I love my Cutter, and I'm keeping it. But I used it yesterday to do a quick round of engineering on some new modules and store them on my carrier so I could slap them in the PC when I got it. All I had to engineer today was was the armour, life support, and sensors and then buy the cargo racks.
Heads Up: Panther Clipper Mk2 is EXPENSIVE! 1.1 Billion!
- Thread starter Cmdr Snuffler
- Start date
Absolutely. Only way to engineer hull.
However, the resistances are a lot, lot, lower than reactive.
In solo/pg play this is fine, who cares about NPCs...they're not even going to drop 300mj shields before you wake outta there.
For open it's a bit more dicey, more so doing open CGs. You need to get those resistances higher, or pray you don't encounter one, or two, frag Python Mk2 gankers.
Going lightweight, over reactive, means you are forced to use way more optional slots to get your resistances to a decent level.
Solo you can get away with paper thin builds, which is great...for solo. Open play and encountering ganker murder boats is an entirely different kettle of fish.
Deep plating... lol.. reactive composites... lol they .melt like butter under the gaze of the new meta Python Mk2....
Shinrarta Dezhra is heaving.... My log file scripts picked up over 30 Python Mk 2 flying PVPers in system. But my runabout was destroyed before I could finish the tally.
Swapped commander and went back to SD in an engineered ship with fully engineered shields a couple of g5 boosters and fully decked out hull reactive composite G5 HD and resist balancing G5 HRP.. but alas I was again successfully interdicted within about 10 seconds of jumping into the system. The other player apeeared in front of me (maybe just jumped into supercruise...) But I didn't think anything of it because he was "safely" in front of me or so I thought. but alas I was wrong and died within 4 seconds according to the Journal data.
Not sure what unearthly engineering they're using but the PMK2 with full frag cannon is just too much even for a fully G5 engineered ship with 4 pips on shields.
Not even a chance to spool up the High wake FSD which I had already set. Unless you can somehow avoid a frontal interdiction you are guaranteed to die.
Anyway, I was just trying to count how many of the ships flying around seal clubbing the unwary were actually Python Mk 2s rather than FDLs... and the consensus is: All of them, it seems.
Shinrarta Dezhra is heaving.... My log file scripts picked up over 30 Python Mk 2 flying PVPers in system. But my runabout was destroyed before I could finish the tally.
Swapped commander and went back to SD in an engineered ship with fully engineered shields a couple of g5 boosters and fully decked out hull reactive composite G5 HD and resist balancing G5 HRP.. but alas I was again successfully interdicted within about 10 seconds of jumping into the system. The other player apeeared in front of me (maybe just jumped into supercruise...) But I didn't think anything of it because he was "safely" in front of me or so I thought. but alas I was wrong and died within 4 seconds according to the Journal data.
Not sure what unearthly engineering they're using but the PMK2 with full frag cannon is just too much even for a fully G5 engineered ship with 4 pips on shields.
Not even a chance to spool up the High wake FSD which I had already set. Unless you can somehow avoid a frontal interdiction you are guaranteed to die.
Anyway, I was just trying to count how many of the ships flying around seal clubbing the unwary were actually Python Mk 2s rather than FDLs... and the consensus is: All of them, it seems.
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Superlight - Heavy Duty engineering on lightweight bulks, no HRPs, no resistances
Middleweight - Lightweight engineering on Reactive bulks, 1 thermal HRP of the smallest size possible. Decent armor, GREAT resistances. Add Heavy Duty HRPs to taste.
Hardcore - Heavy Duty engineering on Reactive Bulks, 1 thermal HRP of the smallest size possible. Slightly lower resistances, but much more armor.
You can do anything in the game with other configurations, but these are optimal, imo, and work for any size of ship. Add further HRPs to increase resistances and armor to taste. Military bulks have no business on a ship that you love.
Middleweight - Lightweight engineering on Reactive bulks, 1 thermal HRP of the smallest size possible. Decent armor, GREAT resistances. Add Heavy Duty HRPs to taste.
Hardcore - Heavy Duty engineering on Reactive Bulks, 1 thermal HRP of the smallest size possible. Slightly lower resistances, but much more armor.
You can do anything in the game with other configurations, but these are optimal, imo, and work for any size of ship. Add further HRPs to increase resistances and armor to taste. Military bulks have no business on a ship that you love.
You can "fix" the only negative resistance on reactive so its all positive against all types of damage.
