Warning for all players looking to buy expensive ships!!

Vindris

Vindris
Specifically if you're looking to outfit your ship for combat...

It's always worth upgrading the crap out of your current ship before purchasing a higher tier ship. Here's what happened to me -- I went from Sidewinder, to Viper, to Type 6, to a Vulture. Now I was looking to make a big jump from Vulture to Fer de Lance. I had my Vulture outfitted in full "B" quality gear. It was worth 15mil CR when I sold it to get the last bit of money I needed to buy the 51mil CR Fer de Lance. The baseline Fer de Lance is terrible. Completely terrible compared to a "B" outfitted Vulture. I ended up selling it and buying my vulture back, but this time with "A" outfittings.

Moral of the story... Don't buy something for its baseline price and expect it to be better than your currently fully upgraded ship. You'll want to have money ready for:

#1 - Buying the ship
#2 - FULLY upgrading it
#3 - Insurance
#4 - 5 million extra for trading/buffer

So, you can plan on spending two to three times the baseline price of a ship to have it fully upgraded upon arrival. Neglecting to upgrade your ship from its default outfitting will likely be a DOWNGRADE from your current ship, even if the base price of the higher tier ship is substantially more.
 

Renegade Roach

R
Gray Lensman said:
All of this is good advice but bordering on the obvious. I mean no criticism by that, just surprise.
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I'm more surprised by the number of threads this forum has seen from people who bought a ship, went with half baked upgrades and then promptly died with no insurance. Given that there's a sale on it can't hurt to make the point to new guys.
 

Philip Coutts

Volunteer Moderator
Philip Coutts
My advice for what it's worth is to have plenty of spare credits when you buy a new ship. Firstly you will always want to upgrade some of the basic components and secondly you should always make sure you have plenty of credits to cover at least 2 "accidents" if not more!
 

Guidebot

Guidebot
My rule of thumb is, double the asking price of the ship if you want reasonable modules to start off with, and add on enough for two rebuys.

E.g. An Asp costs around 6Mcr, so I'd want at least 12Mcr to buy and upgrade, plus 1.2Mcr for two rebuys, = 13.2Mcr.

It's done me well so far.

That said, part of the fun of buying a new ship sometimes is jumping into it with very few upgrades and really feeling the benefit of each module as you can afford it. I understand with some ships though (e.g. the FDL in OP's example) this doesn't work so well.
 

Cradle2Grave

Banned
Cradle2Grave
Vindris said:
Specifically if you're looking to outfit your ship for combat...

It's always worth upgrading the crap out of your current ship before purchasing a higher tier ship. Here's what happened to me -- I went from Sidewinder, to Viper, to Type 6, to a Vulture. Now I was looking to make a big jump from Vulture to Fer de Lance. I had my Vulture outfitted in full "B" quality gear. It was worth 15mil CR when I sold it to get the last bit of money I needed to buy the 51mil CR Fer de Lance. The baseline Fer de Lance is terrible. Completely terrible compared to a "B" outfitted Vulture. I ended up selling it and buying my vulture back, but this time with "A" outfittings.

Moral of the story... Don't buy something for its baseline price and expect it to be better than your currently fully upgraded ship. You'll want to have money ready for:

#1 - Buying the ship
#2 - FULLY upgrading it
#3 - Insurance
#4 - 5 million extra for trading/buffer

So, you can plan on spending two to three times the baseline price of a ship to have it fully upgraded upon arrival. Neglecting to upgrade your ship from its default outfitting will likely be a DOWNGRADE from your current ship, even if the base price of the higher tier ship is substantially more.
Click to expand...

Yes we know. Thanks anyway.
 

Julissa Silver

Julissa Silver
Gray Lensman said:
All of this is good advice but bordering on the obvious. I mean no criticism by that, just surprise.
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Elite's granularity between the combat performance of some ships (especially after the sidewinder and, arguably, the Eagle are out of the way) is rather more fine than the relative strengths and upgrades in other games where taking an expensive upgrade usually implies improvement consummate with cost. Modules just make this that much more unusual. It's always worth stating this, especially for new folk.
 

Para Handy

Para Handy
I think it is worthwhile pointing out that there are good tools to examine the cost / fit / capabilities of ships you want to "move up" to. Using coriolis.io or edshipyard.com you can work out just how much you need to have "in the bank" to buy and outfit to your requirements - they even show the insurance cost if you don't know how to work out 5%. ;)
 

Katkon

K
Gray Lensman said:
All of this is good advice but bordering on the obvious. I mean no criticism by that, just surprise.
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It's because more and more new players are signing off the newcomer forum, and coming to this sub-forum which consists of a lot of people who are very familiar with how the game works. So the posts are well-intended, but ultimately more helpful to new players than anyone else. PSAs such as the above should really be posted on the newcomer forum, not here, but drawing the line and making that determination is tough for a newcomer trying to be helpful.

