Yes, a few mods can make a difference, FSD range is important for any ship.
When I'm missioning I don't usually fight back. It takes too long, plus if I lose and get destroyed I lose all the missions and fail them, which sets me back too.
But if it's a mostly harmless cobra, I might anyway. It never is, though
Thanks for the loadout suggestion, I think I'll copy it. I've said this already, that I keep trying to outfit my ship to do everything well and I need more focus. Your build is what I'm talking about. I'm still trying to fight back, rather than run and that's counterproductive. I guess we all can't have the Millenium Falcon
A few times I did fit a size 2 or 3 SCB so that I could try to stay in combat for longer with my 'friendly' cargo stealing or mission-assigned NPC interdictor.
I did manage to destroy the NPC once or twice, other times I had to run when my shields had gone but on a couple of occasions my AspX decided it did not want to leave any pirate orphans behind, so ended up losing my ship.
Maybe you would have more success with SCBs.
Another option that may work are mine launchers which work well on the T9 aka Space Cow. But I haven't tried this myself.
Part of the fun in playing Elite is on experimenting with different builds and finding one that complements your combat & flying style.
Well depends on your mindset as for one person it maybe fun, to another it might be frustrating/annoying.
All of you have reinforced why the player community for Elite is awesome. I reached out for help because I didn't know what to do and you provided me with the help I needed to make play-time fun again.
