Ships Acquiring a fondness for the Challenger

Moirai

M
Last year I bought a Chieftain and had a bit of fun with it in the early stages of the Thargoid war. Then I shelved it and got involved in refugee missions. After a while I got bored with the war and went off into the black in my Python to earn enough for an FC. Then on a whim, about six months back, I bought a Challenger.

To be honest, compared to the Chieftain, I wasn't wild about it. Especially the loss of a class 3 hardpoint. So I stripped it and left it gathering dust in a corner of the FC's hanger.

A couple of weeks back, while engineering up a Cobra, I decided to dust it off, give it a coat of paint and engineer the heck out of it to use as a bubble bus. And, you know what, I love it now. What a great ship, and a lot of fun for tooling around it, doing some missions and scaring pesky interdictors.

Question is, given its poor showing on customisation, is the Midnight Black paint job available for the Challenger?

Currently, I using this, which is kind of bright and cheerful:

18-36-20 Shamash-Khonsu Gleam.jpg


Would be nice to grab a matt black though, if it's available.

Build link if anyone's interested.
 

Rebel Yell

Rebel Yell
I like the Chally, overall a versatile ship for certain tasks (piracy, cargo retrieval missions, etc) and fun to fly it > Python for same tasks except transort missions/smuggling.
 

Darrack

Darrack
8AHnj5X.png


Its an old image (not a good one) but im away from the carrier at the moment, this is my medium AX ship and i love it, Chally is by far my fav Alliance ship.
This is the Midnight Black paint job with a few ship kit bits, but again not the best of shots.

O7
 

Moirai

M
Darrack said:
Its an old image (not a good one) but im away from the carrier at the moment, this is my medium AX ship and i love it, Chally is by far my fav Alliance ship.
This is the Midnight Black paint job with a few ship kit bits, but again not the best of shots.

O7
Click to expand...

Ah, excellent. Thank you very much. (y) :)

Good to know that I can grab the MB paint job for it in a few weeks (well, hopefully!).

Real shame it's been ignored so much for customisation. Would be nice to see some of the Operator paint jobs for it as well.
 

Moirai

M
So I popped an SRV bay on her and dropped in on Dav's Hope to top up a few mats, and this is what I saw on return.

22-30-49 Hyades Sector DR-V c2-23-Hyades Sector DR-V c2-23 A 5.jpg


Have to assume the lighting position is somewhat intentional, even if you ignore the bay holo.
 

Kayvan

Kayvan
Ah, a Challenger appreciation thread. ^^
In the recent PJ sale, I decided to show my AX Chally some love and give it a Stygian PJ. After much deliberation and previewing, I decided that the brass one actually suits this ship best. That's btw one things that I find really weird -- that one colour looks great on one ship but meh on others. ^^ For instance, I gave my AX Chieftain a Stygian Red, the AX Vulture a Stygian Blue and my AX FAS a Stygian Tungsten. All of these ships look dumb in any other of these respective colours. (Well, mostly; I admit in one case it was a close call).

So anyway, here's my freshly painted Chally =)
Challenger.png
 

pFVD

P
Midnight Black Challenger here too. I use a Chieftan for invasions usually but I like the extra hardpoint for Flak of the Challenger for AX CZ's. Doesn't stop me taking it down town for a few though, I just switch out the Flak for an Azimuth EACMC. Having looked at the few pics in this thread, think I'll have to get the ship kit at some point ...
parabellum8.jpg
 

Kayvan

Kayvan
TBH I've experimented a lot with the Chally, but never found quite the perfect setup. It has so many hardpoints that PP and PD struggle to keep up.
I once set it up as a HazRez mat farmer - with collector limpets and stuff - but it was reeaaaally tricky to find an effective weapon setup. Medium MCs are too anemic and Plasmas draw so much power it's difficult to juggle it all. I think ultimately I used 3 Med PAs and I don't remember what on the Large hp, maybe a beam.

Then when the Aftermath War begun, I thought the Chally might by a great platform for AX action, and I did find a setup that looked interesting on paper: 1 large AX MC to use against Scouts, 3 modshards, 1 TV beam and 2 Cytos (to wear down Ceptor shields).
In practice, it was a bit of a hassle. The single MC is not enough to kill scouts quickly, and if you engage them with shards anyway, you don't need the MC. Otherwise the setup worked, technically, but I found it too much of a hassle to switch between multiple fire groups all the time.
Haven't used it in a while; if I get it out again, I would probably drop the Cytos to ease power and distro load. Even though it goes against every fibre in my body to leave hardpoints empty on a combat ship. 😄
 

Three Stars

T
I agree that it’s difficult to find ways to leverage the mediums. One setup that works for me in PvE is 3 overcharged fixed cannons. They’re very low draw and low power, so that’s more to spread elsewhere. They have nice module breach damage and a better shot speed than PAs. Their armor piercing (with corrosive) fully damages anything but the type 10. Plus, for convenience/laziness, you can make the outer ones High Yield Shell to make sure that they hit the same module target as the center one.

Another good one is 3 fixed medium rapid fire pulses with thermal shock. Slows NPCs to a crawl. I filled the rest of the hardpoints with a high capacity pacifier, frags and an advanced dumbfire missile launcher set up for penetrator munitions. Spam click them when you have the target lined up for best effect.
 
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