Nice title eh?

With the fine crew 'round here floating the idea of small-ship combat, I thought I'd start a thread to discuss the finer points of the craft. Building viable combat crates from the limited small-ship choices is challenging. Finding the right balance of speed, firepower and protection, for me, is considerably more difficult in small ships than medium or large ones, with the Vulture being an outlier.

But that's what makes it fun. Messing around today I tried to run some builds through Coriolis, particularly the Cobra 3. This ship was my first one after the Sidewinder and holds a special place. Buying this ship made me feel like I was moving up, which looking back is rather relative isn't it? (money was much more precious then) So over the past year I occasionally mentioned building another Cobra for the nostalgia.

I know Wingy recently built a Cobra and I'd like to see the build. I could make it fast. I could make it jump far and have good integrity. But those shields! Barely breaking 300mj. One of the restrictions with this ship is having just two utilities. So you can't be stacking boosters. In the end I went with a Guardian shield reinforcement in a C4 slot. Combined with a couple of heavy duty E boosters the end result is pretty good.

Cobra 3 Mock Up

Good speed, jump and integrity. Better DPS than my Courier (one additional hardpoint). What I do not like about what I have built are the resistances. I didn't spend too much time on it, and maybe messing around with shield and booster experimentals can help raise and spread the resistances. Thermal is way too low. MJ is important, particularly as collision defense, but I focus more on the 'Shield HP' section. For me that's a better representation of protection against various weaponry. But here is where the trade offs occur. I could go bi-weave, or put thermal resist on the shields or thermal block experimental, but now my mj is going to drop. That TTD also looks weak, so that would need some attention. A class 4 PD would really help the Cobra. I'll keep messing around with it. Love me some beams though. It's a viable combat ship, but requires refinement. Maybe I'll build it.

Compare it to my Courier

Velocity


The Courier is about 150 m/s faster, which is expected as the Cobra is too heavy for EP thrusters, and I doubt the Cobra can touch it for agility, and certainly not the view!. Shields are on par, but the Courier has much better resistances, largely because of the additional two boosters, which allow more freedom with the experimental bonuses. I can also run Thermal Resist on the shields, which are undersized 2A, and keep the MJ reasonable. Less integrity due to fewer internal slots, and no collector limpet on my Courier. Yet anyway. I don't want to keep dropping the speed further by adding doodads and whizbangs, and with the EP thrusters especially, every half-ton matters.

When I decided to build a small fighter a year ago I ran a face-off between the iEagle and the Courier, swapping modules and running each ship through it's paces. The Courier won in the end due to the fact I could protect it better. At these speeds, ample protection is a requirement!

Anyway, if anyone wants to talk small fighter builds or show their builds please do so. I think this is a rather neglected part of Elite with so many cool medium and big ships to choose from.

That's not true, I have several empty slots. It was due to mass and speed, not slots.

“Vulture be,ing the outlier”

I find the Vulture a tough one for me to theory build in Coriolis. Power starved even with engineering and only 2 hard points. Don’t get me wrong, the Vulture is a good ship and one used for quite a while. I’ve messed around and tried to come up with a build that I find satisfactory to me, but find I just have to make too many compromises to be worth burning the mats during the engineering. YMMV, obviously.

Yeah, and that's why Coriolis is so #%&*$# valuable haha. Think of all the mats we save

I sold my Vulture some time ago, you might recall my intervention thread where I sold half the lot. I really do like the ship, but I had too many I thought.

But I did just work this up on Coriolis.

Vulture Test Dual-Beam


It could use some refinement. But I think it shows why I call it an outlier among small fighters. It's pretty easy to about double the shields, and with Bi-Weaves to boot. I put dual beams on it, and efficient, thermal vent to keep the power down. It has it's limitations of course, and that jump range is one of them. Hard choices too on the weapons. When I had one I never was happy with my choices, like one corrosive and one incendiary MC which never felt effective enough. In this build there are a few percentage points of power to still play with considering module priority. 50 dps is not great, but that TTD suggests it can shoot for a long time. I always choose boring weapons anyway. Beams and multicannons ya know?

