As lovely as the Asp is - and I absolutely love mine - it is NOT a dominating combat ship - unless you simply chase fat traders, railgun them to death, and reload every other combat outing.
It's a good ship at everything. It's the best ship at nothing - apart from looking awesome and sounding wonderful
6 seconds to take down a shielded eagle
just on a minute to take out a shielded python.
Shields not dropping below 30% the whole time.
340,000 credits in combat bonds for less than 10 minutes work.
What in that suggests that an Asp, properly outfitted for heavy combat (no cargo space, class 6 prismatic shields, A-rated power distributor and thrusters, 6 beam turrets), cannot dominate a high-intensity conflict zone?
Mind posting your build? Because an A-rated (with D sensors) Asp with a 6A prismatic shield and 6 turreted beams and nothing else will be at 99% power. Add stuff like SCB's, shield boosters, chaff and KWS, and it will go way, way over the top. You may be able to scrounge up a kinda-sorta-working build if you set SCB's to low priority and then retract hardpoints when you need them to power them up, but in my experience the Asp simply doesn't have the power to run a 6A prismatic, 6 beams and all the usual bells and whistles for combat.
Don't get me wrong, I love the ship and I own one, sometimes refitting it for RES bh, but there are limits to what it can mount effectively
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Irkutsk station at Alioth sells it at 20% off, I think it's a permanent discount. You do need the Alioth system permit to get there, though - it's acquired by becoming allied with the faction called Alioth Independents, so it's much easier and quicker than Federation and Empire permits acquired through ranking up.
![[VR] Frank_G](https://d2aefvhu2f0gi9.cloudfront.net/data/avatars/m/59/59394.jpg?1553527111){kind=avatar}
Just bought an Asp, too . I wanted this ship since beta, but i dont grief and i never bought one in beta to not ruin the moment, when i finally earned the money... Yesterday evening i finally got it. I only had time to circle around the station a few times, but i already love this ship... This evening i am heading out into the unknown again.
Good luck on your missions, fellow Asp pilots
edit: got mine at Goldstein Hub in Lembava for 5.6 million. They offer discount, even if you dont support the faction.
. I wanted this ship since beta, but i dont grief and i never bought one in beta to not ruin the moment, when i finally earned the money... Yesterday evening i finally got it. I only had time to circle around the station a few times, but i already love this ship... This evening i am heading out into the unknown again.Good luck on your missions, fellow Asp pilots
edit: got mine at Goldstein Hub in Lembava for 5.6 million. They offer discount, even if you dont support the faction.
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Got mine at Porta in 39 Tauri. I think it's at 15% discount around that area. Can grab some rares as first cargo but you'd need to jump to a nearby Hi-Tech system for outfitting.
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Mind posting your build? Because an A-rated (with D sensors) Asp with a 6A prismatic shield and 6 turreted beams and nothing else will be at 99% power. Add stuff like SCB's, shield boosters, chaff and KWS, and it will go way, way over the top. You may be able to scrounge up a kinda-sorta-working build if you set SCB's to low priority and then retract hardpoints when you need them to power them up, but in my experience the Asp simply doesn't have the power to run a 6A prismatic, 6 beams and all the usual bells and whistles for combat.
Don't get me wrong, I love the ship and I own one, sometimes refitting it for RES bh, but there are limits to what it can mount effectively
http://coriolis.io/outfit/asp/05A5A...l0202p15j5959595454.AwRj4yVZbo==.AwiMIyu4g===
This is the closest i can guess to what that build would be... As you said the ONLY way to use SCB's on that build while keeping the weapons & shields that strong is by retracting hardpoints to use them (which i HATE doing because its very ineffective and means you can't snap-use them if you suddenly take a lot of damage).
There is actually NO space whatsoever to utilize shield boosters... so instead I'd guess that you would want heat sinks since you're running 6 beam weapons (though i am a bit surprised that you'd want all turretted rather than all gimballed).
I also think this would be a bit of a waste to be honest.... you could get a fully A fitted Vulture for half the price and still well in CZ's... Or save up a bit of cash and fly a FDL/Python and do a far better job in CZ's than the ASP ever could regardless of how well its fitted.
As a side note if you change the prismatic shield for a normal A grade shield generator, you only lose around 60 MJ of shield BUT you gain the ability to deploy SCB's while also having weapons deployed... well worth the sacrifice.
Mind posting your build? Because an A-rated (with D sensors) Asp with a 6A prismatic shield and 6 turreted beams and nothing else will be at 99% power. Add stuff like SCB's, shield boosters, chaff and KWS, and it will go way, way over the top. You may be able to scrounge up a kinda-sorta-working build if you set SCB's to low priority and then retract hardpoints when you need them to power them up, but in my experience the Asp simply doesn't have the power to run a 6A prismatic, 6 beams and all the usual bells and whistles for combat.
