Oolite Bulletins

I need a bit of advice from fellow fighters.

I'm flying the Cobra Mk3 with pretty much every accessory money can buy (except port and starboard lasers) as well as the navy shields and normally survive the typical pirates, stolen navy vessels, thargoids, and the like.

However, I have encountered a rogue frigate 3 times now and always died from the barrage of its plasma cannons. What successful tactics have you used to finish it off?

Cheers,
-Maik

Not knowing what a Rogue Frigate is, but the general advise is: Kill it from the distance. Your military lasers (if you've got them) have a firing range of 30 km, plasma turrets have a range of 5 km.

Stay out of that radius, and they'll never fire a shot.

Thanks, that sounds easy enough. Curiosity killed the cat (or snake in this case)

BTW, no idea from which OXP they are, but they register as "rogue frigate" (or was it "renegade"?) on my scanner.

Rogue Frigates are from Galactic Navy OXP's, I've never fought one, but fighting them from a distance sounds like a good idea, those things are covered in turrets. If you cant fight them from a distance, run.

Good advice above...kill them from a distance. As they're so big they're easy to hit, and actually don't take a lot of killing. Two or three good blasts of Military Laser will see it off.
You'll get a nice bounty, too

"Keep Your Distance" is indeed the golden rule! Slow right down and blast it with your front laser until it overheats. Then flip over and retreat, giving it the same treatment from your rear gun. Then turn over again once your forward laser has cooled and that should be enough to finish it off.

If you do the Navy Reserve missions, you'll sometimes encounter one of these beauties, along with a swarm of other pirates, when you're sent to clear out a pirate base. My advice would be to push ahead of your colleagues and take on the frigate yourself. Get it focusing on you and finish it off at long range, or its plasma cannons will turn your chums into chutney when they come in to the fight (and then you'll have to face everyone else, and the pirate base, all on your own).

I used to try doing the pirate base/frigate thing using a cascade missile: Dive at the base traight off, fire the missile and scud straight past. Would usually take out base and pirates frigate alike BUT if unlucky, your idiot reservist chums would get vapourised too!
Now I have the Nukes OXP I pack a couple of Penetrating Torpedoes and then some Override missiles, then another Penetrating Torp.
I loose the first two at the base as I speed past it, then come about and if necessary finish it off. Then I try to get the frigate with the Override missile, so I can come on in close enough to see the whites of their Pirate eyes as I fire the remaining nuke.
But of course it all goes to hell if they manage to shoot down your missiles!!!

If you have no other choice but to engage a frigate within its turret range...

1. Distance is health. Speed is life.

2. You'd best be sure to take down its escort first, they're seldom alone. On the other hand, they're pretty slow, so you can lure their escort away and pick them off.

3. The safest (and not by much) direction to approach a frigate is from behind. It might be a bit cold, but if you can use your fellows as bait while you whittle away at its flanks.

4. NPC turrets can be easily destroyed; frigate turrets are no exception, taking only a single laser hit to destroy. Of course, you'll need either pixel perfect aim, nerves of reinforced diamond-weave alloy, or maybe just plain blind luck to do so.

5. You're not the only one with missiles; they've got at LEAST 6 missile slots. If you're like me and have an unfortunate misunderstanding with the navy variety, they carry ECM hardened missiles.

Personally, I carry a penetrating torpedo for those rare yet all-too-possible encounters with wandering pirate frigates. The thing is, frigates all carry ECM as standard equipment, so your fancy missile might just end up with your hard-earned credits going up in smoke.