It's so agile, and with dirty drags it is really a hell of a dogfighter. Compared to other small fighters I think it's easily superior for combat in all but speed potential and then jump range. But of course nobody flies one to fly straight lines

But I get what you're saying Bo. When I owned one I was never quite happy with it. I think now that I have access to more engineers I could get there. This one I just put up wold do me fine I think.

My Vulture build https://s.orbis.zone/69ry

Will probably change the Laser to Overcharged / Regeneration to assist the Wingmen!

Wingy

Nice one Wingnuts. Thermal resistance is low, I'd be looking to improve that, probably by swapping low-power for thermal resist . Some MJ would be lost but the 'shield hp', or MJ modified by resistances, would be far better. But you've got good integrity and even managed to squeeze in a GFSDB for more reasonable jump.

I reason that especially on fast and highly agile ships, that the enemy weapons I have to be most concerned about are lasers with their infinite? shot speed. Since they instantly hit what they are pointing at, lasers are much more likely to hit than kinetic or explosive weapons which travel much more slowly of course. So maybe more so than larger ships I think thermal shield resistance is really valuable on small fighters.

Was it you who recently mentioned building a Cobra? Can you share the build?

I flew my Courier last night for a little bit of bounty hunting, and saw how sensitive it is to mass. I have a class 2 fuel tank, and after jumping 10 light years to my hunting grounds, and flying around shooting things I was down to 2/3 fuel. That spent fuel resulted in speed gain. Instead of 4-pipping at 575, it was now 585, and boost speed jumped from 780 to 795! Just from burning some fuel. And not much of that. I'd be boosting 800 with a little more gone. Hadn't noticed this before somehow. On most ships the gain here would be tiny. But on an EP thrusters-equipped ship it is a significant thing.

I mentioned throwing together a CM4. Unfortunately, real life got in the way this weekend and wasn’t able to log in much. Only got about 3-4 hrs game time which was spent grinding out a few % combat rank. Chasing Recluse and trying to catch up to him in percentage.

We definitely try and get a small pad fleet together for this weekend and hit a haz res or CNB.

Is that Cobra Mark IV? I've not even seen one yet. So yeah, do that

When I got back in to Elite a couple weeks ago my plan was to try and stealth-ninja you guys by closing the combat rank gap while you weren't paying attention and/or bored with Elite. Devious plan it was, but you lot have been shooting down ships by the bushel and if anything you've pulled away. Haha, well, it's quite an achievement, and you and Rec are both going to hit it soon. When I first got this game and learned what triple Elite meant I thought, now if there's an end-game goal then that's it. Of course the other ranks got easier to reach, but combat's still as hard as ever. Probably more so as the NPCs are better ships these days on average. Wingnuts did it the hard way, but we have found a little easier path I think especially for me with Trade rank becoming rather trivial.

Rec and Wingy were on last night in Vultures I think. I wasn't able to join. I logged on to import a ship to Coriolis, but didn't get any flying in. I minimized Elite to use EDMC to grab the ship so I logged another 4 hours before realizing it was still open.

When my son's home I don't get the headset on as he's still young and I gotta be able to pay attention, so most of the week when I fly it's solo. But Wednesdays and Thursdays are always good for me. Unfortunately Saturdays are not. So if anyone wants to plan something for say Thursday I'm in. I think I'm going to build another Vulture, still have the modules, and like I said I think with access to more engineers and higher levels I can build a much better one than I used before. I've been doing a lot of mat gathering over the past two weeks and maybe time to burn some of it.

Thurs works for me as I’m off work Fri and Sat.

OK sounds good Bo.

I decided to follow through and bought another Vulture. Started to put it together after running a number of variations through Coriolis. I flew to a tech trader to get a Guardian shield reinforcement only to discover I never actually unlocked this. I have a blueprint, but missing some of the ingredients. So it won't be quite as much of a shield tank as I wanted. I'll have to get around to getting that unlocked. Going dual-beam, bi-weave and hoping to maintain at least 30 jump. I'll have to sacrifice some integrity but that's OK.

https://s.orbis.zone/6ad5

That's my tentative CM4 build.

Wings Cobra as it is for now https://s.orbis.zone/6adq

Still some engineering to do as I bult it out of storage parts mostly.

