Garbad_the_Weak
01-16-2008, 09:35 AM
Help me out here please. I seem to be falling to the same stupid tactic and its my own fault for not stopping it. The only times I have lost so far have been 1 ganking and the rest via boarding. I need to stop falling for this crap.
I engaged at around 450y and hit up his side for a bit as you can see from the screens. He tried using bar on me at that range but failed to hit with anything. I was landing decent shots at range due to my 2 accuracy rigs. I switched to bar and landed a cut shroud at about 400y when he turned and switched back to round. He then started coming in from around 350y when I hit his nose for some damage and he turned on his side to fire bar again.
Now, this is when I started taking pics. He came in again from about 300y when I hit his nose again. I noticed a mistake in not loading bronze first of all after looking at the screeny, I thought it was loaded. As he kept coming in I realized he was going for the board but I thought I would be able to keep at a decent enough speed to be ok.
After pic 2, he dropped behind me, I turned to get another shot on him dropping his structure pretty low but he was able to turn and land a broadside of bar with deter pursuit on. This slowed me down to about 5-6 knots which he then took advantage of by nudging me from the side and eventually getting in front. He boarded me 2 waves to 1. I killed two waves and died. His swashbuckling was crap I probably should have won but I made a lot of mistakes myself. Im still relatively new to swashbuckling pvp.
So... please if you have time help me stop losing like this. I think I could have avoided it if you look at pic 1 when he first started coming in closer by changing directions south after firing my broadside to get the wind at a 90 degree angle rather then behind me and increase my speed. Even if I did do this, how would I prevent deter pursuit plus from allowing him to get in closer and nudge my ship to a slow speed for board?
I know its not a lot to go by as its only 2 pics but look at them and tell me what you can see wrong. I dont want to lose like this again
http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/1976/024rz3.pngThanks for your PM. I thought it might be helpful to people if I posted this publicly. First, let's step back and look at the overall scene before we look at specifics.
The first thing is ship differences. Comparing your ship to his, a MC cutter has excellent overall speed and agility. It has solid toughness and DPS for its level. In this fight, the MC has two main -- it has much lower turning deceleration (so although the xebec can turn as quickly as you do, you lose less speed per turn meaning you can sustain high speed maneuvers longer than he can) and a slight range and dps/armor advantage. In addition, because most xebecs use rig catharpins and you were using speed rigs, you are probably faster downwind.
However, the Sleek Xebec is specifically built to kill cutters and similar ships. It has better speed at a close haul and a 90 as well as comparable agility (for the first turn or two). It also has a larger crew for boarding. Finally, it has more sails and base DR, so it can shake off your damage in the short run to close on you.
To win, the xebec wants to absorb the slight punishment you can dish out, close to point blank range and quickly cripple and board. He wants a quick fight, and if things go badly for him he will turn into a close haul to escape. Meanwhile, you want to keep the fight at medium to long range to bring your DPS advantage into play while preventing the xebec from overtaking you (by forcing it to turn a lot and to sail downwind). If things get ugly for you, running at a 180 or 135 is probably best (depending on what skills the rat uses). In this matchup, I give the nod to the xebec.
Next, skills. As a rat, he has a superior 1v1 skillset, specifically for this kind of fight. Rats have several relevant skills, including identify weakness (keep you in an instance without landing a shot), run them down (OS and instance unremovable ranged snare), cut shroud, plague ship, and deter pursuit. They have a variety of other skills that give them exceptional DPS and agility. This means that although your ship on paper has a DPS advantage, in reality the rat has the DPS advantage. As a privateer, your advantages include Unpredictability damage (which should give you better spike damage, which combined with good tactics can counter their DPS lead), terrorize (which I note you don't have on your bar -- fix that ASAP), and thats about it. At this low level, you haven't yet had time to buy your good skills (rats get their quality skills earlier) and he would be better regardless, and he had a better ship. So its an uphill fight, but you no doubt knew that when you engaged.
Given all that, your goals should be to keep him at a long range, probably between 300 to 450 yards and peck away at him. This favors you both because your accuracy mods, your higher gun weight, and your armor. To maximize your spike damage, you need to switch sides regularly (bringing both decks into play, which favors fight damage and not high dps/reload). This further helps you because he has to either let you control position or waste a lot of his speed turning, which again favors you.
You also cannot trade bar, as he has more sails and has better snares. Bronze is not needed. If you can afford it, great, but its not required. I would rely on round, and realize if he wants to get away he probably can. Just be ready to cut him if it comes to that. Speaking of cut shroud, IMO you used it wrong. Cut shroud is best used to prevent people from running or as a short term snare to help you get where you want to be. The rat showed a good example of the latter in this fight, and the former is pretty clear -- save your cut until he turns to run away in earnest, then cut him. But until you need it, don't waste it. A random cut shroud does almost nothing.
