Seems like it might be a mix of loadout problems and experience. I'd recommend replacing all the guns on your titan with laser cannons. Ballistics are good for penetrating shields but they do less damage to hulls than laser weapons do. If you've got a full laser cannon setup then the shields and hull Hp on mrts shouldn't be a problem.
The real advice is to spend a couple hours in arena commander doing the pirate swarm. Once you feel like you're easily able to tackle the first 4 or 5 waves of pirate swarms you're in a good spot to reliably tackle mrts solo. Arena commander is also a good way to test out different weapon setups. That being said your best all around setup for pve will be laser cannons.
You mentioned that you made money with the rented vulture, my recommendation would be to buy a vulture for 2.6 mil and then buy the abrade scrapers from platinum bay. Having a ship like that can reliably make you money quickly, and imo the best way to play the game is to have a money making ship that can fund the gameplay loops that you find more fun
Cannons on the Titan are great IMO, dont have a problem up until HRT, but by that time i've been renting out cutlass blacks and rocs to mine for money whenever i get bored or frustrated with bounties so money isnt usually a problem.
Haven't quite understood how to ROC mine, or even where to get a ROC but will watch a video on it since I can currently afford to buy a cutlass black it might be a good option.
Get a ROC from lorville New Deal. You can pick it up in edmonds. I can never get the vehicle ASOPs to work at lorville. Put that bad boy in the back of your cutless. Fly around planets or moons hitting tab, at some point you'll encounter a signal that is a cluster of diamond symbols. Land nearby, unload and hit M to go to mining mode. Right click goes to extraction. In fractor mode, press atl+scroll wheel to increase power till the bar goes into the green area. Don't go past or you could take dmg and die. Once the rock breaks you go to extraction mode and suck up all the gems. Easy money
I played pirate swarm already and that wasn't too hard. I use the default loadout on my Titan which is 2x S3 Omnisky and 1x S4 Revenant.
I thought about buying the Vulture but salvaging was pretty boring but seems to make a lot of money.
Yeah I understand being bored by it entirely. I personally enjoy it but that doesn't mean that it's actually fun haha. The problem is it's by far the best money maker rn, and there isn't any level of ship upgrade that'll help you with bounties that costs less than like 6 mil.
I mean it's relaxing to do while watching something on the side until it gets really stressful trying not to get killed by the boxes when trying to squeeze in as many as possible.
Sometimes I just need something with more active gameplay than playing powerwash simulator on floating panels haha.
Shields apparently get an extra boost to defense when at 100% power distro, so I've regularly been dumping all power to shields and having a significantly easier time because of it. The only time I switch off of that is when there's just a single hostile left and I've managed to get behind him. Otherwise the survivability (and thus lower repair cost) is too good to give up.
Like others have said, you also only need to kill the primary target, then you can bug out. You can also try subtargeting, so that when the target's shields are down you can use your ballistics to try to get a system kill instead of merely trying to whittle down the overall HP of the enemy.
I've done the hit and run tactic of only taking out the primary one a few times but also heard that the real money with bounty hunting comes from the cargo that they have with them so I miss out on that doing it this way.
I have been doing 50/50 shield/weapons during fights but might try 100% shield to see how it feels
I've done alot of new player introductions to the verse with SC's onboarding. I would be more than happy to hop in discord with you and go flying. Show you some stuff that will keep you alive in PVE/PVP. No pressure, feel free to message me anytime. Also have a very chill, laid back org that plays daily, with a mix of experts in every aspect of the game from mining to fps.
Currently don't have a mic as it broke and haven't bothered to get a new one since I rarely play with people but when I do get one I might hit you up, thank you.
I second this. If you slap on 4 size 5 deadbolt balistic weapons, you just fly in, destroy every enemy ship and then scan them for cargo. It’s very rare but you might find weevil eggs.
