How 'bad' is a newly purchased Clipper with small amount spending on upgrades?

[CMDR Weatherwax]

That's enough money to start off with a good ship.
Bought a clipper on Sunday night with 30mil left to spec it out.
its lovely. You will have a good ship no probs. however I am currently combat orientated and it's close to a vulture with that cash. I am combat zoning and earning similar an hour to the vulture a bit better I suppose and getting better all the time. Spending the cash on upgrades. I like it that way buy a ship then play to upgrade it. Loving the feel of it. Just wish I could turn off the dash and cockpit lights as they are a pain for me. It's a learning curve with the smaller shield but lots of power to play with. I love it.

Don't know if this setting may be of help

 

[askavir]

I've primarily been a combat pilot during my ED career, and so I've set my sights on getting a FDL. However since I've only made cash by fighting, I'm not exactly flush. I bit the bullet and sold up my combat ships, and bought an Asp which is configured for defensive armed trading. This has done me fairly well, but a 120t limit is having an obvious impact on my profits. Clearly I need more space, but I don't want to be in a T7 - I favour slightly risky trade runs whereby getting interdicted a couple of times in only a 75ls super cruise is likely.

I'm thinking a Clipper might do me well, assuming it's not a complete dog when only moderately upgraded. I have about 30mil available once I sell everything up, so I'm thinking of building up another couple of million and then going for something like this:

http://coriolis.io/outfit/imperial_...302020101.Iw18aQ==.Aw18aQ==?bn=ClipperTrading

Obviously this is a barebones build and I'd be doing a whole lot of Sir Robin if attacked until I can get some defensive weaponry installed. But, 184t should help me along a bit quicker than the Asp, plus I'll be able to improve the module's spec as I go along. Can anyone see any huge holes in my logic? Cheers!

That Clipper is totally fine for trading. A totally A-Rated T7 will still be a lot worse than that Clipper Build. The T7 has larger fuel tank though, may be helpful for long routes without stopping to refuel. If you're just going to trade, you can actually use a size 4 shield, and put a 64 ton cargo slot on the size 6 slot. A pure trading Clipper doesn't need a big shield, its speed will alllow it to get away from everyting easily. The only ships that can match its speed, the viper and cobra, cannot mass lock the Clipper.

If you ditch that clipper for the T7 flying brick, you will regret it as soon as you leave the space dock...

 

[Pile_O_Gunz]

30m is good for a trade clipper but doesn't feel great for combat . Mines worth around 30m and it's not great vs big ships the problem is its massive so even with class 7d shields and a couple of boosters the shields are paper thin.

It's fast but large and not amazingly agile so so you end up tanking dmg with the rubbish shields.
Its got a lot of firepower so it simply overpowers small ships but big ones are rough. I think your gunna need to pour a lot of money into it to make it pvp capable- luckily it's a damn good trader

 

[AndiBcool]

Where did you get one in Rui space? I didn't know they were available outside the Empire.

Was already answered but this thread should help a lot.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=155377&highlight=discount

 

[ocflyer]

Here's my armed trade Clipper that I'm currently using (http://coriolis.io/outfit/imperial_...020101.Iw1-gDKQ.IwBhrSu6g===?bn=Trade Clipper). This is what you should aim for but it costs 42M. You can pare it down to start with this budget trade Clipper (http://coriolis.io/outfit/imperial_...Iw1-gDKQ.IwBhrSu6g===?bn=Budget Trade Clipper).
.
Edit: The other posts make a good point. The shields on this are weak so I limit my combat engagements. For NPCs small like a Cobra, it does well, even with it's weak shields. It's OK against an NPC Vulture but you'll have to use FA Off. If you want to use it in combat against commanders, you'll need to spend much more and it will seriously eat into your cargo space.

 

[Lowe1978]

Well, I just wanted to thank everyone for the help and encouragement to get the Clipper. I bought one yesterday at Kamito, that in itself saved me a stack of cash. Pretty poor selection of modules, but I've eventually managed to get Eagle Eye's classic build, no weapons but with a couple of chaff launchers chucked on for safe measure. In a couple of hours I'd made about 8 million from trading, so it's a huge improvement over my armed Asp.

I love the way it flys - or rather drifts about, even with FA on - when carrying a large payload. There's something very satisfying about pulling a hard turn towards the station entrance and having to judge how much to compensate for the drift to get your vector going the right way again. Makes the brain numbing trade runs that little bit more bearable.

So thanks again one and all.