Best ship/loadout for Civilian massacre Spec-Ops missions?

[GunnerBill]

I don't normally struggle blowing stuff up but this mission I took last night was a real pest...

These so called civilians are all deadly and flying fast little ships that appear to be full of maxed out HRP's! Basically they keep escaping No reason why they shouldn't of course.

1) My Vette was comically useless at this, obviously it scrubs foes in seconds should they choose to stay and fight but has nothing on a Viper if it chooses to flee.

2) My Challenger was slightly better with beams/MC's but still some were escaping and by the time I'd killed 2 or 3 the rest had jumped out. Killing 30 of the blighters began to look like a cruel and unusual Friday night in space.

3) I thought about FSD interrupt but I hate that kind of magic.

Any thoughts on builds/tactics? I have FDL (my next choice), a Mamba and a whole heap of modules so it's just a case of getting the best loadout/tactics.

 

[GraphiteGB]

You are only meant to get 2-3.... 4 is pure luck
And that's only if there are bigger ships that are slow to boost like the beluga..
Shield removal beams/Frags with heavy engineering and then DRIVE disabling weapons like drag munition missiles stops them running as boost is disabled by drag effect... Then power plant sub target kill...

These are not pirates that sit around to be killed there normal civis that run away...

 

[Ashnak]

Killing 30 of the blighters began to look like a cruel and unusual Friday night in space.

Now you know why they pay so much for a little housecleaning . Getting 3 of them per USS is a good result for me - pirates may be slightly easier since they at least sometimes stick around. As you found out, you'll need something with speed, range and punch - FdL/Mamba/Clipper? with some reasonably ranged hull punching loadout might be in order. Never tried the Clipper, so I don't know how bad the convergence on those two large hardpoints is, but a couple of large long range beams together with Salvation's modified Guardian plasma chargers on the mediums (alternatively LR rails) might be worth investigating.

On the other hand, I like my Mamba - put the Salvation plasmas in the smalls as a replacement for SRB Cytos, gimballed beams on the mediums and a, now running a MC on the huge HP, which I intend to switch to SRB. "Short Range" on the MC still means a 2 km range, with no reduction in falloff (as opposed to non-LR lasers with their 600 meter falloff).

 

[GunnerBill]

Oh!

So I'm doing OK then - ROFLMAO!

I might try my rail Cutter then and see how that goes.

 

[CaptainPugwash]

My experience has been similar: 2-3 kills sometimes less before they have all made a run for it. I think the clipper could be a good fit, but after having to travel over 1000ls between each SS when the mission required over 70 kills I never tried it again.

 

[Vedmo]

I have a Phantom that works pretty good for those, MkII might be better, but I just like Phantoms. Four long range fixed pulse. It can take a while to kill stuff up close, but from a distance it is a lethal Power Plant sniper (cheesing the long range benefits of micro-gimballing, I suppose) and 1 pip perma-boost makes keeping that distance pretty easy.

 

[[VR] DDM_Reaper20]

I like railguns with super penetrator. Get down the shields, aim for the frameshift drive, and zap it. Once it's at 0%, they cannot jump out. Either cripple another target, or finish off your current one.

My corvette packs 2 huge beams (G5 efficient/Thermal Vent (fixed)), with a large MC (overcharged/autoloader), one G5 focused gimballed burst laser (scrambled), one gimballed G5 high capacity MC (corrosive), and 2 small rail guns (high capacity G5 -- less reloading), one feedback cascade, one super penetrator. With that loadout, I can typically bag 5-7 pirates in one USS.

 

[Deleted member 254248]

I pledged to Yuri Grom for four weeks just for these missions. I have a Mamba with containment missiles, and frag cannons with drag munitions. Don’t start with the containment missiles, wait a bit after you get the warning about their drive charging and then fire one to reset the timer. They fly in straight lines so they’re easy to hit.

 

[Elpapo]

I use either full railgun krait phantom/mk2 or my rail conda/cutter for lazier and long range approach, or if wanna do this close and personal, a FDL with med beams and huge MC. Target drives, and once those are out, rest to process is walk in park.

Spoiler

This makes very nice "training" how to kill cmdrs, as those npcs are better at running away than most randoms out there. That 50 mil for 30 kills is nice and sweet addition to that.

 

[GunnerBill]

I use either full railgun krait phantom/mk2 or my rail conda/cutter for lazier and long range approach, or if wanna do this close and personal, a FDL with med beams and huge MC. Target drives, and once those are out, rest to process is walk in park.

Spoiler

This makes very nice "training" how to kill cmdrs, as those npcs are better at running away than most randoms out there. That 50 mil for 30 kills is nice and sweet addition to that.

