Ships Most efficient bounty hunter?

[Kayvan]

Little update: I fitted a Mamba with 3 Pacs and 2 Cytos, but it ended in catastrophe. The convergence is just too terrible to succeed with that, especially against smaller ships.

Might try again with a completely different setup, maybe a C4 Multi, 2 C3 gimballed Frags, 1 Cyto and 1 small corrosive MC.
Not sure if the C4 should be gimballed or fixed, though.

Also, what hull do you use on a Mamba? Light for maximum speed, or Reactive for maximum toughness?

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

On pretty much all my ships I use either military or the stock hull with G5 heavy duty deep plating, depending on preference. Stock mostly on explorers or speed boats as HD has no weight penalty on it, military on every thing that sees combat. So I think I have military on my Mamba. Also, fwiw, the frags on my mamba are gimballed.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

Ha, I lied . I checked it in EDSY, My Mamba actually has reactive armor, but that's because it's been done a long time ago. I don't do that anymore, today it's either military or lightweight. Anyway, with rective it goes 481 / boosts to 590, with lightweight it does 491 / 602 with four pips in engines. The difference is small enough I wouldn't sacrifice 500 armor points for. Can't tell you how the difference in handling would be, on paper pitch and roll change about a degree per second, yaw is virtually unchanged.

 

[Kayvan]

Really? ^^ I only use Military on AX ships because resistances don't matter there; on PVE ships I typically use Reactive bc it allows better resistances overall.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

The truth is, for PvE it just doesn't matter (for me), and for PvP (of which I have no real clue how to build for) I'm told all that matters is raw strength because Plasmas. But I'm working strictly in a PvE context, and I'm of the "that'll do" persuasion. I don't really care too much about the resistances, and I do all HRPs HD/DP which makes them universally swappable between ships (I have too many small HRPs in storage that were done to plug holes and are now useless for me).

I've compared it on my "most complete" build, by Combat Krait II. Some stats: It has 3052 armor in both cases, and with military I get 4219, 4686 and 3616 for kinetic, thermal and explosive (resistances end up at 28/35/16 percent). With reactive I get 5922/3616/5163 @ 42/16/41 percent. So yeah, bigger numbers with reactive, but the rebuy is 3.5 million more, and as I said, I'm firmly in "that'll do" territory with military. I don't need 6000 armor for anything in PvE.

In truth I don't really care anymore which type of armor the ship has as long as it is not lightweight and G5'ed. But I tend to do all military, if only just in case I'll repurpose it for AX later.

I do the same for shields (and I've earned some flak for it here in the past). I stopped caring for resistances and plugging resistance holes and just go for raw strength, because usually I end up with better protection for raw, kinetic and explosive damage and just a fraction less of thermal protection, and not doing boosters of shields specifically to plug resistance holes makes it easier to swap stuff between ships. But that's just me. Again: I think, from a certain point on, it just doesn't matter for PvE, and for the few cases it does just be aware of it and/or build for that use case. But usually I don't.

As I said: That'll do .

 

[Kayvan]

Well since you mention it, with Shields I'm currently unsure as well, maybe because of spending so much time in entirely shieldless ships. ^^ I used to mod the shield generator to Thermal Resistant, then just balance out resis a bit with 1 shield booster, add another SB with general Resistance Augment, and 2 HD SBs on top. That gives great overall resis, so the weakest link is Absolute. Now I'm wondering if I should maybe rather go for Reinforced and balance Thermal just a bit with a SB. So it's basically a question whether you expect more laser or PA fire.
I use Bi-Weaves basically everywhere, because I don't fancy waiting half an hour for recharge, and also I don't like using the Reboot/Repair exploit.

