advice on ships...

verbz

V
Hi there CMNDRs, how are you all today.

Im just wanting a little advice on some combat ships, i started out about a week ago with an adder doing a bit of scanning and using my sidey to power down settlements, the last couple of days ive kitted out a DBX and been running some sight seeing trips, now that ive got me a thrustmaster (yesterday) ive been practicing combat a bit on the training section, im not exactly what you could call a danger haha but im enjoing it so wondered what would be a good ship to get and kit up for getting out there and getting some notches under my belt..

Im sat on 38 mil but dont really want to spend it all, also what sort of fun is there to do on the combat scene, from a pve and pvp perspective...

o7 cmdr's 🙋
 

Soric

S
Cobra mk III is solid to get cheap practice in.

Start out at nav beacons where friendly ships can assist while you work out keeping on the bad guys tail in real time

Once you feel a bit more at ease, try “weapons fire detected” signal sources in supercruise it’s slmost always pirates and the signal will tell you the difficulty before dropping in. It’s just you and them in the beginning but cops will show up eventually assuming you haven’t toggled your sos off.

Once you feel real good start going to hazardous resource sites in extraction systems. The pirates drop into these in waves but you can still choose to engage if they look easy enough for you.

As long as you aren’t carrying cargo they won’t fire first.

Once you feel good about flying something a bit priceyer after mods, the vulture is top notch, do like kitty says below
 
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Hellakitty

Hellakitty
Get a Vulture, kit it out and stick dual plasma accelerators on it. If you can, do some engineering on it to give yourself even more of an edge.

You've now got the equivalent of an F-22. Throw it around like a deadly Swan Lake and get used to aiming fixed weapons.

I still go and fly my PA Vulture occasionally, it's just a really fun and rewarding ship to fly.
 

verbz

V

Any chance you could share a good build for the vulture kitty, i know its probably best for me to just test out different things for myself but could just do with that extra nudge in the right direction..

Thanks for the replies..

I'll go buy me a vulture shortly...

Ive not done any engineering as yet so ill work on that over the next few days..
 

Xious

Xious
One more vote for the Vulture...

IFrPkiL.png
 

Hellakitty

Hellakitty
verbz said:
Any chance you could share a good build for the vulture kitty, i know its probably best for me to just test out different things for myself but could just do with that extra nudge in the right direction..

Thanks for the replies..

I'll go buy me a vulture shortly...

Ive not done any engineering as yet so ill work on that over the next few days..
Click to expand...

Ah, I'm on my phone at the moment and Coriolis site doesn't play nicely on mobile, otherwise I would. I'd A-rate everything though, stick an A-rated shield in the largest internal compartment, a few HRP's and some shield boosters in the utility slots. NPC's like to use gimbals so consider a chaff launcher in there too. Dual plasma accelerators, and see how you go. Watch out for the power usage though, the Vulture has two weak spots; 1) small powerplant so you have to manage your power much more carefully than other combat ships and 2) my grandmother could punch through the canopy.

Because of the weaksauce canopy, practice keeping out of the arc of fire of your target. Don't sit there face-tanking it because you'll soon be having your teeth whitened by an angry laser beam. Stick on the six of an NPC and learn to stay there with the help of your lateral thrusters.

The Vulture is a real hoot to fly, and you'll soon get into the swing of things with it. Good luck :)
 

verbz

V
Hellakitty said:
Vultures can also be photogenic, in their own angular, special way :)

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachme...91760950083585/04-05-2017_23-55-17_Cartoq.png
Click to expand...

That sure is a sweet looking ship, its got curves in all the right places... just got back to my xbox so time to go shopping... damn im gonna be broke again haha..

.....

Thanks for the builds deathstroke, i think ill set that eagle up too just to play about in so that i dont get my credits rinsed straight away on insurance, that way the vulture can gather a bit of dust for the week.
 

Hellakitty

Hellakitty
verbz said:
That sure is a sweet looking ship, its got curves in all the right places... just got back to my xbox so time to go shopping... damn im gonna be broke again haha..

.....

Thanks for the builds deathstroke, i think ill set that eagle up too just to play about in so that i dont get my credits rinsed straight away on insurance, that way the vulture can gather a bit of dust for the week.
Click to expand...

