FDL setup advice

Cmnd Fulsom · Jul 10, 2017

So, having spent some months in the black, and several vultures lost to my rustiness in combat, I'm finally profitable again and some 14 million away from a fully speced (minus military bulkheads) FDL. Any advice for load outs and modules?

Stay Frosty

Cmnd Fulsom

Jethro49 · Jul 10, 2017

It depends on what you want to do... I'm not a specalist on weapons loadout so I won't help. For internals, once you fitted and ADS/DDS, a shield generator, a SRV bay and a fuel scoop, there's only 16T left for cargo (that's my current loadout). Enough for BH/CZ, data hauling, planetary missions, in all cases you don't flee once interdicted. I'm sure the FDL is also an excellent ship for pirating, except for its price tag [smile]

bladebss · Jul 10, 2017

Are you the engeneering type?

Do you like fixed or gimbaled?

Pvp or pve?

Plan on doing anything but combat in it?

Hatchepsut · Jul 10, 2017

Well ... the FDL is certainly NOT a trade ship. Even 16T of Painite don;t make a dent in your mortgage on it

Some say Piracy. Fiddlesticks !!! Go buy a SPARE Cobra for that piracy nonsense ... at least it won't cost you an arm a leg and half your organs in rebuy.
Even the MANUAL that comes with your Fer-De-Lance Tells you its a Bounty Hunter Ship ...... with Bonus Luxury Cup Holder.
Even the center Bar that's always in your face when you drive is made of the purest osmium .... and baby pandas.

h347h · Jul 10, 2017

It's a FDL! Post buff it's one of the most lifeless easy to fly ships in the game.

Just go to outfitting roll your face across the keyboard for a good 15 minutes and you should be good to go.

Also on a serious note you should specify what you intend to do so people can give you proper advise.

StiTch · Jul 10, 2017

With regards to PvE:

Is your ship a FDL? Is it engineered?

If the answers to those questions are both "yes", you're going to win.

h347h said:
Just go to outfitting roll your face across the keyboard for a good 15 minutes and you should be good to go.

This guy understands ^

Muzz UK · Jul 10, 2017

FDL is a hard ship to fly well but it's a great ship both pvp and pve.

Heat is the killer in the FDL and managing it is just as important as pips.

Standard is beam in the main hardpoint and multi cannons in the others.

Engineering FSD range and power plant should be first priority.

The best thing about the FDL is there's so many loadouts that work!

Daniel Cloudsifter · Jul 10, 2017

This is what I've just built in the last week (I was late to the FDL game): https://coriolis.edcd.io/outfit/fer...z/sDFC+5qP8BAAA=.EweloBhAOEoUwIYHMA28QgIwV0A=

The class 4 MC is overcharged G5 with the autoloader mod. The C2 MC has the corrosive mod. All three beam lasers have the regenerative mod (to help my friends new to the game.

I also just made a size 4 Hull reinforcement G5 heart to swap with the shield cell battery. So far it kills things as fast as my corvette while being more fun to fly!

Daniel Cloudsifter · Jul 10, 2017

steve_muzz said:
FDL is a hard ship to fly well but it's a great ship both pvp and pve.

Heat is the killer in the FDL and managing it is just as important as pips.

Standard is beam in the main hardpoint and multi cannons in the others.

Engineering FSD range and power plant should be first priority.

The best thing about the FDL is there's so many loadouts that work!

I have zero problems with heat in mine, save for the SCB which I just swapped out. Two of the beams had thermal vent but it wasn't making much of a difference so switched to regenerative to help my friends. ( I put the old beams with vent on my Diamondback Explorer.)

Jackie Silver · Jul 10, 2017

Daniel Cloudsifter said:
I have zero problems with heat in mine, save for the SCB which I just swapped out.

The FdL used to have horrendous heat and power problems, but since the power plant size was increased and the thermal capacity (whatever it's called) was I think increased, it's much harder to overheat one than it used to be. So "old timers" will remember the 'Lance as having horrible heat issues.

My PvE 'Lance has a mix of weapons - class 4 gimballed multicannon and then a mix of gimballed and turreted (yes) pulse and burst lasers. Good shield, good armour, engineered in typical ways and it's very effective.

For PvP I have another one that at present uses a whole load of fixed multicannons, but it didn't turn out too well in practice. Of course, that may just be me not having enough practice in aiming with it... anyway, if you're going to do PvP you'll probably want something to your own preference. Get some friends together and mess about.

HeavyGroovez · Jul 10, 2017

The Lances primary strength has always been its speed and thruster agility.

It has good shield base strength and 6 utility slots to enable triple boosters, twin heat sinks to handle SCBs and heat jack weapons, plus chaff to combat gimbals.

You can run a small C4 shield and then dual bank a C5 and C4 cell or run a C5 shield and dual bank C4 cells. Either way you have a decent shield solution.