Nice whips fellas. Wingnuts that's one amazing Cobra. The speed, jump and firepower are fantastic. My Cobra was nothing like that haha.

It's great to see these builds.

I'll add one. here's what I spent today building

Dual Beam Bi-Weave Vulture

I ran out of mats for a lot of stuff, but good protection (both hull and shield resistances) and jump without adding too much weight to retain as much agility as I could. Quick shield recharge/recover times. This is a much better Vulture than I used to have

Dual Beam Bi-Weave Vulture



OK, analysis time. It was late when I posted that build so straight to bed. But I'm very happy with the result. Easily the fastest I've put together a ship, one day, and that's with getting experimentals on everything which requires visits to a long list of engineers of course. It also required dusting off the AspX to go for a SRV run to gather up some mercury and ruthenium which I was low on. Turns out I should have looked for some tungsten as well, which I ran out of during the build. That leaves all of those hull reinforcements at partial G5 until I can get more tungsten to finish them. Doing so will bring the integrity up a little as well as round off the resistances nicely.

As you can tell by my comments, I focus on resistances. Integrity and shield MJ numbers are important, but only tell part of the story. How well these figures are modified by resistances, for me, is much more important. I did a pretty good job of it I think, although I would like to see a little higher kinetic resistance on the shields. Kinetic resistance is low when using the Thermal Resistant engineering on the shield. I made up for it somewhat through shield booster experimentals, but I would prefer to see this number north of 50%. As posted, hull resistances are a little low too, but that's in part due to running out of tungsten as mentioned.

Approaching this build I wanted to try and retain the wonderful agility this ship has, as well as try to hit my target of 30 jump. In order to do so I had to keep it as light as possible. So I opted for no armor, instead using heavy duty mod on the stock lightweight alloy bulkheads. Heavy-duty adds considerable weight, except when the bulkheads weigh nothing haha. So it's 'free' integrity. That alone isn't enough, so several HRPs were used to bring it up. Heavy duty mod on these adds integrity and just as importantly, resistances. But it does add mass.

If I had it unlocked I would have used a Guardian shield reinforcement in the C5 military slot. But since I do not, a C5 HRP instead. So it's more hull tank than I set out to build, and a little heavier as a result.

I really like how the shields turned out. Bi-Weaves are great, and with good resists and very fast recharge times it's a really nice setup. Throw some pips in to SYS and any lost ring will refill in seconds. 777 MJ, but modified is 1700+ thermal MJ, which is great protection. Again, kinetic's a little low, but I had to accept it. If there were a way to trade some explosive resist for kinetic I'd do so in a heartbeat. But overall, the shields turned out great and are perfect for any PvE instance. Between the shields and integrity I think I have a very well protected Vulture.

On the other side of the coin -- performance and firepower -- I think I did fine. By keeping it relatively lightweight it retains good speed, 353/571. Agility numbers are very high. I forgot to write them down, and Coriolis doesn't display this. But the numbers are significantly better than even my Courier. After finishing it and before hitting the sack, I had to take it to a RES and test it out and the agility and energy retention are insane. Nothing flies like a Vulture. No drift, just constant purchase, and you can fly rings around anything.

The main challenge when engineering a Vulture is power I think. It's starved a bit and with just a C4 PP some overcharging is required. I got by with G2 here and added Thermal Spread to keep the heat down a bit. Still a little overhead remains, and could always go with another overcharge level if needed. It's part of the reason I opted for efficient beams. This mod greatly reduces the power and heat footprint of the beams and allows me to get busy elsewhere. I would have gone dual-thermal vent, but only had enough mats for one! So the other is oversized.

This mixed-beam set up results in a static or slight drop to heat signature when firing as the thermal vent cancels out the oversized one. I like to use dual-vent when I can. I've never seen anyone mention it, but one of the most amazing benefits of this is how it chills the ship. I have a couple of ships with this setup and standing on the beams ices over the cockpit. That's cool yeah, but what I think no one considers is that dropping your heat like this makes your ship essentially invisible to the NPCs. So while you are attacking you're essentially cloaked. That's a big benefit I've not seen mentioned anywhere.