I think what the "forum" should have done is require that all new forum members spend a pre-determined amount of time (several months, perhaps) on the newcomer forum before getting posting access/rights to the "dangerous" discussion. That sounds harsh on the face of it - and is NOT meant as a sign of disrespect to the OP genuinely trying to be helpful - but the proliferation of relatively basic questions/advice is resulting in the forum moving very quickly, and the really interesting/meaty discussions from disappearing off the radar rather quickly. This might sound like I'm newcomer-bashing, and I promise I'm not. It's just that the forum is a little less interesting (and increasingly so) than it was a year or even 6 months ago. Only other solution would be for mods to move more posts into the newcomer forum, but that's also a lot of work.... Again, not newcomer-bashing AT ALL (we need/benefit from new players, and I'd like to see more step in to enjoy this awesome game!!)
 
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Vindris

Vindris
Apologies to those who found this thread obvious. I have well over 100 hours into the game already (I know that's probably not a lot to many of you), and I figured that a ship worth 51mil CR would naturally be better than a ship that sells for 15mil CR. Earning 51mil CR in this game is no small feat IMO. My perception was that if I had made it far enough to buy an FDL, I probably wasn't a noop anymore, and that some people here could use this advice.

But alas, it appears as though I'm still a noop.
 

bwark

B
If i can give you an advice . Find a good station (high tech with good outfitting) keep your ship and when you need money sell outfit not the ship unless its completely useless ship and you have equivalent . better safe than sorry.
 

Julissa Silver

Julissa Silver
Katkon said:
PSAs such as the above should really be posted on the newcomer forum, not here, but drawing the line and making that determination is tough for a newcomer trying to be helpful.
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Two things - it's not just newcomers that can benefit from this information - going from, for example, a vulture to a python, at least in terms of pure cost, would logically seem like a big upgrade, as big an upgrade as going from an eagle to a viper. The newcomer is likely to be in reach of the eagle->viper upgrade, but not necessarily likely to jump from a vulture to a python and, unless he has spent a good amount of time here or around other Elite communities (which can't be assumed), might not realise that the huge price jump between vulture and python is not analogous to a huge pure combat performance upgrade commensurate to the costs.

Not even taking into account just how quickly these forums scroll by with apparently "legitimate" threads, Dangerous Discussion is specifically tagged as "Discuss anything related to Elite: Dangerous". I'd think that a brief note of advice taken from personal experience is quite correctly placed here. I think some of the rather rude or sarcastic comments suggesting it's somehow a bad post are just ill-intentioned, unhelpful trolling, perhaps we should have a snarky pop at those posters before the OP in this instance?


And back on topic - Coriolis.io. Every thread should mention that site. A great utility.
 

Krow

Krow
All good Vindris, it's a steep and harsh learning curve, and sound advice for people new to the game.

Guidebot said it best, Double the asking price is exactly what I do also.
Safest way to modestly kit up your ship and have bucks left over for insurance.
 

Captain Fizz

Captain Fizz
Mainly only applies to combat ships...

Only need +15% (FSD + Cargo racks) for most trade ships.
With associated insurance + cargo value. (Insurance optional really, never had insurance when upgrading but if I lost it all I wouldn't whine about it on the forums)
 

deathmagnet

deathmagnet
Good advice O.P.

You always need to consider the cost of upgrades.

For examply. Python is 56 mill to purchase.....160 mil to A-Grade it not including any additional armor you may want...which can almost double the total price.
 

PiLhEaD

PiLhEaD
Gee whizz people, cut the guy some slack... Vindris joined the forum 3 days ago, and his advice is good... so from me he gets some rep.

Guidebot said:
My rule of thumb is, double the asking price of the ship if you want reasonable modules to start off with, and add on enough for two rebuys...
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And as per Guidebot - rule of thumb, double the money... if you have the patience... which I've rarely had, so I can hand out advice, just rarely follow it :)
 
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JeffVimes

J
I don't really agree with this. I really appreciated flying my D rated Pythoin (then) and Conda (now) and upgrading piece by piece until I had the ship I want. It just suits more the narrative I have in my head.
Obviously, you still need a bit of spare money for insurance + armament and some better module (power distributor is a must), but saying you HAVE to wait until you accumulate double the price of the ship you want is a bit silly. My 170M Cr Conda is holding it's own in any RES, and I have great fun flying it. Might not be optimal, but it's good enough.
 

technophebe

technophebe
This is good advice. The situation is particularly compounded by the fact that the Vulture is *such* a good combat ship.

I had heartache for some time after upgrading from a Vulture to a FDL and then Python; you're spending exponential money for incremental growth. Now that I've got an 'A' kitted Python I've actually stored it and gone back to a Vulture!
 

PavelKCZ

PavelKCZ
Actually I think that the OP should be pinned at the top of the threads as a guide for new players.

Maybe original post can be enhanced a bit with informations like "If you are buying a bigger trading ship, do not forget that you will also need spare money for cargo" etc.
 
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