So let's finally get down to it. Picking a fight is a fairly simple adventure, but picking one you'll always win is another story. It's now time to go over a few of the key points of what to look at to pick that fight.
Bonuses
One thing to try to always keep in your mind when picking a fight is what bonuses the other ship is using. Each ship has some sort of bonus that is determined by the level of the ship's skill. Depending on the age of the pilot, and their skills try to work out of they have level 4 or 5. This is not as obvious with frigates, but with Tech 2, and anything above cruisers the average is most likely level 4. Some ships have a straight role bonus that doesn't multiply at all. The main thing to watch out for with the bonuses are the turret damage bonuses, and any tank bonus. The reason being is that with turret damage bonuses you need to be able to know exactly what type of turret the ship gives a bonus to, and know how that turret type works. Not being keen to this can easily cause you to put your ship in the opponent's optimal, and far away from their falloff. These are things you want to exploit.
Thinking Ahead
With a simple example I'm going to show you the thought process that will become natural to you after time. The Condor has a 10% race bonus for Light Missiles and Rocket Kinetic damage. Right off the bat you know it can have up to 50% increased damage from scourge missiles. To add, it has a role bonus of 80% reduction of activation cost of propulsion jamming systems. The slot layout is 4 Highs, 4 Mediums, and 2 Lows. An obvious Shield tank if it has one, and with a prop mod only leaves 3 slots. Now if it has light missiles, it's going to do a significant amount of damage, but at the risk of reduced available CPU; thus hurting it's tank. If it has a scram and/or web, we know that the tank is almost non-existant with only 2 slots left.
Make a Mental Note of the Fit
If you open up Pyfa, and make a shield tanking Condor, with Light Missile launchers, an adaptive invul, ballistic control units, micro warp, and warp scrambler, you'll notice that there isn't much room for anything else. These are the things to watch out for. It's as simple as making an observation that the ship is using light missiles, and a point to know that it's fit is weak. It's thinking like this that helps pick your fights. Of a course of time fit as many ships as you can to learn as much as possible about fitting, and eventually you'll be able to do it without a fitting tool. Learn what modules can break a fit, and what modules make the fit work. Also, make the fit as optimized as possible so that you know it's limitations. There is still much more to learn on top of this, but this is in fact a key part of solo PvP.
I know this article is fairly vague in some points, but there is so much information to share to open up the "whole can of worms". Eventually I will post some optimized fits, and various fitting tricks, and golden rules to help determine a fit by only seeing a single module.
Have fun, and fly dangerously! o7
No comments:
Post a Comment