Weapons are another challenge when building a Vulture. Two large hardpoints is nice in a small ship. But it leaves little room for diversity, and makes coming up with a satisfactory solution to be effective against both shields and hull a challenge. Dual beams strip shields quickly, but not as good for hulls. You can see Wingnuts opted to mix a beam and a corrosive MC. I've used this too, and actually have a C3 incendiary and C3 corrosive MC in storage, so I can chop and change if I get the urge. But dual-beams is ammoless and with 3 or 4 pips to WEP can fire for days. Coriolis says infinite TTD with 4 pips.

I went with D sensors with a few levels of long-range for power reasons. A-sensors draw too much power for this build. A Guardian FSD booster got me to the target of 30 jump, but that does gulp a lot of gas. Can't jump three times at max range on a C3 tank, so plotting a scoopable route is important. It did make flying it to all of those engineers a little better though.

In all, I'm very happy with my new Vulture. This build kind of came out of nowhere. I wasn't planning on a new ship. But this thread got me to thinking, and that's always dangerous

I used to run 5 railguns and no shields and full armor on a Cobra MK IV, but that was way back in 2014 or 2015? Anyways, the devs then nerfed the crap out of railguns and made it so they melt individually if you start to overheat. I haven't played much since. It was an awesome feeling taking down player FDLs in a Cobra, though, and couldn't fathom a good reason why they ruined such a fun build or weapon.

You mentioned it before Blastman, and I think you should give it another go. Maybe you can't use five rails anymore, but build a ship and see what you CAN get away with. I bet a pair of thermal vent beams could offset those rails even today. Lots of other ways to dissipate heat too. Seems an interesting build project.

3 fully engineered beam lasers and 4 fully engineered frag cannons are more than plenty of firepower for me on my Fed Corvette.

What the DPS number on that setup PM?

After Blastman's post I did a little looking around. I've not experimented with rails much myself, as I see it as a PvP weapon and I don't do much of that. But I found a number of threads from the past couple of years with players using four, five and even seven rails. I didn't dig too deeply, or find out how this is counterbalanced. I think maybe it's viable but will be dependent on how the rest of the ship is built. You have to take care of that heat. So while the configuration Blastman was using when they made changes may have been invalidated, it seems to me it's still possible to run this sort of build with the right engineering soup.

DBond, consider a AMFU size 1 for your ship. You can use it to repair your canopy when it breaks. It's not if on that canopy it's when. Just turn off the power to the AMFU until you want to use it.

I will consider it, thanks for the tip. I still have that unused C1 slot.

Is it true that a canopy won't pop unless shields are gone? If so I cannot see that happening. Famous last words perhaps!

Thanks for the comment. I made that lengthy dissertation about my build but it didn't generate any discussion. What do you think of the build?

I ran dual beams on my V. That was pre-engineering days for me. Bulls were a huge issue once shields are down. Even with engineering, it’s still an issue I feel. That’s the primary reason I opted not to do a Vulture this time around.

I switched from dual beams to dual pulse for power issues. Pulses would stay up longer firing, pre-engineering that is.

Recluse, Neph and I have been testing and getting used to small again. I have switched out my Frags for a large multi-canon engineered with oversized / corrosive. I think I'll get more hits with it, we'll see. So far I haven't lost shields yet and I've actually been doing stupid things to test them. I have been running 2-1-3 on my pips as well. 3 to wep and I can fire the beam indefinitely.

Updated the build as it had a few mistakes on it. https://s.orbis.zone/6as6

DBond your armor choice is a good move to increase jump, however if shields drop I'd be concerned. That's why I kept military grade as I know I'll keep pounding away on them. Your build is pretty similar to mine as well. Our shield differences are interesting choices. BTW Guardian Shield Boosters will take forever to get shields back if ever. If they drop RUN LIKE YOUR ON FIRE!!! That's why I don't use them anymore.

That makes sense. Two weapons is limiting, but I was killing OK with it last night, and anyway it's got more pop than my Courier! The thing about this ship is, that with infinite firing time, gimbals and insane maneuverability I feel like I can just shoot and not stop. Unless he flips to face-tank me, or goes reverski, there's nothing a NPC can do to shake this thing. I can just keep the beams on it until it dies. Big ships like Condas and Gunships can still take a while, but I'm used to it from the Courier and this ship kills better than that. I don't try to kill ships like that solo anyway. I'll shadow a high-ranked big ship until something shoots at it. When flying small ships have I no problem just getting my tags in while the allies gang up on anything Clipper and above.