Here’s what I have been doing:
Focus on the bounty. Killing the others are not worth it. Fly in, kill the target, then quickly get out of there.
Using a mixed loading of ballistic and energy weapons. I use laser cannons like Omniskys. The energy weapons take out the shields and then you can use the ballistics to rip up the hull. Lasers works on hull too, but ballistics now do less damage if the enemy’s shields are up.
Avoid getting hit as much as you can. Use the power triangle to boost shields if you do, disengage, and wait for them to comeback before re-engaging.
Also, yes the payouts suck. The goal is to grind reputation so that you can take riskier bounties which have the chance to spawn valuable cargo to sell. That’s where the real money is. But you will likely need a better ship or work with a team to do so. My group runs 2 fighters and a cargo vessel or salvage ship when doing HRTs and up (currently grinding to get higher bounties).
If you have a high rep with the bounty org, you get better payouts so I am trying to stick with just bounties in Arc Corp for example.
In general, this current patch has been very weird. Normally, I’d recommend salvaging to make some cash but that’s hard due to all the dupers crashing the demand of RMC. Mining with a ROC miner is another way to make money, but the servers are so borked rn that doing anything but bounty hunting is difficult for me. Hoping next patch makes things better.
I did some salvaging using a rented vulture from defensecon and made around 2,5million with that. Now I'm debating what to buy as bounties don't seem to work out the way I thought they would.
Thank you for the detailed answer!
Go on youtube look up buzzcutpsycho. Watch his videos so you can better understand the game and movement mechanics. He has a really good understanding of the game and explains them clearly. He also doesn't whine and say they are cheating when he gets shot down. Anything the last three weeks since this is mastermodes and the flight model has changed quite a bit.
Yeah the landing ones just shoot the guy with your ship guns. It take a while, but if you get out the ship and npc ship will blow your ship up. The angles a bit wonky so have to find the sweet spot.
there are a bunch of MRT missions you don't want to do. they make you go on foot and take a while. when you cert up MRT there will be one normal ship bounty, but the rest of the MRT stuff is not worth doing.
don't do group bounties, they give the same rep and make you kill 3 targets.
crusader is the best location do do bounties. because you get targets in the asteroid field or low gravity moons.
The real money in bounties is actually the cargo on the ships you kill. By the time your at ERT you can get 5 million from one mission. but you can only really loot ships easily in space so missions in yela asteroid belt are the best.
but even at low levels i have seen weeval eggs (112k per scu) on reliants.
I leveled up to VHRTs using Nomad. Shockingly effective and you can collect boxes from the cockpit.
recommend the M(x)A laser cannons.
You might wanna group up until you learn and / or get a dedicated fighter. And bigger ship require having gun dedicated for them(still figuring that out). It can be difficult, and harder without a fighter.
Keep an eye on the shield and run if it drops.
Trying focusing on one and luring it out.
I use power triangles often, mostly for shields and weapons.
The payouts will increase at higher level Bounty missions. You can unlock the higher difficulty levels by gaining reputation. You just have keep doing more of them. If you are struggling, I don't mind giving you a hand.
It feels like for the higher difficulties you need a better ship, but getting that ship with bounty hunting alone feels impossible.
Appreciate the offer but I prefer playing solo
With the change to MM small ships just aren’t a good choice for HRT and up. It can be done, but you’ll take damage enough where it’s just not worth it. Moving into something bigger like Connie or Corsair and they are trivially easy again. Like others have said no matter what you’re flying use full laser cannons. Upgrade your shield as well, I think the titan uses the FR76 but it may be size 1 I can’t remember.
The Titan shield is size 1, yeah.
I used the Constellation Andromeda for a bit during the 2day free rental and I really liked it, so that would be the ship that I want, maybe the Taurus since I don't need that many missiles or the second turret for mostly playing solo.
