The Vulture is a straight beast of a killing machine with two large hard points and enough shielding to begin not caring if it's shot by Small weapons and it's agile but the down side is the 5 million credit stock cost and the low speed.
was about to say pretty much the same here... The Vulture is simply hands-down the BEST single killing ship south of the FDL (though I am of the opinion that the Python gives you a better killing platform over the FDL).
So yeah the Vulture is really your 'best' small fighting vessel because, quite simply, it is the ONLY smaller ship that is actually purely designed for combat over ANYTHING else.
The best alternative, however, I would say is actually the Diamonback Scout! Why? because it has the same hard points as the Cobra or Viper. However, its fast, MORE maneuverable and has longer jump ranges and a longer maximum jump range before needing to refuel as well than the Cobra when similarly fitted. Furthermore i believe it runs cooler as well when you're using the same fittings. Why is this important? because of course it means when you're making that final approach to land you can go dark for longer and therefore less chance of detection. Lastly the DBS also has FAR BETTER slot placements for its weapons so you can actually run fixed weapons on all slots if you actually like that stuff or, if not, still find it easier to hit your targets when they're in front of you.
Just as a side note, I managed to even do small-tonnage smuggling runs in my Vulture without changing its load out (i wasn't using the 1 and 2 slots anyway on it so i dropped in cargo bays just for the sake of it).
When you're considering your larger ships by the way I'd personally go with the Python over the FDL. The Pythons larger power plant allows you to pretty much fit anything you want without having to worry about your power requirements, by comparison the FDL REALLY has to fight for power (especially if you put a Plasma Accelerator in that huge slot!!!) granted the FDL runs 4 Meds and a huge weapon, but the Python runs 2 Meds and 3 large's which pretty much cancel each other out... yes the FDL has loads of slots for things like chaff, shield boosters, etc... but you can't actually RUN that many shield boosters and I normally don't use up more than 1 chaff launcher per 'session' anyway!