Your choice of a Cobra IV though gives you a lot more armament flexibility. Five hardpoints right? That's more than any other small ship I reckon. On the other hand, supporting five weapons can prove it's own build challenge. I'm not a Horizons early adopter so I've not had the pleasure myself.



I see it as my hull is actually better protected than yours, and without 40t of armor, because of the resistances. I base it entirely on what Coriolis is showing me, and maybe it's not accurate? Not sure. But comparing explosive/'kinetic/thermal HP it's 1869/2006/2218 vs 1429/1667/2000. If those values are correct I think my hull is more effectively protected maybe is the way to say it. Not that I want to put yours down, just talking build theory

If any weapons ignore resistances raw integrity will be better. Do NPCs use weapons that ignore resistances?

Once I farm more tungsten I'll see fairly significant improvement here as I finish off the G5 and add missing experimentals.



Yeah, I was wondering about your choice (ELP). I almost went the same route, but I found power was manageable as it came together so went Thermal Resist. And I agree it's interesting, because we ended up with nearly the same MJ, recharge and recovery times, and explosive shield resistance going two very different routes. Your shields have a small kinetic superiority. Against thermal mine are more than twice as effective. Shield integrity is doubled as well, but I'm not sure what this really means. I've never had shields destroyed so means nothing I reckon. I am using one additional booster with no KWS so that has to factored in as well.

Thanks for the scoop on the shield reinforcements.

I was curious to check the pitch/roll/yaw numbers of this Vulture and compare it to my Courier.


Courier (G5 Dirty Drive Distributors)

64.98/153.81/27.36

Vulture (G5 Dirty Drag Drives)

70.53/184.72/28.55

So the Vulture is more maneuverable in all three but particularly roll (and weighs 5x as much) Gotta fly it like a 190

DPS for my 4A beam laser (2) is 40.5 each.
DPS for my 3C beam laser is 25.2
DPS for my 2D frag cannon (2) is 178.1 each
DPS for my 1E frag cannon (2) is 48.9 each

I’d say the dps on the size 3 beam is mostly potential. The hard point is not much use given it's poor location set back under the nose. Imho, of course. I tend to run seekers or a gimballed mc there.

Referring to the L hard point on the Vette.

Adding it up it appears that Vette's DPS is around 560, if it's that simple.

Sorry PM, I thought you'd have a build and could just report the DPS, instead of figuring them out individually, but thanks for doing so. That's a lot of firepower. 10x more than my little old Vulture haha.

Correction: I said both my Courier and Vulture have Dirty Drags, but the Courier is Dirty Drives with Drive Distributors which I found made a big difference in speed.

No problem DBond! It actually was no big deal since I was in the game at the time I made the posting and I simply went to "Outfitting" at the station I was currently at and got the DPS data from there.

Similar builds here....for both Vette and Vulture..

Vulture



Fed Corvette

(this isn't the most up to date configuration... did more engineering since putting this together, notably Grade 5 Dirty Drags... otherwise this is pretty much the current build.

Last night, just after Wingy left, I tangled with a Fed Gunship in a Wing of 3. Then James (OverloadRJ45) showed up and in the time it took me to lose my focus to send a Wing Invite and turn on my Beacon, I got nailed. Lost shields and took about 10% Hull damage before I killed the Gunship, then boosted away to lick my wounds. My Powerplant was degraded to 59%. Once I rebooted and OverloadRJ45 boosted up my shields, I was back in the fight and didn't much notice the degraded PP.


My Vette on Coriolis shows 175.5 DPS

Those FRAG CANNONS really add up...but...llike the PA's, only count when up close and personal.

Yup, they are essentially space sawed-off shotguns.

Yeah, maybe the way I added up PMs numbers isn't how it works? I wonder what Coriolis would say it is.

I checked out your builds Rec and I like those resistances on your Vette. Good balance. Insane MJ numbers, but maybe all you guys have similar numbers on that boat. 18 minute recharge time is enough to go grab a beer and a sandwich

Your Vette is worth more than all of my ships put together lol.

