Pilot Archive

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OldEmpireShark wrote:

tier 4 exit mission for smugglers alliance, i cant take down the friggen tier 4 gunboat... no matter what i do, it always hoses me... im using pretty good equipment but i have no help. the only help i do have cant attack it as they are the same faction, corsec and i cant find any other pilots that still actually play...

uggh that is all, just getting frustrated.

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Stay 531- 570 away from the gunboat target weapon #2, which is the weapon on the very BACK of the Imp gunboat (not the bottom), take it out first. then just bump the speed up 1 notch and keep closing in on the gunboat blasting away (continue taking out weapons 3,4,5 and 6 then just let the rest of the damage count off into the chassis points. I do this all day long, dang near every day. Even easier then the ISD....

Had the same problem myself recently, and the only way I managed was getting a s**t hot Master pilot to wing for me and blast the crud out of it.

He was packing 3 4k guns and using weapon overload 3 I believe. And he was in an M22.

Another time, we overloaded with numbers - group of 6 and they swarmed and died while the mission holder sat back and mopped up.

My standard would be the follow at range but if that isn't working your only choice is to strafe the beastie.

You might consider altering the ship you are flying against this thing. I'm a Rebel so I don't know what the options are for Freelancer.

Bring a missile barge. Armored like a tank and shielded to the maximum. Maximum speed passes, dump as many missiles as you can targeting the engines or reactors to stop the thing and then once you can no longer fire, jink like mad, use shield shunt and boost to get out of her range.

One question - You can outrun her right? Otherwise, if it is following you, your done for.

Another tactic I have heard of is the Lure. Have someone grab its attention and have the gunboat follow them. Basically a heavily armored and shielded decoy, then the decoy is determining the flight path. You are then back to the behind and below, kill the #2 turret and blast the thing to oblivion.

You may have to break off and restart several times depending on how much hammering your decoy can take, or when the gunboat decides to turn its attention on you. This is the only way that I know of to get the thing to track so you can use the blindspot short of just taking it on the chin in high speed passes until you disable it.

The other and probably simplest answer is bring friends, lots of friends and just paste the thing.

Learn to break aggo. Jump inside the system. That will break the gunboat's aggro on you and give you a bit of breathing room.

When I dualed a gunboat, I set up a hyperspace jump, attacked attacked around 50% calculation, then jumped out on the chase.

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Ramona_Garcia wrote:

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Saabotage wrote:

<snipped for incorectness>

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Won't work. This is a mission AI gunboat - it will chase you, not continue on its flightpath like the drones in Deep Space or Kessel.

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A few of the Tier 3 and 4 missions had me take down gunboats, too. (Black Epsilon) I would come in quick from low and behind, targetting engines. (There were multiple weapons, too much to take down on one run.) I made my strafe while spiraling a bit, and was lucky to only get dinged a couple times. They do hit hard! Once you aggro them, they are all over the place.

As you make your pass, hit your booster and take evasive action. At least it spreads the damage between your front and back shield, and with a fast motor they were having a hard time hitting me while boosting away. A well timed CtSS3 kept my ship together during each pass. I was running a light mass shield with 1700/1700 that I picked up from my friendly local shipwright. I was digging in to the armor (500 pts. front, none in the rear) on some passes! I had to make 4 runs on the thing to pound the engines out. After that, hang back 550m and take out the rest of the thing at your leisure.

I definitely had to reconfigure my ship a bit to pass the gunboat mission. My ship was a pair of fat blasters with a fast motor and good shield. I keep a couple different builds for my TIE Advanced and pick the components I need before I take off.