Core Dynamics Vulture – Review
Well I’ve had an interesting weekend – the wife has had an operation on her hand, so that means that we’ve not been able to take the kids out, which, in turn means I’ve been able to dedicate around 10 hours over the course of the weekend to trying out Core Dynamics new heavy fighter – the Vulture. So after a weekend of twisting and turning around a RES, I’ve poured myself a glass of Johnny Walker Black, and, joined by my feline companion who is curled up beside me, I've pulled up my chair to spend a moment reflecting on the ship for all of you commanders considering making the jump to Frontier’s latest edition to the space ways.
First off, the vulture is described as a ‘Space superiority fighter’, and I think that describes its role very well. This is no jack of all trades multirole like the Cobra; there is little space to store cargo and the jump range is poor. Neither is this little ship an interceptor like the Viper, who is designed to get to a target as quickly as possible and apply ordinance (usually with the support of a wing). The vulture is a space superiority fighter – a dog fighter, think F15 eagle – an expensive airframe that has had money spent on ensuring it can turn tighter than the opposition, carry an effective payload, and be survivable enough to deliver reliably it in hot zones, under extreme prejudice.
Interior
The Vulture is a core dynamics craft, the same shipwright that brought us a craft that most have experience of flying, as it’s the second most affordable ship in the game – and the starting ship for those of us who spent nights on our Amiga’s and Atari’s playing Frontier. The design philosophy is very similar, a nimble, well-armed craft with a very focused brief. The cockpit bears the same design trates. Similar layout and materials have been used, but to a higher standard, much like moving from a BMW 1 to a 5 series, its more of the same, only.. better.
The frontier manual introduced the reader to the game with a short note from the eagles manufacturer, which claimed:
And this statement is still reflected in the ED’s vulture – clean lines, little in the way of un-functional indicators or otherwise redundant features. The cockpit is a tandem design, with the pilots chair above and behind a second seat – much like a helicopter gunship. With you head pulled back, you can make out the stars from the gap underneath the control bench. Set slightly back in a bubble cockpit (similar to the Lakon craft), if you have an oculus or similar, I think you’ll be in for a treat.
When you first climb in to the ship, you quickly notice the superstructure of the ship imposing on your peripheral vision, what appears to be the front end of the giant gun mounts extend past the cockpit glass, whether this is to afford some side protection to the crew, or is simply a design oversight has little effect in the end; as the situational MFDs cover most of the offending area anyway, so your view is inhibited only slightly.
Initial thoughts.
Taking off in the stock craft, to be honest I was somewhat underwhelmed, the turning circle was so-so, and the standard weaponry looked laughably out of place in the massive class three housings. At equilized power, the vulture bimbles along at a steady 210 m/sec, but adjusting the power doesn't make a huge about of difference, the boost however works well, and you can close that time to target via augmented thrust very quickly – expect to spend time coasting with flight assist off at full boost to maximise this advantage.
What this does tell you though is this ship is not really meant to be flown stock – if you have the means of the five million credits for the base ship, keep grinding until you have around 20 million and insurance change before you make the jump – five (well two) million sunk into a viper will earn you chits far quicker than the factory fresh core dynamics offering.
Spend that money though, and what a transformation.
I spent on handling, purchasing A class thrusters, power distribution and power generation. A 5B shield was the best available, along with a decent shield booster and some gimbled class three pulse lasers, to round off, I plugged in a A class Frame Shift Drive, a Shield Cell, A-grade sensors to marry up with the auto tracking ordinance and a Kill Warrant Scanner. Now this leads to another short fall, the power is somewhat in short supply for all of the larger components, the vulture has a reputation for being difficult to fit, but more on that later.
With all that said, with the augmented setup I rolled on the throttle.
Now. This. Is. A. Machine.
The Vulture is a small ship, wrapped around a massive pair of guns, and an even larger engine. As you throttle up, the cabin seams to judder and vibrate as it tries in a vain attempt to contain the thrust, and she picks up speed well, remember my earlier comments – this is not an interceptor, there is too much inertia to speed off the line like a small interceptor, but thrust as you go and you’ll hit around 380 before dropping back to a not-to-sedate 244 on four pips.
Plus points
So first the plus points.
The prime movers have been setup for maneuverability, and she provides this in bucket loads – think spinning on a dime. Capitalise on this fact, it’s the vultures meal-ticket. You should be able to boost into an engagement, get on the tail end of an opponent and stay there no matter what aerobatics they attempt while delivering your payload without breaking a sweat.
