Exploration Shields and Weapons

[goemon]

Jumprange goes down from 36.62 to 32.62 while maximum speed goes up from 180m/s to 279m/s. That's a lot of speed and 32.62LY jump range still gets you pretty much everywhere in the galaxy and the rim.

If you don't believe me, try it out with another Commander. Place yourselves at Interception distance and then accelerate at the same time while you run like a mad man and the other guy tries to murder your face off. I guarantee you the faster build will lose less shields.

fly and fight save

my explonda has 6A thrusters and a clean drive tuning on it ... it is a comfy build, i don't have that kind of problem

but i really think, "loosing less shield" isn't important on a explorer build, surviving till highwake is. both of your build are high above that point - i'd say you are good to go with anything above 500 MJ shields, which should allow you to outtank anything with 4 pips to shields for 20 seconds - beside a reverberating cascade torpedo ;-). and when going for shields, fitting a thermal resitant 5d shield and 4 augmented resistance boosters would be the way to go ...

basically this:

Both will survive?!
so I'd take the +4 Ly

 

[ahwala]

Both Drew Wagar and Michael Brooks have made statements that would indicate that, at some point in the future, exploration outside the bubble without weapons and shields will be non-viable. Winter is coming.

Which would be utterly stupid though. Once again forcing combat on people who don't need nor want it. Besides, it'd be quite ridiculous if this threat, whatever it may be, would plague the entire galaxy.

 

[Traveller_GG]

I think you'll find that this is the golden age of exploration and we've not realised it.

We're the Victorian explorers forging paths through unknown jungles, finding ruins and 3,000ft waterfalls that no one else (well, no one that *mattered*) knew before.

Now... well... now is like the photos of the Pyramids in Egypt - they seem to stand alone and majestic against a barren, sandy, stark and desert. Whereas in reality:

Spoiler

I'm afraid the city is encroaching on our desert.

 

[Cmdr Frawd Digger]

I'm always amazed by that pic...pyramids in your back yard.

Frawd

 

[Cmdr Frawd Digger]

So, to go back to the start of this thread...would multiple mine launchers and multiple chaff launchers be useful or do you only need one of each? Only one point defense?

Sorry, never used any of these things before.

Frawd

 

[Ozram]

So, to go back to the start of this thread...would multiple mine launchers and multiple chaff launchers be useful or do you only need one of each? Only one point defense?

Sorry, never used any of these things before.

Frawd

A mix of them is good but still no replacement for shields/armor and/or speed.

 

[Yanick]

I suspect if we end up facing Thargoids, or other advanced Alien races in the black, different types of weapons are going to be effective than with human spacecraft.
For example say, only certain frequencies of lasers might have an effect on a Thargoid ship. Might those lasers only be available via the engineers?
I've been toying with taking weapons and defensive devices, beyond my present Point Defence (which has saved my neck a few times). But I've not come to any firm conculsions.

Obviously we're all making educated guesses as to what kind of weaponised explorers configuration will be useful to us. But we won't really know for a while yet what we're really be facing.

 

[mls]

So, to go back to the start of this thread...would multiple mine launchers and multiple chaff launchers be useful or do you only need one of each? Only one point defense?

Sorry, never used any of these things before.

Frawd

I tend to fit at least 2 point defences, since one usually cannot cover all angles of a ship. But on my T6, ASPX and DBX i find on located at the very end is enough to cover the whole rear and missiles usually come from the back when you're running. On T9 and python you need 2 to cover your rear.
What ship do you intend to bring?

 

[Cdr Voorheez]

If you're not well versed in combat, don't take guns. When you're coming back with loads of data and you get interdicted, there are two ways you can handle this; fight and destroy the interdictor, or run. If you're not confident of your combat abilities you don't want to stay and fight with all that data aboard so your safest option is to submit, boost and wake out. For this scenario guns are dead weight; what you need is good shields, a power distributor that lets you boost, and chaff / point defense. A purely defensive weapon you could consider, though, are shock mine launchers. These mines don't cause much damage but they knock the target around, preventing them from shooting at you thus buying you time to high wake out.

Which ship were you considering taking, btw?

I absolutely agree with Newman here, a defensive fast build with good/modified distributor and mid range/modified shields is the way ahead.
My Asp is currently modded with:
4D thrusters: lvl 1 clean drive mod (Farseer)
3D distributor: lvl 1 engine focussed mod (MacQuinn)
4D shields: lvl 3 augmented low power mod (Martuuk)
5A FSD: lvl 5 increased range mod (Farseer)

I don't bother with weapons at all. I'm
Considering E class shield boosters and modifying them as suggested.

 

[Jermus]

So, to go back to the start of this thread...would multiple mine launchers and multiple chaff launchers be useful or do you only need one of each? Only one point defense?

Sorry, never used any of these things before.

Frawd

If I am informed correctly (and there is a significant chance I am not ) than point defense needs to have line of sight towards the incoming missiles, so you only need more if you cannot cover the area you want to cover with one point defense. In my case one at the rear end of my ship was sufficient, as I only wanted it to bother with the missiles fired at me while running away.

Side note: It was pretty cool to see it fire forward while fitted on my sidewinder when I did bounty hunting in high-res areas

Of all the other modules I can only imagine that you take more with you if you think the capacity (e.g. the number of missiles it can carry) is not enough to your liking.

CMDR Jermus

 

[Cmdr Frawd Digger]

A mix of them is good but still no replacement for shields/armor and/or speed.

Definitely planning on shields and should have some speed.

Frawd