| Author Details |
By: Alex Vanderbilt |
| Edited: 25/06/10 15:22 |
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Firepower and speed are a Xenon M2's main strengths; the Xenon M2's tactical disadvantage is maneuverability.
You will find that upon closing to a range of a few kilometers, the ship will engage you. The first stage of the engagement is ramming, the ship will simply fly towards your ship with the intention of crashing into you which is relatively easy considering they have 375MW of shield power at their disposal. Evading the ramming is simple enough; just move your ship in an almost perpendicular path to that of the M2 and because of its slow turning rate it will be unable to follow your new vector. As soon as you've evaded its ram, you will now be in range of most of its 12 HEPT class weapons which will automatically lock onto you with pinpoint accuracy.
To counter this make sure you are travelling at maximum speed and move in a weaving pattern, or just simply keep changing direction. The lasers will adjust to a change in position with ease but they are unable to account or a change in their target's vector. As soon as the HEPT fire begins to wane, try to make you way to the back of the ship. You will find that if the ship misses a ram attempt and fails to hit your ship with its HEPT's it will quickly slow down in order to make another run into your craft. Use this slowdown to your advantage and get behind the M2 as soon as possible. Open fire in 3 second bursts and readjust every few second your heading.
Short bursts prevent misses due to the kickback of the blast of your laser giving you the chance to correct your heading. At this point you should be wary of any missile launches which will most probably be hornet missiles. If this is so, keep the hornet targeted and "huddle up" close to the M2 you’re attacking, flying alongside it using it as a shield. Obviously this is only of any use if you can get to the opposite side of the ship that the hornet approaches you from. If you do this make sure you don't slow down too much or you'll get caught by the HEPT fire. The whole process will take just a few seconds. If this fails and you find that the Hornet is on the same side of the M2 as you then you must get as much distance as you can between you and the M2.Once you are certain you are far enough away to evade HEPT fire even at slow speeds increase to maximum speed and begin moving in very small circles (this will only work if your ship has a good turning rate).
The missile will try and fail to follow you because of your superior turning rate. Don’t stop doing this until the Hornet burns out. If you can't do that then use your rear camera to watch the Hornet approach you from behind and as it gets extremely close to your ship make a sudden 90 degree turn which will throw it off course for a few seconds, keep doing this until the missile burns out. Once the missile has detonated you might find that the M2 is making another ramming attempt but you will also find that in that time its shields haven't fully recharged from your last run providing you have the bare minimum of gamma PAC's installed. Repeat the steps above until the ship is destroyed.
I suggest you use no less than a 25MW shield for such an attack.
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