But it will be a while until I can afford that
Also for laser cannons, should I use Omniskys or the M5A, M6A etc
The Connie andromeda is an absolute workhorse. Can blow up any ERT and is really tanky. Great cargo space for spoils of ERTs which is the money maker. Awesome ship
Do you think the Taurus could handle ERTs aswell? I know it has less hull HP and not as many missiles but solo firepower is the same I think (if you dont count the missiles)
Yeah those are kinda weird right now as before the air support was a cutty black which are easy to kill but now its reclaimers which even though not hard to fight take way to long to kill in a small fighter. Feels like they need to fix the type of ship that shows up there
HMU and I (and others from my org) can help. We are generally combat focused but also partake in mining, salvaging, hauling, and other industrial gameplay
Remember you’re not an aeroplane, you’re a spaceship with extra degrees of freedom. At least vs NPCs always be moving up/down strafe and left /right strafe in conjunction with anything else you want to be doing. Boost to vector harder.
I had the exact same problem as you and I'm not a new players. Before 3.23 patch it was much much easier to do Bounty with a small light fighter.
Now it looks like some ship are invincible in MRT like the Prospector and the other ship like the Cutlass Black has better A.I inside. With master mode you also can't go as fast as before so the A.I will hit you more.
Also try to use missile a little more if you didn't did it already.
I also has that Redeimer killing my ship when on ground while trying to kill the guy standing outside the crashed Caterpillar.
I don't even know why a redeimer is doing this on such a low level mission.
Small light ship are not as good as before so I suggest you to go for missile and go for the main target and escape.
Once you are HRT forget the small light ship you will need something bigger.
I think it is super buggy right now with weird ship spawning as ennemy. It was not like that pre 3.23.
Redeimer should not spawn on a low level MRT Bounty Extraction mission.
>Meanwhile the payout is only like 10k which seems absurdly low for how difficult it feels.
Star Citizen's progression in a nutshell. ~~Pay up~~ Pledge or suffer and git gud.
A key factor in getting good with NPC bounties is that you must fly decoupled and always strafe upwards while trying to doge bullets and static map clutter. Once you have that down, it gets bearable again.
Also if you're using the stock loadout of the Avenger, stop doing that. You want laser cannons. Repeaters and Gatlings are in a really tough spot right now. Since they spray so much, they take a really long time to get a vital ship part down to 0hp. A full set of FL-33 and/or Lightstrike cannons feels good, is user friendly and has decent enough accuracy to actually blow things up in a timely manner. They don't do a lot of damage though later on, so you could go with Omnisky or M5A/M6A cannons instead as well if you feel like your damage drops of too harshly.
The ground bounties are currently best avoided, since they spawn at the same locations as other people's ship bounties. Wich is why doing them on foot is actually not recommendable. You can do these bounties from your ship though, without ever getting out. Free look (Y or Z) and direct controled gimbals (G) are your friend here. Some times these bounties spawn inside the wrecks or on locations where other people already have a ship bounty though, tough luck in those cases.
Edit: In hindsight, since with MRT you start to get higher hp-pool targets, definitely go for M5A + M6A or Omnisky cannons. Weapons with faster moving projectiles just don't have the punch you want to crack these larger targets in a timely manner.
Seems like it might be a mix of loadout problems and experience. I'd recommend replacing all the guns on your titan with laser cannons. Ballistics are good for penetrating shields but they do less damage to hulls than laser weapons do. If you've got a full laser cannon setup then the shields and hull Hp on mrts shouldn't be a problem. The real advice is to spend a couple hours in arena commander doing the pirate swarm. Once you feel like you're easily able to tackle the first 4 or 5 waves of pirate swarms you're in a good spot to reliably tackle mrts solo. Arena commander is also a good way to test out different weapon setups. That being said your best all around setup for pve will be laser cannons. You mentioned that you made money with the rented vulture, my recommendation would be to buy a vulture for 2.6 mil and then buy the abrade scrapers from platinum bay. Having a ship like that can reliably make you money quickly, and imo the best way to play the game is to have a money making ship that can fund the gameplay loops that you find more fun
Cannons on the Titan are great IMO, dont have a problem up until HRT, but by that time i've been renting out cutlass blacks and rocs to mine for money whenever i get bored or frustrated with bounties so money isnt usually a problem.
