Ambushes Settings.

Ambushes are one of the most efficient combat approaches in Pardus. Instead of trying to catch your enemy in open space and of guard, you find out his location and set an ambush on a tile they are likely to fly through, to try and send them home in a pod.
It is important to always have a retreat point set. For that you need an ambush teleporter (ship equipment) and it has to be done within 10 minutes of laying the ambush.

When laying ambush you can specify a lot of settings, such as attack style, attack length and targets sorted by various parameters: Personal, Alliance affiliation, Faction affiliation ... etc'
This will help you understand the ambush settings better if you didn't experience it before.



Destroy - You will fight until target is dead or until you reach maximum ambush rounds.
Raid - You will fight until target surrenders - In the options screen there are surrender settings. If the target has surrendering set, when the damage reaches it's surrender limit hull points the fight will be stopped, you will raid the target's cargo.

Use Missiles - always check it, unless there's a good reason not to. Missiles are the main advantage especially for us with ECCMs.
Any Attacker trigger... - ALLWAYS have this one checked.. If you don't check it someone who you didn't include might attack you and you simply will not respond, same effect as if you were just floating out in space.
Retreat - don't forget to set your RP. For offline ambushes it's better be something behind an MO so that if your target survives it won't be able to go looking for revenge.
Top distance for retreating is 14 tiles without advanced skills.
After ambush retreat there is an automatic 3 cloaking attempts execution performed, so select locations you can cloak at when setting the RP

Works by hierarchy of: Bounty > Faction > Alliance > Pilot.
That means that if you included federation, but excluded Warson - Warson will not be attacked even though fed.
If you included Union but Excluded OPC - OPC pilots won't be attacked even though Union.
If you Excluded Union but included Jock - Jock will be attack even though Union.
If you included all bountied pilots but excluded Jesper/OPC/Union - Jesper(TPA bounty) will not be attacked.

Friends&Foes and Factions inclusions and exclusions are check boxes.
Be very careful when including all foes - foes are often set just to block them from trade or entry and not always the people you want to attack.

Bounty check boxes become available with uplink I - you will be able to chose to attack people with personal bounties and with faction bounties.
Bounty details (like in the screenshot) are available with Uplink MkII.
Anyone ever had uplink III is welcome to reply here and tell us if that changes something, as well as why the heck did they have it?

Alliances appear in a list ordered by name asc. - Find the alliance you want to exclude/include and click the "add->" "<-remove" button.

Ambush rounds cost same AP as normal rounds + 100. It means that 1 round of ambush costs you 116 AP, 20 rounds of ambush cost you 320 AP.
I don't think "lay ambush" button needs expanding?

This is the key to all ambushes - The quicklist.
When the ambush settings are complete, you can click "create QuickList" which will create a QL for future use.

copying a QL into the QL text box and clicking apply will automatically generate the ambush settings which were set when the QL was created.- the QL is important because if not ambushing alone it is imperative that all the participants use the same QL.

QLs can be saved and reused in the saved QL section, it's good for not having to go look for that forum post or text file or page where you have the saved QL.



Never forget to set RP and check the retreat option.

Don't forget that "include missiles" checkbox.

Setting ambush takes roughly 550 APs at most... When ambushing for long time, what you should do is -
  Wait for max APs.- then break ambush - go use up the APs, just reserve enough to reset ambush when done.
  Make sure to do it fast and not to overuse APs, or you might be missing just when you're needed

Usually it's better to have several pilots to ambush together because it's very rare that fighters can kill each other in 20 rounds.. It takes a big skill advantage for one of them, big lasers+full missiles and still most cases i know of when fighters were killed in 20 rounds it's all of the above plus very unlucky(for the loser) weapon type vs armor type combo with weapon spec. on top.

When several pilots ambush together and a targeted ship hits the ambush - the order at which the pilots are attacking is completely random. That way a low skilled fighter in a merc packing 3 missiles might get lucky and get the kill if he is triggered after someone who took the target to low armor/hull.

When ambushing offline it's best to have safe RP if possible... If no safe RP available either be sure your target will die or won't come looking for you.

Union's cloaking devise enables chitins who didn't train cloaking easily cloak in fuel tiles - use that to your advantage.

Don't go to your ambush spot click ambush and start applying settings... That takes time and there's a throng of stories about guys who died while setting their ambush.
Open an ambush setting window in a new tab at a safe location - Set all your settings. - Return to the main tab fly to the location - when there switch tabs and just click "lay ambush".

best damn quote ever:

Neon: once an ISP stole my VIP...
Neon: then i removed the surrender option

and that is what a raiding ambush is capable of

expanding QLs or How to determine a problem with a QL:
to use a ql that includes bounties - you must have a bounty link, otherwise you'll get an error.
many times noobs are being used as scouts, so no wonder that some noobs are included in the ql you've got. the problem with noobs is that they tend to retire more often..so when a pilot retired/an alliance got abandoned you'll also have a problem to use the ql. the way to fix it - if you know the alliance's/pilot's number you can search for it in the ql and delete. that's generally works.
when you plan to ambush - get yourself a ql first. never go to the ambush spot and wait for a ql/design a ql on the spot. it's deadly.
don't set your ambush to raid..it's really piracy act imo, like telerobbing..
my advice - don't ambush offline if you don't have a safe RP. it doesn't worth it. PU's MOs doesn't create a safe RP for that matter..

A little exercise taken from Red Cell's forums on Orion which will help you with Ambushing and Building Combat. Credit to Killer and Pixx

Many initiates are newer players to the game, and have little or no experience in non-NPC combat. This training is designed to introduce the player to PvP combat and building combat, so s/he can be more prepared when the real opportunity arises. Note that these are just the basics, designed to get the initiate familiar with the ambush screen; creating, modifying, and using quicklists (QLs); and how building combat differs from other combat.


Program of the day (in a friendly area):

Notes:
0.a. One of the trainee's ambushes should be set on a building, and the trainee should trade with the building, collect resources, and cloak (if on energy) to show none of those actions unsets the ambush
0.b. One of the ambushes should be set for two rounds (as long as there is no risk of death)

1. Teacher sets a one round ambush for the trainee, trainee steps on it, finds the retreat point, gives one round to the teacher at retreat point.
2. Trainee sets a one round ambush for the teacher, teacher triggers, finds retreat point, gives one round

These next ambushes don't need to use a RP, to save on APs if desired
3. Teacher creates a quicklist that he triggers on, PMs to trainee, trainee deploys ambush with ql, teacher triggers
3a. Teacher adds an invalid entry (or multiple ones) to the above QL; trainee must fix it and deploy ambush, teacher triggers
4. trainee creates his own ql that triggers on teacher, PM's it to teacher, then deploys ambush with this ql, teacher triggers to check
5. trainee deploys ambush for foes, teacher steps on it -> no trigger. trainee foe lists teacher, teacher steps on the ambush -> trigger
6. de-foe, reset ambush to trigger on RC but exclude teacher (by name, ship size, whatever), teacher doesn't trigger but attacks one round -> ambush should trigger



7. Take a shot at a building, preferably with 2 (light) defense modules installed. Shoot to damage, not raid. Make sure to announce in AC before doing this Notice that each click of "Damage Building" is only 1 round of combat. Look at the logfile, and see how it differs from PvP or PvNPC combat.
8. Fly around the Inner SB area, see the different buildings/defences - do not attack though!