Newcomer / Intro Krait Mk2 PvE Build - without engineering - comments appreciated

[Fey Griffin]

Been grinding a few credits at Robigo, & looking to get a Krait Mk2 for mixed combat & engineer material gathering (just PvE right now). Have 250 million & rising... Would like comments on this build (un-engineered, will eventually engineer it to a pure combat build, but need something that will get the job done while I'm getting the engineers unlocked)

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

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[Chris Simon]

Okay my personal thoughts (what I would do differently)
1) Decide if you want a shield tank or hull tank and either equip A-rated shield+shield cells OR bi-weave+hull and module reinforcement packages. The way you have it setup will mean you will lose shields too often and your armour is not strong enough for you to stay in combat while they are recharging.

2) Krait isn't bad at heat dissipation, but try firing the beam lasers on just two pips in WEP and see how bad it is and how long can you effectively keep firing. If it's too low, try bursts or pulses.

3) Definitely buy a better life support! Krait has a big bubbly canopy that begs to be shot up the second you lose your shields (and usually is).
If you're going to do combat more often, you will find yourself practicing station approach without HUD... quite often.

Other than that, looks fine to me.

 

[Fey Griffin]

TY, was trying to decide if I shold go for 6A conventional shield or the bi-weave, guess it should be the A then as I hate taking hulll damage. Can swap out the 2 medium beams for pulse if the beams run out of power too soon - once everything's engineered then it'll be good with beams Went for the D on the life support to save a bit of weight, but this does push to a pure shield tank build as well.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

Beam lasers are pretty hungry for power, when not engineered. I haven't tried this exact setup, but according to Coriolis it will drain WEP in 5 sec. Beneath opponent, select "Offence". You can also change the opponent ship, and see how long it will take to remove an opponents shield, sort of. The best way is to equip the ship, go outside the no fire zone of the station, and try it out. You can sell everything but the ship itself, without loosing CR, so it's well worth experimenting a little, and you learn a lot.

 

[Jaggid Edje]

With the limited utility slots for shield boosters, I think the Krait is better when setup as a hull tank. I'd ditch the SCB and the fuel scoop for HRP's. I'd also replace the laser on the Large slot for another multi-cannon and just go with 2 beams on the medium slots (that's what I use on my Krait and it works well...but I do have mine engineered). With no fuel scoop, you'd have to swap one in and out when you need to make long trips with it or use another ship as a taxi and pull the Krait to you once you arrive with ship transfer (I do both, depending on circumstance, in mine).

Personally, I'd also ditch the cargo rack and collector limpets for HRP and MRP. Scooping works well in the Krait and you can't use limpets if you get blown up. That being said, I do sometimes replace modules with limpets/cargo in my own combat ships if I am going out with the plan to do a lot of collecting (never in my Krait though, it's a better/easier scooper than many of my ships).

If you really have your heart set on the Krait being a shield tank might make sense to work on unlocking guardian shield boosters. It would help I think.

I agree with Chris regarding Life Support. On my Krait I quickly replaced the D rated Life support that I started with an A after my first canopy breach. lol I can engineer the A so that it is lightweight though, you might want a more middle ground.

Should mention, I'm very new to the game myself, so anything I say on outfitting is from very limited experience. Take it with a grain of salt.

 

[Fey Griffin]

Long term I'll probably ditch the cargo rack, but right now I want the versitility while I'm farming mats for engineering - don't want to find there's an easy cargo mission that's paying something I need & not be able to take it! Never run without a scoop as I'm on the edge of the bubble (most of the time I'm exploring in my AspX - building this to do more combat, but mostly to get all the important engineering done).

I'm leaning towards the shield build as it suits my play style better, will swap that big beam for another cannon thogh - build now looks like this: https://coriolis.io/outfit/krait_mkii?code=A2pptkFflfdussf57l7l7l0s0s0m0402044f05fr375dC0m56b3x.Iw18eQ==.Aw18eQ==..EweloBhBmUDYAsICGA7ZBjA9qgJskEARglJCgqA=

p.s. Unlocking Guardian tech is high on my list - both the shield boosters & the FSD boost will be so useful!

 

[Jaggid Edje]

No one mentioned fighter choice, so I'll also throw out there that with 3 MC's and 2 beams on the ship itself, picking a fighter with energy weapons helps a lot with stripping enemy shields. On mine I have the imperial and federation SLF fitted with fixed beams. For a lower ranked NPC crew you would want to start with gimballed though, until they get some rank and are better at hitting with beams.

