I love E:D But really?

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.
Completely agree and i would guess that the more you play the game the less you use large ships.
The only time my Cutter or T9 get runs out is for hauling CGs or the current colonisation, the rest of the time i fly small or medium ships.

O7
 
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.
So it's one single niche is that its good at not being ganked?

Seriously, just stop, you're making it worse.
 
You have to fill every slot with fully engineered HRPs, not much of a practical ship.

O7
This often seems to be the endpoint. Over the years we've seen a few ship builds presented, described as "best build" or "meta", but when I look at them I think, "No good for actually playing Elite!" Can't haul, can't mine, can't do most missions, no SRV, no collector limpets, rubbish jump range... etc. Just good at (pointless) fighting and unable to pick up loot.
 
This often seems to be the endpoint. Over the years we've seen a few ship builds presented, described as "best build" or "meta", but when I look at them I think, "No good for actually playing Elite!" Can't haul, can't mine, can't do most missions, no SRV, no collector limpets, rubbish jump range... etc. Just good at (pointless) fighting and unable to pick up loot.

Specialized combat ships are no different from ships specialized for other activities in that they are only really good for a single purpose, idk what the problem is with that. A dedicated mining Python won't be good at anything else than mining. Sure, it can haul some cargo, it's just not very good for that purpose. And it won't be a good explorer ship either.

Combat builds cannot pick up loot, so what? What kind of loot? Ships you are shooting at (other combat ships) don't carry cargo and CMDR ships don't drop materials (what you would be totally capable of picking up btw). If it was cargo you were after, you would build a pirate ship (which would just lose against dedicated combat ships nearly 100% of the time).

Multi-purpose builds exist, they can do a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but they are always worse than dedicated builds.
 
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So it's one single niche is that its good at not being ganked?

Seriously, just stop, you're making it worse.
Eh? Not at all. It just so happens it excels at it. It's also a great at other things...mission runner, exo bio, combat, cold running (smuggler or titan tdc farming while caustic clouds were there), operations...just to name a few.
Why do you think bigger ships are better than smaller ships? That's the big q.
Are you one of these commanders we're did the big grind to get a cutter or vette and now that's all you fly?
You are missing out if you don't fly small ships.
 
Eh? Not at all. It just so happens it excels at it. It's also a great at other things...mission runner, exo bio, combat, cold running (smuggler or titan tdc farming while caustic clouds were there), operations...just to name a few.
Why do you think bigger ships are better than smaller ships? That's the big q.
Are you one of these commanders we're did the big grind to get a cutter or vette and now that's all you fly?
You are missing out if you don't fly small ships.
I do fly small ships, frequently. I'm quite happy using an iEagle in pirate activity USSs if you must know. This isn't a true small ship though. That's my problem with it if you could be bothered to read. It's a medium ship they've shoved into a small frame and I have plenty of medium ships.

You certainly can't claim to like small ships and then fly something that has more module slots and hardpoints than a few of the mediums. So quite frankly I'd question whether you really like small ships as much as you claim.

Anyway, like I said, I'm out. This thread killed any interest I had in owning a new Cobra. No point in continuing a discussion on a ship I will never own.
 
The fact that they are creating cash ships that are statswide way and ahead of prior ships to the point of basically including their existence is kind of sad.

At least do something to give the earlier ships at least presence of relevance.

The T7 design had a mistake where it was 50cm too tall for the medium pads in the Beta and clipped through the hangar roof. so they just deleted its ability to

If ships don’t have a niche, why bother existing?
while I feel the same way, I wonder if we’re just wrong about the idea that ships should have a niche.

Clearly many don’t and haven’t for years. And now these new ships are killing the few that did have a niche. It makes me sad, but when we look at the history and ship roster it’s clear fdev never did care about giving each ship a niche.

When I look at how they behave, fdev treats ships not as living content to be enjoyed and maintained, but as one-off releases more akin to a collectible card game season or a PvE game’s DLC that raises level cap and introduces better equipment.

Fdev will release a ship or a set of them, fix bugs, balance a little, and then never touch it again. And if they can’t / won’t touch old ships then old decisions forever limit what they can release new without breaking ship balance. That’s why you have a rolling standard season in collectible card games. Clearly the SCO ships are the new season. It’s balanced within the season, but the balance with old stuff is simply not something that matters to fdev.

I assume because it’s just as costly to modify an old ship as it is to make a new one, but the new ones actually pay for their own development cost. So… yeah it stinks but that’s business.
 
Eh? Not at all. It just so happens it excels at it. It's also a great at other things...mission runner, exo bio, combat, cold running (smuggler or titan tdc farming while caustic clouds were there), operations...just to name a few.

If I understand correctly people were discussing a P2W advantage.
To be a P2W advantage, it must be better than other alternatives that are available.

Exo Bio
No thanks, I will stick with my Viper4 and Eagle. Honestly I can't be bothered with building a specialized CobraV for this. I don't see how it would provide an advantage. How is the CobraV a P2W advantage with Exobio?

General Mission Running
Generally an established player is not going to do large numbers of general ship missions in a small ship. Unless its RP or just for fun. It just doesn't make much sense. Some cmdrs might prefer the CobraV because they like it, but In the context of this thread this is irrelevant. The CobraV does not give some kind of P2W advantage when obvious better ships exist for general mission running.

