Then forget about the PD for your use case - I reconfigured my Midnight Tango for your specs (range, speed) and left the utility slots unchanged. You're right, PD would be of very limited use for you. IIRC I keep it mainly as defense against hatchbreakers.
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Newcomer / Intro Lone Wolf looking to survive Open
- Thread starter FullThrusters
- Start date
I think the most important thing to prioritize when engineering shields is thermal resistance. All of it matters, but thermal resist is the thing that will do the most good to make your shields 'elastic' and be able to able to shrug off or absorb any burst damage you might encounter. Engineered and flown properly, a Courier will be too fast and agile to hit for long against anything with a marked firepower advantage. So you want shields that will take an initial volley while you recognize and evade the threat.
So in Coriolis you want to concentrate on the Shield HP section, and the thermal value in particular. I tend to aim to an even 50% across all three (kinetic, explosive, thermal) but the thermal is key. This is particularly true in a ship like a fast Courier, as thermal weapons like lasers are much more likely to hit as their shot speed is infinite. Other weapons can hurt too, but in the case of something like missiles, the Courier is faster than the missiles, so they present less threat. of course you could be flying AT the missiles in which case it matters less. Bottom line is the longer it takes for the weapon to hit you, the more time you have to be somewhere else.
Last year I was interested in building fast battle Courier, which since has become my main combat ride. It's not terribly effective, compared to other ships, but it is glorious to fight in. I fly it wide open all the time, not simply using the high speed to evade or as a defensive measure. This means I spend quite a bit of time flying while in G-Loc (blacked out), and making high-speed gunnery passes on the target. I liken it to how say a Focke-Wulf 190 pilot would have attacked a bomber stream, making slashing attacks at speed and then extending away to come 'round for a second pass.
So I wanted a fast Courier, that much I knew. I set 800 m/s boost as my target. And I got there easily. Mindful of mass, and with EPTs and Drive Distributors, very high speed can be attained in this awesome little ship. But it soon became apparent that in order to make a balanced fighter I needed more striking power and better protection. So it becomes a balancing act. The Courier, more than most ships in Elite, presents the designer with the same problem facing shipwrights throughout history. And that is, how to combine speed, protection and firepower in a manner that doesn't compromise one or the other too badly. And so, as I added firepower and protection, the speed came down. But in the end, after much trial and error, I arrived at this
Velocity Courier -- Boom and Zoomer / Bounty Hunter
Velocity is a compromise, but has enough of those three things --speed, firepower and protection -- to get the job done. At 1,311 thermal MJ it has the burst protection I want, and at 564 integrity has the collision protection I need. In order to have a ship that could be effective firing at full-boost speeds I needed gimballed weapons, and in order to have enough pop to make this worthwhile I had to opt for full-weight beams. At 4t a pop, these weapons are speed killers, but in the end it's a compromise I felt good about. Each and every ton of mass has a big effect on speed in a ship like this.
But the end result is a near-perfect blend for me. Fast, survivable and able to take on anything smaller than a Clipper. And anyway, the idea behind this sort of ship and the profile I fly in combat is not to latch on to a target and keep going until it's dead, but to slash through and around a furball making passes and getting tags. And it does this exceptionally well. I only have three or four ships I am willing to fly in Open. This is one. The speed and near permaboost capability are enough to evade just about anything more dangerous, as long as you can control the initial burst or volley from an unseen foe. At that point it's a matter or selecting a vector Victor and boosting away.
We had a thread a while back when I was undertaking this project and you may find some good ideas here
forums.frontier.co.uk
Few ships are more fun to build in Elite than a battle Courier, as the challenge of striking the right balance is high. And the range of possible outcomes is so broad. Great ship, and a fun build project with plenty of latitude to build the ship you envision.
So in Coriolis you want to concentrate on the Shield HP section, and the thermal value in particular. I tend to aim to an even 50% across all three (kinetic, explosive, thermal) but the thermal is key. This is particularly true in a ship like a fast Courier, as thermal weapons like lasers are much more likely to hit as their shot speed is infinite. Other weapons can hurt too, but in the case of something like missiles, the Courier is faster than the missiles, so they present less threat. of course you could be flying AT the missiles in which case it matters less. Bottom line is the longer it takes for the weapon to hit you, the more time you have to be somewhere else.
Last year I was interested in building fast battle Courier, which since has become my main combat ride. It's not terribly effective, compared to other ships, but it is glorious to fight in. I fly it wide open all the time, not simply using the high speed to evade or as a defensive measure. This means I spend quite a bit of time flying while in G-Loc (blacked out), and making high-speed gunnery passes on the target. I liken it to how say a Focke-Wulf 190 pilot would have attacked a bomber stream, making slashing attacks at speed and then extending away to come 'round for a second pass.
So I wanted a fast Courier, that much I knew. I set 800 m/s boost as my target. And I got there easily. Mindful of mass, and with EPTs and Drive Distributors, very high speed can be attained in this awesome little ship. But it soon became apparent that in order to make a balanced fighter I needed more striking power and better protection. So it becomes a balancing act. The Courier, more than most ships in Elite, presents the designer with the same problem facing shipwrights throughout history. And that is, how to combine speed, protection and firepower in a manner that doesn't compromise one or the other too badly. And so, as I added firepower and protection, the speed came down. But in the end, after much trial and error, I arrived at this
Velocity Courier -- Boom and Zoomer / Bounty Hunter
Velocity is a compromise, but has enough of those three things --speed, firepower and protection -- to get the job done. At 1,311 thermal MJ it has the burst protection I want, and at 564 integrity has the collision protection I need. In order to have a ship that could be effective firing at full-boost speeds I needed gimballed weapons, and in order to have enough pop to make this worthwhile I had to opt for full-weight beams. At 4t a pop, these weapons are speed killers, but in the end it's a compromise I felt good about. Each and every ton of mass has a big effect on speed in a ship like this.
But the end result is a near-perfect blend for me. Fast, survivable and able to take on anything smaller than a Clipper. And anyway, the idea behind this sort of ship and the profile I fly in combat is not to latch on to a target and keep going until it's dead, but to slash through and around a furball making passes and getting tags. And it does this exceptionally well. I only have three or four ships I am willing to fly in Open. This is one. The speed and near permaboost capability are enough to evade just about anything more dangerous, as long as you can control the initial burst or volley from an unseen foe. At that point it's a matter or selecting a vector Victor and boosting away.
We had a thread a while back when I was undertaking this project and you may find some good ideas here
Imperial Courier - Fast Battle Courier
I love this ship, and for a long time now it's been half-done and now I want to get it closer to all done. It's a challenge. I am looking for the following... -- Fast. Around 800 boost -- Armed. Want to use it for bounty hunting -- Good shields, 600 mj as a minimum The challenge arises from...
Few ships are more fun to build in Elite than a battle Courier, as the challenge of striking the right balance is high. And the range of possible outcomes is so broad. Great ship, and a fun build project with plenty of latitude to build the ship you envision.
