Ships Fully engineering my Cobra MkIII

[IReaperI]

So I'm continuing with the Engineers grind by going through and unlocking necessary engineers and pinning some blueprints for later use. I've decided the Cobra MkIII would be an excellent ship to engineer fully before jumping onto the bigger/meaner ships (Gonna get a Chieftain for an absolute combat beast role and a Phantom for exploration. Sure the AspX and DBX perform way better, but the Phantom looks RAD!) so I theory-crafted the final result of what I'm gonna make out of this ship.

EDSY

EDSY is a ship outfitting tool for Elite Dangerous

edsy.org

Overall I think it's a pretty vicious snake. Tough and mean mofo with a painful bite if caught in her fire. I am already about halfway through engineering her. I am going to Todd and then Broo to get the weapons engineered, then I will go the dweller to get the PD maxed out and afterwards will continue unlocking engineers and getting the modules done. I love how lightly the Cobra MkIII handles, should make easy job of hitting those beam laser/rail gun shots. Plus it has 1400+ hull integrity which I think is pretty beefy for such a small ship. Should I go for a bi-weave SG instead of a regular one, since this Cobra has a pretty thick skin?

EDIT: Oh yeah this ship will also be very good for learning some advanced combat and dogfight techniques, since losing this ship won't be a pain in the wallet.

EDIT: Well the ship performs pretty well. I made most things Grade 5 and some things Grade 4 only as I didn't have some rare components. So far she makes short work of small ships, holds pretty well against FGS, FDS, FAS, FDL and all sorts of medium ships. Can go up against the Anaconda but since sustained fire is not her strong suit, she can only stay so long before gotta bail out, the chaff doesn't help much sadly.

However I barely had overheating issues with the hardpoint setup and I smiled like an idiot when I saw well kitted foes missing the plasma accelerators or missiles constantly. The thin profile really makes it hard to hit this ship.

Leave your thoughts below!

 

[GeoJase]

I love your enthusiasm. I've got a few suggestions, but don't take them as criticism.

You need to focus on your shield and hull resistances. Those are the %'s listed in each of the "SHD" and "ARM" sections. Ideally, you want as all your resistances to be as high as possible for PVE. For PVP the aim is to generally get the max raw protection as most opponents use plasma. At the very least, try to fill the resistance holes as much as you can.

Shields: a combat ship is the ideal use for Bi-weave shields. Add some thermal engineering to fill the thermal resistance hole. You might have smaller shields on paper, but they will recharge much quicker, giving you more protection overall.

Hull: Reactive Bulkheads have only one resistance hole - thermal - making it easy to fill with a small Hull Reinforcement engineered for thermal. Since shields are so powerful, I tend to go for Lightweight/Deep on reactives. Heavyduty/Deep is also valid, but heavier and therefore impacts on your agility.

Power Distributor: almost universally, you'll want to got for Charge Enhanced & Super Conduits for engineering. Giving you better capacitor recovery rather than capacity and greatly affects boost interval and shield recharge. Keep in mind the Cobra suffers from a relatively small PD, so you want as much bang out of it as possible.

Sensors: A-rated sensors with Longrange are heavy, impacting on your agility, and very power-hungry. A fast ship like the Cobra you get mostly disadvantages using A/longrange. Go for D-rated/Longrange for best weight/power/detection compromise.

Kill warrant scanners will earn you a few extra bucks sure, but not enough to bother with IMO. Better to strap on a shield booster.

Guns: I'm not a big railgun user so other feedback is worth considering. Personally I'd go for G3-G4 Short Range/Super Pen as the Cobra is capable of getting in close while staying out of NPCs line of fire.

Utility: I'd bung in a SRV hanger for some ground fun, maybe the new combat variant, but its a personal preference.

What's the intended use of the cargo rack? Personally, I'd put something a bit more useful in there like a fuel scoop, FSD booster or Guardian shield reinforcement (if you have them unlocked).

This is what I'm getting at: https://edsy.org/s/vRRC2HU
Faster - boostier - quick shields - more damage

Fly dirty o7

 

[Rebel Yell]

The Cobra MkIII is a very nice ship and definitively allows players to create several reliable different builds depending on the activity you're aiming at... on the other side, there's no "jack-of-all-trades" so my recommendation is to keep the build as much as you can coherent with the activity you're focusing on: rare commodity trading, mining, bounty hunting, PvP combat, mat collection/exploration, scouting, piracy, etc... each one of these require different modules and engineering.

 

[Batterby76]

INARA

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Engineered mk3.
Works very well, punches well above its class

 

[sinisalo]

Here's my entry

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

coriolis.io

The Cobra's a cool ship, and for me the one to go to coming out of the Freewinder. It's best trait is speed. So I want to be sure my Cobra is fast. Speed is life and in NPC combat it allows you to dictate the terms of the engagement and escape when necessary. It's difficult to build up the defenses in a ship like this, so speed is substituted for shield strength, ya know? If it gets too hot, a boost away is a proper defense. 600+ boost is making the most of the Cobra's best quality and no NPC can keep up with that.

