Ships Easy ship progression

[xkjacob]

I know some newer players may want to know a good way to hop skip and acquire some great ships.
Here is a basic guide to progressing through ships.
RES = Resource extraction site
Usually found in systems with planets that have rings and they spawn randomly (sort of).
Tip for selling ships
- down grade/sell everything on your ship before selling.
1. Sidewinder - starting ships.
- bounty hunt RES or Nav
- get a kill warrant scanner
- I don't really suggest trading or missions.
- bit of a grind.
- don't outfit too much
2. Buy the Viper sell the side winder
- do bounty hunting (RES)
- pulse lasers are fine
- outfit to your hearts content
- make a million dollar nest egg. Do not touch it.
2a. Buy a Cobra and do rare trading from Lave system.
- you may get bored of bounty hunting
- I did and I did this.
3. Lakon type 6
- I didn't remove shield, but if you can use a type D in a smaller slot. I wasn't very good at mail slotting when I first started.
- do not sell your viper to buy this.
- upgrade cargo slots
- D class everything on it
- frame shift drive C or above
- lookup rares trade route (buy fuel scoop)
- download Slopey
- do round trip station to station trading with under 50Ly between them. 1k+ round trip profit per ton. (I average 2-4k per ton)
- this is a serious grind, but teaches you to dock and use a ship that is awful at flying.
4. ASP
- sell your type 6 to buy this ship.
- outfit for trading, should have over 100 cargo.
- repeat type 6 method
- congrats you now own the best adventuring and point to point ship in the game
5. Vulture
- save up 10 million (over your nest egg) then buy the vulture.
- you now own the best (at price) bounty hunting, Rank grinding and mission grinding ship.
- I sold my viper to buy it, but you don't have to. The Viper and vulture are pretty great.
- outfits vary but..
You dont need A thrusters
You dont need A shields
Pulse lasers work just fine.
Shield boosters are great.

Now you have the ASP and Vulture.
You have the mid range apex adventuring / dog fighting / trading / mission grinding ships. The game is your oyster.

FAQ:
Why fuel scoop?
Fuel scoops let you refuel at yellow, red and white stars (no dwarf stars) and this can extend your adventuring / travel range indefinitely.

I have no idea how to navigate?!
Two most important things for navigation.
1. There is a search option in the galaxy map under navigation .
Put the SYSTEM name in and it will find it.
2. When plotting the course it uses economical versus fastest. I usually choose fastest. Economical would be good for adventuring though.

Why D class everything?
D class are the lightest, increasing your frame shift jumping range and agility.

I have no idea how to bounty hunt.
Go to an RES site or nav way point.
Click next target ship.
Wait for scan to finish. If it says wanted kill them. If you scan with kill warrant scanner you can get out of system bounties. Then do not die, or you lose all your bounties,and go to a station. Under contacts choose local security and turn in your bounty.

Why low class/no shield on my trading vessel?
Because if you get interdicted by a pirate just turn throttle to 0 to submit to interdiction then once in non hyper space turn throttle to 100% and put all 'pips' (energy) into engines and boost until frame shift drive cool down is over. You shouldn't be getting attacked much if you stick to that, so you dont need a big shield.

What are rares?
Golden items in the commodity market. Generally google "elite dangerous rare trade route" and that should get you where you need to go.

Why do I want to go so quickly to mid range playing?
Because from that point you are 80 hours or so from your first very large ship and all the other ships are relatively cheap to your hourly income and you can experiment with them more liberally and not have to worry about cash.

Why Vulture and Asp?
They effectively replace every ship under their price range as a pair.

Why should I buy a hauler/eagle/cheaper ship?
Because cheaper insurance, cheaper outfitting, hones your play style and they are fun to fly. Hint- a hauler makes an amazing system to system taxi. An eagle makes a great interdictor practicing ship. A viper is g awesome for dive bomb style attacking.

Should I follow this guide to a T?
No. There are plenty of wonderful ships and activities to do. The environment in Elite Dangerous changes often as well, so this guide may become dated.
Current activities being improved (1.3)
- missions!
- mining! (probes and such)
- power play!
Current activities that are not shown and are fun.
- discovering new areas (make money in the cartography tab)
- trying different flight models in the ships
- pvping
- reputation gaining
- rank gaining
- join a "guild" or online group
- play with friends.
It is a sandbox go have fun.

 

[Ceekay]

I've found exploring and mining to be very good at earning credits and both are low risk, I reckon they fit in between 1 and 2 on your list, re the Asp, build up your rep with the Alliance and buy the Asp at Alioth for 20% discount.

You should get your post stickied by a mod and add worthwhile comments at the come in, rep +1

 

[xkjacob]

I've found exploring and mining to be very good at earning credits and both are low risk, I reckon they fit in between 1 and 2 on your list, re the Asp, build up your rep with the Alliance and buy the Asp at Alioth for 20% discount.

You should get your post stickied by a mod and add worthwhile comments at the come in, rep +1

I don't know how the different exploration stores work, so I wasn't sure the credits per hour for that.
I tried mining, but I think my numbers were 1/30th of bounty hunting. :-/
I did not mine at an RES site though. Maybe those are significantly better?

