A shocking bill for a few bullets

Oman MkII

O
I "ran into" a bit of money today and decided to upgrade to an eagle and do a bit of bounty hunting for a change, naturally I fitted the best guns I could find as well as a missile rack for when I might get lazy and went on a bit of a pirate hunting spree. When I was hanging around the nav beacon in Sun Takush I happened to find a few 10,000cr bounties and was happily drilling holes in their hulls when I ran out of bullets and went back to a station to reload.

The bill was 20,000cr.

I'm thinking I may have been a little too trigger-happy, but still, 20k? Where can I find some bounties that might actually cover this cost? The only decent one I found was for a Cobra that needed me and half the system's police force to kill, and that was only 50k. Is it a matter of luck, or more so where I'm shopping?
 

Troa Barton

Troa Barton
Try a resource extraction site in a bigger ship like the viper. You can make a couple mill that way easy.
keep going out and back in until you see wanted pythons clippers dropships and anacondas and you're on the fast track.
its doable in an eagle but a viper is much better suited. A vulture is the correct tool for the job.
 

sqzbox1

S
Yeah - I'm not sure that was the answer OP was looking for. He has an Eagle - that is it. He isn't yet in a position to buy a viper. The question is about the cost of ammo versus the reward. Fit a laser for hitting the shields first. Bullets are slow on shields and costly.
 

Oman MkII

O
Hmm, I originally fitted the guns to make good use of the extra 20k I had - sqzbox1 is right, I don't have enough for anything bigger yet. I had hoped to be able to take on some bigger game that a few sidewinders, hence the guns, so I was wondering if the bounties you find are scaled based on the ship you're flying, or just chance?

For now though, I'll just downgrade I guess. Is it worth breaking the shields with lasers and then finishing with some bullets or a missile?

If you have a spare viper to donate, I'll happily to accept it ;)
 
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sqzbox1

S
The scale increases according to the ship you are shooting - not the ship you are flying. But it is a fundamental principle of the game mechanics that energy weapons are best against shields and physical ones such as multi-cannons, cannons, rails, and so on are best against hull. It is a long time since I flew an eagle but I am sure that if you asked there would be a number of good responses regarding how best to outfit an eagle for BH.
 

jpaulwilson1982

jpaulwilson1982
In every space game I play, I get missiles (if they're available) as soon as possible. In Elite, though, they're too costly and do too little damage. Even focusing lasers on shields, and bullets and missiles on hulls (as is intended) they're still ineffective. Too bad, because I love missiles in both their usefulness to me and in the challenge they pose.

Just throw on a Point Defense, and missiles can't touch you (at least in my experiences, 100% effective).

Focus on using other weapons until missiles are updated to be more effective.

ED Missiles = spitballs
 

Rankaze

Rankaze
For an eagle, bounty hunting... 3 fixed pulse lasers. Individual shots, they don't do that much damage, but bursts or beams will drain your capacitor too quickly. With the pulse lasers you can sustain fire better.

You can also do 1x multicannon 2x pulse laser, but I don't recommend that in an Eagle because your ability to take on larger ships in an Eagle is limited and so it's hard to make up enough profit to offset the ammo costs.

When you make enough money to move up to a Viper, though, you'll want to consider 2 lasers and 2 multicannon, using the lasers for shields and the multicannon once they're down.

And whatever you do, don't fit 3 beam lasers. You'll melt your own ship from the heat before you melt your target.
 
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Oman MkII

O
Hmm now you mention it dc83, it might have been to fill my missiles as well.

I got the missiles originally to finish off any absurd loop-the-loop combat that I often see, as well as taking care of one target while I focus on another. Do you guys have any better techniques for fighting other that just turning etc. until they're in my sights again?

What do you mean sqzbox? I'm wondering where I can find better bounties, not how they scale as such.

Alex, the point of this thread was to find out what is a sustainable weapon load out and/or how I can take on bigger ships. Of course they aren't free - is petrol?
 

SCADVID

SCADVID
dc83 said:
I'm a laser-lover for BH, because you don't eat up your profits with ammo costs. On the other hand, running an all-laser build turns your ship into an energy hog, which means you need to upgrade your power plant... and it doesn't sound like our OP has the credits to do that.
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Power plants ironically are cheaper than dirt to buy.

