New to the game and in need of help.

[Ydiss]

Thanks. I opted to go with military composite armor as it only costs money and doesn't really affect negatively to anything other than jump range it seems. Do you think i need the cargo rack and the collector limpet? I wasn't sure if the enemies drop some loot and if i need at least some cargo space etc.

Yes and No; "looting" isn't really a thing in terms of legal cargo that takes space. Everything that drops is illegal. I'd not bother with the Vulture.

Materials are a different matter though. These don't take cargo space and its legal to scoop them up. You can do this manually. Or use a collector limpet controller. But, again, you're using a Vulture so just don't bother with this.

This is another reason it's better to use other ships. Scooping materials now will save you a lot of time later when you start engineering. But equally, don't stress about it either. Right now, focus on having fun and learning to fight. Don't try to cross focus too much right now.

Ps in super cruise, constantly target ships you see in front of you and scan them. You'll passively get data materials this way.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

Thanks. I opted to go with military composite armor as it only costs money and doesn't really affect negatively to anything other than jump range it seems. Do you think i need the cargo rack and the collector limpet? I wasn't sure if the enemies drop some loot and if i need at least some cargo space etc.

They do drop engineering materials when you blow them up and a collector limpet does make it more efficient to scoop these up. That said, small ships are manouverable enough that manual scooping isn't too bad. Unless of course you find yourself trying to scoop in the gravity well of a planet, then it's a little more challenging.

 

[Winterwalker]

Yes mats collecting, unless you like flying around and manually collecting them

I would try it. It's a trade off .. You COULD fit collector plus rack, or use the space for 2 x hull boosters.

It starts to depend when you're killing people easily, you feel less need for self defence and more need to collect materials quickly.

 

[Qualityoflife]

Word of advice! If you plan on playing other space games stop now and forget elite exists?
Not because it's a bad game its just that once you get it all else will seem like Fisher price control schemes...you'll hate them all for it!
NMS, everspace, x4, overdue citizen and any other half baked degree of flight lackey!

 

[Ydiss]

Yes mats collecting, unless you like flying around and manually collecting them

It's great to do this but I'd never recommend a novice combat pilot bother with this right away, definitely not in a Vulture. You're hampering yourself, first of all. Secondly, learning to fight is enough without over complicating it with collecting mats.

Knowing this is a thing is enough for now.

The best thing a new combat pilot can do is get into the strongest ship they can build/maintain the rebuy for and just get out there and fight. And focus on nothing else for a while. Once that's familiar, then it's good to start diversifying.

 

[Winterwalker]

The best thing a new combat pilot can do is get into the strongest ship they can build/maintain the rebuy for and just get out there and fight. And focus on nothing else for a while. Once that's familiar, then it's good to start diversifying.

And this might sound all Zen and that, but after the fight, time collecting materials manually can not only give your shileds time to recharge but you can think back to the battle and think, "what did I do right? what could I do better?"

 

[Ydiss]

And this might sound all Zen and that, but after the fight, time collecting materials manually can not only give your shileds time to recharge but you can think back to the battle and think, "what did I do right? what could I do better?"

Yeh each to their own.

I'd suggest that the point of using the Vulture is lower down time and I personally feel that every fight doesn't need time taken to consider it. Everyone learns differently though so perhaps this will benefit the op.

My point is this... Elite is an overwhelming game. It's got so much to learn crammed in and it's useful to know stuff but it's not essential to know all the possible things you need to account for, not when starting out. Combat contains more than enough moving parts without knowing even half of the other stuff you can add in.

The op is obviously considering the wider picture by asking about collectors. That's great. But I'd personally suggest that without engineering, they avoid trying to diversify the Vulture. And manual scooping is fine if they need down time (it's a skill everyone needs to know too). Why not? So long as they pip up systems as they do it.

Otherwise, if their focus is learning combat, I'd say all the other stuff is secondary right now. Like, first day or so using an essentially weak combat ship. There are potentially weeks of just enjoying that learning experience without fussing over the required busy work for engineering. There's lots of time for that.

But if that suits them then of course they can do it. Just feel it shouldn't be automatically suggested, as if it's the only option.