Don't get me wrong, I love the ship and I own one, sometimes refitting it for RES bh, but there are limits to what it can mount effectively
http://coriolis.io/outfit/asp/25A5A...24.Iw19gDK1A===.AwiMIyo11I==?bn=Combat Fitted
That's my combat loadout. Note that the weapons are all class 1. There is a little heat management required, but the power usage is efficient: with hardpoints deployed, all of the systems for combat are active and the power usage is 20.37MW out of 20.4MW or 99.853%.
I have earned a lot of combat bonds with that configuration.
There are 3 reasons why I prefer turret mounts to gimbel mounts:
1. turreted weapons provide a much greater firing arc than gimballed weapons.
2. turreted weapons can be set to fire automatically at hostile (red) targets as soon as the target is in range... so I can focus of flying
3. turreted weapons use less power than their gimbelled counterparts.
Chaff has no greater effect on turrets than on gimbels, so apart from being cheaper to buy, why bother with gimbels at all?
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Yes, a Vulture is a better ship for combat, if you can forgive it only having 2 weapon hardpoints instead of the 6 for an Asp. But Vultures are a very expensive way of doing only one job, and the Fer de Lance far more so. However, with the proper use of turrets, an Asp can engage more targets simultaneously than the Vulture, but it takes the right sort of pilot to do so.
The only issue i have with the above (if you can call it an issue) is that by choosing prismatic shields and hull reinforcement you're running with far less effective 'health' than SCB's. Removing those Hull reinforcements and replacing them with B grade SCB's, and then replaceing the shield with a normal A rated shield Generator will give you about 1350MJ more shielding (which also is better than armour since armour won't help protect your power plant or other sub-systems)
I've been flying the ASP a couple of months now and I can only second that, it's a fantastic ship.
I've mostly set mine up for combat, 4 small gimballed auto cannons and 2 medium fixed beam lasers.
Once I put all the power into the weapon systems the lasers can fire near continuously taking down shields after which the auto cannons will shred most armour.
Having said that, while still being quite maneuverable, is quite a large target.
Not an issue if you're pirate hunting but I had to make more hurried exits from conflicts zones then I'd like.
Despite all that though, there is no other ship in its class. (Which is mostly down to there not being a comparable ship in the first place when it comes to cargo, range and combat abilities)
I've mostly set mine up for combat, 4 small gimballed auto cannons and 2 medium fixed beam lasers.
Once I put all the power into the weapon systems the lasers can fire near continuously taking down shields after which the auto cannons will shred most armour.
Having said that, while still being quite maneuverable, is quite a large target.
Not an issue if you're pirate hunting but I had to make more hurried exits from conflicts zones then I'd like.
Despite all that though, there is no other ship in its class. (Which is mostly down to there not being a comparable ship in the first place when it comes to cargo, range and combat abilities)
Man this system is really quite awesome and I must say I enjoyed mining there in my Asp more than what I would have expected, even though I am sure I did plenty of things less than optimal. When you are getting chunks with mostly the high price noble metals and here and there a bit of Painite, it really adds up to something. The mining was so efficient, I ended up taking way too many collector drones and my cargo hold filling up way too fast with the valuable stuff, so that I was forced to eject some limpets (which didn't work, because the actives would pick them up again) or I had to have them auto explode.
To complement the income with some mining mission bonus I worked on some good standing with the local factions. This led to me even getting a basic military rank from the Empire, for which I feel a little dirty now, but oh well.
Nobody will have seen me there though, as I mostly stayed in solo in that system. Me being a mining beginner and overwhelmed with the drone and refinery micromanagement and all and this system being advertised here, I did not want to deal with the Cmdr pirate snipers on top of that. Yes I know, how chicken of me...
But now I will be off exploring, and happy to say that mining is now a thing for me.
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My 3 Asp builds
Combat: http://www.edshipyard.com/#/L=70g,0...7OX7OX,317_7_7_6u6Q8S8I,7UI16y7fO7fO05U5fa2UI
Rare Trade / FuelRat: http://www.edshipyard.com/#/L=70g,01Q0_g0_g0_g,2-6Q8S7_6u6u8S8I,0AA08c7Pc4zM5DI2UI5fa
Exploration: http://www.edshipyard.com/#/L=70g,01Q0Wg0Wg,2-3I6u7_6u5K8S8I,52C5GQ0Ke05U2UI2jw5fa
Combat: http://www.edshipyard.com/#/L=70g,0...7OX7OX,317_7_7_6u6Q8S8I,7UI16y7fO7fO05U5fa2UI
Rare Trade / FuelRat: http://www.edshipyard.com/#/L=70g,01Q0_g0_g0_g,2-6Q8S7_6u6u8S8I,0AA08c7Pc4zM5DI2UI5fa
Exploration: http://www.edshipyard.com/#/L=70g,01Q0Wg0Wg,2-3I6u7_6u5K8S8I,52C5GQ0Ke05U2UI2jw5fa
I salute the Asp.My first one, the Carmilla, brought me to Sag A* and back.
o7
o7
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