The shields can soak up a lot of damage. Taking shields and packing thermals, you can stay out in a combat zone for along time, it’s the vultures raison d'etre. Don’t rely on armour, and my recommendation would be not to upgrade the armour and in anyway inhibit the maneuverability; the vulture is a knife fighter, its not got the non-boost straight line speed for pass-to-pass engagements, take away its nimbleness at your peril.
With 4 pips, the uprated vulture can almost constantly deliver power to a brace of class three pulse lasers. Now I came from a viper, similarly configured for RES combat using 2 medium and 2 small burst lasers. They can delivery approximately the same damage per second as my vulture setup, but only in short flurries of fire before the reserves are drained, and I have to rework the position and wait before I can fire again. The advantage of being able to constantly apply ordanance to a target cannot be understated.
The Vulture’s engine designers did not leave everything to the prime movers, the lateral and vertical thrusters are powerful – seaming more so than the viper. That means that when you get in close to a large mark, you can thrust around them at your design, moving outside of their firing solution (or ramming intents) with ease, while always maintaining your weapon aspect to target.
Bad habits
The comparative ease of fighting (particularly other fighters) as compared to vipers and the like means that you start to pick up bad habits – with the viper, you are constantly toggling flight assist to get the nose around, and that’s a good habit giving you more time on target. With the vulture, you find you don’t need to, and what’s more, the available shields means that you are less pressed to do so.
I spent very little time with power management also, something that I had to adjust almost constantly on the Falcon De’lacy interceptor. The constant delivery from the pulse lasers meant that I only really changed power settings once my target was destroyed to put power in the engines in order to boost to the next mark.
Most pilots will probably un-power the cargo hatch, or at very least set it a low priority. Just remember that if you ever do carry cargo – unbelievably I did my first ever trade in the vulture. I wanted to get some better shields and look for fixed lasers, so decided to take a detour to Lieadin in order to cache in a 800k imperial bounty I had accumulated, and at the same time see what I could find. For sh**s-and-giggles, I thought I try my hand at 8t of rares trading from Altair on my return, and managed a grand total of 414credits for my efforts!
However, that (minor) profit would have turned into a costly lost if I didn't remember I had powered down my hatch at the (very) last moment before take off.
Out fitting
Just a look at the frontier forums will tell you by the sheer number of related threads that this ship is hard to fit.
You have two weapon hardpoints, and whilst you can run an a-symmetric setup, most players will lump for a full-thermal setup. This works perfectly in a RES or Combat Zone as you can stay out as long as you dare without heading back for ammo – maximise the grind.
Some hints here are:-
Turn off your FSD and shield Cells when not in use. With weapons retracted, the setup above runs at 100%. Disabling these gives you breathing space.
If you need the Shield Cells (or as I call them – get out of jail free cards) Pull your hardpoints in, hit your boost and go engines off, and then cycle to the right hand panel and turn your cells back on before Initiate the recovery sequence.
IF you have a flight stick (my qualifier to this statement) You don’t need gimballed weapons with this fighter, in fact, in my experience they are more trouble than they are worth. Usually I use a fixed loadout, and due to the lack of fixed pulses, I ended up with a pair of gimballed lasers. I have almost 1000 NPC kills, and, upto this point two friendly fire incidents; Once when a rather stupid cop crossed my fire, and a similar event with a bounty hunter in a sidewinder. After a weekend with gimballed, I have at least a dozen; down to accuracy, momentarily moving outside the fire arch and unintentional target switching.
Range is also adversely effected. With fixed I could sit at just shy of 2Kms and snipe, all be it with reduced power, also useful when using ‘boost and turn’ jousting tactics against irritation fighters. With gimballed, the maximum range of engagement seams to be around 1.2.
One thing I did discover is that by mapping the (to this point un-used) sub-system targeting to a rotary coolie switch on my flight column, I could rapidly select the drive or power plant of a larger vessel, taking out either of these and watching your mark slowly spin is somewhat amusing, and an impossibility with manual targeting, however, every time I’ve done this, the targets hull has been down to less that 20%, and more often than not I’ve destroyed the hull before getting the subsystem down to an inoperable state.
Summary
An out-and-out knife fighter, with a sole purpose. Well suited to RES hunting, but you will need to fit well; expect at least 20M in your bank before making the jump. Lots of fun, but it will be part of your multi-ship garage, not something you will use for much other than fighting.
