As usual, Wingy provides more useful information!

In my Case, I ALSO have ONE BEAM and ONE MULTICANNON in the Vulture, so he is right, I do not need a second Fire Groups since I have one button for BEAM and ONE for MULTI. On the Vette, I have 2 HUGE Beams, only one of which is Healing, both of which are operated by the TRIGGER in one fire group so I have a separate FIRE group that only fires the HEALING BEAM on a Trigger Press.

As Wingy said, YOU MUST have the WINGMAN Targeted and, DUH you must be IN A WING..

The link won't load for me but I'd like to have a gander.

1,200 MJ is high for a Vulture but I reckon it comes at the cost of thermal resist and recharge and recovery?

I worked on my Vulture a little more today, more or less finishing up the boosters and HRPs. I added one more 1D HRP since I was going to Selene Jean, but I might swap it for another MRP. Not sure which makes more sense. Since resistances stack on those HRPs, the overall numbers are good, around 2500 effective integrity across the board. I was able to squeeze a little more MJ out of the shields, but didn't bring kinetic resistance up by much. Kinectic weapons are inherently weaker against shields anyway so I think it's OK. It's a lot of protection out of a 380t build and I'm happy with the way it turned out.

Arclight

Wow... you got some good Hull Tanking going on even with LIGHTWEIGHT armor. Reminds me that I never did engineer my Hull reinforcement, since I don't have it pinned, and never visited Selene Jean to add the Experimental Deep Plating on my main armor.

Maybe I will get to it tonight. I have a few appointments in the evening, but I hope I will be back in time to join the crowd.

My Reinforced Shields have FAST CHARGE experimental, but, honestly, they do not charge very fast. Might go back and make it HiCAP and trade the meager increase in charge with overall shield health, but that will increase my POWER consumption so probably will leave it where it is. According to Coriolis, going Hi Cap will boost total shield from 1204 to 1277 which probably isn't worth it. Recovery only goes up by 10 seconds, but ReCHARGE goes up by 2 minutes. Not much advantage of 8 vs 10 though, and with HEALERS in the WING, it doesn't matter.

Thanks, and honestly that integrity is more of a safety net than anything. I don't expect to lose the shields, but it could happen, in which case the solid hull engineering will pay off. As you can tell I focus on resistances, and not raw numbers (MJ or integrity). It's all interwoven anyway, and just about every path has a drawback (except efficient beams!) like you ran in to with the high MJ resulting in a longer recharge rate and I assume thermal resist. I know when I use Reinforced A-rated shield generators I struggle to bring thermal shield resistance to a satisfactory level, plus it adds recovery time, not just through higher raw MJ but because Bi-Weaves have faster recovery. You get a better raw MJ, but it's the HP numbers on Coriolis that I focus on.

I had wondered if there are weapons in Elite that ignore resistances? I don't know the answer, but aside from those, I think the modified numbers are what's important when choosing modifications if you want the best protection. The resistance stacking gives protection beyond what a single 1D HRP should provide, and I took full advantage in this build.

My Elite ship design philosophy is always centered around shield tanks that run relatively cool with low mass and high speed. That usually comes at the cost of hull protection and firepower. It's a trade I am usually willing to make. Shield tank usually means high MJ of course, or at least that's what I see folks concentrate on. For me though it's those Shield HP numbers that reveal how effectively the ship is protected.

Whenever I compare my build to another player's mine is almost always lighter and faster, and more agile as a result. Better speed, better jump. But I give up other things to get it. It's opportunity cost and one of the most interesting aspects of Elite. The hull usually is where I need to make sacrifices. Since the hull is really only important when the shields are down, and I try to build my shields not to go down, it's a gamble I'm willing to make. Rails ignore shields and I think there may be a few exotic experimentals that make other weapons do so too, but in PvE I don't think this is something to worry about. Different story though in PvP where players will build ships to do exactly this.

In the case of the Vulture, the speeds gains are minimal from a light build to a heavier one. I posted my pitch/roll/yaw numbers and it would be interesting to compare to one of the other Vutures here who opted for say full-weight or even heavy duty armor. Probably not a big difference, but would be interesting to compare, so if anyone wants to post their build along with the pitch/roll/yaw figures I would be interested to see how the mass affects the agility.



Yeah, I am happy how it turned out. It's really well protected, at least I think so (speed and agility are defensive qualities too!) while saving quite a bit of mass and cost, not that money is any object for us. Military grade will add around 40t (and high-negative resistances numbers) unless you lightweight it, and at that point maybe it makes sense to do what I did and heavy duty the stock bulkheads which adds zero mass.

