raise thread
My Courier hull has been sitting in my hangar since, well, actually since before we got a free one for christmas from that Smiling Cat or what his name was. So now I finally resolved to do someting with it, and it turned out to be quite an interesting undertaking! All the tried and proven standard recipes don't work too well with the Courier, not if you want to make something of its excellent speed. So I scoured the forums and found several useful threads, but I think ultimately this was the best one. I mean to use my Courier for combat only.
So the Courier benefits especially from staying as light as possible -- so this turns out to be a good application of the CG PP we got a couple of years ago. Previously I had used it in a Viper with absurd DPS (127!), then moved the entire setup (PP and weapons) to a DBS. And all that is well and good but now I think the real calling of this PP is in the Courier.
The first unusual thing about this ship is how the shields behave. Normally, when building a PVE ship, I just plug in the biggest Bi-Weaves it can fit, add a bunch of 0A Shield Boosters, make a couple of them Heavy-Duty, balance out the resistances and
maybe add a Guardian SRP. If you do this with the Courier, you ruin the ship. So for the first time ever, I undersized the SG in a
combat ship and engineered 0E SBs.
After much deliberation, I went for 2C Bi-Weaves. I am aware of various Prismatic builds, but ultimately I prefer a fast recharge over maximum cap. I'll add a few 1D GSRPs, to balance out the shields at around 800 Absolute.
The trickiest problem, however, is the armament. TBH I find this the biggest weakness of the Courier as it is -- 3 medium hardpoints with bad convergence. So what do we do with that. Most of the builds shown in this thread have some mixture of Lightweight MCs and/or lasers.
Now I feel that Beam lasers are a particularly bad fit for the ship, as beams drain your PD like crazy, and you need more pips in WEP, which bites into our speed and shield strength.
On the other hand, I've always found MCs a bit anaemic. Sure, you'll want one for Corrosive. But three of them?
C2 weapons as a whole are kinda the red-headed stepchilds of weapons anyway. C1 has the excellent Cytoscrambler. C3 has the awesome Pacifier and the very decent APA. C2 has mostly the standard stuff... but wait! C2 does have some relatively recent arrivals... the Azimuth weapons! Namely the Modplasma and the Modshard.
So, I plan to test those on the Courier. Currently the Dual Modplasmas are my setup of choice on my bounty hunting Chieftain, which will now be reverted to Pacs, I guess. The modplasmas don't have the raw DPS of Pacs, for instance, but the non-Xeno damage portion is Absolute, and you just gotta love the shot speed. Also, the Piercing is more than enough for any armour the Hoomins have.
Modshards are the other option. Their damage is Thermal, which isn't as good as Absolute. Their strong point is the very high burst damage, but they come with quite a thermal load. So far I've tested only a single C1 Modshard on the Courier and that was no problem at all, even at 1 pip. So now I'll try how it does with a heavier loadout, while keeping the total mass and speed in mind.
But not tonight! I planned to, but I messed up the transfer request before jumping the carrier and now it's almost another hour until it arrives. Grrr.
coriolis.io