As long as you pick your fights well enough against the NPC's you shouldn't have many problems with eating rebuys in the Vulture. For it's small size it has big shield capacity and if you find yourself getting into trouble then use the speed and maneouverability to get the heck out of there. The Vulture is just a huge pair of thrusters and two large hardpoints strapped to a tiny FSD and fuel tank.
 
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verbz

V
Well i set up an eagle for getgingnpractice and it went well, i used your eagle set up deathstroke, the only thing i changed was the guns, i had 1f instead, not sure if that works out better, i just saw the higher dps and figured what the hell... i was a little over on power usage so i shut off my cargo door which dropped me just under...

Trying to get a hang of priorities so gonna have a read up on that, but overall it went really well, definitely easier than the advanced combat training lol.

Might try the vulture later today and see how that wrecks ships.

Many thanks to you all the the advice,

O7 cmdr's 🙋
 

AzraelDirge

AzraelDirge
verbz said:
Well i set up an eagle for getgingnpractice and it went well, i used your eagle set up deathstroke, the only thing i changed was the guns, i had 1f instead, not sure if that works out better, i just saw the higher dps and figured what the hell... i was a little over on power usage so i shut off my cargo door which dropped me just under...

Trying to get a hang of priorities so gonna have a read up on that, but overall it went really well, definitely easier than the advanced combat training lol.

Might try the vulture later today and see how that wrecks ships.

Many thanks to you all the the advice,

O7 cmdr's 
Click to expand...

Good on you for choosing to learn to use fixed weapons. It's harder to learn, but much more rewarding in the long run. More DPS, you're unbothered by chaff, and it makes you a better overall pilot. It may get frustrating using them for a while, but stick with it and you'll be happy you did.
 

Hellakitty

Hellakitty
verbz said:
Well i set up an eagle for getgingnpractice and it went well, i used your eagle set up deathstroke, the only thing i changed was the guns, i had 1f instead, not sure if that works out better, i just saw the higher dps and figured what the hell... i was a little over on power usage so i shut off my cargo door which dropped me just under...

Trying to get a hang of priorities so gonna have a read up on that, but overall it went really well, definitely easier than the advanced combat training lol.

Might try the vulture later today and see how that wrecks ships.

Many thanks to you all the the advice,

O7 cmdr's ��
Click to expand...

Awesome stuff, keep it up!

Fly smart. :)
 

IndigoWyrd

IndigoWyrd
Back when I was a mere scrub, I tried the Vulture, and I hated the Vulture - Wound up selling it, only ship I ever did that with.
Turns out it wasn't the Vulture, it was me.

I hadn't yet developed enough as a combat pilot, nor had access enough to higher level engineering to really make the most of the Vulture.

You'll see a lot of people support the Cobra 3 - personally I loathe it.

I had the most luck with a Viper IV back then - equally inexpensive, doesn't look like something sat on it, just the slightest bit more internals on the V4.

But it's really up to you to figure out what you like to fly, and what you can fly well.
 

XW_Ziggy

XW_Ziggy
I like the Viper III as the best ship to go bounty-hunting early-game. It's far cheaper than the cobra so misakes aren't punished so hard and it's a shield tank rather than a hull tank which gives you a little more staying power at a HIREZ or nav beacon. The vulture turns too fast and doesn't drift at all, so it's a terrible ship to learn in, in my opinion. You want to learn in a ship that has qualities of most other ships in the game. The Vulture and Eagle turn so fast that you will never need to drift, never need to FA-off, never need to plan ahead etc. It doesn't stop them being great ships, but they don't push you to improve like a ship with more momentum, drift and a slower turn speed. Let's face it, you want combat flying practice you can use across all ships in the game, not easy kills in an unrealistic space turret that will leave you utterly unprepared for how larger ships handle!

My advice would be to fit it with the fastest shield generator you can afford (3C bi-weave shields) and then fill the utility slots with one Kill warrant scanner (more money from each kill) and either a chaff or a 0A shield booster. If you're trying to learn the ropes the chaff probably makes more sense since you'll want to get the hang of pushing 'panic buttons' at the same time as evading incoming fire.

Armament is mostly irrelevant because your money will come from assisting the police/feds/security in the vicinity shoot down much bigger ships, but if you want to learn to fly, start with all-laser builds to avoid costly ammunition refills (they're trivially cheap later in the game because they don't scale in cost, but they're expensive at the beginning). Lasers don't punch through hulls but they're great at melting shields, so when you're running an all-laser ship, you need to hit their modules - aim for the power plant and set a couple of hotkeys for 'next subtarget' and 'previous subtarget' Gimballed pulse lasers will let you focus on keybinds and execution of your flying/positioning etc because they're effectively auto-aim. Once you're happier with the rest of the flying, switch out to fixed pulse lasers since you'll get about 25% more damage out of them.

