Newcomer / Intro Please help my i.Courier ship build

[Ant hill]

I'm trying to be a tier up from the Viper III and one below the Vulture and get a working small fighter with fixed weapons without doing loads of engineering. This current build seems all wrong, but I can't quite explain why. It could be for a big reason or a small reason. I think it is in partl that I can't run a fixed laser with a fixed rail gun or a rail gun with a fixed cannon at the same time because of the projectile travel time. The earlier comments on the DBS made me wonder if a change of ship, is part of the fix. Primary use would be bounty hunting, flying FA on, and getting me up past Novice in the ratings. Any ideas?

Coriolis Imp Courier

EDIT I think I've probably already answered my question with an old post from @Chris Simon. But opinions always welcome.

 

[aRJay]

I'm trying to be a tier up from the Viper III and one below the Vulture and get a working small fighter with fixed weapons without doing loads of engineering. This current build seems all wrong, but I can't quite explain why. It could be for a big reason or a small reason. I think it is in partl that I can't run a fixed laser with a fixed rail gun or a rail gun with a fixed cannon at the same time because of the projectile travel time. The earlier comments on the DBS made me wonder if a change of ship, is part of the fix. Primary use would be bounty hunting, flying FA on, and getting me up past Novice in the ratings. Any ideas?

Coriolis Imp Courier

EDIT I think I've probably already answered my question with an old post from @Chris Simon. But opinions always welcome.

The problem with fixed weapons is getting the lead on the target right if they aren’t nearly instant like lasers this is made worse if the flight times are different, rail guns don’t have flight time issues but they don’t fire instantly IIRC. The way round that is to have identical weapons on all hardpoints. I have other objections to fixed weapons that aren’t relevant here.

My main concern with your build is that for a ship whose main feature is its speed it seems a little slow, I have done some tweaking to come up with this.

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

coriolis.io

Which is better as long as you can institute the mass savings, ideally as well as switching to enhanced performance thrusters you should engineer them with Dirty Drives and Drive Distributors which would get the boost up to 562. If you cannot get the mass below 90 then keep the existing drives but do switch the engineering.

 

[Ashnak]

Ok, which engineers do you have?
And yes - convergence on the iCourier is bad enough as it is (you can't even hit with both ouboard guns simultaneously if you put lasers there), setting up wepons with such dramatically differnt shot speeds as Cannon and Laser doesn't exactly help. Two ways out of it - either only use two weapon types (one on each trigger), or use gimbals on the outriggers.

The iCourier wants a lightweight build. It's very good for carrying shileds and awful for carrying armour. And, since you plugged in an engineered thruster - at the same engineers where you can get the thrusters engineered, you can also buy a 3A enhanced thruster, which beats the regular 3A thrusters out of the box, and then apply some engineering.

Guessing (from the interdictor) you want this as a kind of pirate ship and only have Felicity unlocked, I can come up with this:

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

coriolis.io

With all of the engineers (and some Guardian goodies), you could get something like this (disregard that specific weapons choice - you can get all weapons engineered for lightweight. The 4 reverb cascade torps simply aren't sufficient on their own to crack decent (player) shields, and the single missile launcher doesn't punch hard enough. Maybe a single PA (perhaps advanced PA) on the center mount and dual packhounds on the pylons?

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

coriolis.io

Edit: ooops - forget about the APA, that one only comes in size L

 

[Faded Glory]

With regards to weapons, yes, you'll have problems with a fixed laser and a fixed projectile weapon, however, an iCourier with two fixed beams and a railgun works fine.

Advantages of the iCourier are its speed and relatively strong shields, so those are the things to concentrate on. Definitely enhanced performance thrusters are worth a look, but obviously you need one of the engineers that does thrusters to get them. Well worth the effort if you want to get the best out of the iCourier.

Here's a couple of builds that I have. They do have engineering, and I know that you said you don't really want that. Unfortunately, to get the best out of most ships in the game engineering is a bit of a requirement, and to be fair, these days with material traders and remote engineering it really can be done quite quickly and painlessly.

This iCourier is one I use for pirate lord assassinations. I'll only use it in high or medium security systems simply because without the help of system authority it just takes too long to destroy the pirate (which is in a Corvette). It would do fine solo against medium ships.

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

s.orbis.zone

This one also worked fine against bigger ships, and swapped a railgun for missiles...

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

s.orbis.zone

 

[sinisalo]

A Courier thread, me likes

The Courier is my favorite build project in Elite. It's such a cool ship, I love the 'pit. Others hate it but what do they know haha.

It's a ship that evokes the challenge shipwrights have faced as long as they've built them for combat. That is, how to balance speed, protection and firepower. Many Elite ships seem to be able to absorb it all, but building a Courier is an exercise in opportunity cost. Want more firepower? Speed and or protection will suffer. There's no free lunch as they say, and the knife-edge aspect of Courier builds means you will always need to sacrifice one thing for another.

My fast battle Courier is a compromise. I wanted a very fast one, but that could hold it's own in combat. As she came together the speed dropped. At first she was boosting 900+. But I didn't feel like it had enough integrity to survive the one real threat to an engineered Courier --- collision. So I added some HRP. I tried a lot of weapons combinations, frags included. In the end I settled on two full-weight beams and a lightweight corrosive multicannon. Those two beams weigh 8t together, and the speed came down some more. But with all weapons lightweighted, it just wasn't enough firepower. So another compromise.

Through it all I arrived at what I felt comfortable with, sub-800 boost but good shields, resistances and integrity for a ship like this. In PvE nothing can catch it, it outruns missiles. I wanted a faster ship, but to do that I could not get the rest of the balance correct. And that's the challenge in building a viable battle Courier. Most folks use the speed to escape, a defensive quality so to speak. I take a different approach and when I fly it in combat I fly it wide open all the time. That means very narrow shooting windows, as the closing speeds are insane. But it is glorious

Here's my Courier. I feel it is well balanced for speed, protection and firepower, but you can't have it all.

Velocity

 

[sinisalo]

I have other objections to fixed weapons that aren’t relevant here.

So do I. Curious as to yours, but no need to elaborate here.

 

[Ragga Muffin]

I love my Imp curry, 2 gimbled beams and an incendry MC, 2 shield boosters and a 3C bi-weave, its not pvp or fully done out yet but its just a really pretty ship, the body kits also are really shinney. Ive even bought my asp and a vulture, ive not flown either yet.

 

[Ant hill]

Lots of info on those builds, it took me a while to read through. I'm inspired by the courier to put in a little more work. I had a great time in a hazardous res with it recently. A combat experience most like my old 8 bit days. Thanks again.