Fire groups? Eh? It's a Vulture, it has two hard points. The only reason for fire groups is for a scanner. Chaff/heat sinks can be bound.
Z...
Fire groups? Eh? It's a Vulture, it has two hard points. The only reason for fire groups is for a scanner. Chaff/heat sinks can be bound.
Z...
Well the good news then is you will notice that the default optimal mass (not minimal mass) for a set of 5A thrusters is 840 tonnes. I have a few sets of 5A drives I did not roll 9000 times for. Perhaps six times tops. My current Vulture has a set of G5 dirty drives with an optimal mass of 787 tonnes. My Vulture masses at 391 tonnes when in its multi-role build. Due to the fact that the optimal mass is so far above the actual mass, I will only experience a small change in top speed or maneuverability. The point with this is that you can pack a Vulture completely with armour and reinforcements, and you would hard pressed to tell the difference. I used to be very concerned about this sort of effect, until I tried it for myself and found the effect on handling due to adding mass from reinforcements very difficult to discern. Perhaps if you are an uber pilot, you can tell the difference but I'm not that good.
What is especially accentuated by this is the difference between 4 pips to engines and 0 pips to engines. The Vulture might lose about 25 m/s top speed (non boost) from 4 pips to 0 pips. Mine cruises at 305 m/s at 4 pips, and 282 m/s with no pips. That is significantly different from the Cobra, where the optimal mass and the actual mass are much closer and going from 4 pips to 0 pips cuts the ship's speed approximately in half (397 m/s down to about 200 m/s).
The caveat there is that pips significantly affect roll/pitch/yaw degrees per second.
I'd have tried modelling this on Coriolis, but my builds aren't importing properly.
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I don't agree that the 4E is epically slow. It takes 1 minute to fill up the 8T tank of a Vulture, vs a 4A which takes 26 seconds, both from empty. It's a factor of two. Epically slow makes it sound like you'd be using a 4E to fill up a 128T tank on an Anaconda. Only really important if you're jumping a lot. I have to concede that I didn't think through the 4A vs 4E power consumption thing when taking module priorities into account.
Unfortunately for your 3A, the Vulture does not contain any size 3 slots. You would still need a size 4 slot. Besides, a 3A is only slightly faster than a 4E. 176 kg/sec vs 143 kg/sec. Perhaps you meant 2A?
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Greetings again folks.
Ive made some alterations to my Vulture build. I've receded to G2 overcharged PP and managed to keep everything within power limits. Even without disabling anything. I'm guessing this just keeps heat build up lower than the G4 overcharged I previously had.
Also made amends to the shield and fitted 5C Bi-weave with G5 Thermal resistant. Regen and recharge rate are greatly increased and they seem to hold better than my original 5A heavy duty.
And the armour, I've engineered to G5 heavy duty instead of thermal resistant. Now heres a question regarding the armour, Using an anaconda build (found here on the forum), the armour with thermal resistance lasts a lot longer than the armour with heavy duty. So these are the types of ships (the big 3) I seem to need the added protection from. Most others I can pretty much handle.
Also my weapons are the same on both builds so why would one take down shield far quicker than the other? Maybe something to do with the distribution draw difference? An again, what would cause this?
Currently flying
https://eddp.co/u/QEULvN36
And my original spec
https://eddp.co/u/5uK6Hf4Q
Ive kept all the modules from my original build so I can swap them about if needed.
o7
Ive made some alterations to my Vulture build. I've receded to G2 overcharged PP and managed to keep everything within power limits. Even without disabling anything. I'm guessing this just keeps heat build up lower than the G4 overcharged I previously had.
Also made amends to the shield and fitted 5C Bi-weave with G5 Thermal resistant. Regen and recharge rate are greatly increased and they seem to hold better than my original 5A heavy duty.
And the armour, I've engineered to G5 heavy duty instead of thermal resistant. Now heres a question regarding the armour, Using an anaconda build (found here on the forum), the armour with thermal resistance lasts a lot longer than the armour with heavy duty. So these are the types of ships (the big 3) I seem to need the added protection from. Most others I can pretty much handle.
Also my weapons are the same on both builds so why would one take down shield far quicker than the other? Maybe something to do with the distribution draw difference? An again, what would cause this?
Currently flying
https://eddp.co/u/QEULvN36
And my original spec
https://eddp.co/u/5uK6Hf4Q
Ive kept all the modules from my original build so I can swap them about if needed.
o7
About your powerplant; yes. Your original grade 4 one costs so much penalty in heat. Such a powerplant makes it very hard or simply impossible to use hot weapons like beams, rails etc, makes it hard to boost a lot and simply may make it impossible for some ships to fuel scoop. Vultures main weakness is its powerplant, you have to consider your build around that before going too far into overcharged.
About armor and shield theres a few elemental things to know. Coriolis ship builder offers a lot of this information quiet visibly. First, theres hull hardness and weapon piercing. Long story short, if somethings hull hardness is over (like +25) the piercing value of a weapon that is shooting it, weapon looses damage. This is very noticable when small hardpoints try to hit something hard. Second, resists. For the sake of simplicity lets say that, ship A has 1000hp of shields, zero all resists. Ship B, 500hp, 60% resist to thermal but -50% to kinetic. Shooting it with a laser that shoot for 100dmg per shot, I will need 10 shots to take ship A down, with a multicannon that shoots for 100dmg per shot, I will need 10 shots to take it down. Shooting at ship B with the same laser, I can only deal 40dmg per shot so it will take me 12-13 shots to take that shield, and with the multicannon I can deal 150damage per shot so it will take me little more than 3 shots to take that down. So ship B who seems to have raw 500hp in shield actually has a lot more against thermal attacks but a lot less against kinetic, that is the effective hp. Pretty simplified but should be working like that in concept. Go to the defence tab on your Coriolis screen and see the two bar graphics there showing you damage taken (%) and effective hp for both armor and shields. You will make good sense of it and possibly your question with this approach.
