I've been watching videodisc, and have seen it for sale in a few systems, but am unsure of to buy it or not.
Is its extravagant price worth it?
Is its extravagant price worth it?
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Fer-De-Lance Worth it?
- Thread starter Blue Viper
- Start date
Do you like the Viper?
Do you want a giant Viper?
Are you comfortable using thrusters, as well as rotational axes, to move?
Are you willing to set aside any potential mental defect or disorder that would prevent you from being willing to mount a large weapon in a huge hardpoint?
Can you tolerate sitting 1m off the center-line of a 30m wide ship?
Do you know how manage power priorities?
Do you have at least 80 million credits?
If you answered "yes" to each and every single one of these questions, you will probably love the FDL.
Do you want a giant Viper?
Are you comfortable using thrusters, as well as rotational axes, to move?
Are you willing to set aside any potential mental defect or disorder that would prevent you from being willing to mount a large weapon in a huge hardpoint?
Can you tolerate sitting 1m off the center-line of a 30m wide ship?
Do you know how manage power priorities?
Do you have at least 80 million credits?
If you answered "yes" to each and every single one of these questions, you will probably love the FDL.
You forgot "do you like a bar in your face, being power-starved, overheating, an abysmal jump range and being a masochist, but except my first point, it was probably covered in your first point.
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The support bars on the Viper, and plenty of other ships, obscure more of the view than the ones on the FDL, which are actually quite thin and rarely obtrusive.
The FDL is not particularly power starved, nor especially prone to overheating. You can't blindly put A eveything on it along with six boosters, four beam lasers, and a plasma accelerator, but any loadout that would other wise be effective is generally going to work with a basic understanding of power management.
Jump range is not good, but it's not that hard to get around with ~14Ly (and if you don't have roughly 14Ly jump range, your FDL is too heavy for combat anyway) jump range is not that hard.
No.
I typically use 4 med multicannons and a large beam, a class 4 shield generator, dual chaff, a heat sink and D sensors whilst deactivating the cargo hatch, fuel scoop, FSD, FSDI and life support when deploying hardpoints.
Compared to the 5 other ships I fly on a regular basis, it's still power starved. I will now start working on some basic understanding of power management
.10 million space bucks says my 70 million FDL can shoot down or drive off your 125 million FDL 10 times in 10.
Armor is a waste on the FDL.
Actually, I never mount armor on any ship unless I'm building a stealth craft that fights without shields.
I typically use 4 med multicannons and a large beam, a class 4 shield generator, dual chaff, a heat sink and D sensors whilst deactivating the cargo hatch, fuel scoop, FSD, FSDI and life support when deploying hardpoints.
Compared to the 5 other ships I fly on a regular basis, it's still power starved. I will now start working on some basic understanding of power management
I don't have any real issues with the power available on the FDL, even if it doesn't have the same sort of surplus as some other ships.
What are you using your size five internal module for? A 5D shield gen and some boosters weighs less considerably than a 5A and provides more shielding per watt than a 4A.
In my experience, the extra weight of the armor itself is more of a detriment to the combat ability of the FDL than the extra hull strength is an asset. Only on an otherwise very light setup can you fit the heavier armors without starting to compromise the ship's handling.
That said, if you find yourself losing shields often, and you find the protection helps more than the weight hurts...well that's what the armor is for.
Try this: http://coriolis.io/outfit/fer_de_la...60402040400004d5d326b4v.AwRj4yrI.AwiMIyo1yA==
Slightly stronger shields, slightly better weight/jump range, less expensive, no need to power down life support (I'm often in combat for more tha 25 minutes at a time, and find the loss of clear auditory cues/warnings to be distracting), for the trade off a 4A rather than 5A fuel scoop.
If it were my ship, I'd probably drop one of the boosters to C and use gimbaled MC so I could get convergence with both the beam and the MCs simultaneously, but it may just be a waste of power if you are almost always fighting dual chaffers.
I took the 5A scoop to Sag A* in my FDL and it was worth it for a 2,600 jump round trip, but the 4A is perfectly sufficent for getting around civilized space, IMO. I even mange with an A2 in my heavy combat config.
