PvP PvP Build FDL-Suggestions?

I have had enough of this injustice at the Oracle. About time I took the fight to them! I have been thinking of what weapon I will use against them would be. here is what I have got so far...

-Size 4 OC Target lock breaker PA (maximum kick available)

-3-4 Frag cannons ( 1 disruptive, 1 corrosive and 1 drag with possibility of an additional disruptive)

-1 pulse laser with scramble spec

I am unsure though as to what to outfit the core, optional and utilities with. Could use some help on the engineering too. are my choices good or poor? I am not good with PvP as I don't like hurting others.. but the bill has come due. gankers will be ganked with this!

thoughts? also any who agree with this, don't be afraid to stand against them!

CMDR Jaylem
 

Arguendo

Volunteer Moderator
thoughts? also any who agree with this, don't be afraid to stand against them!
You really should check out the Inara page for the wing I am in. It sounds just up your alley :)

For the rest; weapons are a matter of preferred playstyle really, but the current meta is PAs and one or two Railguns. The reasons are mainly absolute damage (PAs), so they disregard resistances to a certain degree, and cancelling SCBs (Railgun).
My advice is to play around with it and find something you enjoy, and ignore whether you've maxed out the DPS etc etc.

Internals again depend on your skills and playstyle. If you can be evasive enough, go for Bi-Weave shields with a few SCBs and not overkill on the boosters. It's not necessary (or even desired) to have huge Bi-Weaves, as it's the regen you're looking for. And you can leave room for Heatsinks so you can single bank SCBs (rapid charge these imho).

If you're not evasive, Prismatics are a must. They will never come back up again though, so expect to have already left the instance, or die when they are gone. Slap on boosters like there's no tomorrow, but leave room for a heatsink or two. Chaff can be useful, but most PvPers run fixed weapons (re PAs), so don't expect them to be useful. PDs may be helpful if they are of the missile-enclined type of player. SCBs are only to give you extra time before having to leave and will never top off your shields, and a lot of players run with Feedback Rails. So don't rely on them.

FdL will never be a hulltank, so don't go overboard with HRPs. MRPs can be nice to protect modules for those precious seconds between loosing your shields and waking out, but consider what you lose by putting stuff on (agility and speed). For the rest;
Power Distro: Grade 5 Charge Enhanced. Focus on the recharge rate, as you'll need that for weapons and engines (and shields if you have Bi-weaves)
Power Plant: Lowest grade blueprint you can muster and still have enough power for all your essentials (minus the cargo hatch. turn that off!)
Drives: G5 Dirty drives. As high as you can get them. God rolls are 140%+, but around 137% and above will be "good enough".

If you run with PAs, I'd go Efficient on all and atleast one with Target Lock Breaker special effect. For Rails you're looking for Long Range, with heat reduction of 50%+ as a secondary, with Feedback Cascade (if only one) and Superpen (if you go with two).

This is not all-inclusive for sure, and others may have other ideas, but these ideas should atleast help you get going :)

Fly un-safe cmdr o7
 
-Size 4 OC Target lock breaker PA (maximum kick available)
Fire it twice and your ship melts ;) In terms of damage over time you'll do a lot better with Efficient rather than OC.

-3-4 Frag cannons ( 1 disruptive, 1 corrosive and 1 drag with possibility of an additional disruptive)
As others have said, combined with the PA, you'll have to be right on top of an opponent to do damage. The FDL is fast ... but unless you have the patience to god-roll its drives, in the short-term almost everything else will be faster. It'll be good for hitting the big-3 ships (though they can low-wake on you at will) but not much else.

Drag munition is a really weak special at the best of times, and virtually useless against someone flying FA-off.

-1 pulse laser with scramble spec
A super-penetrator rail will do far more module damage and let you pick which module malfunctions.

