Escorts and their practice has been a topic of some discussion lately with the flapdoodle and hooplah surrounding the mining mod. The subject of escorts being ineffective has come up more than once and, I feel, has been deposited so virulently that the mindset that escorts are useless has sunk into the global consciousness.
Hopefully I can provide an alternative view with the provision of a few basic strategies.
Please bear in mind that I am, at best, an average pilot. I'm an average pilot when I've been playing a lot, when I haven't been playing a lot I sink to a below average pilot. I can still escort ships. That's something to keep in mind.
The act of escorting a ship, if successful, does not involve blowing up an attacker before it can blow up your charge in the common sense. If successful the vessel you are escorting will be leagues away from your position.
90% of the strategy involved in escorting demands that you encounter trouble long before the vessel you are seeing to safety falls into it. If you are escorting a ship by flying next to it you are wrong. Chances are very good that an attacking force will be able to overwhelm the vessel you are escorting before you are able to destroy them. In which case you have failed.
I'll break that down further for you.
A) Lone escort for wing of transports: Fly at least one tradelane length ahead of your group. They do not move until you tell them to move. Proceed through jumpholes ahead of them. If there is a substantial length of tradelane/gate on both sides of a system consider traveling the entire length before summoning them forward. If you leave your convoy at a location where they can dock you will not need to worry about them.
B) Dual escorts for wing of transports: One performs the actions above while the other lags behind or serves to shut down tradelanes as your group moves through them to ward off any group that may be following. The more escorts you have the better, especially should it come to combat.
C) Mining operations: Patrol a distance between your location and the most likely source of enemy attack. Be it a jumphole, planet, tradelane. As soon as you spot trouble send up the flare and prepare to disrupt the incursion so your mining group can scramble to safety or you can assess the threat. Your job is to make sure that, to the best of your ability, the pirates never reach the actual site of the mining operation or that the vessels laboring are able to scramble to safety prior to the pirates reaching a distance of engagement.
D) Transports within fleets. A number of the midrange transports act as excellent second class combat vessels. Vessels within the 3800ish range carry a limited number of weapons but, with the recent changes, can be outfitted to deal with a number of combat operations. If you have three of such vessels you can do silly things to gunboats with a nice set of class 2 turrets. With a nice set of transport solaris turrets you can put the scare of bombers and similar craft long enough to reach your destination.
E) Even if your group is attacked you have a backup plan. Namely a basic sphere of survival. A vessel with X armor traveling under thrust can survive Y distance. Those odds are only increased by an escort harrying a bomber or gunboat, the bulk of the convoy shooting back and the passing of botts/batts to the primary combat target. Don't think of your ship as having 400 botts/batts. Think of how many the group has. With three transports you're up to 1200 for your ship. That's a lot. You'll go a long ways with that.
F) Pay your escorts well! Don't give them some pissy 500k. Give them a full share of the load. A good escort is worth every credit you have because, well, without one you're going to lose a lot. Bad escorts are a dime a dozen. If you're in a faction and your escorts suck call them out on it and tell them to get in shape. If you're on your own contact one of the more prestigious groups and offer them a wealth of money to cover your rear.
In Discovery every player is everything. If you find someone who wants to play an escort and he finds out he can make more money and have more fun pirating your sorry rear than he can protecting it guess what he's going to do? Pay your escorts well.
So, a brief summary.
1) Escorts travel ahead of convoys to find trouble before the transports do.
2) Mining Op escorts fly patrol patterns between likely vectors of approach by pirate parties.
3) Group cohesion, communication and strategy should be discussed before heading out
4) A group of individuals will fail. Fight together. If things go to pot it'll be the difference between losing 50% of your collective worth and 100% of your collective worth.
5) PAY YOUR ESCORTS WELL YOU CHEAP BUMS. PAAAAY THEEEEEEM.
I hope some of you find this guide somewhat useful. It's all very very basic common sense, so I'm not going to pin it or similar. But keep it in mind if you find your group easy prey for any idiot in a gunboat.
