the last one can actualy be replaced with an Orion module wich is actualy GOOD atm
For mods i usualy use everything that gives speed, except for shields ( i use + resist ) before you get a Kite or whatever has 3+ passive slots, by experience i’d say that Thermal resistance is a must as you’ll be seeing alot of minefields, pulsars , plasma webs and lasers
As weapon i too tended to go with Rapid Plasma but something after the patch changed things a bit and unless i’m fitting the projectile speed mod it doesn’t feel quite as right to use them, if i’m correct maybe before projectile speed was added to your own ship speed while now it isn’t ( but i might be very wrong about this), anyway, becouse i’m lazy i’m using rapid fire lasers and i’m having quite a good numbers of succes with them against fighters or other interceptors
Plasma Arc is a bit tricky to learn as it has very short range (about 300 or less) and works in 90-180 degrees cone, but it is quite good, if you want to take out key targets, you can go behind a lone enginnering frigate and unload rockets + main weapon + plasma arc and demolish it in less than 6 seconds, just try not to be the surrounded by like 10 ships
However be mindful that an interceptor has a limited combat ability, try not to engage first unless you know you can take care of your enemies, escape if you feel you’re not doing enought damage (happens alot when repairs are near), dedicate yourself to objectives becouse of your speed and stay safe when camo and/or flares are both on cooldown, a single missile can wreck you by half if not more
Also a quick tip on frigates, sometimes frigate pilots tend to have both mine field and pulsar as their “panic” buttons, so unless you approach a moving ship keep on their side and quickly fly away from their pulsar, wait 10 seconds a go back for your kill.
I’d like to get some help too…ATM i’m flying a black bomber fed RECON int. It’s t4 now but was t3 and i really find it pretty useless…carryng spydrones is really nothing exciting and attacking abilities look simply crap to me…So is the covert ops int better than the recon one?
Recon is pretty underpowered. Fly in a squad with voice comms to make the best out of your spy drones. If that’s not an option, I would suggest that you get long range weapons and mods, always stick to your teammates, stay away from the main fight, spy drone opportune targets and ping them (hopefully people will notice). Don’t get into any dogfights, CovOps will straight up demolish you, ECM get an edge over you due to cc and i doubt you will have the firepower to take out fighters and frigates in a reasonable amount of time, even if you completely outfly them.
On the CovOps side, I’d say at least practice a bit with the laser sword. It makes you a serious threat, even if you rarely use it. Cutting through a frigate makes you feel pretty awesome. Fighters that get lazy are also good targets. I’ve also managed to take out interceptors with it. For an added bonus, park within 100m of an ECM using tachyon cocoon, laser sword right before the stun, collect 100 efficiency.
I fly solely Covert Ops. Im considered pretty awesome when I dodge missles without flares. I ruined a guys day by doing that.
Here is a list of small and to the point tactics I use (with or without a squad)
Small hit and runs
Capture of the objective
the assistance of my fellow gunships.
Extra “drone” for the captain when im flying a recon ship.
NEVER do the following
Try to finish the enemy when you cannot or have more than full health and shields with your weapons doing mediocre damage.
Attempt to take out a gunship by yourself without help
attempt to fly solo in any way or capture a beacon without assistance.
never xxxx trip…
Recon is indeed underpowered and right now covops are basically better.
I fly a T2 Swift 3 covops with plasma arc, camo and flares (the flares are a wild card, an orion or self destruct are also good options). I have 2 modes of play:
Assassin. Locate a high priority target like an engineering frigate, who isn’t sitting in a minefield, and doesn’t have a guard frigate chilling near him. Hit camo, burn up to him, plasma arc and let rip with guns and missiles. Usually this ends with him being dead, but if you’ve blown your plasma arc and a missile and he’s not on a sliver of HP, gtfo anyway.
Skirmisher. Fly around the fringes, use your speed to threaten or capture objectives, jump undefended LRFs and enemy skirmishers.
Covops work very well in pairs for assassination, because it’s touch-and-go whether a single covops plasma arc will take out an engineering frigate, but two *definitely* will, taking much of the risk out of it.
What you don’t want to be doing is flying in to a big scrum and dogfighting, because if a gunship or frigate notices you you’re probably going to be toast quite quickly
I also sometimes fly a T2 Dwarf 2 recon with a “combat” fit of Phase Remodulator, Spy Drones and Parasitic Remodulator. I fly it exclusively as a skirmisher, popping spy drones on high priority targets like engy frigates on cooldown (which the range and no line of sight restrictions on spy drones means you can do from almost anywhere) to make them easier for others to kill. Meanwhile use your MWD mobility to capture vulnerable points or jump LRFs (which are about the only thing you can beat in a straight fight). While it’s still a sub-par dogfighter, the Parasitic Remodulator really eats shields, leveling the playing field a bit. If you get in trouble use your Phase Remodulator and gtfo around the nearest asteroid.
