I love E:D But really?

You talk as if those ships will forever be available only using real-world money (which, as far as I know, is the case for many/most ships in that other game).
source please because if so that is awful. one of the reasons I backed was because every single thing would be purchasable in game.
 
The only exception is, really, the Cobra 5, which is crazy-powerful for a small ship... but it is still only a small ship.
Indeed. I like that it’s “crazy-powerful” as it’s my only ship, but that doesn’t make it invulnerable. Last night I went to the Indra debris field to do some salvage and was jumped by an Elite NPC pirate SCB-spamming Anaconda which I thought I could handle as I’ve successfully taken on high-ranking NPC large ships many times previously (even in my old Cobra Mk 3). Nope, he got all my cargo and I had to limp away in shame with 72% hull integrity. It was pay to win alright. I paid, he won.
 
I think Frontier is playing a dangerous game with Early Access. Because we Know Frontier makes frequent mistakes and doesn't check & correct stuff very well. Quality Control is poor. So its just a matter of time that they accidentally release a ship for Early Access ARX that vastly out performs other ships. But it was sold... for ARX. And now its in the game. Hypothetical? Yes. Possible? Very.
The main problem with that is that it's very difficult to reduce any ship capability post-release, regardless of how it got into the game.

e.g. the Anaconda's hull mass has been ridiculous since 2014 and the most they've been able to do about is give most of the ships Krait II and onwards similarly ridiculous low hull mass. They've made various ships stronger post-release, but very rarely anything weaker once it was out and in game.

The ARX sale aspect is minimal extra difficulty in that case:
- they haven't, since the Python 2, stated how long the exclusivity period is for
- it's been "3 months or longer" so far, but if the next ship ends up as "5 weeks" because they somehow make a ship so good that it needs fixing that's not breaking any promises
- once out of the early access period changing its specs is less of a problem (still probably impossible in practice, of course, but not for ARX reasons)
- anyway from a legal aspect, you bought the ARX, not the ship, and the ARX worked perfectly. (goodwill conversions of the ship back into ARX could be offered without losing Frontier any actual cash)

Interesting point. I was thinking about the colonisation version of this problem: the bubble is now surrounded by a shell of inhabited systems that players might've paid real money on (naming stations). Can Frontier now have any kind of conflict/crisis that destroys stations and depopulates systems?
No, but that was already ruled out the moment they said (pre-release) that colonisation would have no ongoing upkeep requirements. They've designed it from the ground up to be incompatible with that sort of event, so if anything like that does happen, it'll happen somewhere outside the scope of the colonisation activity.

"If your station gets destroyed, the ARX naming rights are recycled into a voucher you can use in your next system" would technically solve the payment-related issue without making anyone feel any happier about the station itself being destroyed. People who've hauled hundreds of thousands of tonnes of cargo to build a system aren't going to avoid complaining about a plot event which destroys it at Frontier's say-so just because they didn't happen to spend ARX on naming something in it.
 
I have full frags (waiting on pacifiers) on my P2, it chews through NPCs but my privateer Corsair does a good enough job, so I’m not sure how often it’ll come out now.
I may have to try it. The "good enough job" bit goes to my issue with strong PvE ships – I can smash human PvE with my combat Corvette, but what I'm really optimising for is fun. My multi-role Corsair makes it a closer fight, hence more fun. Not sure if ships like the Python Mk 2 are just hard to justify if you don't do PvP.

On the other hand, I might be in the market for a more agile experimental weapons platform. 'Experimental' as in, new to me – a ship to muck about with different weapons. I suspect that's a role for the Chieftain though, rather than a Python Mk 2.

Corsair is pretty meh. It's a better version of the 1v1mebro cope banktank Python, but that's about it. It suffers from a (less severe) form of the Orca/Krait/DBS disease (weak boost).
The Corsair is my favourite ship so far. I'm not sure what "1v1mebro cope banktank" means! It's a fantastic multi-role mission runner and does everything well in my book. I'm glad it's not to everyone's tastes though, and that it has some disadvantages.
 
You can fly around shieldless in Open with something like 4.5k hitpoints worth of funny hull and put out medium-ship level of dps using short range rails.
(Significantly improved version of the shieldless Viper4.)
So its so over powered they made it boring? Now that's a complaint I can relate to.

What you're saying they've actually done is made new small ships unusable for me since any future ones will either be inferior to the new Cobra or so overpowered I lose the enjoyment of the additional challenge of trying to do something in a small ship.

Certainly sounds less fun than flying through Deciat and Shin Dez in open in a Courier with a combined shield and hull of less than 1000.
 
So its so over powered they made it boring? Now that's a complaint I can relate to.

What you're saying they've actually done is made new small ships unusable for me since any future ones will either be inferior to the new Cobra or so overpowered I lose the enjoyment of the additional challenge of trying to do something in a small ship.

Certainly sounds less fun than flying through Deciat and Shin Dez in open in a Courier with a combined shield and hull of less than 1000.

The Courier can only run away, but the CMk5 can fight back and it even has a pretty good chance of winning, if you are a bit better than your opponent (but it does not require a huge skill gap).
 
So its so over powered they made it boring? Now that's a complaint I can relate to.

What you're saying they've actually done is made new small ships unusable for me since any future ones will either be inferior to the new Cobra or so overpowered I lose the enjoyment of the additional challenge of trying to do something in a small ship.