Elpapo!
I thought yours was an evil long since departed...

 

[DemiserofD]

You may want to consider a cannon. Heavily armored enemies can almost always be killed faster by destroying the power plant.

In addition to that, you want as much shield damage as possible, and high speed to get around quickly.

With all that in mind, you might get the best results out of a Mamba. Put a huge cannon on, plus 2x large beams or multicannons(to proc the power plant after reaching 0%), and 2x cytoscramblers to take out the shields.

If you don't have cytoscrambers, an alternative could be missiles. Advanced Missile Racks can very quickly destroy their engines and let you easily take them out, and they've got plenty of ammo. Then use larger fixed lasers to take down the shields quickly.

 

[GunnerBill]

After extensive testing I'm going with my Mamba with a huge Focused PA & 4 x Gimbaled OC'd MC's. With this I'm managing to get 4 or 5 of those pesky civilians in each drop.

 

[Elpapo]

Elpapo!
I thought yours was an evil long since departed...

Spoiler

Haha, kinda you are right.

In some way, evil known as elpapo is long time gone & foggoten. I changed my cmdr name few years ago, I think it was around 2017-18... thats why some might think "who the hell is this elpapo, aint seen him in game yet!" so this is why, while I had almost a half-year hiatus from game at 2019, but since that, still around and kickin almost every day.

That said, I do still hunt other cmdrs(while at it, prefer anarchies), but my kill count rarely is more than 10 kills per day, wich is nowhere close what I used to have during my prime.. if not doing my usual PVE stuff.

 

[GunnerBill]

After further testing over 10+ 30-50million Cr Spec Ops missions I've settled on this build: https://s.orbis.zone/hgxn

There's some speed optimisation possible but with this build I'm regularly getting 8 or 9 of the ships in each signal source.

The Prismatic's are necessary because I'm just powering through the mines being spammed by some of the targets. Bi-Weaves dropped pretty quick and the 4A SCB's are pretty poor.
I'm sticking with gimbaled simply because most targets don't use chaff, time-on-target and the ability to stay on target while driving straight through all the mine blasts.

I'm going to try lightening it up a bit and see if I can get the job done even quicker!

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

s.orbis.zone

I dropped the FDL pretty quickly as it wasn't fast enough to catch the last two or three civilian ships before they jumped out. With the Mamba the most I'm travelling to the next target is 5 km.

P.S. I'm also really pleased I found a use for my Mamba, it's been sitting mothballed since I got one on release which was a shame because it's a lovely looking ship!

 

[nanothargon]

PSA: Slight refinement to this build above - Python Mk2, gimballed multis, overcharged, 3x incendiary, 1x caustic. 2 x Front-facing point defence to handle the mines.
Makes it easy to do the big special ops and pirate massacre missions with the raw materials rewards. No need to farm brain trees with flechettes any more.

Also, Python2 because you end up doing a lot of supercruise, and stable, efficient SCO really helps.

The key is, don't try to be clever. PAs and rails are great for hard targets, but these are "medium" targets without chaff that just drop a ton of mines, run and jump quick. Gimballed because it gets chaotic, there's no chaff, and this gives higher damage overall. Multis for the slight range bump. Point defence rather than better shield because there's a LOT of mines involved - make sure they're the top, front-facing slots.

Also, despite having 0 notoriety, I had the ATR drop in on me after a while, which was... surprising... so be prepared to run

 

[Stealthie]

Heh, two old threads on related subjects.

This is one time (possibly the only time) where a Krait is definitely a better choice than a Python.
Key issue is that the Krait has a seriously efficient boost, which means it's the ship to choose for pursuing targets that will try to flee.

I'd suggest a build with a lot of kinetic firepower, so you can keep shooting while you've got 4 pips to engines, thus maximising your ability to pursue a target and keep on shooting it.
Also, an SLF can be useful to harass a target and hinder it's escape.
Also, also, you probably want a ship with decent shields, that can regenerate quickly, because fleeing ships often drop mines which can't always be avoided.

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

s.orbis.zone

+EDIT+

Thinking about it a bit more, I've recently started putting a frag' turret on my combat ships, usually Overcharged but definitely with the Drag Munitions XFX.
This does a great job of just blasting your target with frag's at every opportunity and slows them down a helluva lot.
That might be useful during massacre missions.

On the Krait build, above, if the middle Large MC was swapped for a frag' turret with Drag Munitions it could help slow down a fleeing ship.
Only issue might be that the 3x large overcharged MCs shred a target very quickly and allow you to go after the next ship.
With only two, it might take longer to explode your current target, thus giving other ships more chance to escape, even though your current target will be moving slower.
Might be worth engineering a frag' turret to see how it turns out.