Combat
I haven't tried the CobraV for combat. It might be great for a small ship. It might be lots of fun. I don't see it as a P2W advantage vs other ships that are available. PvE or PvP.

Cold Running Smuggler
I can't say. I haven't tried CobraV for this. I really don't think smuggling is a big focus of ED right now. Best case scenario, its amazing and way better than any other ship for smuggling. Okay. 🤷‍♂️

Fun Get-Around-Ship
Certainly the CobraV can make a general fun ship for zipping the cmdr around. Again, not a P2W advantage.
 
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Luckily most of us don't do PvP so any build is fine vs PVE in a wing, we just have a laugh.

O7

The claim was that multi-purpose builds were always better.

If he had said that he preferred multi-purpose builds, I would not have argued. That just would have been a statement about personal preference after all.

But insisting that A is better than B means that you took some kind of an objective measurement and found it superior by some relevant metric. A is a better mining build than B because it can mine faster, more efficiently etc. A is a better combat build than B because it's faster, more maneuverable, more durable and puts out more dps than B, in other words you will be more likely to win if you are using A.

You can absolutely still prefer build B, but that does not make it objectively better.
 
The claim was that multi-purpose builds were always better.

If he had said that he preferred multi-purpose builds, I would not have argued. That just would have been a statement about personal preference after all.

But insisting that A is better than B means that you took some kind of an objective measurement and found it superior by some relevant metric. A is a better mining build than B because it can mine faster, more efficiently etc. A is a better combat build than B because it's faster, more maneuverable, more durable and puts out more dps than B, in other words you will be more likely to win if you are using A.

You can absolutely still prefer build B, but that does not make it objectively better.
"Objective" is always a problem and it's not a word I use. But "metric"; OK - my metric is "doing stuff in Elite"; doing missions, getting materials, harvesting PP signal sources, even getting credits. I said that my opinion is that multi-purpose builds are always better, and noted that it was different to yours.
 
Are you saying I should have researched the forums and melded my opinion with the group before stating my opinion?

ain%27t-nobody-got-time-for-that.gif
 
If I understand correctly people were discussing a P2W advantage.
To be a P2W advantage, it must be better than other alternatives that are available.

Exo Bio
No thanks, I will stick with my Viper4 and Eagle. Honestly I can't be bothered with building a specialized CobraV for this. I don't see how it would provide an advantage. How is the CobraV a P2W advantage with Exobio?

General Mission Running
Generally an established player is not going to do large numbers of general ship missions in a small ship. Unless its RP or just for fun. It just doesn't make much sense. Some cmdrs might prefer the CobraV because they like it, but In the context of this thread this is irrelevant. The CobraV does not give some kind of P2W advantage when obvious better ships exist for general mission running.

Combat
I haven't tried the CobraV for combat. It might be great for a small ship. It might be lots of fun. I don't see it as a P2W advantage vs other ships that are available. PvE or PvP.

Cold Running Smuggler
I can't say. I haven't tried CobraV for this. I really don't think smuggling is a big focus of ED right now. Best case scenario, its amazing and way better than any other ship for smuggling. Okay. 🤷‍♂️

Fun Get-Around-Ship
Certainly the CobraV can make a general fun ship for zipping the cmdr around. Again, not a P2W advantage.

Good analysis (y) but you're missing the whole point of that ship: if you buy it with ARX you will win the game.

All the rest you state above is secondary.
 
my metric is "doing stuff in Elite"; doing missions, getting materials, harvesting PP signal sources, even getting credits

OK, "doing stuff": a dedicated mining build is hands down better at mining than a multipurpose build (does it even have a mining laser?) because it can mine more tons of minerals per hour. Btw it will most probably also beat the multipurpose ship in collecting materials, simply because it has more collector limpets. Similarly, a dedicated combat build can kill NPCs faster, which means more missions and more credits per hour. The dedicated AX build will be absolutely superior when it comes to killing Interceptors. The dedicated hauling Cutter will build your colony faster (most of the time), etc. etc.
 

OK, "doing stuff": a dedicated mining build is hands down better at mining than a multipurpose build (does it even have a mining laser?) because it can mine more tons of minerals per hour. Btw it will most probably also beat the multipurpose ship in collecting materials, simply because it has more collector limpets. Similarly, a dedicated combat build can kill NPCs faster, which means more missions and more credits per hour. The dedicated AX build will be absolutely superior when it comes to killing Interceptors. The dedicated hauling Cutter will build your colony faster (most of the time), etc. etc.
All true. But when I go out to do this week's PP tasks it's my multi-purpose Python every time.
 
We are getting ripe for the new Thargoid war in the autumn-winter.
Corsair will shine there, and the effect of 7-8 Titans in now expanded and populated player's universe would be epic.

Corsair came too late.
 
At the end of the day we see what happens when FDEV can't monetize this game easily... development stagnates for years and everyone gets sad and leave.

I'd rather have 'ship sales and regular updates to the game' over 'moral high ground and maintenance mode' any day.

Also the pricing model of ED ships is not in the same league as SC (some ships over $1000).
 
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