Elite Dangerous Piracy With Limpets Guide

Elite Dangerous Piracy With Limpets Guide by squishymcpwn

Limpets seem to be rather ignored among the community, as far as my 5 seconds of bored reading before deciding that i wanted to write a guide went. They are the greatest thing in the universe. You don’t need an Anaconda. you don’t need a ship that eats small planets to fuel itself. All you need are Limpets.

WHAT THEY DO

Limpets are, in a nutshell, hacking missiles. You fire them at an unshielded target, and they blindly poke around until they find the cargo bay. When found, it latches on and begins to hack. If it fails, you fire another one; if it succeeds, the target ship contracts dysentery and starts spewing out all its cargo. One limpet can eject a large amount of cargo, depending on the quality of the limpet controller you have installed in your ship.

WHY YOU SHOULD USE THEM

Piracy is very difficult at times. Commanders can warp away before you can take anything from them. NPCs are often too dumb to try to warp away and drop everything they’re carrying. Limpets mitigate these risks. They will FORCE a player or NPC to drop their cargo, without having to resort to diplomacy or drastic measures. I consider them to be plan C; if talking them down doesn’t work, and shooting holes in them until they cry home and drop everything they’re carrying fails, you fire off a couple limpet mines and watch them spew out cargo like you just fed them a laxative.

HOW THEY WORK

First of all, you need a limpet controller. Hatch Breaker Limpet Controllers are Internal Compartment components, and come in varying ratings and classes. Once it is installed, you will need to go to munitions to buy some limpets. clicking reload all will NOT refill your limpets. They also take a cargo slot, so make sure you don’t take too many; I usually carry 4 (out of 8 cargo slots), and jettison any i did not use while liberating the cargo from its owner. They cost 101 credits per limpet, meaning they are relatively cheap and easy to replace. Even a poor haul is usually enough to refill your limpets. They can easily be shot down by point defense(meaning you should blow it up beforehand) and do not have a 100% chance to work. You should always remove these risks if you can before firing.

HOW TO USE THEM

First of all, the target’s shields must be down prior to firing, or else they will not be able to access the cargo bay. They will fire like a missile out of your cargo bay, and may be destroyed if they try to go through your ship to get to the target. When fired, it will chase the target down very quickly, and attempt to find their cargo bay. DO NOT shoot while this is happening. It is possible to shoot and destroy the Limpet. Continue to hold your fire until you get a message in the top right stating that hacking was successful or not. Once you get that message, the limpet will fall off, and you may resume firing, or launch another limpet. It may take more than one shot to empty out a cargo bay; the limpet will only empty out a certain amount before the effect is reversed. Chance of failure and amount of cargo dropped(?) are tied to the quality of the Hatch Breaker Limpet Controller you are using.

MINOR POINTS OF INTEREST

Keep in mind that using Limpets often causes the target to drop the cargo during the middle of the fight, not the end. This means that, by the end of the fight, cargo may be very close to decaying. You must move as quickly as you can to avoid losing the cargo. Remember to put full power to engines, and go as fast as you can without destroying the cargo on contact.

Aiming your shot directly at the cargo bay when firing a limpet is preferred, but not required. If you are worried about point defense destroying the limpet, you should probably try to get as close as possible and line the shot up before launching. Keep in mind that the Limpet comes out of your cargo hold, not the front of your ship.

Limpets must be bound to an action group to be fired. There is no key shortcut in the options menu that can be bound to fire them.

Limpets can be stolen from the cargohold of other pirates. These limpets ARE considered stolen, and you will be in trouble if a system authority spots them.

Limpets can be sold for 101 credits per. This is done in the Munitions tab, not the Commodities Market, even though they take up cargo space.

ANTI-LIMPET STRATEGIES

If you are a freighter looking for ways to beat limpets, there are several ways to do so. The easiest is to turn off your cargo bay. Limpets cannot hack a powered down computer. Keep in mind that this wont deter the pirate most of the time, and they’ll probably just resort to murdering you until you drop the cargo willingly.

Point Defense will attempt to shoot down Limpets before they attach, but they DO NOT have a 100% chance to succeed in shooting them down, especially if the Limpet is fired from a close distance. If you are a freighter and are worried about limpets, try putting point defense systems in utility slots that are located on the bottom or back of your ship, for maximum effectiveness.