Greetings CMDR's.
I would like to talk about how you can play the Engineer part of Horizon without grinding and also hear your opinion(s) about fitting internals in your ship(s).
Grinding to me, would be to have 1 ship for each purpose and simply doing one thing and one thing only over and over for hours to an end.
Rather than doing that, what I do, is having 1 ship that I do everything with, and rather than tunnelvisioning on one materia, or stacking 1 type of mission, I tend to sidetrack A LOT. Picking up a mission here, going there, if there's something interesting along the way I stop by and check it out, wether it's an USS or a planet that interests me.
By doing this, I get alot of variety in my gameplay, I get to do a little bit of everything at the same time, I don't have to pick up 14 surface assault missions and jump from one base the other in search for Security Firmware Patch or visit a conflict zone for 2 hours searching for Electrochemical Arrays, because you can get these as mission rewards and signal sources.
Now the problem with playing like this, is that it requires a lot of internal compartments to work!
Right now I'm flying a Python, and not because it feels good to fly, nor does it sound good and it sure as hell doesn't serve as a combat ship in terms of maneuverability, but it's a sturdy ship with a lot of internal compartments that allows me to play the way I want to play, rather than using 1 ship for each purpose.
The downside of only using a python is that the combat is, and lets be honest here, somewhat dull, because it's extremely sensitive to speed/turning, if you're outside the blue bar it'll turn like a Type-9, so forget about boosting, even with max upgraded Dirty Drive thrusters with 4 PIP's to engine, boosting while pitching up and using lateral down, you still won't out maneuver anything, not even a conda
Sidenote: I'm sure someone will comment on this and argue that you actually can outmaneuver ships in a python, if that's the case, would you please provide a video for it? Obviously v 2.1
So I started looking at alternatives to the python, something that was built for combat...
Say you decide to go with the Federal gunship, it has:
x2 6 sized compartments
x1 5 sized compartment
x2 2 sized compartments
Lets make a list of internals you need to run missions, without having to refit/change ship for a specific mission:
Advanced discovery scanner, detailed surface scanner - In case I would get any surface assault/cargo mission in a system that I haven't already scanned
Planetary vehicle hangar - Kind of a requirement for surface materials aswell as surface assault missions
Fuel scoop - The gunship FSD jump around 14 LY, with a maximum of 48 LY (fuel tank), I would need to make sure there is atleast 1 scoopable star every 3rd jump.
Shield generator - Also a requirement, sure you can "hull tank" in combat, but what if you're on a high gravity planet, or accidently hitting asteroids in an asteroid field?
Cargo hold - The high tier engineer upgrades often requires cargo material that isn't stored under "materials", but under "cargo".
You need 6 internal compartments if you want to be able to do missions located on planets in systems you haven't already scanned
It would add another step in the process of accepting a mission by first looking up the system, wether you need to scan it or not, and there's a chance that the mission is gone by the time you've done so, but say we're willing to take that risk, and add that extra time. This way we can skip both the scanners.
Now we only need 4 internal compartments to fit the planetary vehicle hangar, fuel scoop, shield generator and cargo hold.
By compromising a bit, we might get it to work, allthough we need to switch out internals for FSD Interdictor, or SCB/Hull reinforcements if we're to engage in a lot of combat.
The problem isn't to switch out the internals, it's that you might not find them in the station you're getting the missions from, and you might not find whatever internal you changed out in the next station you're going to.
Another good example could be to go for a Diamondback Scout, with 4 internal compartments you're really limited to what you can do with this ship without refitting it.
Say you want to upgrade your pulse or burst lasers with the help of an engineer, you would need to provide Praseodymium (mining), do I go refit my ship with prospector, collector limpets, a refinery, cargo hold and mining lasers now? I'm sure you can tell that it would take forever to mine in this ship, the alternative is to use another ship for the mining, but how are you supposed to transfer the cargo from your mining ship the the DBS?
One way to do it would be to outfit your mining ship with the weapon(s) you want for your DBS, go and upgrade it, fly back to the same system and the same station that you keep your DBS in, sell the weapons, change ship and pray to god that you didn't loose your instance lobby in which case the weapons would be gone from the list.
How do you people go about outfitting your ships? Do you also feel that you're kind of forced to use a multi-purpose ship? Or are you using multiple ships for different purposes? Have you lost any upgraded weapons/internals by selling them and hoping to buy them back in another ship?
Youre sincerely,
CMDR RARUE
