If I might take a moment to reply, I respect, completely the desire many have expressed to not go for money, not go for getting "endgame" stuff quickly, and how burnout on grinding is real. Absolutely, yes it is. However, right now the biggest thing constantly inhibiting my fun in this game is all the engineered NPCS, and not having the money to have freedom of gameplay. If a new ship drops, and I'm interested in it. It just means "Grind more" if I had a good income well, and a good financial base, I could just go pick up the new thing, or build something that could quest after the new thing, quickly, and enjoy content as it appears. Right now I cannot do that. At slowly getting up above 200m is considered chump change in this game, it makes me repeatedly shelf it over the past few years, and I really would rather not, as I actually would love to love this game more.
I understand your line of thought. But among the most used combat ships currently are the FDL, Mamba, Krait MK II and Crusader/Challenger. (A while ago I would've listed the Federal Assault ship, but that one seems to have lost a lot of following by now. )
All of them rather different ships, all of them of medium size. And the Krait MK II can even carry a SLF. (Another good medium ship with SLF capability is the Federal Gunship. Fast as a glacier, agile like a cathedral, but plenty of firepower and sure has it's own style. But due to its flight profile, it's more of a lovers ship, not generally advised. )
The big ships might have more shields and more firepower, but many people consider mediums to be more enjoyable. They can also pack very good defense (especially the FDL and Mamba) while also having a sufficient number of hardpoints.
Indeed, nobody here can tell how things are in a year or two. But at the moment, medium ships are in a great spot. Anything bigger really is optional. It's very much your own preference, you prefer "big and cumbersome" or you prefer the more agile options, at the price of a bit less offense and defense. (Only small ships are in a bad spot currently and generally not to be advised for the later game. )
So my advise would be: make up your mind, on which ship you'd like to fly the most. Then invest into that one ship, do all the necessary engineering there. If you want to work and do some grind, then I'd rather put all the effort into one ship of choice.
To understand where I am coming from: I own a number of ships. Among them the Imperial Cutter, Imperial Clipper, Imperial Courier, Type 10, FDL, Krait MK II, Alliance Challenger, Federal Gunship, Python, Cobra MK IV and Asp Explorer, just to name those which are well engineered. (And yes, I managed to properly engineer those despite my comparatively casual playstyle during the last two years. )
Yet while owning such a fleet, most of them see very little use. When going for regular combat, I usually use the Krait MK II. I built it up with multi crew and playing with friends on my mind. But while they didn't log in any more since months, the ship still serves me well. The Cobra MK IV is my miner, Type 10 and Challenger are set up as very different anti-Thargoid ships. And unless I have players along, the Challenger is by far the better option. The rest I don't have to go through in detail, it's enough to say that I just pick them up once every other month, for some specific task, to return to the Krait MK II afterwards.
So yes, I do switch to them once a while. As I already have them. But would I not have them, I could just as well just switch out some modules on my Krait and it would also be suitable for the job. I wouldn't now invest the time and effort to get those ships, for the very little use they actually see.
Credits will come in while doing that. Not a fortune, but they keep coming in. The hard work is in engineering.
So yes, I guess it's quite clear: I advise to really get into the Krait MK II a lot first. Get this one ship to great shape. It's the plus version of the Cobra. It allows you to everything, and does almost everything well enough to be a good choice. Mind you, not the perfect choice, but a good one. Engineer this ship (that's enough grind all by itself) and have fun. Only when you really feel the need for another ship, start collecting credits for them. You might then find that by having fun with the Krait, a good part of the money you need already miraculously is on your account.
Also, that all being said: still try core mining. I also did plenty of it, while not having any need for the money. I just enjoyed doing it. The explosion visual and sound are worth it, everybody should do that a few times, no matter if you need the credits or not.
If you find that you enjoy it: awesome. Good money while having fun. If you don't enjoy it: you still made some cash, have learned how to do it and have the option at hand when you feel the need for credits. But for the time being, I think engineering should interest you more than building up your bank account.
So with Void Opal Mining, I'm seeing the money right now is something around 100 mil an hour (that's a guesstimate based on numbers quoted) and hey! That's about 70 more mil an hour than I'm making right now, so sounds good, let's be good guys. I did ye olde google and looks like builds are all over the place. Can an experienced miner recommend one? Should I be loading some fighters aboard to kill guys who want my diamonds and opals, and related, can my wife join me and fly escort and also make money with me? (Oh man, that'd actually be fun if we got to do something together) sounds like this could be fun, and profitable!
Hmm, the 100 mil per hour, while they might be achievable, are not what you should expect to be able to rake in soon. You need a good combination of speed and capacity (read: probably an imperial cutter), along with being really well trained in spotting the right kind of rock from a long distance and knowing a place with excellent selling prices to achieve that.
Somebody above mentioned 50 millions per hour. That's already a number which tells me that he has some experience in mining and spent some time there. So don't be surprised if your first hours of mining are less lucrative than that. Mind you, even if you "only" bring home like 25 millions per hour, that's a Python every two hours! That's amazing by itself.
Then on the SLF for mining: that unfortunately is not worth it. If you do mining properly, you drop into the hotspot. The game will give you one or another NPC when creating the instance. They come, they scan you. As long as you have only limpets on board and no mined materials, they will just leave. Not just from you, they leave the instance. And no new NPCs get spawned.
This usually happens even before you spotted the first rock to crack. So when you start your actual mining, you are alone. No NPC will turn up any more. Your wife would just sit in the SLF, being bored. While you sacrificed a lot of cargo space so she could be there and be bored.
So while rock mining is very lucrative, it's not an activity were multi crew really is helping. What you should look into for a multi crew setup is combat. In this case you might want to look at: Anaconda, Imperial Cutter, Federal Corvette, Krait MK II or Federal Gunship. These ships can be fitted to have plenty of offensive and defensive capabilities, while at the same time being able to carry SLFs.
My personal preference is the Krait MK II. More agile than the other options, more boost friendly. Drawbacks are that it drifts a lot and is very much a "blue zone" ship. Be at the wrong speed and it also turns slowly. And it can reasonably be outfitted to have even two fighter bays.
This can be used in two ways:
- Only your wife flies SLFs. Then the second bay is spare. She looses one fighter, she just launches the next one, while a spare SLF of the first bay is being prepared for launch. You can have 8 fighters of each line along, so she could loose a total of 16 SLFs before you run out. And fighters are cheap, they are restocked as ammo. So loosing them doesn't really matter.
- You also hire an NPC. Then you can actually have two SLFs out at the same time, which means that plenty of firepower is flying along your ship.
Edit: I forgot to mention the drawback: if your wife looses her fighter in this situation, she has to wait a little till a new one is assembled.
Also note that you actually are at a very good spot for that. The way you describe yourself, your combat rank probably also is not that high yet. Which means that players in multi crew actually get good income. When the owner of the ship is of much higher rank than the crew, the game reduces the income of the crew. Up to -95% when a beginner player pilots the SLF of elite level player.
So if you like to do that, get your wife on board early, so her combat rank stays in the same range as yours. (A few ranks difference matter little. ) Then you both can progress your combat rank and earn credits. I wish more activities in the game would properly support multi crew, but currently only combat really does so.
I hope this helps.
