Ships Looking for Vulture Combat Builds

[wetwire]

I plan on picking up a Vulture as i hear they are fun to fly.
In preparation I figured it would be a combat build but the 2 Large hardpoints keep me pondering a good loadout. Not much diversity so figured i would ask the community on what are some good Vulture build suggestions.

I started with a base comparison using my Imperial Courier as its primary "small" ship equivalent.

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I designed the following Vulture but not sure if twin plasma are the way to go.

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Some build stipulations
She needs to be jump capable, do not plan on using ship transfer.
Ideally a bounty hunting ship, so kill warrant and FSD interdiction would be welcome.
Would like her to be able to punch above her class to take on elite assassination missions.
Price and Engineering is not a limitation.

 

[Starbreaker]

Since you put PAs on your Vulture I made one too with some adjustments. You can drop one HRP (HA w/deep plating) for utility like guardian jump boost. At least 3 pips to SYS for max shield recovery (1 min), and it has a 5B SCB for double total shield strength and a tougher hull against kinetic and explosive. Dropped chaff in favor of heat sinks to make room for a KWS.

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[Red_Beard_98]

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By far my favorite combat Vulture build and I love Vultures, I have played with may builds.

Edit: Sorry, Just noticed your stipulations. You could easily trade a size 1 MRP for a 1A interdictor and a heat-sink for the KWS.

 

[wetwire]

Since you put PAs on your Vulture I made one too with some adjustments. You can drop one HRP (HA w/deep plating) for utility like guardian jump boost. At least 3 pips to SYS for max shield recovery (1 min), and it has a 5B SCB for double total shield strength and a tougher hull against kinetic and explosive. Dropped chaff in favor of heat sinks to make room for a KWS.

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Thanks for this build. I have a few questions.

1. I see this build focuses on the resistances in favor of raw values, i suspect this is because most NPC use the standard Thermal/kinetic weapon combo right?
2. Also noticed this build leans heavily on the ability to quickly regenerate shields over shield tanking. Is due to the flight characteristics of the Vulture being highly mobile any damage taken will be minimal and quick recharge is preferred over higher overall shield mj?
3. You opted for a heat sink over a chaff launcher. I'm not sure the reason for this. Does the vulture have heat issues with PA?

 

[wetwire]

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By far my favorite combat Vulture build and I love Vultures, I have played with may builds.

Edit: Sorry, Just noticed your stipulations. You could easily trade a size 1 MRP for a 1A interdictor and a heat-sink for the KWS.

3K hull is impressive for a small ship. I would have to change my combat tactics with this build.
With a hull tank such as this, im guessing the combat flight model would be, Flying in silent running quite often and releasing heat sinks when required while keeping close for those frag cannons.
I see one HRP has thermal resistance, any particular reason for this over heavy duty?
And i would have to swap out a few modules for the Interdictor and KWS as you noticed, might also need a Fuel Scoop.
But i like this design as well puts me outside my comfort box.

 

[Red_Beard_98]

3K hull is impressive for a small ship. I would have to change my combat tactics with this build.
With a hull tank such as this, im guessing the combat flight model would be, Flying in silent running quite often and releasing heat sinks when required while keeping close for those frag cannons.
I see one HRP has thermal resistance, any particular reason for this over heavy duty?
And i would have to swap out a few modules for the Interdictor and KWS as you noticed, might also need a Fuel Scoop.
But i like this design as well puts me outside my comfort box.

The thermal HRP is due to the lack of thermal resistance on the Reactive Composite hull; it evens everthing out to decent numbers. I use the smallest possible HRP for the resistance to have less affect on the total hull points. You are spot on with the tactics. It was outside my comfort zone as well but i'm glad I built it, it is some of the most fun I have had in PvE combat.
EDIT: I thought I should add about pip managment. You only need one pip in weapons to keep things charged for the frags which is nice. Save the rest of the pips for engines so you can boost whenever you want. I do put pips in systems when i'm silent running but I'm not actually sure if that helps with heat management as I have never researched that or tested it... something I should probably do.
Another edit: The best thing about Vultures? They are super cheap to equip so testing different builds is super easy. I usually just test a build with whatever engineered modules are laying around then if I like it I try to finish the engineering.

 

[Starbreaker]

Thanks for this build. I have a few questions.

1. I see this build focuses on the resistances in favor of raw values, i suspect this is because most NPC use the standard Thermal/kinetic weapon combo right?
2. Also noticed this build leans heavily on the ability to quickly regenerate shields over shield tanking. Is due to the flight characteristics of the Vulture being highly mobile any damage taken will be minimal and quick recharge is preferred over higher overall shield mj?
3. You opted for a heat sink over a chaff launcher. I'm not sure the reason for this. Does the vulture have heat issues with PA?