I am unsure though as to what to outfit the core, optional and utilities with.
For a starter FDL - *not an optimal build*, but one which will work reasonably well without engineering everything to god-roll stage and one which is reasonably forgiving to fly for a beginner, I'd recommend something like:

Core: DD5 thrusters, charge enhanced G5 distributor
Military armour (you're running away or dying anyway when shields drop - it's just to keep you alive a little longer, and a lot cheaper than reactive) modded heavy-duty
OC1 power plant. Very cheap material cost; keep re-rolling it until you get the secondary that gives you +18-20% power.
Lightweight the sensors and life support to get a bit of extra speed.
FSD: either 2D for extra speed but low-waking only, or a 2A with a range mod to give you a few escape options, or a full size range modded if you expect to use it for inter-system escorts.

Optional: If you have prismatics available, 5A SCB, 4A SCB, 4A prismatic. Otherwise, use a regular 4A (really not great, but unless you get lucky and get an excellent DD5 roll straight away, biweaves will basically be weaker regular shields because you won't be able to gain enough range to recharge them) and pledge to Aisling *now*. Mod the shields for thermal resistance. (Regular or prismatic most of your health is in the SCBs *anyway*, so time your banks when the feedback cascade rails are pointed away from you)
1A interdictor, 2A HRP.

Utilities: 2xheavy duty shield boosters, 2xresistance boosters, 1xChaff, 1xheat sink with a high-capacity mod (double banking will mean this is *just* enough)

Weapons: until you've got those god rolls on the drives, expect to be fighting most other medium ships at their choice of range, not yours, so fit at least some weapons which do decent damage at medium/long range. A lot of this is personal taste. Consider fitting a mix of gimballed and fixed - all gimballed will get you chaffed to death, but unless your flying skills are up to hitting a PvP-spec opponent all fixed won't have you doing much damage either.

As you gain experience you'll want to swap out quite a bit of this stuff - with a top-grade pilot and otherwise identical engineering quality, a biweave FDL usually has the edge over a prismatic one, for example, but for beginners the prismatic is likely to beat the biweave.
 
I have had enough of this injustice at the Oracle. About time I took the fight to them! I have been thinking of what weapon I will use against them would be. here is what I have got so far...

-Size 4 OC Target lock breaker PA (maximum kick available)

-3-4 Frag cannons ( 1 disruptive, 1 corrosive and 1 drag with possibility of an additional disruptive)

-1 pulse laser with scramble spec

I am unsure though as to what to outfit the core, optional and utilities with. Could use some help on the engineering too. are my choices good or poor? I am not good with PvP as I don't like hurting others.. but the bill has come due. gankers will be ganked with this!

thoughts? also any who agree with this, don't be afraid to stand against them!

CMDR Jaylem

That's the spirit, Commander! I had a similar experience, and I'm now pleased to say I've succeeded in taking down two members of the Purple Haired Brigade and bloodied the nose of several others. I opted for a FGS rather than a Fer-De-Lance, so I've nothing much to advise on that front, but I wish you all the best on your endeavours. In fact, I'd be happy to join you sometime when you've finally got the build together. I've got the same name in-game as here.

o7 Commander.
 
If you want to seriously compete, on top of a good weapons setup, it also needs to be engineered to the teeth.

As for Frags: they sounds nice _in practice_, but in reality it's hard to put them to good use.
I have a Hull Tanking / Silent running FAS with 4 Double Shot Frags, and at my current flying skill I cannot easily get in position to take advantage of them.

Granted I am also very hard to track, but it doesn't really matter if I can't damage my opponent. Would probably work against a large opponent.
 
I have had enough of this injustice at the Oracle. About time I took the fight to them! I have been thinking of what weapon I will use against them would be. here is what I have got so far...

-Size 4 OC Target lock breaker PA (maximum kick available)

-3-4 Frag cannons ( 1 disruptive, 1 corrosive and 1 drag with possibility of an additional disruptive)

-1 pulse laser with scramble spec

I am unsure though as to what to outfit the core, optional and utilities with. Could use some help on the engineering too. are my choices good or poor? I am not good with PvP as I don't like hurting others.. but the bill has come due. gankers will be ganked with this!

thoughts? also any who agree with this, don't be afraid to stand against them!