About armor and shield theres a few elemental things to know. Coriolis ship builder offers a lot of this information quiet visibly. First, theres hull hardness and weapon piercing. Long story short, if somethings hull hardness is over (like +25) the piercing value of a weapon that is shooting it, weapon looses damage. This is very noticable when small hardpoints try to hit something hard. Second, resists. For the sake of simplicity lets say that, ship A has 1000hp of shields, zero all resists. Ship B, 500hp, 60% resist to thermal but -50% to kinetic. Shooting it with a laser that shoot for 100dmg per shot, I will need 10 shots to take ship A down, with a multicannon that shoots for 100dmg per shot, I will need 10 shots to take it down. Shooting at ship B with the same laser, I can only deal 40dmg per shot so it will take me 12-13 shots to take that shield, and with the multicannon I can deal 150damage per shot so it will take me little more than 3 shots to take that down. So ship B who seems to have raw 500hp in shield actually has a lot more against thermal attacks but a lot less against kinetic, that is the effective hp. Pretty simplified but should be working like that in concept. Go to the defence tab on your Coriolis screen and see the two bar graphics there showing you damage taken (%) and effective hp for both armor and shields. You will make good sense of it and possibly your question with this approach.
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IMO reactive with HD is terrible idea. -30% thermal resist for a small fighter which can dodge most of non-hiscan weapons, with all hitscan weapons being thermal...
If you want HD mil.grade is probably a better idea.
Which one is better depends on HRP-s used and base hull value, in case of your build reactive+thermal provides more EHP and is lighter.
Also there is an error in "original" loadout, hull boost value of bulkheads is set to 250%, which is wrong, it should be 0%.
As for "offence" tab differences - pips are set differently in your loadouts, resetting them to default makes things absolutely identical as they should be.
If you want HD mil.grade is probably a better idea.
Which one is better depends on HRP-s used and base hull value, in case of your build reactive+thermal provides more EHP and is lighter.
Also there is an error in "original" loadout, hull boost value of bulkheads is set to 250%, which is wrong, it should be 0%.
As for "offence" tab differences - pips are set differently in your loadouts, resetting them to default makes things absolutely identical as they should be.
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Ah yes. Thanks for pointing out the error and difference in pips. Putting this right evens things up a lot more.
I use 1 pip to eng and 2.5 each for sys and wep as default. I don't use much boost in combat so 1 pip is enough there to recharge for when I do need it. And I've found 2.5 pips to weapons is just about enough to keep sustained fire for most targets.
The difference in stats on Coriolis are pretty negligible between HD mil-grade and reactive for the time the armour holds. if I don't get a 'best' G5 roll on the mil-grade, they won't hold as long. Also, it looks that reactive G5 thermal resistant would be the best of the three. I mean we are talking a handful of seconds and I'd have busted a groove long before my armour is that low anyway.
Really appreciate the input here. Its my first proper combat build and plan to move up ships accordingly, so prepare for more headaches folks.
o7
IMO simply looking at "how long it will hold" as predicted by coriolis is not the way to do it. Coriolis makes some assumption, one of them being that all shots hit, which are simply not true in real combat. And because of this, results with different resist profiles will differ a lot in real combat from what coriolis predict, assuming you are not just standing still and exchanging hits. IMO for small ships thermal resist is by far most important one, because thermal weapons have by far higher chance to actually hit you, as most of them are hitscan.
Also... tried short-range blaster with inertial impact burst laser on vulture as a substitute for frag cannon which is a lot of fun but runs out of ammo really fast. And actually it is not bad. Useless against small ships and modules, but is pretty effective at dealing damage to large ship hulls.
Also... tried short-range blaster with inertial impact burst laser on vulture as a substitute for frag cannon which is a lot of fun but runs out of ammo really fast. And actually it is not bad. Useless against small ships and modules, but is pretty effective at dealing damage to large ship hulls.
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I tried G5 efficient beams on a Vulture a while back and although they didn't cause heat issues they did empty the wep cap fairly quick so I went back to my usual G5 rapid fire pulses similar DPS and some minor heat issues (get in close to target and the weapon jitter is irrelevant), I agree with mr seanguzzi re the shields as most NPC's will use energy weapons so good effective thermal shield strength is important.
Here's my current Vulture build (I can't be having that asymmetrical weapons fit it needs to be balanced!)
https://coriolis.edcd.io/outfit/vul...A5gK4B2AzgBYCWADiPBM0A===&bn=Vulture F (EDMC)
Yeah, I use dual beam lasers on my Vulture with grade 5 efficient upgrades. It took quite a few rerolls, but I lucked out and got even more reduction on the distributor draw so I can fire even longer (with 4 pips to weapons, I can fire till I get the first thermal warning and then I run out of the weapon distributor shortly after). I still have to use 3 to 4 pips to weapons but I'm also using A grade thrusters with grade 5 dirty drives so I can afford to go with no pips to engines if I want. If I need to boost, I'll readjust my pips so I can recharge my engine distributor.
Along with my grade 5 thermal resistance upgrade on my shields and 2 resistance upgrades on 2/4 shield boosters, I can take quite a bit of damage when I am hit but I'm maneuverable and fast enough that I can stay on the butt on big ships like Pythons and Anacondas easily enough.
Yep, it's what I use. It's also better to get Thermal resistance upgrades on your shields as well so that way your shields don't drop as fast against the AI and players using lasers.
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