What mods do you have on your Vulture's mutlicannon? It shows it's engineered but when I click on it nothing is selected.

Guardian FSDBs are popular in this crowd. It really helps the Vulture doesn't it? Takes the pain away. Those additional C1 slots we got last year are pretty valuable in this ship too.

About frags... I actually tried frags on my Courier and that was a fail. Close range is right and unless you're saddled up what's the point right? In a Courier thread on the FDev boards I realized that many or most players who build small, fast ships fight more or less conventionally and use the agility and high speed for defensive purposes. I took a different approach and fight at high speed, making gunnery passes (or laser passes perhaps). So frags just won't work when the window closes so quickly. It's just what I had in mind when building that ship, to be always flying it at high speed, not just to evade or find the next target.

My VULTURE Multi is Grade 5 OVERCHARGED/CORROSIVE SHELL

I pulled the Multicannon off my Anaconda where I had 2 Large Multis, this one and and another OVERCHARGED/AUTOLOADER so it would keep firing as there is no need to stack Corrosives.

I usually do a mix of HEAVY DUTY and RESISTANCE AUGMENTED on the SHIELD BOOSTERS, but I went HEAVY DUTY on both only because that was my PINNED Blueprint. I ended up going to the Engineer anyway for the Special Effect so I could have done that mix. Didn't feel like wasting more MATS to do it over.

I noticed Wingy put MODULE REINFORCEMENTS on his size 1 slots and I am thinking of doing the same since last night my Shields actually went down...

By the way, my Corvette Shield Megajoules are probably on the LOW side for the Corvette Club. Most of the other guys have Guardian Shield Boosters. Bohemond has something like 8000 MJ!!

I have an overcharged corrosive (in storage).

Bo sort of touched on it earlier, but I'm in the same boat (double entendre, love those) What I mean is when I used the Vulture earlier in my Elite career I was only just beginning to engineer and had access to few and low level. So even though I thought it was a great ship, in relative terms it was not, at least compared to a fully engineered one. I struggled with the weapons in particular as I couldn't even mod beams yet, and pulse lasers at G3 don't really cut it. So I went with two MCs but struggled to strip shields, and I don't like having two guns with no autoloader and different mag capacities, resulting in the guns being out of synch, which it was because I made the other one incendiary to help with the shield issue. It was a bit of a mess and I was never happy with the weapons. Loved the way it flew, and I could protect it well enough for PvE. When I finally started unlocking more engineers I sort of moved away from the Vulture and sold it.

But now I can G5 everything. The two beams are fantastic shield strippers. I'm tempted to add the corrosive MC back in and get the best of both worlds. I really wish I could overcharge it, add corrosive AND autoloader

As long as I shoot these beams from inside about 600m they're pretty good against hulls, but at 1 km and out they're pretty weak. So it locks me in to guerilla warfare, like the Viet Cong grabbing 'em by the belt. Gotta keep it really tight to fight this Vulture effectively. I got in a little bounty hunting last night and was using ramming quite often as a tactic to finish ships off. That's a fun change haha.

My Vulture of yesteryear was barely Engineered and not fully A-Rated. Took quite a bit of materials and Engineering trips to kit it out. Luckily I scavenged the Weapons from other ships. Back in the day pre-Engineering, the regular Vulture was fine, and, since we typically were bounty hunting in WINGS of 2-4 with similar ships, FIREPOWER was never an issue. I'm surprised how capable the Engineered Vulture is today!! Until last night, my shields never went down, whether in a Wing or Solo. I felt quite confident in the HIGH RES. I won't lie, though, i appreciated the cops helping out, though it always seemed when I was facing the greatest threat, there was never one around when I needed him

Gradually getting used to flying a fast maneuverable ship. Despite overshooting more often than not, I have been managing to hang with the other ships and keep sustained fire on them through their maneuvers. If I could only master FA OFF maneuvering, it would be even more potent. As it is, FA OFF is great for rapid PITCH UP to get an enemy in the sights.

Love the ram! Used it very effectively when I had my Chieftain. Kinda tough to ram in the Vette. At
least on purpose

I seem to have NO problem ramming my wingmen, however!

