Looking for advice on ships, engineering

[velospeed2002]

I've been playing ED for a little over a month. Immersive space exploration was my initial draw to this game so, after doing enough RES bounty hunting to afford an AspX, I headed out to Colonia with the intent of doing further exploration trips from there. I did greatly enjoy the journey there which yielded about 30 mil of cartographic sales.

However, I've found that I also very much enjoy running missions and hauling stuff. Or perhaps it's simply the earning of credits that is addicting. Regardless, I have 500 mil credits in my pocket and will probably keep doing profitable Colonia routes until I hit Elite trader in a few days and then will head back to the bubble. So, obviously a change of plans. Question: if I take the "sidewinder shortcut" back to the bubble, do I lose engineering data/materials?

Now having some assets, I'm looking at ship/engineering progression. I'm thinking of building a fleet around a trio of ships: Python for missions/trading/mining, Fer-de-Lance for combat and my beloved AspX for exploration and just flying around. Question: from an engineering point of view, would it be better to jump straight to an Anaconda and focus on improving a single ship for different roles rather than working on multiple ships in parallel? Engineering is a part of the game I know nothing about.

I do realize ship progression is largely subjective/personal, and flying different ships including medium/small is appealing. But, efficiency matters (engineer irl) and want to avoid mistakes if possible. Also, the thought of trading in a huuuge Anaconda..... yeah. Maybe I'll just have to add it to my fleet anyways, if I have enough funds.

One thing is for sure, this game is amazing!

-Cmdr Sakae

 

[Mohrgan]

I, for one, enjoy the medium ships rather than the biggest. You have no restrictions to where you can dock, and you aren't missing anything from the game less the experience of flying the big three. Your plans for your fleet seem very sound. I too use a Python for mission running, my AspX is a miner, and I currently use a FAS for combat.

As for Combat, the FdL is top of the heap, but need not be your only choice. For RES/CZ work the Vulture and the FAS do the job, with less in the risk column, i.e. Re-buy costs. Plus, you should be able to get into the Vulture far sooner than an FdL. With that, if you enjoy combat in the game, one day, you will most certainly want an FdL.

P.S. Engineers: Now that the mats for the better up-grades don;t include commodities, Engineering has gotten a lot more enjoyable to pursue. Before the change to mats, I was quite successful all around with just g1 Up-grades. Fighting NPC's doesn't require engineered ships, but having the improvements does markedly improve your TTK.

 

[Klab]

Gratz on your progress so far CMDR. When you die, you lose any cargo you are carrying, but data & materials are kept so dieing is ok in that regard. I would recommend engineering one ship at a time, start with your favourite ship and work through as many engineers as you can, ranking them up to at least grade 3.33333 so that another engineer opens up. After a while you will have access to all 20, and be able to upgrade the rest of your fleet without having to go through this rather long process again.

 

[Alex Brentnall]

Nice credit balance!

It depends entirely on what you want to do. Personally despite having the time to engineer every ship in game I've restricted myself to 5 of the 30 available:
Racing Courier <- Sometimes used as a high speed fuel rat ship.
Fuel Rat Anaconda <- Also doubles as an explorer
Trading Imperial Cutter <- Also doubles as a mining ship
Combat FDL <- Does the brunt of it, Res sites, PvP and occasionally CZs

Combat Corvette <- Work in progress.

The rest I will probably never engineer. I may do the odd FSD upgrade here and there, maybe turn the Cobra III or Viper III into something. Possibly a niche PvP sidewinder fully engineered. Not sure yet


I min-maxed engineers. Found out what most engineers needed to unlock, found out that it's 3x mods from that rank to reach the next rank. Found out the easiest mods to do at each rank for each engineer. That gave me a huge list of materials, data and (at the time) commodities. So I went out, gathered them all in advance, did the 5000ly for Palin etc in advance and did my best to get all the modules/weapons on one ship that I'd use to power the upgrades.
Took me about 1.5 weeks to gather all the stuff (30hrs gametime ish) then about 4hrs to fly round unlocking them all and ranking them (some rare goods had to be done in a few trips). All engineers bar 3 (maybe?) were at rank 5 after that, a few I got stuck on with permits. Once I got the permits it was about 30 minutes or so to finish them off.

Anyway, I do a similar thing with ships. Work out what I need for all the mods, get 5x the materials in advance then fly round engineers one after the other ticking off upgrades. I recommend a 1 play-session on and one play-session off approach, Ideally do Farseer and get the FSD upgrade rank 5 before doing gathering for everything else. Have a specific "engineering ship" say an Asp. Fit the odd bits like the SRV bay, wake scanner, cargo holds and collectors etc and it should work out fine.

Anyway, that's me, Excel database, online resource (inara.cz) and lots of planning. Others hate that, I enjoy it, I feel like I'm saving time.

 

[velospeed2002]

Thanks for the advice, guys. Reading about your experiences and recommendations is helpful. I'm taking notes and drawing up a plan. ED is definitely complex, especially for new players, but that's also part of the appeal.

I'll probably stick with my plan of having 3 "core" ships (for now) and focus on engineering a Python first, since I'm quite enjoying mission running at the moment. Then will engineer the combat ship and lastly the explorer. It's funny, because the idea of exploration is what drew me to playing this game and I have enjoyed what I've done of it so far.

Goes to show the depth of this game - definitely a good thing.

 

[Mohrgan]

The Python is an excellent choice of ship to dig into the Engineering stuff. You will have to bribe many of the Engineers themselves with Cargo. The Python makes that more bearable. Don;t forget you can transfer Mods around to each of the Engineers you visit, to help get other ships tuned up.

 

[Alex Brentnall]

Thanks for the advice, guys. Reading about your experiences and recommendations is helpful. I'm taking notes and drawing up a plan. ED is definitely complex, especially for new players, but that's also part of the appeal.

I'll probably stick with my plan of having 3 "core" ships (for now) and focus on engineering a Python first, since I'm quite enjoying mission running at the moment. Then will engineer the combat ship and lastly the explorer. It's funny, because the idea of exploration is what drew me to playing this game and I have enjoyed what I've done of it so far.

Goes to show the depth of this game - definitely a good thing.

Sounds good

If you want any advice on exploration hit me up, I've done more than most with probably about 1250 hours over 1million Ly and 30,000+ systems.

I am happy to give pointers where possible to interesting places, ways to explore, ship build etc.