... just small suggestion: instead that very costly armor increasing rebuy cost considerably, and which also slightly slow ship down, buy V1 SCO FSD ... much higher chance for survival in Open in busy areas
+ that superlight variant by Aashenfox
+ that superlight variant by Aashenfox
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Meanwhile in Solo my ADC gently coasts me into Vespucci City whilst I make a brew at the back of the cockpit
O7
I'll buy 12 then...
your rigth rat absolute cope on my part gg wp . im sure the pvp community is da best..
lel who really thinks that
frag cannons are op the pvp community is just finding them out now . because they all used the same copy pasta build fdl with acellerator plasmas.. frag canons frag canons and mroe frag canons . one with drag munitions to make people rage. that is all there is to killing your engeneered ship in 4 seconds .. unless they kill you in2 seconds with infite damage packhounds. but that is cheating and "no one cheats " in the pvp community . >.>
anywyas the meta shields tanks die fast to ..the " pvp community" allways bitched about shields tanks .. when they all needed to do is get frag canons and shoot lol
To be completely fair, the cheats are rarely part of the actual pvp community. It's too easy to get found out, we have a LOT of experience now, some of us 9 years plus, we know straight away when someone is using premium, and if someone is cheating so little that they wouldn't be detected by simple 'that looks fishy' videos by other pvp cmdrs, then that's unfortunate, but unlikely to affect a gank, or be the difference against a better pilot. If they are cheating more than that, then they will be immediately found out by the first serious pvper they encounter. The pvp community is small in elite, and the price of getting caught is heavy. Immediate and total humiliation and ostracization.
Wings of frag cannons are unfortunate if you have anything but a fully pvp configured death machine, and the introduction of seekers that give you an extra 15 secs to kill your target was...an interesting decision by FD (for what it's worth, I run PD on all my hybrids now where they were chaff before, and chaff is of limited use on a medium or large ship against another player, so it's no real sacrifice). The frag guys are unlikely to be cheating though, some are probably running premium ammo, which is disgusting imo, I wish FD would remove it for the sake of pvp, but the pve'ers would be understandably upset, so that ship sailed long ago sadly. They don't need to cheat. 6 premium frags on a py2 is not something one can reasonably expect to survive against unless yuor ship is faster.
I don't think you're coping, there have been enough incidents over the years, but they are far less frequent than most people beleive, and I geniumely think it's counter productive to assume that people who can kill you in 5 secs with 4 optimally configured py2s, is a potential indicator of cheating.
I'm not denying your claim or your experience, but similarly I don't want anyone thinking that open is a cheat-fest. Shinrarta has always been gankland, I go in solo if I want to actually arrive at the station without getting interdicted, but you have to be elite to get in there, so you should know what you're doing. That's the theory anyway
The combination of the release of the python 2 with its truly insane dps, combined with a FSD reset seeker has simply pushed things hugely in favour of the gankers.
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... just small suggestion: instead that very costly armor increasing rebuy cost considerably, and which also slightly slow ship down, buy V1 SCO FSD ... much higher chance for survival in Open in busy areas
+ that superlight variant by Aashenfox
All depends on what ship you're flying, what the exact build is and your evasive flying skill. Reactive armour isn't a silver bullet on it's own. What was your build that got turned to toast in 4 seconds? If I had to guess I'd say you had either no shields or weak shields, <500mj and armour less than 1k, but I'm just speculating here.
A few weeks ago during a CG I was in my T-8 heavy trader, 1300 shields, 3200 armour. Restinances between 20% and 30%. Saw a frag PMk2 and SCO'd outta there...they followed me for quite a while. I ended up making some school boy errors and ended up being interdicted, which resulted in a very long FSD cool down.
During the 1-2 minute long barrage of frags I tried to high wake but cancelled it last second. Doh! So took even more fire.
Ended up high waking at 40% hull. Closest I've come to rebuy in a very long time. If I hadn't made so many mistakes in a row I would have escaped with my shields still intact.
Frag Python Mk2s hit HARD!
While charging the FSD do NOT fly in a straight line towards your jump star as this means you're a sitting duck, instead you need to face the attacker and fly as if you're dog fighting with them. This reduces the incoming fire drastically. Then at the last second point towards your destination and jump.
All ships have different SCO top speed. CMk5 is the fastest at 7.5k LS and the PCMk2 is the slowest at 3k LS. A PMk2 will easily catch up to a PCMk2 in SCO. So an SCO isn't a "get out of jail free" anti-hanker module.
