Newcomer / Intro What are you up to?

[aRJay]

Okay, that were quite a few answers. To multiquote and answer them all would take me days ,thus here my answer(s):

First off, I don't intend to make money by killing every NPC that isn't hiding behind the next moon on three.

My main way to make money right now is doing courier runs. It gives me a nice amount of money, the odd material I could need and is just what I need right now to have some fun. Right now, I am doing these runs with an AspX. It is a nice ship and built right, it is sturdy enough to survive the onslaught of those big guns long enough to jump away. But fighting a 'deadly' NPC in a 'Conda with it isn't advisable.
But my contractors often give some nice boni for getting rid of those goons. I wouldn't mind getting that extra money.
And, as I mentioned in the other post, I want to expand into delivery missions, which surely will have me find every pirate of the quadrant sailing on my wake. Here would getting rid of some of them give me a little breathing room between interdictions.

I should go and get some sleep. I keep losing track of my thoughts.

o7

The Asp Explorer is a great ship for that sort of work, with a jump range 30% better than the best of the Federal ships it will take fewer jumps so fewer opportunities for attacks.
I used one fairly effectively for combat back in the day when I only had a single ship but that did involve making it a solid lump of reinforcement modules.

You shouldn’t have to fight a random Deadly NPC until you are at that sort of rank, of course the non random NPCs that are part of a mission will be based on the advised rank of the mission.

Learning how to beat the interdiction, a combination of ship* and learning, will give you as much breathing space as you need.

*A surprisingly good ship for this is the Type 7 unfortunately it is a large pad ship which rules out some missions.

 

[Miscellaneous]

Yeah I know we have xeno concerns but what of the HUMAN PROBLEM?

21/21

I turned their settlement into a disturbment then back into a final settlement​

 

[CMDRQuainMarln]

New to forum

I'm flying in a Federal Dropship at the moment; bought the game a week or so after release, played for a while, then left it, another brief spell in 2019, and back to it now (Horizons) after a couple of years away and thoroughly enjoying it. Currently having fun doing increasingly risky courier and delivery runs, with plenty of trading on the side, and the odd bit of salvage too. In short - playing like I used to on Frontier back in the day!

Tempted to upgrade(?) to a Chieftan, but not sure how much it would cost to get it up to the capacity (80 Cargo) of my Dropship.

Welcome
Dropship has a bit more cargo space than a Chieftain, so as an armed small scale trader would seem a better option. Sounds like Krait II or Python is your ideal ship, with Krait II being better for combat but one less size 6 slot for trading when you have the credits.

 

[CMDR Timber McWolf]

The Asp Explorer is a great ship for that sort of work, with a jump range 30% better than the best of the Federal ships it will take fewer jumps so fewer opportunities for attacks.
I used one fairly effectively for combat back in the day when I only had a single ship but that did involve making solid lump of reinforcement modules.

You shouldn’t have to fight a random Deadly NPC until you are at that sort of rank, of course the non random NPCs that are part of a mission will be based on the advised rank of the mission.

Learning how to beat the interdiction, a combination of ship* and learning, will give you as much breathing space as you need.

*A surprisingly good ship for this is the Type 7 unfortunately it is a large pad ship which rules out some missions.

My Asp is stuffed to the brim with hull and module reinforcements and three shield boosters - combined with some mildly upgraded dirty drives, that is good enough to survive the alpha strikes of those (mission related, ideed) 'Condas and whatever big guns they throw at me while my FSD recovers. As I am more likely to tear my ship apart if I try to escape the interdiction, I adopted a different approach. I submit and instantly go to full throttle +boost as soon as I drop out of SC. Most of the time, this gets me far enough away from them to reduce the damage they can deal initially with the next two boosts in short succession (a good distributor does wonders here) effectively getting me out of weapons range (most of the time). On my last tour, I had a really persitant pursuer that managed to interdict me seven times on my way from the hyperspace dropout to the station (it were a few thousand lightseconds down there...). It took him until the penultimate ID to whittle down my shields (set with 2 pips, while 4 on the engine). And even then they weren't able to finish me off - a few dents and dings in the outer hull, that was all.
But if you see that they sent 4 goons after you, of which for each your contractor would pay you 180k credits for elimination, you start to think... And this is where this idea stems from. Especially now that I would like to do some delivery missions as well - the Asp doesn't have any room for cargo and lacks still a little in the overall strength to take one of the reinforcements out again. And I know that the Federal Dropship and her sisters are built quite tanky. They don't seem to be very fast nor agile, yes, but I guess some creative thinking and the help of some engineers might be able to alleviate that issue.

And then there is the thing with my combat rank. I'd like to improve that a bit, even though I'm not the best combat pilot out there.
And blowing (mostly) harmless pilots out of the sky to achieve that is a little tedious.

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

And then there is the thing with my combat rank. I'd like to improve that a bit, even though I'm not the best combat pilot out there.
And blowing (mostly) harmless pilots out of the sky to achieve that is a little tedious.

