Hunter/Killer

Ok, so the mortars got a buff and firebombs are still massively popular. Heck there's even a strategy thread innthisnforum on mortar spamming. Mostbof thetbattles i see, with the obvious exception of those at wayward pains, featurefextended periods of long range attacks. But what if yo're tired of just lobbing shots across the map. Well, there is an opportunity in this era of long range bombing for the savy killer.

And no I'm not talking about poaching umfriends with a few hundred health, though that happens. What I'm talking about is optimizing your setup and play style to get 4-5 kills in nearly every TDM and 2-3 in regular matches. It can be done with a little practice. In game my kill ratio may be a .76 but that's up from about .6 a few months ago as I've begun to focus on this style.

So first let's talk about setup. What does a hunter/killer need. On the weapons side I recommend line of sight weapons only. And I recommend that they hit hard and do damage fast. Remember we're not trying to poach. We want kills on ships that have at least a thousand hp left. So we're looking primarily at railgun, blast/ex cannon, though a sniper cannon with lots of critical perks or a grenade with a high chance of fire damage will work in a pinch.

Now what ship to put them on? I'm primarily speeder/interceptor but this will work on speedforcer too, and i suppose a selfish reaper could work as well.

For the rest of the loadout I'm going to go nitros over OB for reasons that I'll cover in a bit. I'm also going to recommend band-aid over standard shield, again to be covered in a bit. Turbo and big shield are pretty much prerequisites for any speeder/interceptor so those should be obvious choices.

Here's where we get into play style. I have two preferred tactics. The first doesn't seem much like a hunter tactic but it works. It's what I call the fighting retreat. A well executed fighting retrate will leave you with a badly wounded opponent behind your own line. There are two keys to a successful fighting retreat. First is baiting your opponent. This is where the band-aid comes in. A successful bait ship won't be showing 9k+ hp, nobody's going to chase something they don't think they can kill. Also the band-aid is critical because youre going to get shot, sometimes a lot, and you have to be ready to recover. When baiting I like to near the enemy lines at about ex cannon range. I usually try to set it up where I am moving perpendicular to the eney line, think of a T where I'm the part going across the top and the umfriends are the vertical line. This means that I only have to make one turn to begin my retreat. And I begin that retreat once I've got someone clearly targeting me. The goal of the retreat is to seto yourself up for easy shots while making it hard for umfriends tonhit you. I like to do this by retreating at a bit of an angle relative to your opponents path. It can't be too much or they will turn and you lose your easy shot. You can throw in some shallow evasive turns too. The goal is to get them traveling in as straight of a line as possible while they follow you. This is the shot that the game's targeting system handles the easiest. But your opponents is shooting at something that is traveling at an angle away from them which the game's aiming system sucks the worst at. When retreating use your nitro and the waves to evade, but use the nitro sparingly becaue you don't want to crcrea too much of a gap. If you get too far away your opponent may give up the chase. You may have to repeat the bait part multiple times but like real life fishing patience and persistence are key.

The second hunter/killer style I like is what I call the fireman. This requires speed because you will cover a lot of ground, or you know water. As a fireman you will need a lot more awareness and a bit of distance so when I'm suing this tactic I try to stay behind my teams line until I see a kill opportunity. As a fireman I also like to set up a patrol route where I circle through the areas of each map where battles commonly occur. (If you don't know where these are don't worry you'll pick them up as you start to watch for them.) The goal of the patrol route is to try to increase the odds that you'll be in the right place at the right time. Once you see a firefight break out your goal is to dive in and target the weakest ship or the one your teammates are focusing on so that you raise the probability bof a kill. The overall goal of a firefighter is to charge kill and leave. You're trying to do damage on an already distracted opponent without taking any yourself. (A note here about rushing in. I know incall this the fireman role but this isn't a rescue operation. Even as a firefighter I still recommend the band-aid because you're going to have down times in your patrol which gives you time to heal and a good band-aid can heal way more than the HP of a standard shield given enough time. And with the band-aid you don't have enough health to act as a shield for friend who has overreached, you'll both just end up dead. Only go for rescue opps where you're pretty sure you can get a kill.)

That's all for now, if you have any questions feel free to ask and if you have any tips or comments I'd appreciate those as well. Until next time, happy hunting.

 

Sorry I'm not familiar with all of the teams and I figured much of this was out there but I hadn't seen it in one place. AntiSnipe, your guides are great and in depth on specific topics but I wanted to capture more of a sense of how it all fits together instead of discussing each part separately. Anyways I hope it helps someone and if not I couldn't sleep last night anuways.

Oh and here's my interceptor build for this style.