LOL! I'd say close to 50% of my dogfights against AI pirates involve one or two collisions. I have close to 6,000 shields though so I can shrug off a couple of collisions with no problem.

This is a maneuver we have all mastered!

Bumping uglies, as I like say!

Rec, collapsed shields was just the fact you were stopped and attention was elsewhere right? You wouldn't have lost them otherwise. I haven't had shields shot away on any ship in, well I don't really know, a year or two. I feel compelled to add "in PvE", but henceforth all of my posts assume this forthwith!

The only times I lost my shields in that time was due to collision in the Courier. One night Bo and I were dual-Courier bounty hunting and this dude Andrew Knox and I collided. Dead me instantly. That was my fifth ship loss. Each one stings

By the way there is an APB out on one Andrew Knox

Up to now I've only done PvE and I have zero interest in the PvP stuff to be honest. I just don't care for the stress and hassle of adversarial multiplayer stuff anymore.

It's a bit of a mess in Elite, PvP i mean.

But I would fly open all the time and willfully engage if engineering was removed from the game. If all ships reverted to just A-rated versions, with their inherent strengths and weaknesses, I would really enjoy flying that way all the time.

Pretty much how I feel about it, PM. Any pvp I want, I’ll get in another game. Not to mention the fact that the meta is totally different pvp vs pve as far as builds, from what I understand.

If you play PvP, are all of the ships you encounter human piloted or are there AI ships in the mix as well?

Both. From my time spent in open, mostly it’s 99% AI unless you’re in one of the hotspot systems like Shin, Deciat, or some such. Back when the CG’s were going on, I’d see other commanders there also.

It's exactly like any other mode but with players. So all the NPCs plus players. Players have a hollow square on the radar. Player ships also have CMDR in front of their names.

Thanks for that info guys! It would be interesting to know what percentage of the entire ED player community plays exclusively or mostly open server/PvP.

From my limited experience in open, there’s honestly very little additional risk as opposed to PG or solo. PG ensures that I’ll meet up with the gang I hang around with, however.

Bo's exactly right. Open feels more or less like solo except in certain systems, and he named two of the worst. You never want to go to an engineer in open haha.

I've flown open a bit. Not to seek out PvP but to have the threat of it. It feels pretty cool. I am hyper-aware all the time and it feels more exciting to me. But if you're staying off the beaten path and away from magnet-systems it can be pretty peaceful. Any players who were instanced with you and in the same system will appear in your comms panel log. I often found many names there which I had not been aware were even around. Players just going about their business like I was. The griefers hang around the most likely locations of course, because that's where they'll find the most targets. These folks just want to blow you up, again and again if they can.

There's another subset of players who want PvP, but with consent, so they will send you a message asking if you are game. Others just attack. Sometime they time their attacks just outside the station so if you fire back the station kills you. Some ram you inside the station. I've not been hit but remember one attempt that I saw coming and evaded as he crashed and was then blown up by the station. it was maybe the best moment I've had in Elite haha. It was a FAS.

I'm not so adventurous though, and I hate losing ships. So I'll only fly a couple of mine in open. The Courier and the FDL. I've done the DBX a few times too. Any other ship I've taken in to open was because I was board flipping and forgot which one I had last flipped to lol.

Great post DB! I cracked up about the player who tried to ram you in the station. It would be really hilarious and stunning to come across another human player on the open server in some remote system like 30,000 LY from the bubble. Just think of those odds!

Early on I used to do Transport CG's in OPEN because I liked meeting other Commanders going about the business of space trucking. Sometimes winging up spontaneously for the Trade Dividend.

But then I got griefed a few times. Seriously thought I was Hot #%&*$# in my ASP Explorer and even SOUGHT out the guy for a REMATCH after he blew me up....and he blew me up again. Later, I got Interdicted, and figured the old SUBMIT and RUN trick would work. Nope.. got blown to smithereens before my FSD even charged.

Maybe I could have stuck it out and "Got Gud" at PvP builds to hold my own in PvP, but it just wasn't as appealing as flying in PG with friends, so I walked away and never missed OPEN.

Are there any kind of rank promotion or credit bonuses for destroying human-controlled ships?

None that I know of.