CMDR Jaylem

Unless you have people to wing up with you might find an interference ship/build more effective.

A ship that can attack/distract the target and get out of weapons range quickly. E.g. courier, possibly a clipper could be hybrid PvP and interference.

You could also experiment with a silent running reverb cascade mine layer, cobra mkIV is good for this. Expect to die a lot though lol.

On my CG trade cutter I have 8 reverb cascade torpedoes and 3 gimballed multicannons, I've had a fair bit of success with this :)

With the last two ideas you won't catch out a decent PvPer but you can catch out people who have come along for a casual gank and are only expecting weakly armed trade ships.
 
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Jaylen, if you have to ask the question, the most useful thing you can bring to Oracle Station is a really fat bank account, because son you gonna need it.

Not that I don't admire your feistyness:)
 
If you want pure and simple effectiveness, you can run with one/two rails and the remainder OC multicannons. It's not much-meta-so-l337-wow any more, but gimballed weapons allow you to focus on manoeuvres, which are king in PvP. A ship that isn't changing direction constantly is a dead ship.

Jaylen, if you have to ask the question, the most useful thing you can bring to Oracle Station is a really fat bank account, because son you gonna need it.

Not that I don't admire your feistyness:)

Oh yeah, bring money and a predisposition to laughing at your own demise. It's the PvP requirement everyone forgets to mention.


Military armour (you're running away or dying anyway when shields drop - it's just to keep you alive a little longer, and a lot cheaper than reactive) modded heavy-duty

Quick note on this - MGC is essential for the FDL. On bi-weave builds, going in intentionally with no hull HP is madness, and the FDL absolutely doesn't have the internal space for enough HRPs. In a prismatic/SCB build, you will have very few HRP slots, and MGC bulkheads will stop you being embarrassed to extremes by the travesty that is phasing.

I can think of nothing worse than trying to stock up on thousands of mj effective shields, and you are blown up despite the opponent never even downing your shields. If that happens....shame on you. Just shame on you.

I often recommend reactive over MGC, but with the FDL's relatively thin hit profile and speed, hitscan weapons (none of which are pure kinetic or explosive, and inertial impact bursts are unusably jittery) need addressing more than usual. I don't find the extra cost worth it.
 
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Quick note on this - MGC is essential for the FDL. On bi-weave builds, going in intentionally with no hull HP is madness, and the FDL absolutely doesn't have the internal space for enough HRPs. In a prismatic/SCB build, you will have very few HRP slots, and MGC bulkheads will stop you being embarrassed to extremes by the travesty that is phasing.

I can think of nothing worse than trying to stock up on thousands of mj effective shields, and you are blown up despite the opponent never even downing your shields. If that happens....shame on you. Just shame on you.

Currently running 17.3 ton lightweight reactive on my FDL, which I usually supplement with 1-1.5k more hull in HRPs in a full combat fit.

I run phasers on my Vulture, which I am constantly tuning...should be able to field a pair of rapid fire bursts soon, while still having my 220 integrity armored PP, a D4 MRP, and 2k+ hull with 40%+ resists across the board and a pretty solid bi-weave roll to hold it all together longer.

This is the old setup:

[video=youtube;NBmhBffwo2Q]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBmhBffwo2Q[/video]

[video=youtube;rc5OcGWLAm8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc5OcGWLAm8[/video]
 
Currently running 17.3 ton lightweight reactive on my FDL, which I usually supplement with 1-1.5k more hull in HRPs in a full combat fit.

I run phasers on my Vulture, which I am constantly tuning...should be able to field a pair of rapid fire bursts soon, while still having my 220 integrity armored PP, a D4 MRP, and 2k+ hull with 40%+ resists across the board and a pretty solid bi-weave roll to hold it all together longer.

This is the old setup:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBmhBffwo2Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc5OcGWLAm8

Haha, yeah, that was a long duel. Good times:)
 
I like a multi-cannon in the large and the rest frags. It's not the meta build like Algomatic mentioned but its the most fun.
 
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