It's always interesting when these threads come up. You see everybody posting their thoughts based on their own experience and skill levels. Because half of these people are pve exclusive, they never get to see what these ships can really do when minmaxed to oblivion. Nor is minmaxing to oblivion required for a pve pilot. So where do you (where do I) draw the line? Do I advise based on mediocre skill level and engineering desire, or do I just say what is best under all the optimal circumstances and assume the pilot will engineer everything g5 as I suggest...
The problem is the FDL in this. It;s such a finicky build, as soon as you add another cell or booster, you need to rethink the power, as soon as you rethink the power, you need to rethink the heat gen, as soon as you rethink the heat gen, you need to rethink the weight (this is a mild exaggeration, but you get what I mean, you can chase 3 glasses of water with a jug trying to make them exactly the same, but you'll be forever adding a little more to one, then another, then another).
The main folly being stated in this thread is that in pve, the FDL has better survivability because of its huge shields, this is just plain wrong. The 'effective health' of a ship, is a calculation based on its shield and armor values, anticipated pips to systems at any given moment and of course, innate resistances applied by engineering. The challenger has more raw hp in its hull than even a fully g5 engineered FDL does in it's shield AND hull.
For its hull size, the challenger is the tankiest ship in the game, its effective health with a fast charge biweave is nearly DOUBLE that of a prismatic FDL. In PvE you don't care if your shields go down in the challenger, NPCs don't module snipe, so that MASSIVE 5k (if you minmax) hull, is already more raw mj than the FDL WITH its shield. Now add the fact that you've got a 700ish mj biweave AS WELL (which if you're smart you've got 4 pips in when under fire, making it last literally forever in pve). When that goes down, it takes about 1 minute to come back up at half strength. Now add the fact it has SEVEN hardpoints, pitches like a dream and is easy to fly.
The FDLs advantages are...good initial shield values and tons of boosters, plus strong lateral thrusters, indeed, BUT, this huge shield gives you power issues and it has few internals, so you are all shield. The typical pve builld would be prismatic (because of that weak hull and the fact that NPCs use gimballed and hitscan weapons mainly, negating any chance for a biweave to get much recharge). Even an A rated shield would be more useful in the average compromised nav, than a biweave, cos in the ferdie you do not want to expose your hull, if you do it's time to leave. In the challenger you're barely getting started.
The reason the FDL is king is because it has the maneuverability to put a lot of fire on target and avoid a lot of fire, but that takes a lot of skill, and is simply not needed in PvE, and therefore, there is no need to live with its disadvantages (finicky pip management, finicky stall-y flight model, bad pitch if flown wrong, no hull).
Bottom line without going into insane detail on every point, this is absolutley no contest, the Challenger is BY MILES the superior PvE ship, especially for thargoids due to their phasing attacks, you need that hull. One thing about thargoids though, the challenger's hardpoints aren't exactly ideal for ax weaponry. Do not use any AX stuff in the small hardpoints, it's a waste of a slot, so that only leaves you the three belly mediums and the top mount large. I put three gauss in the mediums and a plasma charger in the large, but in hindsight, I should have put two gauss in two of the mediums, a medium shard in the spare medium and a large shard in the large.
The FDL is vastly superior in pvp though, it can hit and not be hit due to its agility in the hands of a skilled pilot.
Here's a base challenger build for you (sorry, forgot to add it, please see a later post where I have now added it). I mained this ship in pve and pvp since it was released, until about a month ago, when I switched to a Krait, simply because it's bigger, superior and has more of everything as a hybrid. Which brings me to the final point...
The Krait is far superior to both in pve and arguably a match for the FDL in pvp as well.
