Ships Free Imp Courier

Yesterday I received the the free Imperial Courier from the Winking Cat, then spent several hours engineering it. Apart from running a little bit hot it seems to be a very nice little ship to fly and may replace my Cobra Mk III as a general mission runner. Trident

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Actually mine does have the enhanced performance thrusters and the special CG Frame Shift drive on, for some reason it does not show up properly on Coriolis. It can jump 31 Ly and boost about 560 m/s.

Another odd thing while flying around doing the engineering is I got interdicted quite a few times, it seems to attract the attention of NPC pirates. I don’t have space for any cargo nor had any active missions.

On the other hand players just took off, saw a few (I fly in open most of the time), when ever I got near. I did see a few, but they seem to get fewer every day. Even my squadron mates are hardly playing any more.

Even while still not fully engineered it easily kept up with NPCs and packed a decent punch for a small ship.

Inara screen shot:
 
Actually mine does have the enhanced performance thrusters and the special CG Frame Shift drive on, for some reason it does not show up properly on Coriolis. It can jump 31 Ly and boost about 560 m/s.
That is way too slow for a Courier on enhanced drives, you made it too heavy :)
See if you can shed some weight here and there. 600-700 m/s are possible on a still working build that's not entirely a paper plane.
 
That is way too slow for a Courier on enhanced drives, you made it too heavy :)
See if you can shed some weight here and there. 600-700 m/s are possible on a still working build that's not entirely a paper plane.

Laughs in Viper doing over 800.

Can be a paper plane if nothing can catch you :D
 
Post combat update.

Just took the Courier to a High RES, boy is it fun. Made about 2 Mil Cr in about 40 min. I only bugged out because the wife needed me somewhere else. It is not about the money, that is a side benefit, it is the way she flies, very fast, agile, fairly strong and punches way above her weight.

Ok there was mostly only small ships but the few medium ships that did appear stood no chance, just took a little bit longer. Once their shields drop though, the frag cannon shreds them quickly.

I even took a few rams and never even lost my shields.

I have a fully engineered Viper with some CG weapons and parts and it is not as much fun as the Courier.

I think the Courier will become my new favorite small ship.
 
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That is way too slow for a Courier on enhanced drives, you made it too heavy :)
See if you can shed some weight here and there. 600-700 m/s are possible on a still working build that's not entirely a paper plane.
Hi Numa, you are right. Tweaked the design a bit Trident Mk II, looks like she can do 460 and 625 with boost with this setup. Now fitted with LW weapons suitable for longer range engagements, with only a small loss in shield and hull. Not sure she can get rid of the bigger ships now unless I snipe the PP. Have done it with my Cobra and Viper so it is possible.
 
Lightweighting hull reinforcements is counterproductive. It’s better to downsize them to class 1 and then make them Heavy Duty/deep. For a lightweight ship, Reactive hull isn’t a great return on investment (as far as integrity vs mass) even when lightweighted. You can get much more useful hull by stacking class 1 HRPs.

I made some changes to the build. Got you a faster and tougher ship. The only deletion was the auto-dock. https://s.orbis.zone/hi9_
 
Of course if you want more speed and another couple of light years of jump range, you could drop the 3C Bi-weave shields, slap in a 2A prismatic instead, and use that free size 3 slot for a bigger guardian FSD booster.

and wind up with something like this: https://s.orbis.zone/hicd (haven't really used that site before, so uh, here's to hoping that link actually does something.)

Also tweaked the power plant's experimental to monstered to get a bit more juice out of it. It's still going to be relatively cool because it's armoured.
 
Actually mine does have the enhanced performance thrusters and the special CG Frame Shift drive on, for some reason it does not show up properly on Coriolis. It can jump 31 Ly and boost about 560 m/s.
That's cute. Mine jumps 48LY and boosts at 851. It cruises at 560 :D It's not built for fighting though; much like the SR-71, the standard defensive action is just to accelerate lol.

I'm glad the Duvals have decided to share the glory of the Imperial Courier with the galaxy in this festive period.
 
Of course if you want more speed and another couple of light years of jump range, you could drop the 3C Bi-weave shields, slap in a 2A prismatic instead, and use that free size 3 slot for a bigger guardian FSD booster.

and wind up with something like this: https://s.orbis.zone/hicd (haven't really used that site before, so uh, here's to hoping that link actually does something.)

