Ships Vulture Exploration. Because.

[Good Whiskey]

I'm in love with my little Vulture. There is a simplicity to this machine that makes it stand out. The cockpit. The hardpoint placement. The overall design. It's so basic and sensible and clean. And functional. Its sole purpose is to have those two big guns pointed at something that will soon explode. It is a combat ship, and nothing else.

But I'm a big fan of the impossible. Here's my attempt at doing it.

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

s.orbis.zone

38ly range with a stripped down, overcharged 3D plant. Lightweight everything. That's all I could squeeze out of her. And it's frustratingly clear that the one thing holding this beauty back from being a bit more reasonable as an exploration vessel is the restricted optional 5. Were that restriction to ever be lifted, we could drop a 5H FSD booster in there without having to sacrifice the scoop, and we'd be in the region of about 45ly. It would also allow me to remove one of those tiny emergency AFMUs and replace it (and the 1H booster) with a 1A repair controller and a 2T rack for a couple of cheeky limpets. Sadly, that restricted 5 means that unless we're using the Vulture for combat, one of its two largest optional internals is just dead in the water. And there is no way in hell that a 1A scoop is an option, because parking myself on top of stars for up to 4 minutes at a time on long journeys sounds only marginally worse that having my teeth pulled without any anesthetic.

Call me crazy for wanting to do this, because there are far better ships to explore in... and I don't want the Vulture to be some sort of multi-role hybrid nonsense boat... but I enjoy being in it so much that there's something really appealing about corrupting it just a bit in order to have more fun with it.

So, is there any way that I could actually improve this build for what I'm trying to do, or is this the limit?

 

[Just Paul]

Put a 3A armored thermal spread PP in it, still 38ly range and you probably can park at the star for a very long time. With the OC 3D you will overheat every time you just as much as look at the star (heat efficiency 0.94 to 0.32). You could get away with a 2A armored PP too with some modules turned off, no need to power AFMUs if not needed or the SRV hangar in space.

 

[Red_Beard_98]

There's a couple of us wacko's here. This is mine.

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

s.orbis.zone

 

[Good Whiskey]

Put a 3A armored thermal spread PP in it, still 38ly range and you probably can park at the star for a very long time. With the OC 3D you will overheat every time you just as much as look at the star (heat efficiency 0.94 to 0.32). You could get away with a 2A armored PP too with some modules turned off, no need to power AFMUs if not needed or the SRV hangar in space.

Excellent suggestions here. So, swapping the plant works brilliantly. I mean, I could theoretically switch the Guardian FSD and the scoop, but isn't that just less efficient time-wise? Because I'm getting 45ly instead of 38ly, but the added scooping time kinda defeats the point of going that extra distance, right? I'm making the PP switch regardless. Thanks for pointing out the improved heat profile.

There's a couple of us wacko's here. This is mine.

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

s.orbis.zone

I love it, and now I get to ask someone who flies something like this one of my most pressing exploration questions.

How are things out there without a shield? Like, do you find yourself ever running into trouble without it?

 

[Red_Beard_98]

I love it, and now I get to ask someone who flies something like this one of my most pressing exploration questions.

How are things out there without a shield? Like, do you find yourself ever running into trouble without it?

No problems running without a shield. I have taken some hull damage from hard landings, the most in a single landing being almost 10% on a 4g planet that I messed up my approach on but that's what the repair limpets are for and also the reason I did stick a hull reinforcement in the military slot. You could remove the hull reinforcement or downgrade it for a bit more jump range but sitting around 42 ly is good enough for me. My actual build in game is 42.02 max range on a full tank which is a bit more than that build I posted, can't remember what I did different but that's the gist of it anyways!

Edit: There's another forum member who explores in a Vulture as well, @WR3ND , and I think his build is quite a bit different than mine although I did take my inspiration to putter around in this thing from him so he may also have some input for you if he sees this!

 

[Good Whiskey]

No problems running without a shield. I have taken some hull damage from hard landings, the most in a single landing being almost 10% on a 4g planet that I messed up my approach on but that's what the repair limpets are for and also the reason I did stick a hull reinforcement in the military slot. You could remove the hull reinforcement or downgrade it for a bit more jump range but sitting around 42 ly is good enough for me. My actual build in game is 42.02 max range on a full tank which is a bit more than that build I posted, can't remember what I did different but that's the gist of it anyways!

Edit: There's another forum member who explores in a Vulture as well, @WR3ND , and I think his build is quite a bit different than mine although I did take my inspiration to putter around in this thing from him so he may also have some input for you if he sees this!

I hope he does see this. And thank you for breathing some life into this concept with an alternative build.