Well I’ve had an interesting weekend – the wife has had an operation on her hand, so that means that we’ve not been able to take the kids out, which, in turn means I’ve been able to dedicate around 10 hours over the course of the weekend to trying out Core Dynamics new heavy fighter – the Vulture. So after a weekend of twisting and turning around a RES, I’ve poured myself a glass of Johnny Walker Black, and, joined by my feline companion who is curled up beside me, I've pulled up my chair to spend a moment reflecting on the ship for all of you commanders considering making the jump to Frontier’s latest edition to the space ways.
First off, the vulture is described as a ‘Space superiority fighter’, and I think that describes its role very well. This is no jack of all trades multirole like the Cobra; there is little space to store cargo and the jump range is poor. Neither is this little ship an interceptor like the Viper, who is designed to get to a target as quickly as possible and apply ordinance (usually with the support of a wing). The vulture is a space superiority fighter – a dog fighter, think F15 eagle – an expensive airframe that has had money spent on ensuring it can turn tighter than the opposition, carry an effective payload, and be survivable enough to deliver reliably it in hot zones, under extreme prejudice.
Interior
The Vulture is a core dynamics craft, the same shipwright that brought us a craft that most have experience of flying, as it’s the second most affordable ship in the game – and the starting ship for those of us who spent nights on our Amiga’s and Atari’s playing Frontier. The design philosophy is very similar, a nimble, well-armed craft with a very focused brief. The cockpit bears the same design trates. Similar layout and materials have been used, but to a higher standard, much like moving from a BMW 1 to a 5 series, its more of the same, only.. better.
The frontier manual introduced the reader to the game with a short note from the eagles manufacturer, which claimed:
“A dynamic spacehound such as yourself will not have time for unnecessary frills, so we have styled the interior with the minimum of fuss, just like the exterior.
And this statement is still reflected in the ED’s vulture – clean lines, little in the way of un-functional indicators or otherwise redundant features. The cockpit is a tandem design, with the pilots chair above and behind a second seat – much like a helicopter gunship. With you head pulled back, you can make out the stars from the gap underneath the control bench. Set slightly back in a bubble cockpit (similar to the Lakon craft), if you have an oculus or similar, I think you’ll be in for a treat.
When you first climb in to the ship, you quickly notice the superstructure of the ship imposing on your peripheral vision, what appears to be the front end of the giant gun mounts extend past the cockpit glass, whether this is to afford some side protection to the crew, or is simply a design oversight has little effect in the end; as the situational MFDs cover most of the offending area anyway, so your view is inhibited only slightly.
Initial thoughts.
Taking off in the stock craft, to be honest I was somewhat underwhelmed, the turning circle was so-so, and the standard weaponry looked laughably out of place in the massive class three housings. At equilized power, the vulture bimbles along at a steady 210 m/sec, but adjusting the power doesn't make a huge about of difference, the boost however works well, and you can close that time to target via augmented thrust very quickly – expect to spend time coasting with flight assist off at full boost to maximise this advantage.
What this does tell you though is this ship is not really meant to be flown stock – if you have the means of the five million credits for the base ship, keep grinding until you have around 20 million and insurance change before you make the jump – five (well two) million sunk into a viper will earn you chits far quicker than the factory fresh core dynamics offering.
Spend that money though, and what a transformation.
I spent on handling, purchasing A class thrusters, power distribution and power generation. A 5B shield was the best available, along with a decent shield booster and some gimbled class three pulse lasers, to round off, I plugged in a A class Frame Shift Drive, a Shield Cell, A-grade sensors to marry up with the auto tracking ordinance and a Kill Warrant Scanner. Now this leads to another short fall, the power is somewhat in short supply for all of the larger components, the vulture has a reputation for being difficult to fit, but more on that later.
With all that said, with the augmented setup I rolled on the throttle.
Now. This. Is. A. Machine.
The Vulture is a small ship, wrapped around a massive pair of guns, and an even larger engine. As you throttle up, the cabin seams to judder and vibrate as it tries in a vain attempt to contain the thrust, and she picks up speed well, remember my earlier comments – this is not an interceptor, there is too much inertia to speed off the line like a small interceptor, but thrust as you go and you’ll hit around 380 before dropping back to a not-to-sedate 244 on four pips.
Plus points
So first the plus points.
The prime movers have been setup for maneuverability, and she provides this in bucket loads – think spinning on a dime. Capitalise on this fact, it’s the vultures meal-ticket. You should be able to boost into an engagement, get on the tail end of an opponent and stay there no matter what aerobatics they attempt while delivering your payload without breaking a sweat.
