Nice one, thanks. That's a lot to take in, but I'll start by swap my & A shield for the Bi-Weaves.IMHO, you'd be much better off making a more purposeful build. Weapons are very much a personal choice, depending on whether you want fun or earnings rate and how long you want your play sessions to be.
I prefer all lasers for PvE because the earnings rate is higher overall and I prefer long play sessions without having to waste a lot of time going back for ammo. The time to kill is longer in theory, but if you set your fighter on the enemy and wait for it to land a shot, the enemy will prioritise the fighter, so you get complete freedom to shoot it from the side, where you can target its powerplant and kill it before it even knows you're shooting it. That works for any ship bigger than an Asp. The fighter must be the one with fixed multi-cannons, which stops the enemies from chaffing.The one with fixed plasma works as well, but doesn't seem to do as much damage as the m/c one.
Generally, bi-weave shield are better for PvE, where you want to kill multiple enemies. Prismatics are OK for shorter sessions, but you need two very large shield cell banks to keep them charged, which those builds that you've been looking at don't have. SCBs need cooling, so you'd have to fit heatsinks or thermal vent lasers too. Overall, correctly engineered bi-weaves give more shield strength because they replenish more quickly and give more hitpoints. Always engineer with fast charge.
Here's what I use for PvE. If you don't have Guardian shield boosters, you should prioritise unlocking them, which can be done quickly with a DBX fitted with two point defence and an SRV. If you want to farm materials while shooting enemies, you can change one GSB for a class 7 cargo rack and one class5 GSB for a 5A collector limpet controller. The armour isn't really necessary because you'll never lose your shields, so you can save 1/2 billion r and get some extra speed, which might be more useful.
Coriolis EDCD Edition
A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerouscoriolis.io
If you farm pirates in a Resource Extraction Site (RES), you get loads of encoded data. After a few evenings you can go to a material trader and level it all off. Carry on until you have 10 billion and you should be full of all encoded, plus you have enough credits to get a fleet carrier. You can farm pirates in a low RES and get 200 mil/hour while collecting encoded materials. Low RESs normally have only small ships, though about 1 in 5 times they have big ships. You log until you get the spawn you want. Small ships for quantity, like you need for pirate massacre missions, and big ships to farm manufactured materials. Don't bother with the manufactured mats from small ships because they're not worth enough for the time to collect them. Pirates in a low RES don't put up much of a fight. You don't need any engineering to be 100% successful, though speed and long range sensors always help, so do that first. An FDL with all pulse lasers is a good ship. In the vid below, I used an unengineered Vulture with burst lasers. There's only an outpost to get the missions from, so it's best not to use a big ship, otherwise you have to swap ships in a nearby system to get the missions and to cash them in.
For me - and this is personal preference - I go to the crashed 'conda and Jamesons then trade.
Good old Ngalinn-Mainani grind! I made most of my FC money there. Works really well, can recommend. Some wing synergy exists too, if you happen to have friends in a similar situation.
Interesting scenario. I've never tried it either.
It's funny you mention the number of scavs. I've had a few missions now where the last one has gone completely AWOL.
Probably saw buddies dropping and legged it.
There was nothing on Contacts (1000m radius) and I ran around the entire base looking. I guess the game can't count.
I have seen some just walk away, some dragged towards the centre of the planet but also, there have been instances where the kill count did not go up for one of the first kills and, when I finished, the counter was stuck at 9/10.