Also tweaked the power plant's experimental to monstered to get a bit more juice out of it. It's still going to be relatively cool because it's armoured.
I’ll raise the bet further 😁: https://s.orbis.zone/hid8

Kept the prismatic but made it thermal resist/lo draw so it can be stronger but not too energy hungry. I replaced the weapons with 3 Lightweight 5 weapons that don’t depend on weapon size. The cytoscrambler is to remove shields and does the job better than any other medium thermal weapon you could put there. The two dumbfires are actually Advanced Missile Launchers so they have 8 (edit) in the clip and 64 in storage. They do 20 breach damage each with 100% chance of breach. You aim for the power plant and do 40 damage to its integrity (or the module reinforcements) every time.

Since the shield and the weapons don’t need much distributor draw, I decreased the distributor one size and saved mass.
 
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Thanks guys, really appreciate all the suggestions, it seems there are some interesting nuances and combinations in the use of the various ways a ship can be put together and engineered that can make huge differences that is not so obvious. I am learning every day. I will try out some of the designs.

I still need to do the power play modules. I will definitely go for the cytoscramblers first, this weapon has some really intresting capability but it seems as a little bit of waste to fit them in a size 2 slot.

I would like to put three of them on my Chief in the small hard-points, that will apparently just strip any ship’s shields double quick.

The only thing that gets me a bit down is the 4 week wait for the PP modules.
 
@CaptKarel Sidebar to the thread, but I’m a big cytoscrambler fan. I don’t typically use them lightweight because of integrity loss, but for your average Chieftain build an efficient or overcharged one is fantastic. You’re turning a small hardpoint into a large equivalent, and you’re maneuverable enough to stay close and keep it on target.

It’s not really a waste because there’s no larger size equivalent that does the job better, and if you’re lightweighting a ship you want every mass advantage you can get. Same with the missile launchers. The only thing a medium advanced missile launcher gets you is more missiles in the clip. You still get the same 64 missiles in storage, so you might as well go small (class 1) size and save the mass and the power.
 
Yeah I have a Viper like that..even taking all pips out of engines it’s still absolute madness to fly. I actually really only ever used it to chase wakes to scan.

I use it when running courier missions and its nice for settlement jobs as long as there is no risk of scavengers, as they will wreck the lightly shielded viper in seconds (it happened once, i missed one scavenger). Anyway, i prefer to take out scavengers with death from above from my Dropship.
 
Builds for a Free Courier ?

Try these, tweak however you like
  • Fast freight - Horizon BGS Mission runner, i.e. Cargo, Mission deliveries, enough DPS for occasional assassination - https://s.orbis.zone/his1 848m/s 47LYr
  • Warbird - CZs, Max shields for the weight, Beams balance the Distributor for infinite fire, just sprinkle 3-4 rounds of corrosive MC every 10 secs or so to soften hulls. Runs ice cold when firing - https://s.orbis.zone/his2 - 722m/s
  • Impersonnel Delivery - Some spare parts I had lying around that became my Odyssey build. Fast enough to evade fire at a settlement while dumping in missiles, tanky enough for you not to evade - https://s.orbis.zone/hisa
  • Off the beaten track - Planetary explorer build - https://s.orbis.zone/hish - 52Yr jump range
And often the most fun
  • Pyra Sea - PVP pirate vessel. Cold running so you can sneak in behind them, Shields restore as fast as possible when you need them. Originally built for Borann LTD "hunting", last used to supply Ram Tah with liberated Salvation weapons. Also really good for stealing things under the noses of Thargoids - https://s.orbis.zone/his6 680m/s 37LYr
 
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Just thought I'd try a hypothetical "Noob Courier" build, so here's a early level build using only grade one engineering from Farseer @ 578m/s 21LYr.
The collector is so you can gather materials to progress easily. Using a 2A shield to keep weight and power down since you only lose about 50Mj, and a 3A power plant to keep weight down and the speed up.
If you plan on Bounty hunting you can swap one of the shield boosters for a 0E Kill Warrant Scanner for extra credits (probably the Resist Augmented, 2nd one down).
https://s.orbis.zone/hjhb
 
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