Vulture - not as good as everyone says it is? Or just me?

[[VR] Enexemander]

So I've been playing ED for about a week now, picked it up for 20 quid and been loving it, made a bit of money got a few ships explored a bit. Since the update the money has dried up and decided to become a bounty hunter or do some massacre missions for some money. Looked online to see what the "best" ship for this would be and saw vulture everywhere. So I bought a vulture, kitted it out and went on my merry way. Joined a high conflict zone with my massacre 8 ships, was doing okish, took a bit of time to kill them but I managed to get to 7 and then got absolutely destroyed by one viper I think it was. So am I awful at killing things or is the vulture that bad it gets killed by a ship 3 "levels" below it? Help me out as I got angry and sold my vulture. But got 300 mill to buy something else? What should I buy?

It's you, but that's okay. You're not ready for a Vulture in a CZ yet. For 300 million, you could buy the Fer-de-lance. It has very strong shields (use most of the utility slots for boosters), very nice firepower and great speed. The FDL is the combat ship of choice of many, many commanders.

What you might also want to do is look up some combat tutorials. There are a lot of youtube vids devoted to that. Vindicator Jones has a very nice series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjYeCs5MA18

Good luck out there!

 

[Chaparral]

The Vulture is an amazing heavy fighter. There are some basic considerations to make it ultra-mega fun.

1) Soft power plant. You are going to have to engineer it to boost the MJ output to kit the A rated everything you will want.
2) Build
3) You'll notice that this build WILL NOT WORK without engineering the power plant. You can save some power on the FSD, and system scanner.
4) You will have the edge on maneuverability, but it takes a while to learn how to avoid jousting and stick on the tail of an opponent.
5) Your large hardpoints will allow you to do solid damage against larger opponents.
6) While your learning, wait for the cops to fire on someone, then steal their kill.

Good luck! It's a great ship!

 

[[VR] scipio_77]

Outfitted well and with proper pip management the Vulture will crush any Hazrez NPC, including elites, and it will also easily do conflict zones.Pip engines when out of NPC line of fire, pip shields when in NPC line of fire - boost back out of LOS by using those insane trusters, pip engines... kill, kill, kill. But you will need to know how to dogfight in Elite.

I'm speaking of a non-engineered ship. I have no experience engineering it, I moved on to larger mediums when I started engineering.

You can do priority management in the right UI module window to get enough power to all relevant combat modules.

 

[yolomcbobbinz]

If you got 300mil id buy a fdl. It has stronger shields and hull than the vulture. While its not as nimble as the vulture it makes up for it in firepower, the Fer-De-lance has 1 huge hardpoint and 4 mediums. It'll cost you about 100mil to buy and outfit but its well worth it.

A really good loadout to use is 4 pulse lasers in the class 2 slots and a multi cannon in the class 4 slot. For shields, i personally prefer biweaves in class 5 slot and fill the rest if the internals hull and modual packages and maybe a fuel scoop.

As for the utility mounts i filled them shiled boosters.

 

[Majic-12]

The Vulture is a great ship, but it's tricky to outfit, takes some time to get used to and there's definitely no shame in not liking it if it's not your cup of tea.

 

[JesusRocks1988]

You've only been playing for a week. Skill takes time to develop.

Had you done any engineering on your Vulture? (requires horizons)

And don't quote me on this but I think(?) conflict zone NPC ships have engineering? Someone more knowledgeable will correct or confirm for me soon.

I can't say engineering for certain, but Conflict Zone ships definitely have the unique ability to know exactly when you've pressed the reboot/repair button.

Found that out when the entire zone got aggro against me right after my shields switched off.

The PY-102 Savage Bargain very quickly became the PY-202, if you get my meaning.

 

[Deleted member 110222]

OP, if you want to PM me here on the forums, feel free to do so. These days I primarily play on Xbox. Would be happy to discuss things. We could even wing together as we're on the same platform. And I have a very good network of friends too.

 

[M00ka]

Personal opinion here: I love my Vulture and consider it one of the best ships in the game.

What I really enjoyed about it was when I first bought it. Pre-Engineering, because of the small PP, you just couldn't throw everything A rated into it, you had to THINK, EXPERIMENT, TRIAL and COMPROMISE to get everything working. That one ship probably taught me more about PIP management, how modules work, which weapons are better suited to different roles than any other ship. Once I got everything the way I liked, I actually had a small sense of achievement that I had something special (weird I know lol).

Of course, with Engineering, all of those problems have been thrown out the window .. sigh

 

[Arry]

I can't say engineering for certain, but Conflict Zone ships definitely have the unique ability to know exactly when you've pressed the reboot/repair button.

Found that out when the entire zone got aggro against me right after my shields switched off.

The PY-102 Savage Bargain very quickly became the PY-202, if you get my meaning.

C.Z.s have been brutal for a while now, no matter what ship you fly. There is a theory that sticking to the edges is the way to survive, however; if is hard to stay at the peripheral of the action, when you are the centre of attention.

 

[GammaZ]

Unique thing about vulture is combination of its large guns and maneuverability. It allows playing around with all the different guns, testing how they work in different conditions. There are also few very fun weapon configs which were already mentioned - dual PA-s, dual frags....
Other than that... it is still small ship, it has limited amount of power, shield, armor etc. You can partly compensate with maneuvering / avoiding getting shot at, but it only works with one or may be two targets, any more than that and you have to rely on shield/armor for defense. That's why vulture is great for cases when you can control number of targets (RES, assassinations etc) but not so good when you have whole radar filled with red, like in CZ.

