Is an iCourier still viable in a Combat Zone ?

I took a iCourier to the CG ........ Combat Zone (Low) .... armed with gimballed burst lasers (not engineered), military armor, plasma weapon, chaff, ecm, good burst of speed .... put myself near the edge, picked a side ......


and got totally wasted in a couple of minutes .....


twice ! :mad:

Is the iCourier no longer usable in these combat zones, or is it me ? Have I gone soft ? I'm sure it wasn't this hard before.

I put myself near the edge of the fight, and tried to isolate a single ship battling against a green opponent, but before I can do sufficient damage the green wanders off and the red is joined by others, which totalled me ! Twice over so far.

Half a million rebuy isn't so bad, but I am wondering if I am just too optimistic hoping to make a dent in a combat zone with this kind of ship, ........... or is it my tactics ?
 
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Am gonna go ahead and say both loadout and tactics.

MGC on an iCourier is immediate flag for concern as it is, and unengineered is not going to help you.

Feel free to post up your loadout, and I'd be happy to help.

And yeah, CZs take a little working out at first. If a single green is fighting a single red and you take the red on, the green will almost unconditionally run off elsewhere (ungrateful git!)
 
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I'd say: unenineered doable, but unnecessary hard, as for an unengineered cz ship you want good armour + speed, and a couriers manouverability suffers a lot from weight.

generally your build missies out on HRP, which will provide you more armour than bulkheads on a low base hull ship like the courier. two single class 1 HRP will provide you with more hitpoints, than your armour, for 25% of its weight.

but on my non-horizons non-engineering account i have fully switched to HRP cobra mkIII and DBS for CZ (as i don't like the viper mkIII), as they don't suffer from weight that much, while being faster. an engineered courier on the other hand - can do it all.
 

So, bottom line is that isn't a CZ iCourier. Looks more like a general use ship. Certainly not the kind of build that makes me facepalm, but not a combat bred ship either, and CZs demand combat bred until you're talking ships to withstand heavy fire.

That thing needs PE thrusters immediately. Just do it. Then learn to shed mass to get the most out your speed.

I would also move away from thermal-heavy loadouts until you can comfortably farm a CZ to the point that ammo is your problem.

So I might recommend something like this: http://beta.coriolis.edcd.io/outfit...sAAAvOczcjcAAAA=.EweloBhAWGQUwIYHMA28QgIwV0A=


Immediately I'm doing things like losing the MGC armour in favour of two C1 HRPs. Instead of 8T for less than 140 HP, the ship gains 2T for 220HP.

The bursts are gone and replaced with two MCs. These things will be much more potent for you. Easier distributor management by miles for higher damage output. You can roll a low-grade Efficient mod on it and there are NO offsets to this mod, so there's nothing to be lost by putting it on. You then have the option of applying effects after a few rolls; I can recommend one MC gets incendiary (PvE only) and the other gets corrosive.

I would also roll the efficient mod on the PA and again if you roll enough to hit G3 and burn rep for effects, dispersal field. But if you're not into working the engineers enough to burn rep effects are optional - I would however replace the PA with a traditional pulse lazor or similar; in PvE, PAs aren't actually great shield breakers, and so two multicannons without effect will burn through ammo quickly to break shields, where one of the MCs with incendiary will do most of the shieldbreaking for you.

I can also recommend, IF you have the money, downgrading to a 2D FSD and halving the size of the fuel tank. It makes a serious difference to your speed. The reason you need money for that is you have to transport the ship everywhere, which is gonna be about 60k to 90k for a respectably sized trip in the bubble.

Finally note the change to utilities, which are much more robust for a CZ - two D rated boosters and two chaff launchers. As you aren't likely to overheat yourself in PvE unless you fire off an SCB, which I removed because it's not much use to an iCourier, I missed heat sinks and included an AFMU. This would allow you to heal moderate heat damage to your modules, probably after battle as your ship will unlikely be able to power it at the same time as every other module. And when you get into big boy mode and can reliably survive each encounter with shields up, get a C2 bi-weave and engineer for resistances.

Now that is what I might recommend for a CZ but by no means is what you have to use. Feel free to draw inspiration from what I've put forward and make it your own (Y) On the other hand I do know the iCourier, and if you can fund the ship I put forward, you'll see that it lacks the utility for anything but fighting - but for that fighting has more bulk in both shields and hull, has double chaff, and yet is over 100 m/s faster unboosted, with about 140 m/s extra boost speed. That's a lot.

If you want a more MR ship feel free to adapt something with more utility. If funding is an issue...I'm sure I can help you in game.
 
