there is no reason to ever buy a Viper over a Cobra, unless you really like the beauty of the viper and you are prepared to put in million to make it decent and accept all it's weaknesses and future problems
disadvantages:
- Power hungry: fully upgraded is impossible, you have to choose what to sacrifice which is not normal, and because of that there is a lot of other problems related, you can't choose your weapons, you have to put the worst utility/internal stuff, you will have to disable/enable modules all the time, and finally try to find for hours what is the "sacrifice build" that will at least be enough for you
- Only 1 profession effective: Bounty hunter ! this is the best job you can do, and the Cobra will be better at it, you can also do other job but you'll be crippling yourself for obvious reasons
- No edge against a Cobra: the Cobra will be faster than you, have more shield cell, will have the same agility, can use all the best weapons and all the best utility stuff at the same time without any drawback
- Weight punishment: for each 1 tonne of upgrade that you will equip, you will loose a hell of a lot Speed/Agility/Jump range, if you dare equip armor then you will certainly reach between 11 and 12,7 Jump range, which is seriously bad for a ship that worth 4 million
- Jump range is crap: the initial jump range is very bad, the maxed out jump range is very bad, some people will say "it's a drawback for the rest", what rest ?
- Costy to make it decent: you need minimum 2 million to begin to be decent, you will need a "full sacrifice build" of 3 to 4 millions to make it average.
- Fuel cost: the fuel cost on this thing is monstruous, and i really don't understand why, Fuel scoop mandatory so your build option will be even worst
advantages:
- Better for fixed weapons that the Cobra, but doesn't really matter since you can't use the big fixed weapons
- Smaller target than the Cobra
now you can understand why so many people are crying for a balance, as i always say "a Specialist should always be better at his own specialty than a generalist"