The one rule of making money via combat is to never shoot something until the target has been identified and shown up as "clean" or "wanted". Even if it's a wanted criminal, you will be fined for shooting something before your scanner has identified it. If you get into the habit of scanning everything with the kill warrant scanner, it takes 10 seconds which means you will never be firing too early and getting a bounty on your ship by mistake!
 
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Darkslayer

Darkslayer
XW_Ziggy said:
I like the Viper III as the best ship to go bounty-hunting early-game. It's far cheaper than the cobra so misakes aren't punished so hard and it's a shield tank rather than a hull tank which gives you a little more staying power at a HIREZ or nav beacon.

My advice would be to fit it with the biggest shield generator you can afford (3C bi-weave shields are amazing value for money when you don't have much money) and then fill the utility slots with one Kill warrant scanner (more money from each kill) and either a chaff or a shield booster. If you're trying to learn the ropes the chaff probably makes more sense since you'll want to get the hang of pushing 'panic buttons' at the same time as evading incoming fire.

Armament is mostly irrelevant because your money will come from assisting the police/feds/security in the vicinity shoot down much bigger ships, but if you want to learn to fly, start with all-laser builds to avoid costly ammunition refills (they're trivially cheap later in the game because they don't scale in cost, but they're expensive at the beginning). Lasers don't punch through hulls but they're great at melting shields, so when you're running an all-laser ship, you need to hit their modules - aim for the power plant and set a couple of hotkeys for 'next subtarget' and 'previous subtarget' Gimballed pulse lasers will let you focus on keybinds and execution of your flying/positioning etc because they're effectively auto-aim. Once you're happier with the rest of the flying, switch out to fixed pulse lasers since you'll get about 25% more damage out of them.

The one rule of making money via combat is to never shoot something until the target has been identified and shown up as "clean" or "wanted". Even if it's a wanted criminal, you will be fined for shooting something before your scanner has identified it. If you get into the habit of scanning everything with the kill warrant scanner, it takes 10 seconds which means you will never be firing too early and getting a bounty on your ship by mistake!

Here's a sample build for under 650,000cr all-in, rebuys will cost you just 32,000cr.
https://beta.coriolis.edcd.io/outfi...19kA==.Aw19kA==..EweloBhAWEoUwIYHMA28QgIwV0A=
Like most combat ships, the biggest weakness is the jump range so you probably want to buy a better FSD as soon as you can afford to; when you're ready to move on to a bigger/better ship, you can sell it for zero loss and in the meantime, a 15LY jump range is definitely a better experience than a 10LY jump range. With many stars more than 10LY apart, you might find yourself taking some long routes for short journeys! This is a problem that the fighter ships typically all suffer from - the viper, vulture, fer-de-lance and Corvette are all terrible for jump range.
Click to expand...

My engineered Viper 4 gets around 30ly.
 

XW_Ziggy

XW_Ziggy
It is also, slower, less agile, tougher, 3x more expensive and no better armed than a Viper III, which doesn't really help verbz in his quest for combat experience.

To learn to dodge, you need to be weak so that you don't use the crutch of facetanking
To learn to fly, you need a ship that is fast and lets you manoeuvre around until you find what works
To learn to survive you have to die to gain experience from your mistakes. Rebuy on an A-rated Viper IV will cost 500K whilst a death in an A-rated Viper III is just 150K
 

Spandexxx

Spandexxx
Sounds like you've already done the right thing but just in case: Buy a Vulture.

Everyone should own one at some point. Although I don't fly it too often these days I consider it a critical part of my development as a combat pilot and a spectacularly fun rung on the ladder up the ship heirarchy.
 

verbz

V
Well ive been using the vulture and can honestly say i love it, the dual plasmas are well orgasmic to say the least, im in the process of trying to get an invite from yoru party so i can g3 them but having problems with the invite... i need to get the rest engineered to so maybe later ill look into that, its rare i have heat issues at the moment though, i like to plan my attacks and watch heat so its not going to high.. ive only had a few canopy breaks but got to a base in time... thanks all for the advice.
 
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