 

[Chris Simon]

Cool!
Two medium beams should not pose a problem for the distributor. Good point by J.E.
One more (possibly pointless) advice - if you don't like hull damage and want to keep the fights as short as possible, be sure to target the opponent's powerplant directly. MCs are great at shredding modules and destroying a powerplant limits opponent's power output to 40% (limited firepower and sometimes their thrusters fail entirely if they don't have their power priorities right) and if you keep punishing the destroyed powerplant, it sometimes explodes outright, taking the ship with it, even with an intact hull.

And advice about ship-launched fighters - Hire a low-rank pilot and train them up. They take less money that way.

 

[Fey Griffin]

TY, some good advice there, particularly for the fighter choice - hadn't got thet far yet. Will deffinately be getting rookies & training them up too - so gimballed until they're ranked up is a given. Only been playing ED for a couple of weeks, but had 1000's of hours in X3 plus have also played the original Elite on the BBC-B (yes, I'm that old ;-) )

 

[wetwire]

Just a note, you mentioned collecting materials. Without an SRV bay you wont be able to collect surface materials. All the (RAW) materials used in Engineering.
1. A 2G Vehicle Hanger will fit nicely when replacing the FSD Interdictor. If your Interdictor is being used for those assassination missions you don't really need it. The Nav Beacon in the system works just as well, Sometimes discovery scanner gets the mission target waypoint. As a bounty hunter the resource extraction sites and compromised nav beacons are great locations to use the kill warrant scanner. The Interdictor is quite a specialized tool it really depends what you will be using it for if its worth replacing with the SRV.
2. I can guess the heat sink is to counter the shield cell banks, but it might be worth looking into swapping the heat sink out in favor of the chaff launcher. This is a great tool for combat that helps prevent NPC's with gimbled weapons from locking onto you. Just another measure to prevent damage altogeather for a short time and in turn letting your shields last just that much longer.

 

[Jaggid Edje]

@wetwire has some great suggestions there.

Regarding the assassination missions, I'd be very wary about doing them at all in the build in question. Assassination missions with decent payoffs tend to be against engineered NPC ships. With this build being not engineered and including so many components not geared for combat that'd be a risky proposition.
The hull strength/shield strength of this build would be 2 to 3 times better without all of the non-combat modules, and that is before being engineered... its just not something I'd be willing to go up against the tougher assassination opponents, personally, so ditching the interdictor should definitely be on the table, imo.

I actually never fit an interdictor even on ships that I do bounty hunt with; as @wetwire pointed out there are other game options to hunt down the NPC's you need. It's more of a PvP tool imo.

 

[Fey Griffin]

Surface mining will be done from my AspX as that's already equipped - can certainly ditch the interdictor for some more defence, will need to try out the build with both heat sink launcher & chaff to see which works best... if I have to rebuy a couple of times it's not a problem, making credits is easy - currently getting 60-100mil/hour at Robigo (don't board swap, so very dependant on what gets offered - doing these in a python from Robigo Mines). Will be engineering everything as I get the engineers unlocked & get the needed mats.

Going with this build to begin with, will tweak once I see what works best for me TY everyone for the advice, has helped refine the build & given food for later thought once I get more engineers unlocked. https://coriolis.io/outfit/krait_mk...Q==..IwelBYQBhBmAmEA2SBDAdqgxge3QE1RDClOnKiA=

 

[aRJay]

The best sources of elements on planet surfaces are Geological and Biological sites a Detailed Surface Scanner mapping module is the way to locate those but adding that would mean losing your Advanced Docking Computer, not a disastrous swap on a Krait unless you are planning on visiting stations on very high gravity planets.

 

[sinisalo]

That's a pretty good build Fey. I had a stab at a different configuration, between sips of morning coffee

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

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I agree with the comments about hull tank here. Without engineering, you will struggle to get really good shields. So increasing protection with HRPs was one of the things I did. I switched out the Bi-Weaves for 6A which gives you slightly better shields. Along with the integrity (which is doubled) you'll have good enough protection for PvE I reckon.

I lowered the power plant class to save a bit of money and gain a bit of speed and jump (although it made virtually no difference in those two) and it would require proper module priorities to prevent shut down on hardpoint deployment. I kept most of your stuff like the fighter, KWS, DC, limpets and interdictor. A bigger scoop (and very expensive, a 6C would be fine too for much less cost)

I experimented with a few weapons configurations. Like Chris said above your build won't fire all weapons for long before it drains the capacitor. So this setup is slightly less DPS, but can fire for three times as long, which means it has much better DPS really. As was mentioned, beams are excellent, I use them in most of my ships, but without engineering they are very hungry, so I put a pair of large burst lasers instead.

