As above.
Looking good?

Yea, how are the missions, and how are your ship modifications going?

lol at present while trying to get the "missing Engineers beta launcher bug" sorted out and ending up at a uninstall/reinstall and then running into issues getting the stable Horizons version reinstalled which is now a support ticket I have no feedback. Presently the only ED I have is the single player combat tutorials and I figure you already know all about those

Only have 1.6 E:D beta but do have to atrip a lot of weight on my viper/cobras in order to chase down high bounty targets easily. That means usually D rated equipemnt for everything except thrusters.

Some delivery mission require a fast ship as sometimes you get a message to quickly deliver cargo for a bonus.

Force Shell Cannons!

First impressions

Looks pretty good.
There will always be some changes (it is beta) but should be good - least the non-Engineer stuff. For that we will see.

I have played the 2.1 beta yesterday. I had a few issues with infinite hyperspace jumps, but that seems to have gone now. I can say the game feels a lot more finished. I like the new screens for missions, the configuration settings got grouped, and we get loads more audio chatter near stations (jay!). I have a feeling the GFX performance has increased but I cannot put my finger down on it yet. I've found one of the engineers' bases and they look awesome.

Cool.

I like most things, but really dislike the power creep. Mods for engines can boost performance by 30%. Shields can be improved by more than 300% for some ships. Weapon DPS can be improved by 200%.

It's crazy. A fully-modded ASP is faster and more maneuverable than a Viper Mk3 while being tougher and having higher DPS than a pre-nerf Python.

Yea.
My one thought/concern is that if you are going to play in Open - and do anything but run away in a Cobra constantly - you are going to have to do the Engineer stuff or be hopelessly outclassed by all.

Well, at least with the Engineer upgrades being kind of a slow grind, it may prevent them from becoming something everybody uses. And even those who do invest the time, may focus on other aspects aside from weapons.

For me, FSD range and shield boosts are all I will probably spend the effort on for my own ships.

FSD and.....speed!

Upgrading the FSD is the only mod I have any interest in at the moment. I have just bought a Fed Dropship. It is really nice to fly and makes a brilliant small/medium general purpose ship for bimbling around. The major problem with it though is that the jump range is woeful. My current build does 16.33ly unladen whereas even my T9 does 18.02.

I am a bit worried about the reports of uber npc interdictors with modded ships. It is great if people want to grind for mods but I hope I don't have to do the same just to survive.

Yeah, me too. I'm slowly making my way to Elite in combat. If the NPCs are equipped with mods, I'm not sure that I have enough play time to pursue the engineers upgrades. My ranking up may come to a halt.