The thing with combat rank is that you ought to take on equal to, or greater than, your own level. This will maximise your percentage increase. To add further woe (if you can call it that ) is that, when you reach "deadly", you're only half way to Elite...

 

[CMDRQuainMarln]

My Asp is stuffed to the brim with hull and module reinforcements and three shield boosters - combined with some mildly upgraded dirty drives, that is good enough to survive the alpha strikes of those (mission related, ideed) 'Condas and whatever big guns they throw at me while my FSD recovers. As I am more likely to tear my ship apart if I try to escape the interdiction, I adopted a different approach. I submit and instantly go to full throttle +boost as soon as I drop out of SC. Most of the time, this gets me far enough away from them to reduce the damage they can deal initially with the next two boosts in short succession (a good distributor does wonders here) effectively getting me out of weapons range (most of the time). On my last tour, I had a really persitant pursuer that managed to interdict me seven times on my way from the hyperspace dropout to the station (it were a few thousand lightseconds down there...). It took him until the penultimate ID to whittle down my shields (set with 2 pips, while 4 on the engine). And even then they weren't able to finish me off - a few dents and dings in the outer hull, that was all.
But if you see that they sent 4 goons after you, of which for each your contractor would pay you 180k credits for elimination, you start to think... And this is where this idea stems from. Especially now that I would like to do some delivery missions as well - the Asp doesn't have any room for cargo and lacks still a little in the overall strength to take one of the reinforcements out again. And I know that the Federal Dropship and her sisters are built quite tanky. They don't seem to be very fast nor agile, yes, but I guess some creative thinking and the help of some engineers might be able to alleviate that issue.

And then there is the thing with my combat rank. I'd like to improve that a bit, even though I'm not the best combat pilot out there.
And blowing (mostly) harmless pilots out of the sky to achieve that is a little tedious.

You are facing the issue that there is a big price gap between ASP X and the Krait MKII or Python that better fits your play style. The Feberal Dropship if you have the Federation Rank, or the Alliance Challenger if you have the extra credits, do seem to the stepping stones to the Krait/Python you need. Both are tanky and heavy with mediocre jump range, but good enough for local mission running. These ships don't have amazing shield strength, so are best fitted with a fast recharging bi-weave shield plus boosters so they recover quickly if damaged or dropped.
If engineering is on your mind, my approach would be to get into an end game medium ship like the Krait or Python before investing too much in engineering other than obtaining a a class 5 (only size this comes in) Engineered FSD V1 which will fit in all of the ships mentioned here.

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

\o/

Thanks to a very helpful @Frankymole , I unlocked Rosa Dayette and now I've been invited to a pow-wow with this fellow

This means that I have every single engineer in the galaxy willing to modify my stuff if I want it.

Obviously, one doesn't need all the engineeers open to achieve ones needs but it's a goal I set myself - just for the sake of doing it.

In other news, my pic of the day:

"Step out of the vehicle and place your hands where I can see them!"

 

[aRJay]

\o/

Thanks to a very helpful @Frankymole , I unlocked Rosa Dayette and now I've been invited to a pow-wow with this fellow

This means that I have every single engineer in the galaxy willing to modify my stuff if I want it.

Obviously, one doesn't need all the engineeers open to achieve ones needs but it's a goal I set myself - just for the sake of doing it.

…

He looks ‘armless.

 

[Marvin the Martian]

There was a time when I had a Federal Assault Ship as my main combat ship. That was a long time ago, though, before engineering was available. I remember liking it pretty well, except for the jump range.

And since we're talking about Federal ships, if you've never seen this video about the Federal Gunship it is worth a look. Humorous, a bit profane, and rather accurate for its time. It's a classic.

Spoiler

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ1oBDQHhfM

That video is hysterical.

It also sold me. I'm buying one as soon as I log in.

 

[Codger]

That video is hysterical.

It also sold me. I'm buying one as soon as I log in.

Sounds like fun!

 

[aRJay]

My Asp is stuffed to the brim with hull and module reinforcements and three shield boosters - combined with some mildly upgraded dirty drives, that is good enough to survive the alpha strikes of those (mission related, ideed) 'Condas and whatever big guns they throw at me while my FSD recovers. As I am more likely to tear my ship apart if I try to escape the interdiction, I adopted a different approach. I submit and instantly go to full throttle +boost as soon as I drop out of SC. Most of the time, this gets me far enough away from them to reduce the damage they can deal initially with the next two boosts in short succession (a good distributor does wonders here) effectively getting me out of weapons range (most of the time). On my last tour, I had a really persitant pursuer that managed to interdict me seven times on my way from the hyperspace dropout to the station (it were a few thousand lightseconds down there...). It took him until the penultimate ID to whittle down my shields (set with 2 pips, while 4 on the engine). And even then they weren't able to finish me off - a few dents and dings in the outer hull, that was all.
But if you see that they sent 4 goons after you, of which for each your contractor would pay you 180k credits for elimination, you start to think... And this is where this idea stems from. Especially now that I would like to do some delivery missions as well - the Asp doesn't have any room for cargo and lacks still a little in the overall strength to take one of the reinforcements out again. And I know that the Federal Dropship and her sisters are built quite tanky. They don't seem to be very fast nor agile, yes, but I guess some creative thinking and the help of some engineers might be able to alleviate that issue.