Beam lasers for the grunt work (shield downing); MC only for the hull/subsystem damage keeps the "tax" cheap (I call all the repairing and ammo costs "taxes" as that is how they feel like). That can keep the sorties down to < 5,000 cr with 2 MCs.
 

Valethar

Valethar
I run nothing but multicannons on my Asp, and never have trouble covering the cost of ammo. Even with the Cobra and only 4 weapons, I didn't have trouble killing things fairly quickly.

These days I run all lasers on my Python. Less time spent running back and forth to reload. :D
 

Gold Member

Gold Member
Oman MkII said:
I "ran into" a bit of money today and decided to upgrade to an eagle and do a bit of bounty hunting for a change, naturally I fitted the best guns I could find as well as a missile rack for when I might get lazy and went on a bit of a pirate hunting spree. When I was hanging around the nav beacon in Sun Takush I happened to find a few 10,000cr bounties and was happily drilling holes in their hulls when I ran out of bullets and went back to a station to reload.

The bill was 20,000cr.

I'm thinking I may have been a little too trigger-happy, but still, 20k? Where can I find some bounties that might actually cover this cost? The only decent one I found was for a Cobra that needed me and half the system's police force to kill, and that was only 50k. Is it a matter of luck, or more so where I'm shopping?
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Get a viper in Leesti as soon as you can. They are only 300K (fully upgraded around 3 million) but even the stock ship can do some damage and it's a lot tankier than an eagle. Look, I had an A-fitted eagle and I loved the thing, but everyone can throw a rock at you and burn through your shield in no time. The viper isn't that expensive to start flying and is much tankier. Also, it can fly fast enough (with 4-pips to engines) to outrun most pursuers if you need to jump out.

And yeah...about the missiles. They don't do nearly enough damage to justify the cost. Use multi-cannons and beams or pulse lasers. The multi-cannon doesn't do much damage either but at least you have a bit of ammo. My viper has 2 beams and 2 cannons (large). If I use them properly, 200 rounds of cannon ammo will last around 30-60 minutes and only cost a 2000 credits or so for 3-600K bounties collected.
 

Sathayorn

S
Sounds to me like a mix of missiles and railgun, both of which use expensive ammo, and both are great weapons when being used with lasers. Missiles are well worth the cost if you need a quick boost in damage, such as when you're trying to land a finishing blow on a ship that's charging its FSD, or one that's about to get it's shields back up.

Gotta have the lasers.
 

Oman MkII

O
Gold Member said:
And yeah...about the missiles. They don't do nearly enough damage to justify the cost. Use multi-cannons and beams or pulse lasers. The multi-cannon doesn't do much damage either but at least you have a bit of ammo. My viper has 2 beams and 2 cannons (large). If I use them properly, 200 rounds of cannon ammo will last around 30-60 minutes and only cost a 2000 credits or so for 3-600K bounties collected.
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Are these just the stock lasers for 3K? They are relatively effective on the couple of ships I took out, but it sounds like you need a hell of a punch to take out anything larger. I'll head back later and buy a Viper when I've finished my exploring spree, made a tidy profit actually. Thanks for the tips guys.
 

Gold Member

Gold Member
Oman MkII said:
Are these just the stock lasers for 3K? They are relatively effective on the couple of ships I took out, but it sounds like you need a hell of a punch to take out anything larger. I'll head back later and buy a Viper when I've finished my exploring spree, made a tidy profit actually. Thanks for the tips guys.
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With only 3 small hardpoints an eagle just can't dish out enough damage to kill much larger ships effectively. It can be done but it takes forever and you always run the risk of getting caught one too many times in the sights of your enemy. I regret selling my eagle now. It was mostly A-fit and a lot of fun to fly. That it was also squishy made it a fun challenge, and at the end of the day insurance is so cheap that I never really felt like I was risking a lot.
 

zeq

Z
Almost certainly your missile rack for most of that. Missiles come out to about 500 credits a pop. The multicannons probably come out as quite a bit if you fully run out, but that should be plenty of bounties. In my experience, in an Eagle as well, it didn't take more than a couple hundred credits worth of ammo to take down a single bounty.
 
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