 

[Spacecat]

It's you and me.

I read all the raves about how it was the go to cheap killing machine. The first issue I had; was I could not fit a pair of beams and the only power viable fit was a couple of pulses. However: I still felt happier in my Cobra III, So I parked it and saved up for my FDL and never looked back.

In the right hands and with a bit of engineering it is supposed to be a great killing machine, which you either love or hate.

It's better with one beam and one of something else (MC or FC). For the price, it's a decently maneuverable and capable combat ship.

 

[Schmack]

During the 1.4 days, or so, it was the real deal. Imagine back then if you could have engineered the power plant.

With VR it's a real treat.

 

[orange_apecs]

Love the Vulture. Great combat ship.
Always had mine fitted with a Beam Laser and Multi Cannon. Plus A and D class shield boosters (1 of each). Chaff and Point defence help as well. Use a military hull with some hull reinforcement.
If you've unlocked Felicity go see her (if not dig out the Cobra and do a bit of the Road to Riches exploration to get Scout Exploration rank - Google it). Overcharge the power plant and upgrade the thrusters and add a bit of jump range.
Then go see Todd the Blaster and upgrade the multi cannon. Add a special effect (corrosive shells are good). Engineer as high capacity to offset the 20% drop for corrosive shells.
It'll be the combat ship that you keep going back to for laughs.

 

[4gui4]

Vulture is the first ship can take serious hits and the canopy is weak is kinda contradictory and have power issues.

 

[sb413197]

Unengineered it's not that great. Engineered it is a force of nature.

 

[Mars Starcruiser]

Loved vulture in a wing, just hated solo’ing in one because of pore boost speed. Sadly I think asp explore now has a better time-to kill thanks to corrosive negating the apv problem of small guns.

 

[Stealthie]

Unengineered it's not that great. Engineered it is a force of nature.

This.

The Vulture is something of a "project ship".
Buy one, throw a bunch of modules and weapons at it and the results will be "meh".

Get the modules and weapons engineered for a specific purpose and it really comes alive.

Completely contrary to what I'd usually advise, the FIRST thing you should do with a Vulture is to take the PP (possibly in another ship) and go and get a G5 Overcharged mod' for it.
The PP will is always going to be the limiting factor for a Vulture build so you might as well just put a G5 o/c mod' on it and be done with it.
Least that way you'll know where you stand when it comes to doing other mod's and you won't be constantly thinking "Okay, this doesn't work now but if I overcharge the PP a bit more it should be okay...."

 

[Sethioz]

So I've been playing ED for about a week now, picked it up for 20 quid and been loving it, made a bit of money got a few ships explored a bit. Since the update the money has dried up and decided to become a bounty hunter or do some massacre missions for some money. Looked online to see what the "best" ship for this would be and saw vulture everywhere. So I bought a vulture, kitted it out and went on my merry way. Joined a high conflict zone with my massacre 8 ships, was doing okish, took a bit of time to kill them but I managed to get to 7 and then got absolutely destroyed by one viper I think it was. So am I awful at killing things or is the vulture that bad it gets killed by a ship 3 "levels" below it? Help me out as I got angry and sold my vulture. But got 300 mill to buy something else? What should I buy?

Vulture is good starter fighter, but in conflict zone it's not really good as you have to fight several ships at same time. If you get destroyed in Vulture, you're clearly doing something wrong. you need to have common sense and run when there's no chance of winning the fight, there's no point staying and losing your ship.
Vulture is fast and manouverable, you can easily get out of harm's way.

I used to fly a Vulture for quite a while, until i swapped it out for FDL and FAS, but I was doing bounties and not combat bonds. I'd recommend a Chieftain tho, it's about 17 mil and is far more superior than Vulture. FAS aint bad either, but you need a federation rank for it and FDL is good too, but less manouverable than Vulture.

 

[Aashenfox]

If you took out 6 or 7 ships in a conflict zone without engineering in your first week, you're doing alright, well done. The Viper Mk4 is no joke, it has 4 hardpoints, they can kill an unengineered ship quick. Deploy chaff!

For 300m I'd build an FGS for pve slaughter, but focus on unlocking engineers for now, if you want to feel OP in combat.

 

[Aashenfox]

This.

The Vulture is something of a "project ship".
Buy one, throw a bunch of modules and weapons at it and the results will be "meh".

Get the modules and weapons engineered for a specific purpose and it really comes alive.

Completely contrary to what I'd usually advise, the FIRST thing you should do with a Vulture is to take the PP (possibly in another ship) and go and get a G5 Overcharged mod' for it.
The PP will is always going to be the limiting factor for a Vulture build so you might as well just put a G5 o/c mod' on it and be done with it.
Least that way you'll know where you stand when it comes to doing other mod's and you won't be constantly thinking "Okay, this doesn't work now but if I overcharge the PP a bit more it should be okay...."

Woah! Never, EVER put a G5 overcharge on a powerplant, unless you ABSOLUTELY have to. You want to do as MINIMUM an overcharge as you can to power what you've got. Also, don't forget that G5 armored now gives 17% extra power production with oversize special.