Type-9 : shielding vs jump range - a n00b has questions...

I don't bother putting weapons on trading ships, for me it's all about making it light as possible and getting best jump range and cargo capacity. I do put on shields, but use the bare minimum just to prevent hull damage landing and taking off. My Cutter does over 50ly and 35ly when loaded with cargo. The only utilities installed are heat sinks and Shutdown Field Neutraliser.
 
The difference between Heavy Duty and Lightweight is only about 1LY. More effective to HD the hull armour and mount a guardian FSD booster.
Yeah but it also will make it more nimble in normal space which is good for reducing time on target.

Actually if you lightweight a reactive surface armor the kinetic and explosives resistances are almost a full equivalent 600 more points than Heavy Duty military grade. Sure if he were flying a Corvette HD reactive surface would be the better choice as he's going to have to tank lots of damage but the goal IMO in a T9 is to try and Ballance defense with as much jump range and agility as you can. I said this was a controversial idea because that is my design philosophy and not everyone agrees. Most people over look light weighting armor because they mistakenly believe it will reduce it's effectiveness when it doesn't.
 
Yeah but it also will make it more nimble in normal space which is good for reducing time on target.

Actually if you lightweight a reactive surface armor the kinetic and explosives resistances are almost a full equivalent 600 more points than Heavy Duty military grade. Sure if he were flying a Corvette HD reactive surface would be the better choice as he's going to have to tank lots of damage but the goal IMO in a T9 is to try and Ballance defense with as much jump range and agility as you can. I said this was a controversial idea because that is my design philosophy and not everyone agrees. Most people over look light weighting armor because they mistakenly believe it will reduce it's effectiveness when it doesn't.

Not to any meaningful degree it won't. Nothing you can do with the Type 9 is going to make an opponent miss it, it's the size of four buildings. So build for durability, heavy duty hull and put a couple of hull reinforcements in the smaller internals.

It'll still fly like a pig no matter what you do with it, so make it tougher and let the docking computer land the pig.
 
I run my Type 9 ( Louise ) shieldless with supercruise, advance docking and a class 4 guardian FSD boost. i use supercruise but don't really use it till i am close to the target. I have been interdicted a bunch of times and managed to escape all but one and it was my fault for not being ready when i got interdicted. thats the key.... follow that circle as soon as u can. everything else is all Cargo space with D rate everything accept A rated G5 engineered FSD drive. i get a little over 40 ly. i am sure i can play a little more with it and engineer it some more to get more out of it. i do take some damage in the slot for not running shields but the extra cargo makes up for and then some.
 
You shouldn't D rate your power plant. Run a smaller A rate instead. That's pretty much a universal truth no matter what you're building for.

eg. a 4A plant produces the same power as a 5D, but produces half the heat doing it and is 3 tons lighter.
Good to know.. i will have to look at my ships again. I always thought D rate for light weight.
 
Here's my current setup:
A rated power plant for max power and heat efficiency, modified with low emission to run cold
7A thrusters and 6A power dist. to boost indefinitely

And the rest speaks for itself. Sure the jump range is pretty terrible with full cargo, but I usually use my carrier if I do trading related stuff.

 
I would echo what others have said.

Take the weapons off and lose the fighter and your NPC crew. You're wasting time trying to fight in this thing when you should just submit to the interdiction and get the hell out again asap.

Based on what you're currently able to do, I would replace the heat sink launcher with another shield booster then have Felicity engineer all 3 (and obviously make sure they're all A-rated before doing so). She can only take them to G1 but its better than nothing. The end result in terms of shield strength will depend on which option you go for. I would personally go for thermal resistant as, in my experience, you're more likely to encounter thermal weapons with NPCs and your unengineered 6A shield generator doesn't deal well with thermal damage when compared to explosive and kinetic.

That should give you sufficient protection while you escape.

That said, multiple encounters (one after the other) will wear you down so accessing other engineers such as Lei Cheung (who can engineer your shield generator up to G5 and boosters up to G3) would be useful. His primary requirement is trading in at least 50 markets which you've probably already managed.
 
That said, multiple encounters (one after the other) will wear you down so accessing other engineers such as Lei Cheung (who can engineer your shield generator up to G5 and boosters up to G3) would be useful. His primary requirement is trading in at least 50 markets which you've probably already managed.

G3 shields + G5 Boosters from Didi gets you better shields than what Lei Cheung can provide.
And G3 shields can be obtained very early in the game from Elvira Martuuk
 
TBH long term you'll get more value from hull beef on the Type 9.

Its shield base is weedy and unless you use up far too large a slot you're going to be over your optimal hull mass so lose even more to that.

On the other hand it has quite a lot of base armour and you can add to that nicely with a couple of small hull reinforcements engineered for heavy/deep.

If for some godforsaken reason you wanted to take your Type 9 into a serious fight, you could do something like this with it: https://s.orbis.zone/ern4
 
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