My Combat style (i.e POOR) is to get as much firepower on target for as long as possible, even if it means SLUGGING IT OUT, so I always go for Shield Tanks whenever possible to survive those encounters. Much less practical with the Smaller Vulture when up against heavier opponents, but I still probably put myself in HARM'S way more than would be prudent in order to shorten the fight. I do try to bob and weave so I don't have to take multiple PA blasts in the face while slugging it out.

D, I don’t believe rails ignore shields. Also, PA’s have raw damage so they ignore resistances. If I recall correctly, there’s one more weapon that deals raw damage also but I’m drawing a blank on which one. I’m sure someone else will chime in....

As an aside, I’m not impressed at all with my CM4. Wish I would’ve gone Vulture or DBX combat build. Oh well, I’ll prolly repurpose the CM4 at some point.

Have we set a tentative time to meet up yet?

I left the Vulture at Jameson (after I fled to pay a murder bounty!).

I can be on this evening between 6 and 7 eastern. Gotta give my mic a test, hopefully that works straight away.

Thanks, I had it wrong, but each ignores resistances. Against these weapons raw values are important. Thanks Bo.

Edit I just read PAs ignore 60% of resistance, so do 60% absolute damage. Another thing that resistances do not help with is collision, so always good to have enough raw number to handle those.



I ran a few builds through Coriolis a year ago. I wanted to see what I was missing by not having access to this ship. I was impressed with it's hull-tank ability (ten optional slots) and five hardpoints, but I was not able to put one together that I would have been satisfied with (just too slow for me and couldn't turn it in to a good shield tank -- just two utility slots). Just not my type of ship in the same way that the FAS is not my type of ship.

I cannot buy it anyway so rather moot, but still fun to play around with.

I’ll be on around 5 eastern. I may mod my CM4 or even scrap it and do either a DBX or Vulture. More likely the former. Wingy’s a left coaster and there are a few mid-westers, so I’d imagine the majority will show up later. S’all good, tho. D and I can work on rank and only split 2 ways til then

I knew from the forums that the CM4 was kind of a dog, but thought I’d give ‘er a go. Mebe she’ll shine a bit more after tonite.

Not sure what weapons you're going with, but I've got shield stripping covered. If your ship cracks hulls we'll have a good synergy.

How about your Courier?

I imagine I won’t decide til I log on later. Case of can’t-decide-itis

Small ships are cheap to transfer, so you can have an assortment at the station closest to the Happy Hunting Grounds

"Rather than restock, I'll just jump in a new ship"

How aristocratic!



And totally true

I bought an iEagle. The plan is just to use it as an ultra-fast wake scanner, because everyone has one of those right?

Here's the mock-up

Smokeless Mock Up


That is a death trap if I ever saw one.

I had forgotten to add mass manager, so it's been updated

I used wake scanners during my early days of playing ED but stopped using them entirely after I had accumulated a large surplus of wake data even after I had engineered several ships. If I recall correctly, I think it's just the FSD's that use wake data for engineering?

I have a Wake Scanner on my Python since I was doing transport mission BACK AND FORTH for awhile so there was ample opportunity for scanning wakes outside stations. I did need the scarce Datamined Wake Exceptions and Strange Wake Solutions, Eccentric Hyperspace Trajectories etc.. for FSD as PM said.

Right, but it's just part of my routine. Like landing on planets and taking the SRV out for a ride for raws. Several of my ships have wake scanners on them, especially any that might near the edge of the bubble or beyond. I regretted missing my first couple of chances at Thargoid wake data, and since then I've been prepared. There is still no use for thargoid wakes, but hey ya never know! But this Eagle is for taking out of the station for 10 minutes, and zipping around at ludicrous speed grabbing the high wakes. My Courier used to do this role, but I changed it a bounty hunter and needed the utility slot for another booster.

And I look at mats like a NFL general manager looks at draft picks. It's draft capital, with this being worth that and so on and so on. So even if wake data has limited use, it's always worth some of something else. DWEs are the good ones, but I'll gobble up as many types as I can and trade it for what I need.

I spent the day home schooling my son due to the virus, and found the time to work on this needless project. I didn't quite hit the mock-up posted earlier, but pretty close. Despite spending half my time in game mat gathering, mats are always the limiting factor with how quickly a ship gets to completion. But still, I have a new speed champ in my fleet. I bit the bullet and traded some speed for a 1.4t HRP. That triples the integrity and it's still made of paper. Must be very responsible with this speed. It would be very easy to kill myself.

Smokeless

820 boost! Fun as hell to fly. Skins cost 320 Arx. A mostly pointless waste of mats but I love ships like this.