Ship Builds & Load Outs Engineering a BH Vulture: which weapons and mods?

[Ted Striker]

My old trusty Vulture has two gimballed pulse lasers which worked great before engineers were a thing and power plants were fairly easy to destroy. But now I have to engineer it. It's currently in transport to Felicity Farseer for a power plant mod but what do I do about the weapons? I was originally thinking either overcharged or focused pulse lasers but then I was thinking maybe efficient beam lasers would have a greater effect? I don't know how much an advantage +% armor piercing is for a weapon that has very little to begin with.

Not even taking experimental effects into account. It's gonna take long enough to farm the materials I need as is. Any experimental effects I'll consider a bonus at this point.

I'm not yet interested in multicannons. I want sustainability in RES and I can theoretically stay for hours with lasers with no need to rearm. Only question is which type of laser and which mod.

So I'm thinking either Efficient Beam Lasers, Overcharged Pulse Lasers or Focused Pulse Lasers, all gimballed. No ammo needed.

I'm not familiar enough with all these engineering mods but I'm loving how Felicity Farseer gave my Asp over 41 LY range

 

[GJ51]

Efficient Beams are pretty powerful. If you go with some combination of Engineered lasers, I'd make one gimballed and one fixed so you can get hits on target when chaff gets fired. I always carry one or two fixed weapons for BH as you can use gimballed when there's no chaff and fixed when you're on target. By alternating between the two your less likely to drain the capacitor and get more overall damage per unit time.

Takes a bit of practice to get used to timing and getting comfortable with which fire button when, but once you get dialed in it's very deadly.

HTH


YMMV

 

[Ceekay]

I've tried a fair number of Vulture builds and G5 efficient beams are good they run cool but do drain the wep cap fairly fast so I ended up back with fixed pulse, the G5 rapid fire mod does have some issues (heat and jitter) but DPS is close to efficient beams and they're capable of sustained fire, the heat is manageable and as you're generally getting close to the target in a Vulture the jitter isn't really an issue.

I also found that G5 DDT 5A thrusters resulted in agility levels that made targeting difficult with fixed weapons (gimbals do fix this) so I use a 5C G5 DDT thruster instead, although you lose a bit of speed the agility level is more manageable and with the added bonus of reduced power draw, if you don't have access to Palin G3 DDT 5A would be another option with better performance but more power draw.

Instead of fitting G5 resist aug A0 boosters I've used one thermal and one kinetic as they draw less power and also have a better balanced resistance spread, the reactive armour helps against missile attacks if you lose shields it ain't cheap though!

https://coriolis.edcd.io/outfit/vul...OISWIdQhkAuY/2U+mgcwBAAA=&bn=Vulture F (EDMC)

 

[Ted Striker]

So efficient beams still drain the capacitor fairly fast? That's exactly what I'm hoping to avoid with efficient and a modded distributor.

Rapid Fire pulse over Focused (or Overcharged?). Would you know by chance what kind of DPS increase Rapid Fire is over the other two when hitting hull or power plant? That's why I was thinking Focused (or Overcharged which I'm less and less interested in): to do better damage once I punch through the shields than I do now. Shields melt fast even with stock pulse lasers but hulls don't.

 

[Ceekay]

A lot of it down to flying style, close in knife fight or long range sniping for the former I reckon it's all about max DPS with max firing time (all the mods except long range and focused have damage dropoff at 0.5 - 0.6 km), for the latter it's about keeping outside the targets dropoff range with long range mods

However they'll push the power plant and PD much harder than efficient, long range 8 seconds firing time compared to 47 with efficient beams and constantly with rapid fire pulse all at 4 pips, check the TTD column in Coriolis for different weapon mods and the profiles tab shows the dropoff curve for each weapon type and mod.

 

[StiTch]

There's one very serious rule for engineered PvE builds: there are no rules.

Anything will kick backside once you've earned some personal favour with them resource gobbling lunatics.

 

[Yure]

I run one large turreted beam with efficient mod and one fixed beam. It works out pretty good as you can maintain on target hit as your circle around your opponent. My fixed beam I have long distance mod with the cooling beam on hits.

So even if out of range I can still ping them. It works out great with a charge enhanced PD.

 

[Starman 1966]

I also found that G5 DDT 5A thrusters resulted in agility levels that made targeting difficult with fixed weapons (gimbals do fix this) so I use a 5C G5 DDT thruster instead, although you lose a bit of speed the agility level is more manageable and with the added bonus of reduced power draw, if you don't have access to Palin G3 DDT 5A would be another option with better performance but more power draw.

This increased agility may indeed pose some problems. For this reason my fun Vulture build has got two efficient plasma accelerators. Works like a charm, but the rest of the vessel is highly engineered as well. Overcharged power plant is a must.