So those are your keys: range, turning, and round the hell out of him. Don't let him close in, and don't let him get you into a bar fight.
Next, the specifics. I do not know the tactical situation, so I cannot advise. If he was upwind of you, both of you have an easier time running away, while if you were upwind of him you should probably be able to force the fight. TBH, I am not sure which of those you would prefer given you were overmatched and TBH, given the type of ships its not a huge issue.
When you got at close range and knew he would try to board, you should have countered with a terrorize + grape volley. Grape and **** is devastatingly easy to cripple a ship, and even if you have no plan of volleying killing his DPS and acceleration only help you. Shearing away a lot of his crew could make him reconsider the board and break off (good for you) and/or maybe even set you up for a counter board. About the best defense you have to boarding is blowing up his crew and boarding him instead, which is why you don't want to be at under 150 yards to start with. Once he was under 100 yards and landed that deter, not much you can do. That's partly just the nature of rats -- they are designed to have superior 1v1 damage, debuffs, and speed.
Your idea captures the basic point -- keep popping him in the nose as you dance back, controlling range. Not too close, to endanger yourself with a board, yet not too far so that he either runs away or you do too little DPS to finish him.
Inside the boarding itself, I again don't have the information to make specific suggestions. Assuming you were dirty, I would have gone in with the goal to blow up his crew in the first few seconds of the fight. I would toggle offense on, toss a grenade, and pray. With luck and some good hits, you could clear a lot of his crew in a few seconds, which would make him call his second. At that point, call a spike on the captain and hope for the best, and be ready to sprint away and pray. With only 1 wave, its pretty hard to do anything, but it sounds like you held your own anyhow. But AC is relatively unimportant -- its pretty rare to have a close boarding action. Its almost always heavily stacked to one side (one guy has 7 waves and even if he loses no problem and the other guy has 1 wave and is playing for his life). The main things in AC are to prepare by blowing up his crew before boarding as much as you can and then to either weather the flash powder and spike the captain or spike the crew as the florentine guy tries to tank. Pretty easy stuff tbh.
The mistakes I see you made include these: not using terrorize, wasting your cut, relying on speed to prevent boarding rather than range, and being indecisive about your strategy. On the plus side, you had good equipment and were aware of what the opponent was doing and reacted reasonably well. I know you only got the game a week ago and are relatively new to pvp, but you did well overall. Just get a bit more practice and you will learn to deal with xebecs, as you will get plenty of practice. :yar:
Hope this helps.
I engaged at around 450y and hit up his side for a bit as you can see from the screens. He tried using bar on me at that range but failed to hit with anything. I was landing decent shots at range due to my 2 accuracy rigs. I switched to bar and landed a cut shroud at about 400y when he turned and switched back to round. He then started coming in from around 350y when I hit his nose for some damage and he turned on his side to fire bar again.
Now, this is when I started taking pics. He came in again from about 300y when I hit his nose again. I noticed a mistake in not loading bronze first of all after looking at the screeny, I thought it was loaded. As he kept coming in I realized he was going for the board but I thought I would be able to keep at a decent enough speed to be ok.
After pic 2, he dropped behind me, I turned to get another shot on him dropping his structure pretty low but he was able to turn and land a broadside of bar with deter pursuit on. This slowed me down to about 5-6 knots which he then took advantage of by nudging me from the side and eventually getting in front. He boarded me 2 waves to 1. I killed two waves and died. His swashbuckling was crap I probably should have won but I made a lot of mistakes myself. Im still relatively new to swashbuckling pvp.
So... please if you have time help me stop losing like this. I think I could have avoided it if you look at pic 1 when he first started coming in closer by changing directions south after firing my broadside to get the wind at a 90 degree angle rather then behind me and increase my speed. Even if I did do this, how would I prevent deter pursuit plus from allowing him to get in closer and nudge my ship to a slow speed for board?
I know its not a lot to go by as its only 2 pics but look at them and tell me what you can see wrong. I dont want to lose like this again
http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/1976/024rz3.pngThanks for your PM. I thought it might be helpful to people if I posted this publicly. First, let's step back and look at the overall scene before we look at specifics.
The first thing is ship differences. Comparing your ship to his, a MC cutter has excellent overall speed and agility. It has solid toughness and DPS for its level. In this fight, the MC has two main -- it has much lower turning deceleration (so although the xebec can turn as quickly as you do, you lose less speed per turn meaning you can sustain high speed maneuvers longer than he can) and a slight range and dps/armor advantage. In addition, because most xebecs use rig catharpins and you were using speed rigs, you are probably faster downwind.
However, the Sleek Xebec is specifically built to kill cutters and similar ships. It has better speed at a close haul and a 90 as well as comparable agility (for the first turn or two). It also has a larger crew for boarding. Finally, it has more sails and base DR, so it can shake off your damage in the short run to close on you.