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

Most of my combat ships have reinforced bi-weaves with either fast charge or low draw (depending on how short I'm on power). On my Viper I only have two utilities, so I put two HD boosters with super caps in it. I don't care that its thermal resistance is -5%, because with four pips I still get 1500 raw, 2900 kinetic, 1450 thermal and 3500 explosive. If I cared for the thermal resistance by putting in a thermal booster I'd end up with 1600 thermal, but much lower for everything else (1180 raw, 2200 kinetic and 1500 explosive). Thermal resistant shields with two HD boosters would, again, give me slightly more thermal resistance (1700), but catastrophically worse numbers for the rest. So I don't do that.

On ships with four utilities I usually do three HD boosters and either a thermal or a resistance aug booster to at least be in the plus for thermal resistance. On ships with more utilities / boosters I go for A-rated shields with maximum capacity, as the bi-weaves lose their recharge advantage with high raw capacity. So my Mamba has 5A reinforced hi-cap shields with six boosters. The boosters on my Mamba are kind of weird, I assume I just stuck in what I had in storage: It has four HD boosters, one thermal, and one resistance augmented, so all resistances are 30+ percent. With that, it has 2500 raw, 6300 with four pips, 13600 kinetic, 9300 thermal and 16000 explosive (all numbers with four pips). In other words: It's unkillable in PvE.

Here is the EDSY link to my Mamba. Oh, and I don't have access to prismatics.

 

[Aleks Zuno]

Also, what hull do you use on a Mamba? Light for maximum speed, or Reactive for maximum toughness?

Reactive surface indeed, but engineered with Lightweight so that the boost speed remains very slightly above 600, and one class 2 Hull reinforcement with Thermal engineering balances its hull resistance. In effect, it is just about tough enough to escape one major incident¹, and the small speed luxury comes with accepting that one does not hunt without the shield present.

The Mamba modules look like this, where:

• In practice I have been using all Guardian shield recently rather than having a Shield cell, although the latter is supported nicely with Thermal vent.
• Obviously use double Chaff instead of a Kill scanner where appropriate.
• Use an Interdict for Wing assassinations, in this case instead of the Supercruise assist luxury.

1. Or to withstand the Phasing damage from running consecutive Wing assassinations, which it can do with double Chaff.

 

[Kayvan]

Did some more test runs last night, with the weapon setup as written above (C4 MC etc); ofc the fixed MC did not work at all and I switched to gimballed.
The shield worked fine in my first test run, never dropped below 80% in fact, currently running with 2 GSRBs.

RN I'm using a 4D FSD plus C2 GFSB, that also saves a couple of tons compared to a 4A FSD.

My current hardpoint setup is just stock (unengineered) or shelved weapons that I had lying around, so there's still a lot of room for optimization. For instance my only thermal weapon is currently the single Cyto, which makes busting shields a bit awkward. I guess I'll try that Beam laser after all, seeing it has the highest DPS and sufficient Piercing.

Otherwise, the Mamba has a totally different flight model than any ship I'm familiar with, especially the Chieftain, so I'm still completely rubbish with it. I'll have to try that out. However, from what you (Aleks) wrote previously, I need some different control binds, which conflict with my current setup (read: on my dual sticks I don't have an easily reachable unassigned button that I could use for the landing gear). My binds are currently mostly optimized for my AX ship, but also work well enough with my PVE Chief. Not sure how to fix that.

 

[Aleks Zuno]

I need some different control binds, which conflict with my current setup (read: on my dual sticks I don't have an easily reachable unassigned button that I could use for the landing gear).

Have you easy Cargo scoop access and enough power for it? It can serve the same purpose, and indeed it is preferable with particular other vessels. I mentioned the problem with the Fer-de-Lance landing gear blocking its hardpoint, and more generally the cargo scoop is required if you fly something larger with a Fighter deployed!

 

[Kayvan]

No, neither. I used to, but swapped out the button for the SFN bc you don't need the "airbrake" in AX combat. I know the SFN is not strictly necessary when fighting at a station anyway; maybe I should just swap that out (and use the slot for a caustic sink on my AX ships instead). Yeah, I guess I could do that.