You mentioned running in to another player thousands of light years away. yes, that would be the sort of emergent gameplay that Elite should be known for right? Instead all I can think about is losing all that data after so. many. jumps. I should want to play in open but I don't, most of the time. Honestly the way it is is what FDev intended, and in some ways I can't blame the players who blow others up for no apparent reason other than the blowing up part. There's nothing in place to prevent it. If there were some sort of casus belli system (to borrow that term) I think it would be a better game. That is to say, valid reasons required to attack another ship, be it alignment, bounty status or any valid, sensible game-related reason.

I always imagined this game as more tribal. Like you are 'born' in to a certain alignment, and part of the bubble is ally, part neutral and part enemy, which is constantly shifting according to the geopolitics intrinsic in this sort of system. Venturing in to enemy territory has risks. Elite would have frontiers, and front lines, a sense of danger when you cross those lines, a sense of community and purpose, a homeland to defend. I don't know. Wouldn't it be fun just to patrol the frontlines, flying BARCAPS like in Falcon? As it is I don't care at all about the background stuff, and most players only do because of the special gear. I'd rather care about what I am doing than what I am getting, and frankly ships and ranks are what keeps me going.

But back to seeing players thousands of light years away... there's a middle ground with expeditions like Distant Worlds, where it's more like a huge PG with common destinations far from home. So not solo, no PvP, but lots of fellow explorers to meet.

Where's Wingnuts, I was hoping to continue the Vulture build discussion

Any thoughts on where the hunting will be Thursday? I'd like to strategically place my ship in advance. Where have you guys been getting your kills lately?

So after about a year of playing ED, I have come to the conclusion that the Empire in the game is very much inspired by House Corrino from the Dune universe in both aesthetics and political structure.


The pertinent scene starts at the 1:00 minute mark.

No decision as yet. Most of us are around I Carinae which is pretty close to Shinrarta Dezhra, so either place should work for Pre-positioning. Last night, on the way back from an Engineering trip, I stopped at the CNB at LTT 4487 and it was very rich in Elite/Deadly ships. There is a small outpost very close to the CNB for Refit and Repair and cashing in bounties. Since we have Small Ships it will do It is one jump from Shinrarta. There is also a CNB at LTT 4497 which is about a jump away from LTT 4487 as well. If we get more than 4 players, we could split into 2 Wings at adjoining CNB's.

OK thanks Rec. I'll leave my boat tied up at Shinrarta then. Haven't flashed my credentials there is a while

I've got a few million in explo data on board and I can turn it in there and get relations up. Are we still doing small ships? Can't decide on whether to bring the new Vulture or the Courier. I'm less likely to get blown up in the Vulture,

I see there are two beam mods for healing, one is the regeneration sequence and one is concordant something or other. You guys use regeneration sequence right? What's the difference and when would you want to use the other one?

We use Regeneration. That DIRECTLY puts your LASER power into regenerating shields. Concordant Sequence increases the target ship's own Regneration. Never used the latter so I don't know which is really better, but Regeneration is what we have always used, and on SMALL ships the Shield regeneration is FAST. Concordant Sequence also has a cost of extraf HEAT while Regeneration doesn't.

Only Caveat is it will not work if the target ship has ZERO shields, so it is best to reboot to 50% then take the [non-sexual] healing..

Maybe a silly question, but do you have to set a second fire group to only use the weapon with the regeneration mod? In other words if I only have it on one beam, but fire both beams at a friend, will one do damage while the other is healing?

YES.

Actually it's Yes and No. The important part is having the Wingman selected as Target. Due to the Vulture having only two weapons and my choice of not using a Kill Warrant Scanner I deleted the extra Fire Group. As I have a large laser and large multi-cannon in group one on separate buttons no need for the extra group. Now I only have two fire groups; first for weapons and second for Chaff Launcher and Laser. If you have more than two weapons, say 3 to 5 then you'll need a seperate group. Overall important thing is to Target the Wingman for the regeneration to work.

DBond my Vulture build is: https://s.orbis.zone/6as6

Shields were wrong on the other build. The jump range is actually 29,68LY. Recluse's build and mine are pretty similar, though he went with 2 Shield Boosters Heavy duty and I'm considering that as it took his shields uo to 1,200 MJ.

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.