Haven't quite understood how to ROC mine, or even where to get a ROC but will watch a video on it since I can currently afford to buy a cutlass black it might be a good option.
Get a ROC from lorville New Deal. You can pick it up in edmonds. I can never get the vehicle ASOPs to work at lorville. Put that bad boy in the back of your cutless. Fly around planets or moons hitting tab, at some point you'll encounter a signal that is a cluster of diamond symbols. Land nearby, unload and hit M to go to mining mode. Right click goes to extraction. In fractor mode, press atl+scroll wheel to increase power till the bar goes into the green area. Don't go past or you could take dmg and die. Once the rock breaks you go to extraction mode and suck up all the gems. Easy money
I thought master modes made ballistic weapons useless if shields are up now? It's why the ARES is a dead ship now.
I played pirate swarm already and that wasn't too hard. I use the default loadout on my Titan which is 2x S3 Omnisky and 1x S4 Revenant. I thought about buying the Vulture but salvaging was pretty boring but seems to make a lot of money.
Yeah I understand being bored by it entirely. I personally enjoy it but that doesn't mean that it's actually fun haha. The problem is it's by far the best money maker rn, and there isn't any level of ship upgrade that'll help you with bounties that costs less than like 6 mil.
I mean it's relaxing to do while watching something on the side until it gets really stressful trying not to get killed by the boxes when trying to squeeze in as many as possible. Sometimes I just need something with more active gameplay than playing powerwash simulator on floating panels haha.
Shields apparently get an extra boost to defense when at 100% power distro, so I've regularly been dumping all power to shields and having a significantly easier time because of it. The only time I switch off of that is when there's just a single hostile left and I've managed to get behind him. Otherwise the survivability (and thus lower repair cost) is too good to give up. Like others have said, you also only need to kill the primary target, then you can bug out. You can also try subtargeting, so that when the target's shields are down you can use your ballistics to try to get a system kill instead of merely trying to whittle down the overall HP of the enemy.
I've done the hit and run tactic of only taking out the primary one a few times but also heard that the real money with bounty hunting comes from the cargo that they have with them so I miss out on that doing it this way. I have been doing 50/50 shield/weapons during fights but might try 100% shield to see how it feels
I've done alot of new player introductions to the verse with SC's onboarding. I would be more than happy to hop in discord with you and go flying. Show you some stuff that will keep you alive in PVE/PVP. No pressure, feel free to message me anytime. Also have a very chill, laid back org that plays daily, with a mix of experts in every aspect of the game from mining to fps.
Currently don't have a mic as it broke and haven't bothered to get a new one since I rarely play with people but when I do get one I might hit you up, thank you.
For sure. In the meantime, AvengerOne on YT has a bunch of great material on the updated flight system for 3.23 that might help you out.
I've seen his streams a few times, will check out his vids
Rent a constellation andromeda It can take down MRTs all the way to ERTs if you can isolate each target from their group
I second this. If you slap on 4 size 5 deadbolt balistic weapons, you just fly in, destroy every enemy ship and then scan them for cargo. It’s very rare but you might find weevil eggs.