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Yeah - that's a slight improvement - wrongly assumed powerplant mechanics would apply, where you get more weight and less performance in the higher class D compared to the lower class A. Only fitted the 5A fuel scoop because it doesn't weigh anything and the power consumption is irrelevant when deploying hardpoints.
However I'd still consider it power starved. I downgrade my PP on all my DBS/DBX builds and some of my Courier builds. I am happy with the highest class PP on the Python and the Anaconda. However the FdL is still the only ship where I have to jump hoops to make a really modest weapon loadout work whilst still having a worse jump range than any of the ships just mentioned.
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Yeah, if you've been spoiled by the more general purpose craft, the FDL will require some adjustment. Still, it compares favorably to the rest of the relatively pure combat ships (Eagle, Viper, Vulture).
On a mostly unrelated tangent you should see my combat Courier; 76 tons, 420 boost, gets by on an A2 PP...and still has a useful SCB load.
No. 8chars
Motto: If the engines sound sexy, get it :^)
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I absolutely adore the ship. I continue to purchase other ships, but I always keep my FDL. It is a beast of a ship for combat. Definitely suggest you give it a whirl. Bare in mind however, if you are graduating to the FDL from any smaller ship, including the Vulture, it will give you a bit of a "culture shock", as the ship is a wholly different class - as in larger ship class - and does not handle anything like the smaller ships. However, if you can acclimate yourself to the forward and reverse thrusters and integrate it as part of your flying you will find that the ship is absolutely incredible when it comes to dogfighting.
Unfortunately, the Python is leaps and bounds better with everything except dogfighting combat. Python is more like a powerhouse, albeit slow, heavy, but not in any way limp, as it gives a beating as well. However, you can build an A class FDL for 70-80 mil, whereas the Python will set you back upwards of 160mil same.
Here is my FDL build, if you are consdering trying one out. My build is for PvE, I am not much for PvP, but the ship is also supposedly one of the top ships for PvP as well. This build pretty much milks every watt out of the powerplant, both with hardpoints retracted and deployed, but has served me well in every PvE instance:
http://coriolis.io/outfit/fer_de_la...4a335d5566.AwRj4yrI.EwBhEYy6bZ3kA===?bn=FDL 1
Unless you have a habit of getting your cockpit broken several jumps away from any inhabited system, that A-grade life support is burning energy and weighing you down for nothing you'll ever use. I recommend D. Also while I realize it's nice to be able to see farther away, those B sensors are also heavy, and take a looooot of power. I make do with D there too.
Same story the KWS. I use a D there too. Only 2.5km range, but otherwise just as good.
Of course, since I'm using a Large PA on my Huge mount, I need that power more than you do.
ya i personally like the extra sensor range i would go with an A if i had the power. have not even turned on the KWS yet. or used the FSD intradicter. I mostly fight in HICZ and VPZ. I have the A grade life support just because even if i go with a D it dose not give me enough energy to do anything worth while
Have there been changes made to the FdL?
Last time I flew one (I sold it for a Python), I had four A0 boosters, a 5A shield and thrusters, two chaff, four class 2 gimaballed pulse lasers and one class 3 gimballed pulse. I had an SCB set to priority 2 (I forget the module size).
Power management wasn't a problem, and it had epic shields. It also killed in PvE easily enough, and I rarely had to use the SCB - conflict zones being the exception if I was alone. Armour was completely unnecessary.
It's not that gimped. I stopped using mine because it was CZ/RES easy mode (which made PvE combat boring), and I wanted something with more flexibility in role.
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Last time I flew one (I sold it for a Python), I had four A0 boosters, a 5A shield and thrusters, two chaff, four class 2 gimaballed pulse lasers and one class 3 gimballed pulse. I had an SCB set to priority 2 (I forget the module size).
Power management wasn't a problem, and it had epic shields. It also killed in PvE easily enough, and I rarely had to use the SCB - conflict zones being the exception if I was alone. Armour was completely unnecessary.
It's not that gimped. I stopped using mine because it was CZ/RES easy mode (which made PvE combat boring), and I wanted something with more flexibility in role.
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Having looked at this, my build was very similar, except I swapped the D0 KWS for a chaff launcher, the cannon for a large gimballed pulse laser, and upped the sensors to 4C.
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