 

[wAsh67]

You don't need a cargo bay, limpet controller, supercuise assist, ADC, any of that, especially if you fly something with limited expansion space like a Vulture.
If it ain't no use in a fight, don't fit it. Shields, armour, guns, then hull and module reinforcements in any spare slots.
Manually scoop the materials shed by a ship when it breaks up if you need to - you will certainly need the mats with your future builds.
If you need all that crap then go with a medium ship instead, seeing as you have the money to do so.

 

[niksa83]

Thank you everyone for your input on the matter. What a great community you guys and girls have here. I am indeed more interested now to learn to combat so for those reasons i made some changes to the build. I opted to go with more hull reinforcement rather than cargo rack, limpets and so on. I did however keep the docking thing and the super cruise assist.

If you have anymore ideas to improve this by all means do tell.
Vulture

 

[Ydiss]

Thank you everyone for your input on the matter. What a great community you guys and girls have here. I am indeed more interested now to learn to combat so for those reasons i made some changes to the build. I opted to go with more hull reinforcement rather than cargo rack, limpets and so on. I did however keep the docking thing and the super cruise assist.

If you have anymore ideas to improve this by all means do tell.
Vulture

This is decent. I'd personally switch to a pulse and biweave shields with more boosters.

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

s.orbis.zone

You lose a small amount of dps but you'll get to basically fire forever and sustained dps > burst dps on the Vulture due to agility. Beams are great but much better when engineered (efficient). They will restrict you on this build though, requiring down time for heat and power draw management. Not worth the 6 extra dps in my opinion. Burst dps is good for "boom and zoom" or low agility ships. The Vulture lets you stay on target much longer though. Might as well be firing 100% of the time.

Plus, it frees up a small amount of power for shielding. Biweaves with 4 boosters (admittedly two have to be E rated without engineering) gives you exactly the same shield strength as your standard shields with 1x booster but it regenerates way faster. 4 minutes on your build, less than 2 minutes on my suggested build.

 

[yianniv]

Welcome cmdr to this fantastic game. One site I find very useful for getting data and stats about equipment and ships is https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Elite_Dangerous_Wiki
Also, do you know about Inara?

 

[niksa83]

This is decent. I'd personally switch to a pulse and biweave shields with more boosters.

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

s.orbis.zone

You lose a small amount of dps but you'll get to basically fire forever and sustained dps > burst dps on the Vulture due to agility. Beams are great but much better when engineered (efficient). They will restrict you on this build though, requiring down time for heat and power draw management. Not worth the 6 extra dps in my opinion. Burst dps is good for "boom and zoom" or low agility ships. The Vulture lets you stay on target much longer though. Might as well be firing 100% of the time.

Plus, it frees up a small amount of power for shielding. Biweaves with 4 boosters (admittedly two have to be E rated without engineering) gives you exactly the same shield strength as your standard shields with 1x booster but it regenerates way faster. 4 minutes on your build, less than 2 minutes on my suggested build.

Ok. Thanks a bunch. It's cheaper as well. Saving 6 million credits.

 

[Michael Whatever]

With the power available something like this vulture would be where I start.

I like collecting mats after a kill, seems less wasteful.
Tweaked a few bits and added shield boosters, chaff, biweave and burst lasers.

Your design excellent nothing wrong, just personal preference.
Good luck cmdr.

 

[Ydiss]

Ok. Thanks a bunch. It's cheaper as well. Saving 6 million credits.

Great cashback.

Just a minor thing to think about; this isn't viable for the Vulture because it's so limited and due to this you've done the sensible thing by using D rated sensors... Just, for a bounty hunting build this is really restricting. You want to have long range sensors because it makes finding your next victim way faster. It's night and day once you're proficient.

Don't worry about it now but later on you'll want A rated (like in bigger ships). Much better though is when you engineer, you can go with D rated and long range grade 5. Best of both worlds then.

It's fine as it is for now. I loved my Vulture and it's a fantastic ship to learn combat but you'll definitely want to try bigger ships eventually.

 

[13A]

Welcome to the forums.

Viper III and Vulture are both good combat ships, but I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Viper IV.