 

[Aleks Zuno]

I used to, but swapped out the button for the SFN bc you don't need the "airbrake" in AX combat.

Then in turn, are you aware that you can have both by making use of the way one can set a hold-button for extra things, such as tap for Chaff and hold for Neutraliser? This works very well with Neutralisers, and indeed with ECM of course, because they need to be held regardless!

For any pilot generally, discovering the ability to set hold-buttons and pair-buttons can simplify things quite a lot!

 

[Kayvan]

Thanks for the tip, indeed I wasn't aware. I now set it up that way and it works. ^^ I'll have to think what other binds I could modify that way.
I wish there was some way to set up the FA "reverse" - so you can fly FA Off by default and momentarily engage it for as long as you hold the button, in order to stabilize your bearing. But that doesn't seem to be supported.

After some more fiddling with the settings, the last test run in a Haz went much better. Still not as easy and powerful as a Chieftain but not too bad. Biggest problem now is that the OC Beam drains the cap like crazy, so the ship needs a lot of pip-juggling. So I'm thinking about downgrading that to a pulse or burst laser after all, despite the huge hit to DPS that would bring. SRB would still draw a lot more than the PD can deliver so that wouldn't improve much. The idea switching to Burst would be that it can run with less power in WEP, allowing for stronger shields and more agility, hopefully resulting in more time on target.

Also, as with most ships that are not my Chief, enemies chaffing and popping shield cells are a real nuisance. The Chief I run with mostly fixed weapons, but on the Mamba that's not practical due to non-convergence and extreme sluggishness when you run out of boost.

That said, the Frags really cause nasty damage (also thanks to softening the target with corrosive). The endurance with one magazine is okay, when I ran out I had enough for one session anyway, and also the corrMC had almost run dry at the same time. Not sure how useful Drag Munitions really is; might swap that out for Screening Shell.

I ran this with 2 GSRPs and no banks, and most of the time my shields were between 35 and 60%. (I did use the reboot/repair exploit once or twice after all) Once I had an "incident" probably when fighting a Wing, that took out my shield and brought the hull to 70%. So, good thing I already had changed to Reactive LW hull, with the stock hull it would have been rebuy screen at this point.

 

[shadowhand]

My most efficient haz res bounty hunter ship is an FDL with a huge overcharged multicannon with corrosive shells and 4 efficient gimballed beam lasers with thermal vent.

It's not the best meta build for anything, but it's got good time on target, I put a 4D Long Range grade 5 scanner on it so I can find targets further away - makes it easier to just focus on the big juicy bounties and ignore the small fish.

But more importantly, that huge MC's ammo lasts for a long time before I need to fabricate more bullets or go back to the station. The thermal vent lasers keeps the ship cool (frozen mostly.) and while they do take longer to strip shields than double-shot frags, they also don't use any ammo.

Anyway, that's what I used to get to Combat Elite. Which, was the first Elite rank I got back in the day.

It's not flashy, but it gets the job done. And I just like flying it.

 

[BackToTheMud]

I did work my way up to a Corvette and build a basically unkillable PvE battle cruiser in my first year or so of Elite. I'd argue it's the least efficient one, because it's so boring after a while you fall asleep at the wheel .

I've literally done this. Fell asleep fighting the entire spec-op. When I woke up I had killed the 3 small ships in the wing, and was just about to take out the fdl.

 

[AEBRAM]

This is my go-to ship for hazardous/high RES BH and CZ. Alliance Crusader

This ship is as tough as Chuck Norris. You can get blown down to 27% remaining hull and STILL remain fighting with all weapons firing.

 

[BetaToaster]

Because the original question was about efficiently farming combat rank, I'll add the warning against SLFs here: If an NPC pilot participates in a kill, they take about half of the combat rank points away from you.
Of course, having the SLF around is fun, and it can be very useful for manipulating aggro. But it kills rank efficiency, since there's no way it can double your kill rate.