I’m a dedicated interceptor pilot in T3 ( atm i use a kyte, Hawk-M was just as good if not better for some things )
I personaly fit Plasma Arc / Flares / Camo / Suicide, altho the last one can actualy be replaced with an Orion module wich is actualy GOOD atm
For mods i usualy use everything that gives speed, except for shields ( i use + resist ) before you get a Kite or whatever has 3+ passive slots, by experience i’d say that Thermal resistance is a must as you’ll be seeing alot of minefields, pulsars , plasma webs and lasers
As weapon i too tended to go with Rapid Plasma but something after the patch changed things a bit and unless i’m fitting the projectile speed mod it doesn’t feel quite as right to use them, if i’m correct maybe before projectile speed was added to your own ship speed while now it isn’t ( but i might be very wrong about this), anyway, becouse i’m lazy i’m using rapid fire lasers and i’m having quite a good numbers of succes with them against fighters or other interceptors
Plasma Arc is a bit tricky to learn as it has very short range (about 300 or less) and works in 90-180 degrees cone, but it is quite good, if you want to take out key targets, you can go behind a lone enginnering frigate and unload rockets + main weapon + plasma arc and demolish it in less than 6 seconds, just try not to be the surrounded by like 10 ships
However be mindful that an interceptor has a limited combat ability, try not to engage first unless you know you can take care of your enemies, escape if you feel you’re not doing enought damage (happens alot when repairs are near), dedicate yourself to objectives becouse of your speed and stay safe when camo and/or flares are both on cooldown, a single missile can wreck you by half if not more
Also a quick tip on frigates, sometimes frigate pilots tend to have both mine field and pulsar as their “panic” buttons, so unless you approach a moving ship keep on their side and quickly fly away from their pulsar, wait 10 seconds a go back for your kill.
Thanks for the info. I just bought the Hawk-M myself and found that plasma hail does not have the DPS for T3.
Any advice when it comes to implants? Resist or shield regain, critical damage or projectile speed?
WEll really looks that the recon int is crap and the good choice is the coverops…wich to be honest fits very well my fighting style…problem is that i’m t4 and switching to coverops int would cost 31 millions …yay…thanx for this devs…
Being a skermisher, like Binky said lol, it’s the only way i’m already using this recon int atm…how exiciting…Hope someone found some other strategy lol
Any advice when it comes to implants? Resist or shield regain, critical damage or projectile speed?
I very rarely die to sustained dps. It’s usually mines, missiles and 2k kinetic crits, so I got the reduced explosion and crit damage to hull R1 implant. Seems to be working better (for me anyway). E-barrier also helps. If you are using anything other than lasers, projectile speed is a must I think. Personally, I go with pulse lasers and the extra crit damage implant.
Also, if I had to choose between Orion and laser sword (I get both), I’d go with Orion for dependability reasons.
wath Covert ops can do:
-Others interceptor: good eneough
-Long range frigate: you can rape it
-engirening: nothing, is impossible to kill due the high regen rate
-guard: almost impossible to kill, because the hight tank and mines+pulsar. and if you stay atacking others enemies will kill you or you have to abort.
-comand ship: very hard to kill because the hight shield/hul and speedy.
-gunship: sort easy, they have low shield/hull
-tacckler: medium, he is fast and is anoyng when he cloack.
Well as you can see, the only ship covertops can kill “easily” is snipers and gunships. this means something is wrong with the game balance(maybe will be fixed in the next update)
Well as you can see, the only ship covertops can kill “easily” is snipers and gunships. this means something is wrong with the game balance(maybe will be fixed in the next update)
true. though I do love killing the enemy captian when I get a chance…
-engirening: nothing, is impossible to kill due the high regen rate
It seems I regularly achieve the impossible. My life is complete.
wath Covert ops can do:
-Others interceptor: good eneough
-Long range frigate: you can rape it
-engirening: nothing, is impossible to kill due the high regen rate
-guard: almost impossible to kill, because the hight tank and mines+pulsar. and if you stay atacking others enemies will kill you or you have to abort.
-comand ship: very hard to kill because the hight shield/hul and speedy.
-gunship: sort easy, they have low shield/hull
-tacckler: medium, he is fast and is anoyng when he cloack.
Well as you can see, the only ship covertops can kill “easily” is snipers and gunships. this means something is wrong with the game balance(maybe will be fixed in the next update)
I saw you in-game and you’re pretty good at flying interceptors. I just wanted to added some info that may be useful for other players in T3:
Engineering: Use web and that +105% damage active module, then get closer than 300m and use your arc, pretty much you can bring down any engineering frigates, if not, just use nuke (in T3) or self-destuct when you’re about to die.
Command ship: Just watch out for mines when you’re dogfighting, keep a safe distance.
Guard frigate: Kinda hard to bring one down, but if you have 2 other interceptors going with you, no guard frigate captain can survive for their kamikaze playstyle.