1. Yes, it's ready for any type of opponent and the size 1 slots makes it easy to balance resistances. I'm not sure if this is true or not, but another thing is that raw intergrity value over over resistances could have an advantage by protecting internal modules better. Someone else needs to confirm or deny this.
2. I've only used Bi-weave on Vulture due to power issues and never considered shield tanking, thanks to engineers and the military slot they added a while back I can now run shield cells. The Vulture is very forgiving and you lose only 6°/s pitch by going from 4 pips to 0 pips into ENG.
3. The heat sink is for when I use shield cells. PA is not my first choice and if I were to use PA I'd use the Advanced PAs, I only included them because you put them in your build. I believe what kind of weapon loadout you should use is something only you can answer. Run some test with different loadouts before commiting materials to engineer them.

 

[idahosurge]

This is my combat Vulture. I have been out in the black exploring since the last update so I have not put anything in the two #1 slots the last update added.

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This is for PVE. I have never taken the time to learn PVP and outfit a ship for PVP.

 

[Northpin]

This is mine
Since i never pass an opportunity to ram them out of their ships i went for absolute Mj in shields instead of resistances - and it works

 

[Vardaugas]

I have a Vulture with inertial impact burst lasers for conflict zones. May only have an effective range of 500m but it does a good amount of DPS with no need for restocking. Only needs to cool off between bursts or use heat sinks to skip the cooldown time.

 

[CMDR Cknarf]

1. Buy Vulture
2. Equip 5c Biweave
3. Apply armor
4. Weapons of your choice
5. Kill stuff

 

[wetwire]

Pretty much what @Cknarf said, as I reviewed everyone's build it came pretty apparent that was a good build design. Though this was not excluding the shieldless build which had great appeal. In the end i tried to pull good ideas from all designs and ended up with the following.

From: @Red_Beard_98 (Tiny Tank) + @Northpin (Baldie)
Twin Frag Cannons Overcharged/Corrosive, Incendiary

• Great Energy Per Second cost, reduced pips in weapons
• SDPS of 85 seems adept of taking on both shields and armor.

From: @Starbreaker
Bi-Weave Thermal Resistant/Force Block
Twin 0A Shield Boosters Resistance/Force Block , Heavy Duty/Force Block
+ Shield Cell Bank Rapid Charge/Flow Control

• Fast Recovery 1:28 and Recharge 1:56
• Great Resistances, Ex 58.5%, Kin 47.2%, Therm 50.2%

Red_Beard_98 (Tiny Tank) + Starbreaker
Reactive Surface Composite Heavy Duty/Deep Plating
Balancing Hull Reinforcement Thermal Resistance/Reflective Plating
Twin Module Reinforcements

• Healthy amount of armor after shields drop
• Great balanced resistances of Ex 27.2%, Kin 30.9%, Therm 30.9%

End Results.

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Honorable mention:
@idahosurge I like where you decided to put the Fuel Scoop and figured for a combat ship it was a good place as a "backup" system.
@Vardaugas Enjoyed the use of the Guardian Shield Reinforcement, I personalty don't have those unlocked yet, but for a shield tank i can see how useful they will be. Also liked the idea of Long Ranged Sensors from you, Northpin and Starbreaker.

 

[Northpin]

Nice build, you will have fun with it. Just remember to avoid ramming and plasma bolts from anacondas and pythons
And fire those frags really close. I mean - below 4-500, ideally when their hull is obscuring your cockpit view so no pellet gets wasted

 

[Kissamies]

I love plasma. For Vulture it might be worth it to queue up Denton Patreus for his extra fun Advanced Plasma Accelerators, then set them on different fire groups so you can fire them alternatively. Pew pew pew! Don't use plasma slug, though. That tiny fuel tank probably couldn't handle one of them, let alone two.

Edit: If you go Overcharged 3 and Thermal Spread on the PP, you get slightly better performance, but that's a really minor change.

 

[wetwire]

I love plasma. For Vulture it might be worth it to queue up Denton Patreus for his extra fun Advanced Plasma Accelerators, then set them on different fire groups so you can fire them alternatively. Pew pew pew! Don't use plasma slug, though. That tiny fuel tank probably couldn't handle one of them, let alone two.

Edit: If you go Overcharged 3 and Thermal Spread on the PP, you get slightly better performance, but that's a really minor change.

Ah ha, i do get better heat management with overcharge 3 and thermal spread, very nice thanks for that tip. will adjust.
I strongly debated plasma's originally but the distributor draw and heat build up had me concerned. The advanced seem like a better option i will have to set aside some time for Denton. Sounds like a fun idea to swap out with in the future.