Certainly sounds less fun than flying through Deciat and Shin Dez in open in a Courier with a combined shield and hull of less than 1000.
You have to fill every slot with fully engineered HRPs, not much of a practical ship.

O7
 
[...]

No, but that was already ruled out the moment they said (pre-release) that colonisation would have no ongoing upkeep requirements. They've designed it from the ground up to be incompatible with that sort of event, so if anything like that does happen, it'll happen somewhere outside the scope of the colonisation activity.

"If your station gets destroyed, the ARX naming rights are recycled into a voucher you can use in your next system" would technically solve the payment-related issue without making anyone feel any happier about the station itself being destroyed. People who've hauled hundreds of thousands of tonnes of cargo to build a system aren't going to avoid complaining about a plot event which destroys it at Frontier's say-so just because they didn't happen to spend ARX on naming something in it.
I don't really think that's an issue. Stations don't tend to get destroyed. If Thargoids took over the system and put the station out of service it's still there with the paid-for name. The player can then try to kick the Thargoids out and repair it (even though they'd probably won't be able to do so on their own).
 
Certainly sounds less fun than flying through Deciat and Shin Dez in open in a Courier with a combined shield and hull of less than 1000.
Those Courier specs pretty much resemble my Cobra Mk 5’s. That’s because although fully engineered, its loadout is multirole (and as such a little combat compromised), which is where the fun lies. It more than holds its own in combat, but it’s not king of the spacelanes by any means. It does have 51 ly range, 454 straightline speed/ 642 boost, an SRV and 48t cargo capacity. But I’m no PvPer, and I’d be pretty nervous taking it to Shin Dez or Deciat in open. So yeah, you can make a boring combat vessel out of the Cobra Mk 5 by stacking it with 4.5k hull points, but you won’t be taking it far or doing anything else but combat with it. Which of course is boring.
 
The Courier can only run away, but the CMk5 can fight back and it even has pretty good chance of winning, if you are a bit better than your opponent (but it does not require a huge skill gap).
Not for me then. I have about 20 medium ships for that.

Honestly, all this thread has done is put me off buying one because it's going to lose the fun of actually facing a rebuy in one of my paper darts and I have medium ships that will do things better while having the same gameplay restrictions. Anyway, as this has got me to a decision, I'll let someone else carry on.
 
I don't really think that's an issue. Stations don't tend to get destroyed. If Thargoids took over the system and put the station out of service it's still there with the paid-for name. The player can then try to kick the Thargoids out and repair it (even though they'd probably won't be able to do so on their own).
I can't even see Frontier doing that (and again, this is entirely independent of the paid-for naming)

"I colonised a system, hauled a few hundred thousand tonnes of cargo, and now I have to wait two years for the plot situation to get round to the point where it's practical for a coalition of major AX squadrons to take it back?" <repeat for 100 pages of complaint thread>
 
Yeah, at least not specifically pick out a player-colony system as the center point for some narrative. But it could happen with something like the war mechanic - and then nobody would have to wait for the narrative to progress but just start working on it.
 
I can happily ignore the Cobra mkV for the simple reason that small ships are for new players or for giggles.
Why do you say that???
In ED it's a big misconception that the small ships are for new players. Bigger Ship != Better Ship.
I still use my Vulture for combat. It's a tough little honey badger! Can solo clear a high CZ faster than some Cmdrs can with a corvette.
The Cobra Mk5 is an amazing ship...little bit more fire power than the Vulture, but slightly more drifty so it's not replaced my Vulture for combat.
Where the Cmk5 really shines is it's SCO handling and armour. Each of the new SCO enhanced ships have a different SCO top speed. The Cmk5 is the fastest at 7.5k LS. On top of this it's SCO fuel consumption and and heat handling are brilliant. This makes it ideal for open play when trying to fly where there are gankers. A Python Mk2 will never catch up (4.5k LS max speed in SC) and if it tried it would overheat or run out of fuel. If you do get interdicted then the Cmk5 shields and armour are way plenty enough to escape. I'm using my blockade running combat Mk5 in open play for the current CG to get to and from Kidd Station.
I fly more small ships than medium. I don't fly large ships as they are slow and boring. I fly small not for giggles, but for the shear fact that they are better than larger ships for a given task.
 
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it comes with pre engineered stuff (if you buy the top one) but that is still earnable in game
.....

I don't know about the other new ships but I bought the Stellar edition of the Cobra Mk V and there was no engineering applied to anything. Maybe it is the pre-built variants of the older ships that come with some engineering applied?

CobraV Stellar loadout:

mk v.jpg
 
How're you using that ship, and do you have a Coriolis build?

It makes other ships go away.


I was away from ED for a couple of years and when I came back a bunch of my ships had vanished, including my FdL.
Wasn't really inclined to rebuild the FdL since it was "only" a combat ship and I also have a Corvette, a Cutter and a couple of multirole ships that are sufficiently fighty for most things.

The P2 is obviously intended as an alternative to the FdL so I figured it might be fun to see how good it was.
My build is pretty straightforward, with no fancy insta-kill weapons, but it's turned out to be an absolutely epic combat ship.
Compared to my FdL some things are slightly better and some are slightly worse but, overall it's just absurdly capable in combat.

The one thing I have noticed about it is that once the shield goes down the canopy will quickly start to crack when you're taking fire.
Don't recall the FdL having that issue but, honestly, against NPCs the shield rarely get's below 70%.

Overall, though, when you go to CZs, RES's and CNBs there are ships that are predators and ships that are prey.
The P2 is definitely a predator ship.
 
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