Logbook entry

NEW PIRATE INITIATIVE: PVP TACTICS

1. When you enter areas that are high-risk according to the Inara crime blotter (usually including Deciat and any active community goal systems where PVPers will congregate looking for targets), take precautions.
2. Enter Galaxy Map and set a course for another star system immediately after entering a system.
3. Map the Target Next System In Route keybind (Menu/Controls/Ship Controls/) and Hyperspace binds so you can hit it quickly along with your hyperspace key to high wake away.

1. Submit by throttling to 0. It will reduce the cooldown time before you can wake out.
2. Set your shield pips to 2, thrusters to 4 to help you dodge fire till your FSD drive can high wake (Alternatively, if you are in a slow tanky ship do 4 shields 2 thrusters as This will 2.5X your shield strength and help you survive till you can boost away.)
3. Boost constantly in a random direction and continue using lateral thrust up, down, left and right to dodge a portion of incoming fire especially FSD reboot rockets which could knock you back to a cooldown period before your FSD can reboot and attempt an FSD jump.
4. Hit the Plot Next System in Route key to lock onto your high wake destination.
5. When your FSD is ready, aim at your destination system and hit your Hyperspace bind to high wake out.
6. Immediately high wake again if you think they'll pursue your wake.
7. Find the nearest system or carrier and repair if you think you've sustained major shield module or hull damage.
8. Congrats, you survived and now you can do the same thing in the future and get better at it till you're in a position to fight and win!

• The key is flying to be where the enemy ship has the least ability to shoot back and where the enemy ship is as easy as possible to hit with your weapons.
• Range management is the first key.
• Always remember the effective range of your weapons and figure out what your enemy has to stay in a range that disadvantages them.
• Some ships have hardpoints in positions that make their belly a weak spot or at least split their fire in half from certain angles.

• Jousting is a way to move in and out of range so that you deliver alpha strike damage.
• Fire short range weapons like frags and plasmas during a brief window when you pass someone.
• Jousting makes you hard to hit before and after by immediately boosting past them.
• BANK TIMING: Shield cell bank when you are about 2.5 seconds away from passing someone. This gives them the least time to turn around and 3 second charge rails to feedback cascade cancel your bank.
• PRE TURNING: Try to fire your shot on a joust and boost dodge before your opponent does, using the boost rotation speed to turn back towards the target as you pass them to stay able to cancel their bank. If you began charging a rail shot when they were seconds away.
• PRETURNED BANK CANCEL: You might even be able to land the shot to cancel their bank or let go of the charging up shot early since it will likely miss and charge up another shot quickly to coincide with the stabilization of your aim on them as they pass you.

1. Your target is front of you about to boost. Hold boost till right after they boost.
2. Now as they boost, boost after them 1 second delayed and turn in the direction they boosted.
3. You'll be able to follow their boost and target them.
4. They may boost again to evade after they're hit, allowing you to boost after theirs and target them again.

1. Don't give yourself away with weaker weapons before your strongest ones are ready to fire for a full volley by surprise.

• This makes you temporarily able to turn much faster.
• You can turn FA back on before reaching your target so as not to overshoot.
• With gimbled weapons like multicannons you'll be able to maintain shots on target by getting close enough to the target's reticle the whole time.
• If you're using keyboard/mouse, enable Relative Mouse which functions almost like partial flight assist to avoid overturning.

• SYSTEMS: When you are being shot at, you want to have 4 pips in shields to get 2.5X boosted shield strength.
• WEAPONS: 4 weapon pips reduces power and heat generated by shots as well as distributor energy used.
• Don't waste pips on weapons when your weapon pips are already full. Put pips into weapons to refill it or to reduce heat generation, otherwise put those pips into thrust and systems.
• When you are shooting enough to near zero energy in your distributor for weapons, you need to increase weapon pips till it refills.
• THRUST: 4 thrust pips increases the speed of your thrusters and boosts.
• Use aggressive pips when you can get away with it like 4 thrusters 2 weapons to pursue a fleeing foe.
• Don't waste pips on systems when your shields go down. Use thrusters to evade manually instead.

• Use weapon sound and radar flash as a signal to put pips into thrusters instead of systems when enemy aren't firing at you.
• You can safely reduce systems pips to prioritize thrust during a pass to turn about and face your foe.
• Weapon sound and radar flash can't predict hit-scan or nearly hit-scan weapons like rails, lasers, super CG shard cannons, high velocity cannons, etc.

• You can set up pip macros in your keyboard/mouse/hotas drivers or Autohotkey to adjust pips into particular presets by using the reset key followed by a couple directional taps.
• Don't go overboard on macros. VoiceAttack and basic macros are allowed, but fully automating fighting or botting is not. Scripting things beyond hitting nearly simultaneous key presses may violate FDEV EULA. See above under GUIDELINES: DON'T CHEAT.

1. Right click on the row corresponding to the hat of choice such as H4 (The bottom hat switch on the throttle).
2. Choose 4 WAY and BUTTONS. (Fall Back mode will return them to working as distinct joystick inputs for in-game config use).
3. Additional rows appear for each direction of H4.
4. Click each and enter the directional arrow inputs on the keyboard.
5. Click the checkmark to save or the red X to start over till you get them right.
6. Click the disk SAVE icon and click the gear TEST SETUP icon to try the hat switches in the text input box it gives you so you can confirm they work.
7. Try them in game!