The shields can soak up a lot of damage. Taking shields and packing thermals, you can stay out in a combat zone for along time, it’s the vultures raison d'etre. Don’t rely on armour, and my recommendation would be not to upgrade the armour and in anyway inhibit the maneuverability; the vulture is a knife fighter, its not got the non-boost straight line speed for pass-to-pass engagements, take away its nimbleness at your peril.
With 4 pips, the uprated vulture can almost constantly deliver power to a brace of class three pulse lasers. Now I came from a viper, similarly configured for RES combat using 2 medium and 2 small burst lasers. They can delivery approximately the same damage per second as my vulture setup, but only in short flurries of fire before the reserves are drained, and I have to rework the position and wait before I can fire again. The advantage of being able to constantly apply ordanance to a target cannot be understated.
The Vulture’s engine designers did not leave everything to the prime movers, the lateral and vertical thrusters are powerful – seaming more so than the viper. That means that when you get in close to a large mark, you can thrust around them at your design, moving outside of their firing solution (or ramming intents) with ease, while always maintaining your weapon aspect to target.
Bad habits
The comparative ease of fighting (particularly other fighters) as compared to vipers and the like means that you start to pick up bad habits – with the viper, you are constantly toggling flight assist to get the nose around, and that’s a good habit giving you more time on target. With the vulture, you find you don’t need to, and what’s more, the available shields means that you are less pressed to do so.
I spent very little time with power management also, something that I had to adjust almost constantly on the Falcon De’lacy interceptor. The constant delivery from the pulse lasers meant that I only really changed power settings once my target was destroyed to put power in the engines in order to boost to the next mark.
Most pilots will probably un-power the cargo hatch, or at very least set it a low priority. Just remember that if you ever do carry cargo – unbelievably I did my first ever trade in the vulture. I wanted to get some better shields and look for fixed lasers, so decided to take a detour to Lieadin in order to cache in a 800k imperial bounty I had accumulated, and at the same time see what I could find. For sh**s-and-giggles, I thought I try my hand at 8t of rares trading from Altair on my return, and managed a grand total of 414credits for my efforts!
However, that (minor) profit would have turned into a costly lost if I didn't remember I had powered down my hatch at the (very) last moment before take off.
Out fitting
Just a look at the frontier forums will tell you by the sheer number of related threads that this ship is hard to fit.
You have two weapon hardpoints, and whilst you can run an a-symmetric setup, most players will lump for a full-thermal setup. This works perfectly in a RES or Combat Zone as you can stay out as long as you dare without heading back for ammo – maximise the grind.
Some hints here are:-
Turn off your FSD and shield Cells when not in use. With weapons retracted, the setup above runs at 100%. Disabling these gives you breathing space.
If you need the Shield Cells (or as I call them – get out of jail free cards) Pull your hardpoints in, hit your boost and go engines off, and then cycle to the right hand panel and turn your cells back on before Initiate the recovery sequence.
IF you have a flight stick (my qualifier to this statement) You don’t need gimballed weapons with this fighter, in fact, in my experience they are more trouble than they are worth. Usually I use a fixed loadout, and due to the lack of fixed pulses, I ended up with a pair of gimballed lasers. I have almost 1000 NPC kills, and, upto this point two friendly fire incidents; Once when a rather stupid cop crossed my fire, and a similar event with a bounty hunter in a sidewinder. After a weekend with gimballed, I have at least a dozen; down to accuracy, momentarily moving outside the fire arch and unintentional target switching.
Range is also adversely effected. With fixed I could sit at just shy of 2Kms and snipe, all be it with reduced power, also useful when using ‘boost and turn’ jousting tactics against irritation fighters. With gimballed, the maximum range of engagement seams to be around 1.2.
One thing I did discover is that by mapping the (to this point un-used) sub-system targeting to a rotary coolie switch on my flight column, I could rapidly select the drive or power plant of a larger vessel, taking out either of these and watching your mark slowly spin is somewhat amusing, and an impossibility with manual targeting, however, every time I’ve done this, the targets hull has been down to less that 20%, and more often than not I’ve destroyed the hull before getting the subsystem down to an inoperable state.
Summary
An out-and-out knife fighter, with a sole purpose. Well suited to RES hunting, but you will need to fit well; expect at least 20M in your bank before making the jump. Lots of fun, but it will be part of your multi-ship garage, not something you will use for much other than fighting.
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