 

[Reaver 2.0]

A very thorough and well thought-out progression. But I would encourage new players to not simply do what another player did and find out what ships meet their needs based on what activities they are interested in doing and what money's they have available given the time they are willing to put into acquiring money.
There's a ton of player feedback on every ship in the game for new folks to research their next ship and make informed buying choices.

 

[Ziljan]

Progression seems broken right now. It basically boils down to: "if you want to upgrade, go bigger". This seems like a very shallow MMO style game design that will herd the general player mindset into an "endgame" mentality. As a result we have 17 ships models, out of which, only 5 of which occupy the top tier of their respective food-chains. The smaller ships are for new players, role-players, or for those that want to increase the difficulty artificially.

 

[xkjacob]

A very thorough and well thought-out progression. But I would encourage new players to not simply do what another player did and find out what ships meet their needs based on what activities they are interested in doing and what money's they have available given the time they are willing to put into acquiring money.
There's a ton of player feedback on every ship in the game for new folks to research their next ship and make informed buying choices.

Added to FAQ.
One thing to caution against is not using the Vulture or Asp once financially viable.
I have heard people complain that the vulture is a little too effective, but as it stands the Asp may also be a little too great as well. It should probably not have better cargo space of a type 6 and the vulture should probably also have less cargo space

 

[xkjacob]

Progression seems broken right now. It basically boils down to: "if you want to upgrade, go bigger". This seems like a very shallow MMO style game design that will herd the general player mindset into an "endgame" mentality. As a result we have 17 ships models, out of which, only 5 of which occupy the top tier of their respective food-chains. The smaller ships are for new players, role-players, or for those that want to increase the difficulty artificially.

In some places I agree. In others I don't.
We can't use the word progression and be upset a thing that costs 25 Vipers and have a rebuy of +3 Cobras is good.
We also cannot ignore base model 6 million dollar ships are garbage,when you can fully outfit a cheaper ship for less and be more effective. It takes a ton of money to outfit them and if they aren't worth it then no one will buy them.
We also cannot ignore each ship has a distinct strategy and if you ignore it you will have a bad time. Each ship has different strengths and weaknesses along with a custom outfitting. Based on player skill, outfit and base model the outcome will happen.

With the Asp I would agree it consolidates...
The eagle, sidewinder,cobra,hauler and type 6 and Adder(!) easily with little to no compromise.
The vulture at least has crap jump range and much less cargo space.

Other ships, like the Clipper and Drop ship are rather terrible. They may be better than a type 7 for transporting goods, but using them for any other purpose is pointless.
No agility, bad weapon placement and ship sizes that are impossible to miss with shields that are paper thin. You even need rank to buy those steaming turds.
Full disclosure I am ranking up to buy a clipper to skip buying a type 7 for trading.

 

[Elooder]

Full disclosure I am ranking up to buy a clipper to skip buying a type 7 for trading.

Yeah, well get the clipper and outfit it properly and see if you still think it's a turd.

 

[xkjacob]

Yeah, well get the clipper and outfit it properly and see if you still think it's a turd.

It is. In terms of being a multipurpose ship.
As a freighter it is better than a type 7.
As a freighter it is very good.
So good I'm willing to blow 3 weekdays to Rank up and pay 5 million more.
For combat its hull is too big for the shield available making them easily defeated. Which opens your subsystems up to destruction. It goes fast in a straight line, which makes it great for running away...
It can't turn and its weapon points necessarily must be gimballed making it incredibly flak sensitive. The cost to load it out for combat costs more than a loaded out fer de lance, so no it shouldn't be called multi purpose and good in the same sentence.
Trading, exploring, combat.
It is bad at combat, worse at exploring than an Asp and is better than a type7 at trading.

If in exploring they make pirate encounters less escapable and drop in the 4-7 vulture kill squads with FSD lock commonly then I could see an advantage with the Clipper over the Asp. Not because a Clipper can take 4-7 vultures. Only because it won't get mass locked and can run away. However that mechanic might ruin Adder gameplay.

You could use it as a mass lock PvP instrument with a wing of Vultures / Vipers.
It is a large ship, so you can mass lock more ships and use your speed to keep the ship locked. Being in a wing will make up for its flak issues and poor agility.

Seriously, I am in an imperial group.
We want to use this ship.
It just isn't very good.

 

[xkjacob]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...ES69Lc317U/pubhtml?gid=2011892275&single=true

If you check that link out you can see shield value for all ships based of rating and class.
You'll notice the FDL has 150% the shields of the Clipper and the Python has 200% the shields of the clipper. The Vulture's shields are on par with the Clipper... The VULTURE has the same shield power and loads more agility.

Now the FDL and the Python are pricier, but the class 7 shields are insane expensive and along with some insane thrusters to compensate for a 2 in agility the Clipper fitted for combat is more pricier and worse at it than the others. The python and FDL have a 6 base agility.
So the conclusion is the Clipper is a poorly maneuvering, poorly shielded, giant ship that is pricier to outfit for combat than its more expensive base cost counter parts.
I'll always try to back up my "this ship is a turd" with real numbers and comparisons.