I disagree with the comments about life support and recommend sticking to the D. You can synthesize life support and that fact alone means you don't need A rated. But that's down to each commander. Just my thoughts on it. I swapped the heat sink for another booster. This ship is clearly built for combat (fighter, KWS, interdictor), so I think the booster is a better use of a utility than a heat sink. But flavor to taste.

One more comment.... fighters are cool and helpful. But be aware that NPC crew eat in to your profits and experience gain. Some won't care, some will. But something to consider anyway.

 

[wetwire]

That's a pretty good build Fey. I had a stab at a different configuration, between sips of morning coffee

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

coriolis.io

I agree with the comments about hull tank here. Without engineering, you will struggle to get really good shields. So increasing protection with HRPs was one of the things I did. I switched out the Bi-Weaves for 6A which gives you slightly better shields. Along with the integrity (which is tripled) you'll have good enough protection for PvE I reckon.

I lowered the power plant class to save a bit of money and gain a bit of speed and jump (although it made virtually no difference in those two) and it would require proper module priorities to prevent shut down on hardpoint deployment. I kept most of your stuff like the fighter, KWS, DC, limpets and interdictor. A bigger scoop (and very expensive, a 6C would be fine too for much less cost)

I experimented with a few weapons configurations. Like Chris said above your build won't fire all weapons for long before it drains the capacitor. So this setup is slightly less DPS, but can fire for three times as long, which means it has much better DPS really. As was mentioned, beams are excellent, I use them in most of my ships, but without engineering they are very hungry, so I put a pair of large burst lasers instead.

I disagree with the comments about life support and recommend sticking to the D. You can synthesize life support and that fact alone means you don't need A rated. But that's down to each commander. Just my thoughts on it. I swapped the heat sink for another booster. This ship is clearly built for combat (fighter, KWS, interdictor), so I think the booster is a better use of a utility than a heat sink. But flavor to taste.

One more comment.... fighters are cool and helpful. But be aware that NPC crew eat in to your profits and experience gain. Some won't care, some will. But something to consider anyway.

Great ideas, but he is using collector limpets. but no cargo space to store them in your build version.

 

[Jaggid Edje]

@sinisalo Like the build you linked, makes me much more comfortable with some hull boosting (of course, the ship is not for me), but wanted to point out that you left the cargo rack off which means the collector limpet controller is not going to be useable and that seemed important to OP (not to mention the slot is wasted as-is).

In principle I agree with you about the Life Support, but I was one of the persons who agreed about going higher than D....simply because I do not trust myself to always ensure I have the materials for synthesis. Better safe then sorry is my motto, learned after limping into a station with only 10 seconds of air left. D is simply not long enough if the nearest station is a few jumps or long supercruise away. Totally makes sense for someone who is better than me good at remembering to keep materials for synth properly stocked though.

 

[Fey Griffin]

Looks like I've ended up with a build that incorporates suggestions from everyone Will be down to time as to what needs tweaked, but it's been a helpful discussion - need to see if the shield cell bank's usable without the heatsink launcher - if so that gets swapped for another booster.... Surface mining is down to my AspX as I posted, so no need for DSS & SRV hanger on the Krait. Long term I might lose the limpets & cargo, but right now I'd like to hold on to those while I'm building up - TBH I suspect that this, the AspX & my Python will be the main ships for a long time as I'm not too keen on L only craft - as I mostly spend time on the edge of the bubble the flexibility to land at any station's fairly important to me.

Final build before tweaks & engineering: https://coriolis.io/outfit/krait_mk...Q==..IwelBYQBhBmAmEA2SBDAdqgxge3QE1RDClOnKiA=

 

[sinisalo]

Great ideas, but he is using collector limpets. but no cargo space to store them in your build version.

Well that's a great point lol. OK, need room for the limpets. They could go in the MRP slot. If it were my ship I'd ditch the fighter altogether which would free up some optional slot versatility.

 

[aRJay]

The only thing in that build I definitely wouldn’t have is the Shield Cell Bank, I just don’t use them, so that would be a size 4 reinforcement module of one sort or the other.

The important thing though is that you are happy with it.

 

[Alezander Corben]

This is my krait build.

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