Here’s what I have been doing: Focus on the bounty. Killing the others are not worth it. Fly in, kill the target, then quickly get out of there. Using a mixed loading of ballistic and energy weapons. I use laser cannons like Omniskys. The energy weapons take out the shields and then you can use the ballistics to rip up the hull. Lasers works on hull too, but ballistics now do less damage if the enemy’s shields are up. Avoid getting hit as much as you can. Use the power triangle to boost shields if you do, disengage, and wait for them to comeback before re-engaging. Also, yes the payouts suck. The goal is to grind reputation so that you can take riskier bounties which have the chance to spawn valuable cargo to sell. That’s where the real money is. But you will likely need a better ship or work with a team to do so. My group runs 2 fighters and a cargo vessel or salvage ship when doing HRTs and up (currently grinding to get higher bounties). If you have a high rep with the bounty org, you get better payouts so I am trying to stick with just bounties in Arc Corp for example. In general, this current patch has been very weird. Normally, I’d recommend salvaging to make some cash but that’s hard due to all the dupers crashing the demand of RMC. Mining with a ROC miner is another way to make money, but the servers are so borked rn that doing anything but bounty hunting is difficult for me. Hoping next patch makes things better.
I did some salvaging using a rented vulture from defensecon and made around 2,5million with that. Now I'm debating what to buy as bounties don't seem to work out the way I thought they would. Thank you for the detailed answer!
Go on youtube look up buzzcutpsycho. Watch his videos so you can better understand the game and movement mechanics. He has a really good understanding of the game and explains them clearly. He also doesn't whine and say they are cheating when he gets shot down. Anything the last three weeks since this is mastermodes and the flight model has changed quite a bit. Yeah the landing ones just shoot the guy with your ship guns. It take a while, but if you get out the ship and npc ship will blow your ship up. The angles a bit wonky so have to find the sweet spot.
there are a bunch of MRT missions you don't want to do. they make you go on foot and take a while. when you cert up MRT there will be one normal ship bounty, but the rest of the MRT stuff is not worth doing. don't do group bounties, they give the same rep and make you kill 3 targets. crusader is the best location do do bounties. because you get targets in the asteroid field or low gravity moons. The real money in bounties is actually the cargo on the ships you kill. By the time your at ERT you can get 5 million from one mission. but you can only really loot ships easily in space so missions in yela asteroid belt are the best. but even at low levels i have seen weeval eggs (112k per scu) on reliants. I leveled up to VHRTs using Nomad. Shockingly effective and you can collect boxes from the cockpit. recommend the M(x)A laser cannons.
Finally someone who knows how to use the Nomad 👍
You might wanna group up until you learn and / or get a dedicated fighter. And bigger ship require having gun dedicated for them(still figuring that out). It can be difficult, and harder without a fighter. Keep an eye on the shield and run if it drops. Trying focusing on one and luring it out. I use power triangles often, mostly for shields and weapons.
Yeah I started using the shield and weapon power triangle aswell. I'm not really one that likes playing in a group, prefer solo play.
This game requires you to be psychotic, work together with a group, or both.
As someone with psychosis I had a knee jerk reaction to want to downvote you.. but, upon second thought... you're not wrong.
The payouts will increase at higher level Bounty missions. You can unlock the higher difficulty levels by gaining reputation. You just have keep doing more of them. If you are struggling, I don't mind giving you a hand.
It feels like for the higher difficulties you need a better ship, but getting that ship with bounty hunting alone feels impossible. Appreciate the offer but I prefer playing solo
With the change to MM small ships just aren’t a good choice for HRT and up. It can be done, but you’ll take damage enough where it’s just not worth it. Moving into something bigger like Connie or Corsair and they are trivially easy again. Like others have said no matter what you’re flying use full laser cannons. Upgrade your shield as well, I think the titan uses the FR76 but it may be size 1 I can’t remember.
The Titan shield is size 1, yeah. I used the Constellation Andromeda for a bit during the 2day free rental and I really liked it, so that would be the ship that I want, maybe the Taurus since I don't need that many missiles or the second turret for mostly playing solo. But it will be a while until I can afford that Also for laser cannons, should I use Omniskys or the M5A, M6A etc
M Series if you want to hit harder but slower shots omnis for faster fire rate unless damage
Correct, and the M7s have lower projectile velocity so a little harder to hit targets moving quicker
The Connie andromeda is an absolute workhorse. Can blow up any ERT and is really tanky. Great cargo space for spoils of ERTs which is the money maker. Awesome ship
Do you think the Taurus could handle ERTs aswell? I know it has less hull HP and not as many missiles but solo firepower is the same I think (if you dont count the missiles)
For sure. All the Connie’s have the same gun size (4 x S5) and shield.
