Newcomer / Intro What are you up to?

Every ship in the game has something distinctive about its engine sound, how that affects our experience in the cockpit is why I suggest picking ships you enjoy being in for exploration.

The Vulture is a ship I don’t own and despite riding in a few of them used as battle taxis don’t recall the engine sound. A ship that sometimes has a really objectionable sound is the Clipper occasionally when boosting at full throttle it sounds like the engines are tearing apart.
 
Unengineered, the PP struggles to deliver enough power for its core components - no weapons installed, yet.
I bought my first Vulture in the old days, before Engineering was a thing. Power was limited, as you say. However, 2 large pulse lasers worked fine, and at the time they were quite powerful against the NPCs. I did a lot of bounty hunting in RES sites and CGs in that Vulture, saving up for a Python.

I have a fully (if strangely) engineered Vulture now that I call Bunzilla. This one features 2 overcharged multicannons with Incendiary Shell on them. And 1816MJ worth of shields. Power is less of a problem now. The MCs aren't as effective as I'd hoped they would be, but it's an amusing ship nonetheless.

I've never really noticed the engine sounds much. I guess they don't bother me. I do tend to keep the sound on my computer fairly low, though. :)

 
I bought my first Vulture in the old days, before Engineering was a thing. Power was limited, as you say. However, 2 large pulse lasers worked fine, and at the time they were quite powerful against the NPCs. I did a lot of bounty hunting in RES sites and CGs in that Vulture, saving up for a Python.
Dual pulse laser, free riding in HiRes with NPC police were my days before I started the engineering grind, and save enough for chieftain. That's a fun little ship to blow things up with. Never a fan of C3 MCs due to the spin up delay. After unlocking dweller, 1x LR TV beam become standard equipment, the other could be double shot frags, another beam or LR/Focused PA which is now my Fav. setup.
 
If you think the Vulture's engines sound bad, wait until you try a Dolphin - where each time you boost it sounds like someone has put an actual dolphin in a really big food processor.
I own a Dolphin for quite some time. And I don't have any issues with it's engine sounds.

It isn't the engine sound of the Vulture as such, it is about how loud it is, as soon as you get above a certain level, your eardrums meet in the middle. You don't even have to boost to get that.
It really feels like having a V8 or some high end sports car with some cutouts installed closely to the headers, far from any muffler. As long as they are deactivated at slow speeds / low engine power, everything sounds fine, but as soon as you hit that threshold that activates the cutout, hell breaks loose.
 
hell breaks loose
Yes. Vulture in a nutshell - in every respect. If you get an assassination, and they have three high ranked Vultures as escorts, you know you're in trouble.

As for mine - PP engineered for armoured, then put two rapid fire/screening shell Pacifiers on there (switch for regular frags if you don't have pacs). You need to get up close and personal, but that's what the Vulture is there for. Last time I've been using mine was to ship out mugs and gin to Ody ground stations within Operation 2HOT2MESSY. Even stripped of reinforcements (in exchange for a cargo rack), pirates are a welcome snack.
 
Ah yes the Vulture - almost a medium sized combat ship in ability, but with a small footprint’s maneuverability? :]

i ultimately fitted mine with as many shield boosters as i could, as well as two 3C Beams engineered with Efficiency and an enhanced distributor - even with a maxed out power plant, it deactivates quite a few (unnecessary) things on drawing hardpoints - but yep, those lasers just keep going…

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So I bought this:
View attachment 344565
... To use for courier missions around Kuk.

I'm not entirely sure if it was a good idea, though.

"Core Dynamics pushed its expertise to the limit when creating the Vulture, employing sophisticated techniques to integrate two large hardpoints into the ship's compact frame."
Yeah, right, but they forgot to make room for a power plant of befitting size...
Unengineered, the PP struggles to deliver enough power for its core components - no weapons installed, yet.

And the engine sound is quite obnoxious, to be honest. It is okay at low speeds, but as soon as the throttle goes past half, it is as if there would be some cutouts activated to circumvent the mufflers... It got so loud that my cat raised her head, looking at me - she lies across the room and I wear headphones. Yikes. Thank goodness the volume wheel is easily accessible...
Ah, a Vulture. I don't have one of those in my fleet but have been a pax in one a few times. ;)
 

Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
I discounted the Vulture as a viable combat ship for a very long time because it only had two hardpoints, until I tried it. It's great fun to fly. I even managed to kill a player who jumped me in a CG conflict zone and made the FDL that piled on bug out :D They're just so much fun to fly and so manoeuvrable. It's also a perfect example of how unbalancing engineering is, because I don't have to make compromises as I can just overcharge the Power Plant.
(it was a long time ago, I know I should have boosted at the end)
Source: https://youtu.be/a6z5SHTR8Qw


But it also has the second best paintjob in the game for it!
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(the best paintjob is obviously for the Cobra Mk. III)
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Dual pulse laser
Another good option.

and save enough for chieftain. That's a fun little ship to blow things up with.
I do like my Chieftain, but I truly love the Challenger. It's a bit bigger and handles almost as well. The big thing to me though is that the Challenger isn't nearly as "twitchy" as the Chieftain. To me, it's much easier to control and aim and keep guns on target.

It's going to be interesting to see if all of this changes for me when my HOTAS stuff comes in.
 
...

It's going to be interesting to see if all of this changes for me when my HOTAS stuff comes in.

The fun is going to be getting used to the omni-throttle and what to assign where on it. Some months down the line I often (very often) find myself loading my old binds file and using the CHPro Throttle that I used for years. The omni-throttle is hugely more accurate / sensitive but the CHPro button layout is pure genius and changing that muscle memory is not fun. For sure I will stop using the CHPro before long as the VKB is great - it just me taking ages to get used to it (stopping fiddling with button assignments should help).
 
Yes. Vulture in a nutshell - in every respect. If you get an assassination, and they have three high ranked Vultures as escorts, you know you're in trouble.

Ah yep, usually with an elite Fer de Lance in a threat-6?

Those are the ones to watch out for... you're in for quite a battle, even in a Corvette - but, as you head back to collect your rewards and bounties, picking bits of pirate from between your teeth, it leaves one with a deeply satisfied feeling... :]
 
That would be the constant "low energy level, deactivating modules" reminder each time the ship changes between supercruise and normal space and vice versa, I guess.
Is there a way to deactivate that without deactivating more vital messages? (Hoping I missed something here...)
Manually switch off the offending module - or configure your ship so that there's enough power available.
 
Yes. Vulture in a nutshell - in every respect. If you get an assassination, and they have three high ranked Vultures as escorts, you know you're in trouble.
I remember having a merc chasing me down in a data couriering mission sporting one of these.
Made me second guess my tactic of submiting to interdiction and boost away, as I had my issues getting out of weapons range before my shields went down...
Nowadays I always evade interdictions, even though a Vulture is quite rare these days. But It usually isn't really fun to be on the business end of an Anaconda, either.
 
That would be the constant "low energy level, deactivating modules" reminder each time the ship changes between supercruise and normal space and vice versa, I guess.
Is there a way to deactivate that without deactivating more vital messages? (Hoping I missed something here...)

That probably means you are doing your outfitting right, to achieve the best results possible in combat with available power - as long as nothing important for combat is shutting down ofc... i don't know if it's possible to deactivate that warning - just something one has to live with, as when one assigns multiple scanners etc. to a single firegroup option.
 
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