To win, the xebec wants to absorb the slight punishment you can dish out, close to point blank range and quickly cripple and board. He wants a quick fight, and if things go badly for him he will turn into a close haul to escape. Meanwhile, you want to keep the fight at medium to long range to bring your DPS advantage into play while preventing the xebec from overtaking you (by forcing it to turn a lot and to sail downwind). If things get ugly for you, running at a 180 or 135 is probably best (depending on what skills the rat uses). In this matchup, I give the nod to the xebec.
Next, skills. As a rat, he has a superior 1v1 skillset, specifically for this kind of fight. Rats have several relevant skills, including identify weakness (keep you in an instance without landing a shot), run them down (OS and instance unremovable ranged snare), cut shroud, plague ship, and deter pursuit. They have a variety of other skills that give them exceptional DPS and agility. This means that although your ship on paper has a DPS advantage, in reality the rat has the DPS advantage. As a privateer, your advantages include Unpredictability damage (which should give you better spike damage, which combined with good tactics can counter their DPS lead), terrorize (which I note you don't have on your bar -- fix that ASAP), and thats about it. At this low level, you haven't yet had time to buy your good skills (rats get their quality skills earlier) and he would be better regardless, and he had a better ship. So its an uphill fight, but you no doubt knew that when you engaged.
Given all that, your goals should be to keep him at a long range, probably between 300 to 450 yards and peck away at him. This favors you both because your accuracy mods, your higher gun weight, and your armor. To maximize your spike damage, you need to switch sides regularly (bringing both decks into play, which favors fight damage and not high dps/reload). This further helps you because he has to either let you control position or waste a lot of his speed turning, which again favors you.
You also cannot trade bar, as he has more sails and has better snares. Bronze is not needed. If you can afford it, great, but its not required. I would rely on round, and realize if he wants to get away he probably can. Just be ready to cut him if it comes to that. Speaking of cut shroud, IMO you used it wrong. Cut shroud is best used to prevent people from running or as a short term snare to help you get where you want to be. The rat showed a good example of the latter in this fight, and the former is pretty clear -- save your cut until he turns to run away in earnest, then cut him. But until you need it, don't waste it. A random cut shroud does almost nothing.
So those are your keys: range, turning, and round the hell out of him. Don't let him close in, and don't let him get you into a bar fight.
Next, the specifics. I do not know the tactical situation, so I cannot advise. If he was upwind of you, both of you have an easier time running away, while if you were upwind of him you should probably be able to force the fight. TBH, I am not sure which of those you would prefer given you were overmatched and TBH, given the type of ships its not a huge issue.
When you got at close range and knew he would try to board, you should have countered with a terrorize + grape volley. Grape and **** is devastatingly easy to cripple a ship, and even if you have no plan of volleying killing his DPS and acceleration only help you. Shearing away a lot of his crew could make him reconsider the board and break off (good for you) and/or maybe even set you up for a counter board. About the best defense you have to boarding is blowing up his crew and boarding him instead, which is why you don't want to be at under 150 yards to start with. Once he was under 100 yards and landed that deter, not much you can do. That's partly just the nature of rats -- they are designed to have superior 1v1 damage, debuffs, and speed.
Your idea captures the basic point -- keep popping him in the nose as you dance back, controlling range. Not too close, to endanger yourself with a board, yet not too far so that he either runs away or you do too little DPS to finish him.
Inside the boarding itself, I again don't have the information to make specific suggestions. Assuming you were dirty, I would have gone in with the goal to blow up his crew in the first few seconds of the fight. I would toggle offense on, toss a grenade, and pray. With luck and some good hits, you could clear a lot of his crew in a few seconds, which would make him call his second. At that point, call a spike on the captain and hope for the best, and be ready to sprint away and pray. With only 1 wave, its pretty hard to do anything, but it sounds like you held your own anyhow. But AC is relatively unimportant -- its pretty rare to have a close boarding action. Its almost always heavily stacked to one side (one guy has 7 waves and even if he loses no problem and the other guy has 1 wave and is playing for his life). The main things in AC are to prepare by blowing up his crew before boarding as much as you can and then to either weather the flash powder and spike the captain or spike the crew as the florentine guy tries to tank. Pretty easy stuff tbh.
The mistakes I see you made include these: not using terrorize, wasting your cut, relying on speed to prevent boarding rather than range, and being indecisive about your strategy. On the plus side, you had good equipment and were aware of what the opponent was doing and reacted reasonably well. I know you only got the game a week ago and are relatively new to pvp, but you did well overall. Just get a bit more practice and you will learn to deal with xebecs, as you will get plenty of practice. :yar:
Hope this helps.