Dangerous Trailblazer

[Isana Jabaani]

Greetings Commanders...

I have two questions I'm hoping you folks can help me out with...
Allow me to provide some context...

I started playing only a few months ago. In those months I've tried many things. I've participated in the in the Void Opals gold rush, I'm both Duke and Rear Admiral, Elite trader, I've done salvage, I've visited the Golconda and I met a few Thargoids.

Recently I made the trip to Colonia in my unengieneered 38ly Phantom and I thourougly enjoyed that. I've seen some amazing things; I had taken over 500 screenshots on that trip. But after living in the Colonia Region for a while, duty called and I Sidewinder-suicided myself back to the bubble. Since then, I've continued some of my unfinished business, most notably Engineering and combat...

And that's where my queries come in to play.

I intend to follow through on my trip, which was supposed to take me to Sag, aswell as other points of interest. So now that I've been unlocking the Engineers, I've been making my Krait paper thin and efficient. But there's one thing that concerns me a little bit. My previous trip took me through the "highway", which has populated pit stops here and there. On my next trip however, I only intend to stop at Rohini and Colonia, before moving on to Sag. Those are big distances and I worry about my hull integrity. Now, I know about the Repair Limpets and all that; I got that covered. But I would like to be able to check up on my hull integrity every once in a while, and to my knowledge, the only way to do that is via the Advanced Maintenance tab at stations, which, obviously, is no use to me out in the black. And so my first question is;

Is there a way to check on hull integrity during flight?

Anyway, I also intend to engineer some of the utilities, and so I have to go see Lori Jameson about that. One of her unlock requirements is to be Dangerous combat-rank. Getting there won't be a problem, because it so happens that I've been rather enjoying (PvE) combat recently and I'm currently on the back end of Novice. I've tried a bunch different shiips in combat scenarios and I've settled on using a Viper III to take on another endeavor; earning merits via combat. The reason I've chosen this ships (and these weapons; I'm well aware of lasers and shields not being friends. And hey, I like dakka-dakka, what can I say?) is because I'm interested in punching above my weight. And I've been able to do just that with some clever thinking. I find that's a good way to throw myself in the deep end learn. Moreover, the ship is cheap, so if it goes south, it won't be that detrimental.

I've been thinking about a build for it and I came up with this;

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

s.orbis.zone

Any experienced combat engineers with some tips?

I'll undoubtedly be back later with questions about combat bigger, badder combat ships.
Until then and thanks in advance!

o7

 

[Faded Glory]

With regards hull integrity, no, there's no way to check outside of a station. But there's no need to worry, at 0% integrity, if my memory serves me right, it just means your hull is at 70% its normal strength, so really not much of an issue unless you get into a fight, lose shields and hang around.

And for info, hull integrity is affected by supercruise flight, not normal flight, and not hyperspace jumps, so unless you're planning some long SC detours, your hull will be fine.

Regarding your Viper, if it were me I'd probably swap the small MC's for lasers - I know you've got incendiary experimental - and put corrosive on the mediums. But as I say, that's just me.

 

[Isana Jabaani]

With regards hull integrity, no, there's no way to check outside of a station. But there's no need to worry, at 0% integrity, if my memory serves me right, it just means your hull is at 70% its normal strength, so really not much of an issue unless you get into a fight, lose shields and hang around.

And for info, hull integrity is affected by supercruise flight, not normal flight, and not hyperspace jumps, so unless you're planning some long SC detours, your hull will be fine.

Regarding your Viper, if it were me I'd probably swap the small MC's for lasers - I know you've got incendiary experimental - and put corrosive on the mediums. But as I say, that's just me.

Thank you so much...

I've heard that 70% thing before. But it does worry me, because I (surface) scan everything (well, not rocky bodies and snowballs), so I do in fact spend a lot of time in supercruise...

I guess it's time to hound Frontier about this...
Do people do this already? Surely I'm not the only one that would like to be able to check this on the Internal Panel or what have you...

So, hang on...
I put Incendiary on the lasers and Corrosive on the Multi-Cannons?

Also, what lasers should I get?
Pulse?

 

[Faded Glory]

Like I said, even if your hull gets to 0% integrity, your ship won't malfunction or explode. If you decide to land on bodies, just make sure you have some shields.

No, incendiary is only a MC experimental, so the fact that you have it makes your MC's somewhat effective against shields (but then MC's need ammo, so that's another consideration). Corrosive is a very powerful MC experimental against NPC's and eats through their hulls, so once the shields are down they don't last too long.

If you decide to go for lasers on the small then generally I use pulse, find them perfectly effective, and with the right build can fire endlessly. I tend to use efficient pulse with scramble spectrum. Works for me. If you have the power and the distributor can take it, you might also try beams with the thermal vent experimental.

Assuming you are talking about PvE combat, play around with things and see what works for you, you'll still be outperforming the NPC's.