Agreed.Superlight - Heavy Duty engineering on lightweight bulks, no HRPs, no resistances
Middleweight - Lightweight engineering on Reactive bulks, 1 thermal HRP of the smallest size possible. Decent armor, GREAT resistances. Add Heavy Duty HRPs to taste.
Hardcore - Heavy Duty engineering on Reactive Bulks, 1 thermal HRP of the smallest size possible. Slightly lower resistances, but much more armor.
You can do anything in the game with other configurations, but these are optimal, imo, and work for any size of ship. Add further HRPs to increase resistances and armor to taste. Military bulks have no business on a ship that you love.
Talking open only builds, not solo or PG...
I can't think of anything where I would use lightweight amour, even in exploration.
Middleweight and hardcore is where you really see a big difference in defences. Although when and how you use these comes down to what task you're doing and what ship you're flying. For example, as a rule of thumb, the slower and less agile the ship would lean more towards hardcore. Shielded or shieldless would also be a contributing factor. I don't think I would use middleweight on a PCMk2 in open when doing a trade CG as the loss in armour is greater than the benefit of resistance increase.
Yup. A single 1D HRP with thermal res and reflective does a great job of balancing armour resistances.
Been using this for the last 10 years.
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Agree with everything you said here. I'm 100% open only and have only encountered cheaters a handful of times in 10 years of playing. Happens, yes, common, no.
One thing I have noticed is how empty shin has been recently. It's been quiet all year. From what I have seen it is no where near the gank fest it used to be, 99% of the time it's an empty instance...I think colonization and many CGs with module rewards have something to do with it.
Get a Cobra Mk5, they make for great "blockade busters" when gankers are around. Fastest SCO speed at 7.5k LS, small target, very very fast top speed > 600m/s, great armour and shields, great jump range. I have a dedicated CMk5 just for busting through gankers to get to a station and it's never failed me, many gankers have tried, all have failed.
Love the Cobra Mk 5!
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Maybe people are just learning to avoid the crowded places in open now.
Yes, the Corsair and the Cobra V can both outrun Python2s and even seekers (the missile will catch you in the end, but it takes quite a few seconds for them to catch up when they are only approaching at less than 50m/s delta. Cobra V is a great runabout, speed is king in combat.
Exception: AX ships. Resistances do nothing and you want as much raw HP-s as possibleMilitary bulks have no business on a ship that you love.
Also, Lightweight engineering on Reactive armor is underrated. It works great on ships that are sensitive for added mass, but still need decent hull.
Standard hull with HD, DP is only for small superlight glass cannon ships that rely 100% on speed and agility.
The Cobra 5 is my main ship (the other ship is a 3, and I also have a second 5 fitted as a core miner, that activity is much more fun due to its size and agility). It can do pretty much everything and despite flying in Open at all times, its paintjob is down to 10% now, still waiting for the first rebuy. It's almost too OP but it's genuinely a great package that was worth the Standard Arx edition for me (all the other ships* left me cold).
As I had to regain access to ShinDez recently I was quite disappointed how dead it was (played during a weekend's afternoon, Europe timezone), despite pretty high traffic stats. Always enjoyed the shenanigans there, people moaning about gankers, me evading them, the odd cheater (rare as you say, but I've witnessed a few, some more obvious than others). Not sure if people just resigned to Solo now which would be sad.
*exception being the PC2, although looking at how many issues it comes with, waiting until the general credits release probably means most bugs and visual issues will have been fixed by then, so thanks to all the Beta testers lol.
The Mk5 has almost completely replaced my Vultures, which used to be my go-to hard as a coffin nail combat and blockade running ships. Waiting for a Vulture Mk 2, but I doubt that will happen
IMO this comes down to solo vs open play builds again. IF you're only fighting thargoids in solo then 100% agree with you.Exception: AX ships. Resistances do nothing and you want as much raw HP-s as possible
In open it's quite common to get gankers at thargoid events. The lack of shields and resistances means it's easy pickings for them.
I run reactive and a 1D HRP thermal res on my AX ships. The loss of armour from the 1D thermal HRP is negligible from a goid combat standpoint, but huge benefit if you get ganked. If you can afford it I see no reason to use military over reactive, ever.
Same here. Used to love the cat and mouse game trying to get to Jamesons Memorial
Not seen many issues with the PCMk2 apart from some odd shadows and lighting issues. The severely limited view is probably my only gripe.
I need to go read the PCMk2 bugs thread someone started to see if there's anything I've missed.