Newcomer / Intro Mass and Superspeed

[Chrisard]

As I understand it all ships acc/top speed is the same in Supercruise. However maneuverability differs. I've got a cobra I put some fat thrusters on pushing my optimum mass to 300's. I run without shields for extra cargo space, but I'm thinking of putting on some armor. Assuming my mass stays in the optimum range will my maneuverability in supercruise change? I read that dumping cargo can improve maneuverability so I assume mass can affect your maneuverability or cargo mass at least. As I understand it all ships acc/top speed is the same in Supercruise. However maneuverability differs (please correct me if that's wrong). I've got a cobra I put some fat thrusters on pushing my optimum mass to 300's. I run without shields for extra cargo space, but I'm thinking of putting on some armor. Assuming my mass stays in the optimum range of my thrusters will my maneuverability in supercruise change? I read that dumping cargo can improve maneuverability so I assume mass can affect your maneuverability or cargo mass at least.

Secondly if I did go with armor for a sheildless cobra any suggestions? Both Military and Thermal look nice but I'm thinking most folks have either multi guns or cannons and the like for hull damage and running Thermal could leave me open to such things.

 

[Undecided]

Armor will reduce your maneuverability and jump range. I really don't recommend pairing armor with a shield-less Cobra, it won't improve your survivability much. Either go whole hog with lightweight alloys and risk it all, or stick a shield generator on.

 

[krysohmyz]

I personally don't use heavier armours, even on fighting and PvP oriented ships. It has basically only cons. It will prolong your life by about ten seconds, which is pretty negligible. The truth is, once your shields are down, you're dead.

On top of the mass/jump range/agility issues there is a financial stuff. It raises the rebuy cost quite drastically, and every damage cost much more money to repair. Let's say you've lost your shields and then got shot by fragment cannon few times. With light armour it'll get you to 50% hull, which cost you x credits, depending on what ship you're flying. Heavier armour can reduce the overall hull damage to, say 75%, but to repair that 25 percent is more costly than repairing 50 on lightweight. Plus there is exponentially higher wear and tear repair bill and such things.
Heavier armour doesn't even help to reduce module damage.

Shields all the way. If you succeed in ten cargo runs and die on eleventh due to no shields (for whatever reason - a pirate, bad docking,...) it's not worth the few extra credits you'll make by sacrificing them.

And yes, your ship's agility highly depends on weight/thrust ratio.

 

[Ophion]

I must disagree. Heavy armor saved my neck quite a few times when my Cobra collided with a Clipper in a dogfight. And I had shields on, so after a collision, shields were gone, hull damage was 35% from 100%. Before that with light weight alloy, my Cobra blew up twice because of the collision with a bigger ship. So I relay like my kinetic resistant armor and with A class thrusters I didn't noticed that my maneuverability dropped by much.

 

[krysohmyz]

Cobra is pretty agile ship in the first place. But you wouldn't believe how sluggish can Dropship or Clipper be with heavy armour. :/

And yes, I agree it will help in case of collision, especially in smaller ships. Then again, unless you use ramming as a battle tactics, well...