Hail and well met, Commanders.
I'm only a couple of months into Elite, so still learning the ropes. I have a couple of ships in the fleet, the original Sidewinder, my trusty Type-6 Hauler, a Python kitted out for mining, an Asp Explorer which is currently gathering dust in the hanger until I've learnt a bit more about the exploration game, and my current steed, the Type-9 Heavy, L3viathan.
I've only unlocked one Engineer so far - Felicity Farseer - but I've engineered the FSD on all my ships for maximum jump range. It's not made a massive difference, but it's definitely helped.
I tend to play in either solo mode or private groups so I haven't suffered any griefing but of course that doesn't stop NPC interdictions.
Now in every other ship I own, I can escape these, but the Type-9 handling, as it does, like an elephant on tranquilisers, isn't going to evade much. To that end I've equipped a fighter bay and an NPC pilot (started as Mostly Harmless and has worked her way up to Novice), and I've only lost the ship (and a 30 Million credit cargo) once. However, I noticed that even though I balance my pips across SYS and WEP, even the most humble of enemies was taking my shields down and doing some serious damage in a matter of moments. I usually got where I was going, but I had a large repair bill when I got there.
So I splashed the cash on some Military Grade Composite bulkheads. It's definitely made the ship more robust, but now, fully laden, the jump range is down to about 16LY.
There's always going to be a trade off between defensive capability and jump range, but I wondered what more experienced Commanders thought was the sweet spot? Stick with the MGC bulkheads and try and make improvements elsewhere, or go for something a little less industrial and hope that between Holly, my pilot, and me, we're able to fend off the bad guys?
Cheers!
Boo
I'm only a couple of months into Elite, so still learning the ropes. I have a couple of ships in the fleet, the original Sidewinder, my trusty Type-6 Hauler, a Python kitted out for mining, an Asp Explorer which is currently gathering dust in the hanger until I've learnt a bit more about the exploration game, and my current steed, the Type-9 Heavy, L3viathan.
I've only unlocked one Engineer so far - Felicity Farseer - but I've engineered the FSD on all my ships for maximum jump range. It's not made a massive difference, but it's definitely helped.
I tend to play in either solo mode or private groups so I haven't suffered any griefing but of course that doesn't stop NPC interdictions.
Now in every other ship I own, I can escape these, but the Type-9 handling, as it does, like an elephant on tranquilisers, isn't going to evade much. To that end I've equipped a fighter bay and an NPC pilot (started as Mostly Harmless and has worked her way up to Novice), and I've only lost the ship (and a 30 Million credit cargo) once. However, I noticed that even though I balance my pips across SYS and WEP, even the most humble of enemies was taking my shields down and doing some serious damage in a matter of moments. I usually got where I was going, but I had a large repair bill when I got there.
So I splashed the cash on some Military Grade Composite bulkheads. It's definitely made the ship more robust, but now, fully laden, the jump range is down to about 16LY.
There's always going to be a trade off between defensive capability and jump range, but I wondered what more experienced Commanders thought was the sweet spot? Stick with the MGC bulkheads and try and make improvements elsewhere, or go for something a little less industrial and hope that between Holly, my pilot, and me, we're able to fend off the bad guys?
Cheers!
Boo