My posted ship uses OC'd autoloaders and ETV beams, but I like rails just fine. I tend to go super pen or lightweight with rails. Weapons are so personal, so use whatever combo appeals to you and you are effective with.

 

[IReaperI]

I love your enthusiasm. I've got a few suggestions, but don't take them as criticism.

You need to focus on your shield and hull resistances. Those are the %'s listed in each of the "SHD" and "ARM" sections. Ideally, you want as all your resistances to be as high as possible for PVE. For PVP the aim is to generally get the max raw protection as most opponents use plasma. At the very least, try to fill the resistance holes as much as you can.

Shields: a combat ship is the ideal use for Bi-weave shields. Add some thermal engineering to fill the thermal resistance hole. You might have smaller shields on paper, but they will recharge much quicker, giving you more protection overall.

Hull: Reactive Bulkheads have only one resistance hole - thermal - making it easy to fill with a small Hull Reinforcement engineered for thermal. Since shields are so powerful, I tend to go for Lightweight/Deep on reactives. Heavyduty/Deep is also valid, but heavier and therefore impacts on your agility.

Power Distributor: almost universally, you'll want to got for Charge Enhanced & Super Conduits for engineering. Giving you better capacitor recovery rather than capacity and greatly affects boost interval and shield recharge. Keep in mind the Cobra suffers from a relatively small PD, so you want as much bang out of it as possible.

Sensors: A-rated sensors with Longrange are heavy, impacting on your agility, and very power-hungry. A fast ship like the Cobra you get mostly disadvantages using A/longrange. Go for D-rated/Longrange for best weight/power/detection compromise.

Kill warrant scanners will earn you a few extra bucks sure, but not enough to bother with IMO. Better to strap on a shield booster.

Guns: I'm not a big railgun user so other feedback is worth considering. Personally I'd go for G3-G4 Short Range/Super Pen as the Cobra is capable of getting in close while staying out of NPCs line of fire.

Utility: I'd bung in a SRV hanger for some ground fun, maybe the new combat variant, but its a personal preference.

What's the intended use of the cargo rack? Personally, I'd put something a bit more useful in there like a fuel scoop, FSD booster or Guardian shield reinforcement (if you have them unlocked).

This is what I'm getting at: https://edsy.org/s/vRRC2HU
Faster - boostier - quick shields - more damage

Fly dirty o7

Hello Commander,

I like this build a lot, gonna start building her this way to see if she fares better than what I have right now. Hull resistance is something I should build a little more on, I don't have Guardian tech unlocked yet, because I didn't bring myself to visiting guardian sites just yet to be honest. I would change the guardian shield booster for a hull reinforcement in my case just to compensate for the small shield with more hull integrity. My overall goal is to be able to bring down Dangerous Anaconda NPCs with my ship largely intact in the end.

I did find the High Cap PD to be quite underwhelming, I can fire for a while but shield recharge becomes abysmal with it, so will change to CE PD with CC experimental effect.

I thought a Bi-weave would be better for a hull tank than a regular shield gen, but because I took out the Guardian Shield Reinforcement, I put on Fast Charge exp effect instead of Lo Draw.

Yeah that Cargo Rack was going to be for limpets when I'm too lazy to scoop up mats after a fight. But tbh it shouldn't be there lol.

EDSY

EDSY is a ship outfitting tool for Elite Dangerous

edsy.org

Modified her a bit, less shield but way more armour and tbh I don't mind the 30Ly jump range instead of 40 without the FSD booster, 30Ly within the bubble is pretty good, you can make 300ly trips in 10-11 jumps.

Also there is just something about hitting those rail gun shots and seeing the massive damage output And this is my way of practicing fixed mount laser shots. At one point I will get my Krait Mk2 fully combat engineered too with APAs and start learning leading shots.

P.S.: I started ramming enemy ships with my current build, it is amazing how well she holds up against medium ships and just absolutely destroys them when being rammed. I do lose 10-25% hull in the process so I only ever ram if I really want the kill and don't mind going back for repairs xD

Fly dangerously! o7

The Cobra MkIII is a very nice ship and definitively allows players to create several reliable different builds depending on the activity you're aiming at... on the other side, there's no "jack-of-all-trades" so my recommendation is to keep the build as much as you can coherent with the activity you're focusing on: rare commodity trading, mining, bounty hunting, PvP combat, mat collection/exploration, scouting, piracy, etc... each one of these require different modules and engineering.

There is a reason she's been the poster ship of Elite throughout the many years since this franchise first came out. She's a ship of extreme potential if in the right hands.

 

[Batterby76]

It's not so much what you fly, but how you fly it