Life in a Vulture is a dangerous affair either way, so I might actually drop the shield and copy your approach.

 

[Red_Beard_98]

Some things I took into consideration while building this:

1) It's not a Vulture if it has no weapons. Stick on a lightweight, plasma slug PA or Railgun or else other Vultures will laugh at you. I also took the mining laser for the sole reason that it may come in handy either for myself or someone else to gather materials from asteroids for jumponium. There's a thread I read a while back that made me think it's a good idea although it is something you are very unlikely to use.

2) I went with 5D thrusters which I found to be the best for performance vs weight. A little extra speed to escape is never a bad thing

3) I have a habit of keeping Thrusters, FSD and Life support running on 40% power in the very rare case of PP malfunctions hence the 4A PP. It would take some pretty bad piloting to get your PP to the point it is malfunctioning but if you want to stay out there for extended times it is something to consider.

4) Because I'm running shieldless I decided to include chaff and point defense. I figure between all the utilities on that ship I should be able to escape any attempted gank. Maybe. Also part of the reason for the hull reinforcement; I don't like being too squishy.

5) I took the size 4 scoop and size 5 FSD booster so I could squeeze out some extra jump range. The 4A scoop is more than enough for a size 3 fuel tank.

6) I went with mass manager over deep charge for the FSD just to give me that little extra cushion on my fuel. It does sacrifice some jump range but it's negligible.

So as you can see there are some choices I made that aren't really necessary, more just peace of mind things. You can easily drop the mining laser without worry (add another PA?!?). You can downsize the HRP, PP and Thrusters and change the experimental on the FSD without much issue as well.

As for actually route plotting in this thing you do have to be a bit careful. I was experimenting when I first built it so I ran out to the witchhead nebula and back. I didn't filter out any stars and trusted the route plotter to do it's thing. The plotter failed me twice and I had to use jumponium and manually plot to a scoopable star. I also had a very bad moment when I hit 2 unscoopable stars then got hyperdicted on my next jump to a scoopable star (not a problem in the vast majority of the galaxy). I barely made it out of that one. Needless to say while I'm out in the black I filter by star class to plot only scoopable ones (I leave out M as well unless needed to cross a sparse region) and the rare stars.

That should pretty much sum up exploration, Vulture style!

The changes I suggested would make it look something like this

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

s.orbis.zone

EDIT: In the above build I also forgot to drop the PD one size. Do that and you hit 44.01 Ly, pretty darn good for a Vulture if you ask me!

 

[Old Duck]

Where is that W3IRD guy? He is to Vultures what Rick is to Belugas!

 

[Noobilite]

Put a 3A armored thermal spread PP in it, still 38ly range and you probably can park at the star for a very long time. With the OC 3D you will overheat every time you just as much as look at the star (heat efficiency 0.94 to 0.32). You could get away with a 2A armored PP too with some modules turned off, no need to power AFMUs if not needed or the SRV hangar in space.

if you want super luxury go with the lightest A that can do either Low Emissions; Thermal spread or monstered. Best possible scooping experience. You will likely never miss the slight jump range loss.

Vulture Explorer <- Probably not ideal for everyone's use. PP and stuff are for farming guardian sites. When you land the power plant turns off and you get enough power to run everything. Not the best idea though given this doesn't have shields! 8) I use this on my anaconda but my anaconda has shields fitted for landing. I wouldn't land without shields. But if you do want to land you can use the power setup to get a free lander and PD for just the weight. But if you don't have a shield it's probably better to not use ground stuff and replace those with things you can use in space only exploration.

If you are doing cargo and limpets I would think you want a minimum of 4. You could dump and AMFU from the one build and use it instead.

If using limpets always get the ones that cost 0.14mw. They are all interchangable power wise then.

Vulture Space only!

If you are going to repair though then the 1repair limpet only does 60 hull per limpet. And adding the extra hull will make it impossible to repair. It might save you from dying though but the repair limpet is basically useless unless you can land safely and gather lots of mats. Or go through a tone making limpets. Half of which are wasted by the 2 cargo by only getting half of the synth recipe. Which is always 4.

I would intermix for what you want/need for exploration. Ground is way better than mining for gather resources though. But it's very risky as it provides a lot of ways to die. Pure space exploration is much safer and lucrative also. Avoiding limpets all together is must safer unless you have a real bad accident. So, it might be better to dump anything but AMFU and basic space exploration.

Vulture Safe Space Only! <-Change out the utilities as needed.

This build is basically for only ELW hunting and system scanning. It's a money maker! Don't go near anything dangerous at all. Mabye take a mining laser and carefully scoop. But it increases risk potentially and uses more power and jump range. You can potentially ditch the Plasma slug weapon also. And utility if you want.