As far as weapons are concerned im not going to go into detail - there are so many different loadouts that work you will just have to play around and see what you like.

Its best to use a forward operating ship to get to the theater of operations and then ship the FdL over to maximise your usage of the internals and not have to give up a class 4 for the scoop.

My current build :

https://coriolis.edcd.io/outfit/fer...==.EweloBhAOEoUwIYHMA28QgIwV0A=&bn=Dirty Bird

5miley · Jul 10, 2017

This is what I use for both PVE and PVP

https://eddp.co/u/A5XqByCL

IndigoWyrd · Jul 10, 2017

The FDL is good for exactly one thing - blowing things up.
I'm rather keen on this configuration: https://coriolis.edcd.io/outfit/fer...18aQ==.Aw18aQ==..EweloBhAOEoUwIYHMA28QgIwV0A=
It's a lovely ship, but it's microscopic fuel tank holds it back.
I mostly use mine for assassination missions, as that seems to be what it is most suited for doing.

sidereal6 · Jul 10, 2017

It's interesting to me that all three people who have posted their FDL builds in this thread went with huge gimbled multicannon. I gave that a try and didn't like it at all. You don't get much aiming from the cannon because of its position at the bottom of the ship (it can't aim up much).

I went with a huge fixed efficient beam laser on mine and have been liking it quite a bit. I don't have any heat or distributor issues.

Daniel Cloudsifter · Jul 10, 2017

sidereal6 said:
It's interesting to me that all three people who have posted their FDL builds in this thread went with huge gimbled multicannon. I gave that a try and didn't like it at all. You don't get much aiming from the cannon because of its position at the bottom of the ship (it can't aim up much).

I went with a huge fixed efficient beam laser on mine and have been liking it quite a bit. I don't have any heat or distributor issues.

I've had no problem with mine "aiming up" to hit the target. Also, with it's G5 overcharge, it's DPS 32.5, which is really good; autoloader means it never (practically) ever stops firing when I want it to. And with the C2 multicannon putting corrosive on the target... BOOM.

Nothing wrong with your build though. I thought about a huge beam laser. But since I currently have two of those on my Corvette, I wanted something different.

Schlack · Jul 10, 2017

You really really need the G5 FSD mod. Also G5 Dirties drives are great! This allows you to get out of trouble as fast as you get into it!

Devantejah · Jul 10, 2017

I use a fixed class 4 multicannon and the rest are fixed class 2 pulses/burst.

I do change from the multicannon to a regular cannon sometimes though and it used to be my mainstay armament.

Jackie Silver said:
[...]the thermal capacity (whatever it's called) was I think increased,.

Aye, but that was reverted back to (I am told) previous values.
All I know is that it's not as cool-running as before.

TomP · Jul 10, 2017

The FdL is so insanely manoeuvrable, fixed weaponry is pretty much a gimme.

I use a huge fixed beam with fixed multis - kills stuff very quickly indeed. Oh, and everything is engineered to [redacted].

Enjoy it, whatever load out you choose, you can always swap stuff around later.

Stealthie · Jul 10, 2017

Personally, I like all my ships to have a specific role, which makes it easier to define the loadout.

Rather than just being "another combat ship", my FdL was specifically intended for bounty-hunting missions - the "kill the pirate lord" and "kill the deserter" ones.
To that end, it's really just intended to be good at killing one ship while not getting destroyed in the process.

This is pretty-much how it's built (except for the engineering, which I can'f figure out how to do in the Coriolis builder): https://coriolis.io/outfit/fer_de_l...a5d6l2o2f.Iw1sAzsXEA==.IwBhrSuzSA==?bn=BH FdL

Basically, I use the PA to snipe at my target and then the turrets kick in and (hopefully) either help keep any other ships busy or take shots at my primary target, which means I'm free to concentrate on manoevring and not getting destroyed.

I usually run with the Interdictor, KWS and Wake scanner powered-down and only fire them up as required, which means there's enough power to keep the FSD on priority 1 for quick getaways, should they be necessary.

HeavyGroovez · Jul 10, 2017

sidereal6 said:
It's interesting to me that all three people who have posted their FDL builds in this thread went with huge gimbled multicannon. I gave that a try and didn't like it at all. You don't get much aiming from the cannon because of its position at the bottom of the ship (it can't aim up much).

I went with a huge fixed efficient beam laser on mine and have been liking it quite a bit. I don't have any heat or distributor issues.

Like i said, weapon loadouts on the FdL come down very much to personal preference. The huge beam is an excellent choice, but then so is a huge pulse/burst/plassie/cannon/multi.

I used to fly FdLs a lot with Morbad and he always ran a big beam (before we had the huge beams) and 4 gimbled cannons. I tended to go with rails and dakka.

I have a storage locker FULL of goodies and frequently switch weapons loadouts on the Lance. Kinda go through phases, last one was triple plassies !