Using the engineers and with some access to Guardian technology the Dropship can look something like this.

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

coriolis.io

And then there is the thing with my combat rank. I'd like to improve that a bit, even though I'm not the best combat pilot out there.
And blowing (mostly) harmless pilots out of the sky to achieve that is a little tedious.

As has been said it is a long process with each rank needing more kill points than the one before. If you get an NPC fighter pilot for any Ship Launched Fighters you may fit then be aware that if you use them in a fight they will take half your points as well as their cut of any money you earn.

 

[Marvin the Martian]

And then there is the thing with my combat rank. I'd like to improve that a bit, even though I'm not the best combat pilot out there.

It's by far the longest process in the game.

I bought the game at the end of March but didn't get into playing heavily until April of this year. I made Elite Trade rank with ease. I then made Elite Explorer with ease once I got my Krait Phantom up to snuff and going.

I've killed literally thousands of ships and am only at 24% of the way through the Master rank. You can make some serious bank with massacre missions, but for whatever reason they keep feeding me medium ranking enemies to kill. It is tedious. VERY tedious. That's why I pretty much only do it now every once in a while for fun these days.

 

[Ashnak]

Yes... I remember some discussion about this video. Keep in mind that this was six years ago. In the meantime, people have noticed that some of the MCs have a large spin-up time, which makes this build a bit more problematic than shown in this video.
If you have the time and materials (I currently don't) and a few powerplay goodies, this build looks... promising. Not really great on shields, agility or speed, and you can pretty much forget about that 1800 m core range due to the weapons spread - but basiacally anything short of maybe a T-10 you can get in front of you within maybe 500 meters (haven't seen hostile NPCs in Cutters outside of a CZ yet) should vaporize instantly.

 

[Ashnak]

Using the engineers and with some access to Guardian technology the Dropship can look something like this.

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

coriolis.io

As has been said it is a long process with each rank needing more kill points than the one before. If you get an NPC fighter pilot for any Ship Launched Fighters you may fit then be aware that if you use them in a fight they will take half your points as well as their cut of any money you earn.

Errmmm... you might want to think about it. As shown, the guns will be powered off as soon as you deploy them.

 

[Marvin the Martian]

people have noticed that some of the MCs have a large spin-up time

Only the large one. It's the biggest drawback to the Krait Mk II as well. It's not THAT bad. I think people that play this game are, generally speaking, spoiled and lazy about most things. They want everything to have an "easy" mode so they can be brain dead and still take out anything with the click of a trigger or push of a button.

In my Krait Mk II, I've learned to time it to where I start spinning up as I come out of a turn and by the time I complete the turn and the guns start firing I've come around to have them on target.

I'm sure the Gunship will be the same way.

 

[aRJay]

Errmmm... you might want to think about it. As shown, the guns will be powered off as soon as you deploy them.

Oops!

Revised build edited into original post.

 

[aRJay]

Only the large one. It's the biggest drawback to the Krait Mk II as well. It's not THAT bad. I think people that play this game are, generally speaking, spoiled and lazy about most things. They want everything to have an "easy" mode so they can be brain dead and still take out anything with the click of a trigger or push of a button.

In my Krait Mk II, I've learned to time it to where I start spinning up as I come out of a turn and by the time I complete the turn and the guns start firing I've come around to have them on target.

I'm sure the Gunship will be the same way.

My reaction to this keeping in mind I haven’t bothered with a Gunship in years was you might be out of ammo before you finished the turn.

I was spoiled by the time I had access to any of the Federal ships I had a Fer de Lance to play with.
Not flying Flight Assist off probably didn’t help.

How annoying the spin up time on multicannons is depends a lot on how you fly and fight it isn’t all laziness, said the inveterate turret user.

 

[Marvin the Martian]

The small and medium cannons have no spin up time to speak of. Only the large one. There's only one large one on the Gunship. I just don't see it being that big an issue as I'll just put the large one on left mouse and the mediums and small on the right mouse. Engage the large as I come around so it has time to spin up, then when it's on target and starts firing hit the other button.

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

Now I've unlocked the 'neers, I think I'm going to live in the Colonia area for quite some time... at some point, I need to find a good platinum spot. And it'll be a great staging post for exploration and exobiology - plus, I've found quite a few CZ's now so that takes care of my bloodsport needs.

 

[CMDRQuainMarln]

I need to find a good platinum spot.

Well, Eol Prou IW-W e1-291 planet 8 ring A is decent if not the best I've ever mined, right in the middle of the Colonia mini bubble and 42.39ly away from Zhu Oasis outpost (so medium pads only) in the Benzaiten system that was paying best platinum prices when I was there. A Python with no fuel scoop and grade 5 increased range (so not as good as Engineered FSD V1) can make that round trip. I could reliably make 53 to 60 million inside an hour for the round trip in a Python depending on price on the day.