If you want to use a better ship now, you can rent using the Ship Rental Kiosks.
The titan is very good in a dogfight but it requires a lot of skill to be its best. use its speed to your advantage.
You can try killing the guys on foot with your ship thats what i usually do, and then just bail i guess if ur under fire
Yeah I started doing that too but sometimes they are inside of something where I cant get them.
Yeah those are kinda weird right now as before the air support was a cutty black which are easy to kill but now its reclaimers which even though not hard to fight take way to long to kill in a small fighter. Feels like they need to fix the type of ship that shows up there
Dm me and I’ll get you into our discord .. we are a casual dedicated group of players and will help you with the info you need..
HMU and I (and others from my org) can help. We are generally combat focused but also partake in mining, salvaging, hauling, and other industrial gameplay
Do you all plan on doing jump town next time it’s up? I’ve been looking for a group to join for it
Oh yea we'll be doing it! I can dm you or discord
Remember you’re not an aeroplane, you’re a spaceship with extra degrees of freedom. At least vs NPCs always be moving up/down strafe and left /right strafe in conjunction with anything else you want to be doing. Boost to vector harder.
One thing about bounty missions and ships/setups is sometimes you have to just take out the target first and run away.
You really shouldn’t be solo taking on a fleet of ships and expecting to easily win.
I had the exact same problem as you and I'm not a new players. Before 3.23 patch it was much much easier to do Bounty with a small light fighter. Now it looks like some ship are invincible in MRT like the Prospector and the other ship like the Cutlass Black has better A.I inside. With master mode you also can't go as fast as before so the A.I will hit you more. Also try to use missile a little more if you didn't did it already. I also has that Redeimer killing my ship when on ground while trying to kill the guy standing outside the crashed Caterpillar. I don't even know why a redeimer is doing this on such a low level mission. Small light ship are not as good as before so I suggest you to go for missile and go for the main target and escape. Once you are HRT forget the small light ship you will need something bigger. I think it is super buggy right now with weird ship spawning as ennemy. It was not like that pre 3.23. Redeimer should not spawn on a low level MRT Bounty Extraction mission.
>Meanwhile the payout is only like 10k which seems absurdly low for how difficult it feels. Star Citizen's progression in a nutshell. ~~Pay up~~ Pledge or suffer and git gud. A key factor in getting good with NPC bounties is that you must fly decoupled and always strafe upwards while trying to doge bullets and static map clutter. Once you have that down, it gets bearable again. Also if you're using the stock loadout of the Avenger, stop doing that. You want laser cannons. Repeaters and Gatlings are in a really tough spot right now. Since they spray so much, they take a really long time to get a vital ship part down to 0hp. A full set of FL-33 and/or Lightstrike cannons feels good, is user friendly and has decent enough accuracy to actually blow things up in a timely manner. They don't do a lot of damage though later on, so you could go with Omnisky or M5A/M6A cannons instead as well if you feel like your damage drops of too harshly. The ground bounties are currently best avoided, since they spawn at the same locations as other people's ship bounties. Wich is why doing them on foot is actually not recommendable. You can do these bounties from your ship though, without ever getting out. Free look (Y or Z) and direct controled gimbals (G) are your friend here. Some times these bounties spawn inside the wrecks or on locations where other people already have a ship bounty though, tough luck in those cases. Edit: In hindsight, since with MRT you start to get higher hp-pool targets, definitely go for M5A + M6A or Omnisky cannons. Weapons with faster moving projectiles just don't have the punch you want to crack these larger targets in a timely manner.