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You're probably better off picking a High combat zone, too. Ironically, Higher combat zones are more survivable for smaller ships, due to it being easier for multiple powerful ships to gang up on each other. Find a green python or anaconda, and make that NPC your big brother: shoot at everything it shoots at. With a big, powerful NPC as an anchor, it only takes a slight push from you (or sometimes no push at all is needed) for a "bait ball" of greens to form, and this tends to obliterate red ships faster than they can reappear. At least, until your invisible CZ timer runs out and the Red Fleet of Death appears and either blows you up or makes you retreat.
 
Wow, I am impressed by the quality of advice offered here ...... Much appreciated guys and rep all round ..... thankyou :)

No problem, always flying the flag for the iCourier :)

Just bear in mind my comments apply to a CZ/combat focused build. If you want something more chill that you can enjoy more of the game in, keep at what you're doing now, but bear in mind soloing a CZ is something you may want to avoid.

Now, when you have a python, or one of the big three...you can start looking at a ship that does everything and can hold out in a CZ anyway.
 
Imperial courier goes to war - http://beta.coriolis.edcd.io/outfit...Rj4zKA.Aw18UA==..EweloBhAOEoUwIYHMA28QgIwV0A=

I also highly recommend engineering the heck out of it - thermal resist the hull, heavy duty the reinforcements, thermal resist shield generator, resist on the boosters, and plasma slug the accelerator - and if you can muster enough power out of the power plant, some DD5 Enhanced Thrusters mean there's virtually nothing you can't outrun.
 
Imperial courier goes to war - http://beta.coriolis.edcd.io/outfit...Rj4zKA.Aw18UA==..EweloBhAOEoUwIYHMA28QgIwV0A=

I also highly recommend engineering the heck out of it - thermal resist the hull, heavy duty the reinforcements, thermal resist shield generator, resist on the boosters, and plasma slug the accelerator - and if you can muster enough power out of the power plant, some DD5 Enhanced Thrusters mean there's virtually nothing you can't outrun.

Not to judge your play style, but this seems like a grossly overweighted load out for the iCourier. Even with DD5, it will suffer massive penalties to speed and manueverability, which are key to this ships flight mechanics. Wouldn't it be more beneficial to drop un-needed weight (reactive armor, heavy duty HRP) in favor of Moar Speed! ?
 
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Not to judge your playstyle, but this seems like a grossly overweighted load out for the iCourier. Even with DD5, it will suffer massive penalties to speed and manueverability, which are key to this ships flight mechanics. Wouldn't it be more beneficial to drop un-needed weight (or armor chassy, heavy duty HRP) in favor of Moar Speed! ?

Yes! I have received that message loud and clear :)
 
I find the trick with the courier is to use it's speed and agility - by putting on military armour and the like, you're weighing it down and making it slow.

I keep mine as light as possible, with race engines that are L5 dirty tuned, then choose our weapons of choice.

When I start taking it's, I just boost and I'm out of range before my shields drop. I then let them regenerate before re-engaging. The iCourier is the opposite of a shield tank build such as a Cutter. You need to treat it as such.

Z...
 
Weight, weight, weight, weight. Be obsessive about weight. I don't have military bulkheads or HRPs, to save weight. Only a 2A shield, to save weight. D0 shield boosters, to save weight. I don't have an SCB, they weigh too much. I only have a 2T fuel tank... can you guess why?

It's engineered to hell and back, of course. Dirty drives, shield, boosters, short range blaster feedback cascade railgun, corrosive efficient multicannons. I'll take her into any conflict zone and take on anything. You have to be awake; she's not a shield tank by any means. But it's the most fun you can have in Elite, full stop.
 
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Weight, weight, weight, weight. Be obsessive about weight. I don't have military bulkheads or HRPs, to save weight. Only a 2A shield, to save weight. D0 shield boosters, to save weight. I don't have an SCB, they weigh too much. I only have a 2T fuel tank... can you guess why?

It's engineered to hell and back, of course. Dirty drives, shield, boosters, short range blaster railgun, corrosive efficient multicannons. I'll take her into any conflict zone and take on anything. You have to be awake; she's not a shield tank by any means. But it's the most fun you can have in Elite, full stop.

My courier build is very similar to yours, just with 3 OC multis. It can survive any CZ, and it is the most fun ship to fly by far.
 
I've just put three OC multicannon on mine. I've gotta go matt farming for D rated booster mods.
I'll hopefully be able to take the Nulli Dei out for some test combat tomorrow...
A lot of good tips in this thread!
Also been reading Truesilvers tips on gimballed combat and hope to be able to apply it to my Courier.
I've also got two efficient cannon on a Viper MkIV with seekers on the small HP. Will have to test that at some point.
 
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