Y'know, before the mining mod, my main character (my freelancer) didn't have much to do. I'm no good at PvP, so I couldn't hire myself out for battles, and no one ever wanted an escort. So I would just do a bunch of NPC missions, and role-play that I was doing jobs for actual people.
Then the mining mod came. After a few days of the mod, it became apparent to people that escorts were needed with such precious cargo. My freelancer started getting jobs. I ferried traders back and forth from Tremont to Narita, taking what I had learned from watching the Mandalorians, escorting the right way, keeping distance and watching my scanners. I wasn't so good at it at first. Sometimes I would fly too far ahead, or forget to tell my transport that the coast was clear, etc., but I more or less got the hang of it.
This is an excellent guide. It also gets the message out there that escorts really are needed these days, and so will hopefully create more jobs for myself and people in my situation. Also, thanks for adding that bit about payment. I once took a Kujira full of platinum ore to Narita and back again for just 2 million credits. That was a real let-down.
' Wrote:I once took a Kujira full of platinum ore to Narita and back again for just 2 million credits. That was a real let-down.
I would have demanded a third. Half of that up front, half when then job is complete. The up front would be refundable if I failed to get him there safely, however if the transport was stupid and didn't listen to my warnings and got himself killed - no refund.
I'm wondering if that possibly this can be applied to all trade routes in the future?
So far I've just stayed in the Colorado, Shikoku, Kelper, Galileo and Penn vicinity and I've had marvelous experiences from everyone involved.
The problem I see with having Narita (Though Kusari needs more attention, so it's very understandable) is that a player can go through all that work and lose it all on that last lane, by pirates with smugglers, or miner pirates.
If we did have it extended to other areas of the mod, like general trading, I can't imagine there wouldn't be a positive outcome. People would be in a better mood because they're only losing so much money, in a mod were everything is so expensive.
And of course the Achilles heal, "Battleships. Battleships. More LOLShips. Big. LOLShips." Well, if everyone has them, then it's not special anymore. People will fall back to bombers since I especially like the update. Then to best the bombers we get people falling back to VHFs, HFs to best the VHFs. And, pretty soon we have this reverse in what we want. Everyone can learn to fly a battleship in an hour, dodging dodging. But, in my experience, fighters have always been the top pilots.
Forgive me for my opinion if it's too ... out there.
/2 cents.
Good guide Dusty, I'll keep it in mind if I can ever be bothered to escort someone.:P
[17:45:39] Wolfs Ghost (Murphy): Tom, you have problems. Go kill yourself.
[19:25:12] Johnny (Jam): Tomtom, I will beat you with a spoon.
[14:22:56] Prarabdh Thakur: KILL HIM WITH A SHEEP.
[17:40:48] Eagle (Junes): Tom should be slapped with a spoon.
[11:32:18] Warspite: Thank you for being so awesome Tom. <3
[18:17:36] Metano: I love you tomtom
[20:06:24] Warspite: I will seriously give you epic head.
' Wrote:Edit: also, Tomtomrawr, fappin' like a boss.
I was always thought it would be a good strategy to put yourself between the trader and attempt to flee before you fight. You and your cm absord any cruise disruption while the trader gets the heck out of dodge. After the trader is a safe distance away it is up to the pirate if he wants to continue combat. I would assume most pirates, after the profit is gone, would chose to end combat. A battle to the death with nothing to gain is never in a pirate's best interest. If combat has to happen, the trader is a safe distance away and hopefully docking somewhere.
The only downside to the escort is the increased tension it will create. A good escort can diffuse this tension easily, but a bad one who goes in guns blazing is going to get the trader killed.
Something else to add: always a good idea to discuss strategy with a trader before you go on the trip. What is the route, what is the response to a pirate attack in open space, or on a trade lane. Maybe even an alternative route if things seem a little to hot in one system. Planning is worth its weight in gold (or silver, whatever you are carrying).
"Hell, there are no rules here--we're trying to accomplish something."
-Thomas Alva Edision
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