• Pewpew: Mostly lasers, typically a couple beams and the rest pulse, to avoid running out of ammo which helps for PVE sessions. Phasing lasers that go through shields are nasty in PVP against low-hull foes.
• Dakka: Mostly overcharged multicannons relying on incendiary to shred shields and 1 smallest multicannon with corrosive engineering to shred hull. Dakka is the easiest to engineer with Todd the Blaster and the easiest to aim and hit for sustained DPS as long as you can maintain time on target within range. This is a good hardpoint build for new PVPers learning how to stay on target at all. You can also include a couple rail guns to get practice at shield cell bank canceling while you can just hold down the multicannon fire during your rail aiming process.
• Frag: Frags are popular for fast ganker builds like Mambas, using lots of gimbaled frag or fixed pacifiers if convergence allows it to dish massive damage at close range. Gimbled frags are a good training wheel step between gimbled multis and fixed plasmas because you learn how to joust and get close range but the aim is more forgiving than plasmas.
• Reverb: The counter to big shield tanks is often to use reverb cascade torps and mines to knock the shield generator right out through the shields. This often relies on missiles to distract them long enough to land the reverb cascades. Torpedo missile boats can shred medium and even large shield tank builds that aren't prepared.
• Plasmarail: The "meta" PVP hardpoint style uses 2-3 plasma accelerators with thermal conduit for heat-based damage boosting plus feedback cascade rails to cancel shield cell banks and superpenetrator rails to module snipe power plants. Plasmas are amongst the hardest weapons to aim, but the reward for mastering them is immense. They do 60% absolute damage which ignores resistances and split the rest 20% thermal 20% kinetic, effectively boosting their damage against most targets.

• Ramming also happens more easily during jousting when you're flying past each other anyways, and plasma and frag ramming is a common strategy to finish foes off quickly by delivering a fatal combination of ram and close range burst damage.
• Practice ramming by aiming your thrust towards the reticle showing where the enemy ship is going to be rather than where it appears to be.
• Practice evading rams by lateraling and reversing and boosting out of the way before it is too late.

• Double banking means triggering 2 cell banks quickly and then firing a heat sink to cool off both at once.
• Hot banking means triggering 1 cell bank, preferably receycling cell specialized, in order to ride out the heat without taking damage and without spending valuable utility slots on heatsinks instead of shield boosters.

• In the shield charging time period, you're vulnerable if they rail gun you with feedback cascade experimentals.
• It will cancel the shield cell bank usage partially or in full based on the size of the ship's banks and the rail gun comparitively.
• As soon as you unlock Todd the Blaster, you should be aware that rails are meta because of shield cancels and start practicing using them even against PVE.
• Most PVP builds should include at least 1 long range feedback cascade rail gun if not more and larger ones against larger shield bank using ships.
• Imperial Hammer powerplay rails are 30% stronger if you land all 3 burst shots and make canceling easier on a per-slot basis if you can afford the power.

• A size 1 feedback cascade rail causes 1 cancel.
• Each additional class 1 adds 1.
• Each size category larger is worth another cancel.
• Thus you can add up all the size classes of rails you've got for a total cancel number.
• Imperial hammers are worth 1.3X as much as a single rail.

• You should always target a subsystem such as power plant or drives when in combat.
• Power plant has  chance of prematurely detonating the enemy ship.
• Drives disabled will render the enemy ship unable to move or FSD jump away.
• Drives are easier to hit when you are pursuing a fleeing enemy presenting their drives to you.

• Seeker missiles and especially Powerplay Li Yong Rui Packhound missiles (Li Yong Rui's powerplay weapon unlock).
• Superpenetrator experimental rail guns. (Short range blaster increases the damage done, long range lets you hit longer shots for more chances to snipe).
• Phasing sequence lasers do NOT damage subsystems, they have penetration value 0. They CAN damage hull through shields though but you'll have to damage the entire hull. This works best against paper thin hulls on shield tanks.

1. You need to pledge to Li Yong Rui for 4 weeks and move 750 tons of preparation cargo from their capital to their prep systems at the end of the 4 weeks.
2. Then when the Thursday Powerplay tick happens you'll gain 750 merits.
3. Once the 4 weeks are up you can buy Packhounds.
4. Get 20 of them or more stashed in module storage ships and defect to your next powerplay module shopping priority.

• Mostly because they're almost impossible to intercept using ECM/Point Defense and because they do great module sniping or special effect delivery damage.
• They make it hard to see an incoming torpedo alert and can trick people.
• And they look like amazing anime missiles!

• When enough damage is dealt to reduce shield generators below 0%, the generator breaks and shields fall and do not come back.
• This is a common tactic used to counter powerful shield tank builds.

• They have a low speed around 250M/s so most ships can outrun them.
• But they can be masked by distractions like packhound missile barrages and people can be baited into running into them or hit when they're not paying attention.
• Even after being hit, many pilots won't pay attention to their shield generator module health until it is too late.