It's a bit slower and a bit less manoeuvrable, but if you lose your shields it can take some punishment while you recharge/run away.

 

[Llandrenel]

Hello commanders,
First time poster here. Sorry for my poor grammar it's not my native language.

I recently got this game from Epic when it was offered for free. I must say the game has very steep learning curve so i am still very much learning things as i play the game.
I only play on Solo mode until i figure out what the game is all about.

I have tried few of the activities the game offers such as data delivery, exploration, bit of mining, i have crash landed on a planet losing 5 hours worth of scanning and probing data, Tried combat but got killed in less than 15 seconds and had to take a loan as to not losing my Cobra mk3, I crashed on a space station and i've done many more silly and noobish things. I once managed to actually land on a planet just to figure out i don't have planetary vehicle installed

I have no idea about the alien tech or engineering at this point in time. I will look into these later on but right now it is not my priority.

I played around with the sidewinder until i got enough credits for Cobra mk3. Then i purchased the diamondback explorer and kept doing exploration until i got bored. Now i have about 450M credits so the return of investment has been very good for both of these ships. Cobra made 190M and diamondback explorer 260M.

Q: I would like to get a recommendation for a entry level combat ship prefebly small sized ship, what modules and weapons to fit? What areas to go to get the easiest entry to combat, difficulty wise? What areas to avoid?
Note: I will keep my automatic landing module for obvious reasons, not entirely sure what super cruise assist module even do. This ship only has to do combat nothing else.

First I gotta say, as others have, good for you for sticking with it despite the adversity. And secondly, this ↓↓↓

Viper Mk 3

for PVE go with beam lasers and multi cannons

This is what I started combat with myself, though honestly, the diamondback scout you already have is a good fighter too, and iirc, you can stick a fighter in it instead of the SRV and hire a pilot to fly it, or to fly your main ship while you launch in the fighter (launch via the central hud console).

As for loadout, I used beam lasers in the small points and multicannon on the medium. Make sure you get a good power plant and distribution otherwise you'll spend more time waiting on your weapons recharging than you will shooting and a good solid armour, else you will die quickly, take any combat mission that says it's for (Harmless) or (Mostly Harmless) and you should get the hang of it pretty quickly. If you need a hand running combat I (or likely many other) would be happy to go out with you in a wing for a few missions to give the enemy someone else to shoot at.

But seriously though, hiring a secondary pilot in a ship that has multicrew function is a blessing as your opponent has not just you to think about and is a great way to get the hang of things early on.

 

[Llandrenel]

NMS, everspace, x4, overdue citizen and any other half baked degree of flight lackey!

So either I'm missiong something, or I have no idea what that 4th other game you mentioned is?

 

[Vardaugas]

The Viper III and Vulture practically fly themselves. If you want to learn combat, get a Viper IV. It needs a personal touch to fly well, so it's good practice and it's more forgiving to mistakes with how durable it can be made.

 

[Stealthie]

Enjoy the learning experience.
When you first enter into a game-world, such as Skyrim or Fallout, you should expect to not really know what's going on. Part of the fun is figuring it all out.
It's not as obvious but the same thing applies in ED.

The best thing to do is just amble around, doing things and you'll gradually stumble across things which you want to know more about, at which point you can either ask on here or use google.

Credits are pretty easy to get in ED these days.
Because of that, it's pretty easy to get hold of a decent ship for combat.

I'd suggest buying a Cobra as soon as possible.
Use that to do a bit of everything in the game and earn some credits.
Once you've got enough, buy a Vulture (without selling the Cobra) and upgrade it for combat.

Keep using the Cobra to run missions, until you can afford to upgrade to a better ship, and then spend what you earn on upgrading the Vulture.
And always, always, make sure you've got enough to pay for a rebuy if your ship is destroyed.

 

[Urbanski101]

Yes, the Vulture is one of the best small combat ships, good shields, quick, agile and easy to fly.

I'd also second the Viper MkIII and the Diamondback Scout (DBS) which are both great small combat ships. The DBS is more versatile, has a better jump range and fitting options. It also has great hardpoint placement.