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Literally Kermit posted:It walks a fine line between between obnoxious obviousness and plausible deniability. If there was no MGS V, this info fluff would still be very at home at elite dangerous, a game full of morally ambiguous mercenaries drift on a sea of endless political driven bullshit. Which happens to be peak Metal Gear. The best poo poo happens when I'm asleep or at work, I swear. Hey, you mentioned wanting to see some experiments with cheapo annoying ship builds - I think I'm going to take that over when I get back home. Got any specific requests for builds/hulls? Sidey, Eagle, Adder? Edit: Thought experiment, a Palwinder build. Exactly how nasty can you make a Sidewinder if we assume you start rom zero and some friendly goon tosses you four tons (a full Sidewinder cargo bay) of palladium? A pretty okay one, turns out. Assuming the about average marketprice of 13,5K per ton of palladium, you're left with a budget of 54K for upgrades (not counting the 32K for the base hull). Note that this is basically just a little more than the cost of a stock Eagle plus a third gun for that dorsal mount (47K with a third pulse laser). This particular design doesn't got for anything fancy or complicated, like power stance dancing or the like (though it does take som power priority management); it's basically a stock Sidewinder simply upgraded in most ways. Upgrading the vast majority of systems into lightweight, low-cost D-grade equipment keeps the final retrofit costs low while (thoretically) vastly inreasing the basic ship's performance - higher agility, better maneuverability, tougher shields. Most vitally the power distributor has been boosted all the way up to B-grade, making the ship much more forgiving in combat - the stock Sidewinder's power generator is actually pretty okay, the problem is getting it where it needs to go. A hull reinforcement package, shield cell bank and chaff dispenser further increase your longevity - I chose to emphatize durability, seeing the Sidey's tanky role in CQC. I chose a B-grade shield cenn bank in particular because while it's cheaper than the A-grade, it also carries an extra cell for a total of 3. If you can trigger your cells properly when you hit the thirty or so percent mark on your shields, you can actually absorb more damage than a stock Viper before the bubble finally fails. Finally, a pair of burst lasers are a minor upgrade over the stock pulses - being able to put out damage in faster bursts mean you can deal a fair amount of damage between evasive maneuvers. Beam lasers would be beter, but require several seconds of uninterrupted burn for maximum effectiveness and are much, much more expensive. Now, I'm not going to say that this is a ship that'll make you invincible - at its heart it's still a Sidewinder, afterall. However, the point is that this thing is cheap, easy to fit, and easy to fly - and, with a few basic skills, can (theoretialy) make for a surprisingly difficult target to actually take out. Shield cell banks and chaff dispensers on an agile hull can be pretty nasty - in my experience many players (partiularly those sticking to a gamepad or mouse&keyboard) rely on gimbaled weapons and being able to gently caress with that is invaluable for adding a couple of seconds of confusion. It's also very cheap and easy to upgrade to something more deadly, either with ship upgrades or simply replaxing it with an Eagle own the line (once you can afford a proper fit). Replacing one laser with a gimbaled multicannon would give you moe punch against armor (at the cost of adding another key bind ot keep a track of) and the hull reinforcement package can be switched out for the original cargo bay, fuel scoop, or an auxiliary fuel tank.. There's also the fact that, well.. it's a Sidewinder. The vast majority of players move up from it to more exciting ships the moment they have the chance to - hell, some of the pople who preordered likely never flew thiers any further than claiming their Freagle on launch. NPC sidewinders are weak and braindead, little more than flying target practice - motpilots are going to either think a Sidewinder plyer is n easy newbie or just plain ignore them. having one turn up that actually puts up a decent fight might ad just enough confusion to help. Did I say one? I mean eight. Afterall, we're goons. One of these thigns might not be much of a threat, bt a whole wing or even two, acting in concert over voice cooms and hopefully lead by a bigger tougher ship? That'll be pretty drat nasty. We are Goons. Our freewinders will blot out the sun, and they shall fight in the shade. Drake_263 fucked around with this message at 09:46 on Sep 16, 2015 |
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Sep 16, 2015 07:45
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Fanzay posted:Op: Power Bottom? I know! Can't wait to give that thing a spin, though the lowered maneuverbility sounds like a shame.
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Sep 16, 2015 09:49
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Crimson Harvest posted:I'm trying to do an imperial navy promotion quest to bring in a stolen black box or something, do I just go look for unidentified signals in the specified system? Yes.
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Sep 16, 2015 10:39
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Raskolnikov2089 posted:Does mass/shielding affect damage given dealt ramming a ship? The damage inflicted by a collision seems to be calculated fairly realistically based on the mass and relative velocities of the ships involved - so yes, adding armor and reinforced (B-grade) components to your ship would make you a more dangerous rammer/rammee. That said, the calculations seem to heavily (ha!) favor the bigger, fatter ship in the equation - you could probably ram the poo poo out of a Cobra or the like in an uparmored Sidey, but you'd likely just bounce off an Anaconda. Edit: THere was actually an interesting bug in the early open beta phase, where NPC ships like Federal fighters and the like were treated as having infinite fuel for logistics purposes. HOWEVER, for some reason they were also considered to have infinite fuel.. for their mass purposes. I saw teenytiny federal condors ram the poo poo out of an Anaconda like an enormous guided missile thanks to their obscene mass paired with all the speed and agility of a spider monkey on crack. Drake_263 fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Sep 16, 2015 |
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Sep 16, 2015 18:43
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So for medical reasons irrelevant to the point of the discussion, I've got today and likely the rest of the week off. This leaves me with plenty of time to theorycraft. Note that these builds are purposefully intended to be cheap - you could, with most ships, just ram them full of A-grade equipment, but the point here is to get as effective a vessel with as little money as possible. That said, I'm more than happy to discuss 'a given ship hull and unlimited budget' builds, as well. Squawking Eagle Case in point, this Eagle here. The Eagle is a fast, nimble, deadly interceptor, so I went with a build that emphatizes the design's strengths. Namely, it's fast as balls. The most important components to our purposes - the primary thruster array and power distributor - have been upgraded to A-grade (the 3A thruster array admittedly accounting for about two thirds of the retrofit's 750K pricetag - a low-cost alternative is to stick with a 3B model, which does hinder your maneuverability and frameshift range somewhat). Armed with a pair of fixed beam lasers (explaining most of the power draw, along with the high-performance thrusters) in the ventral mounts and a gimbaled multicannon in the dorsal mount, supported by a chaff dispenser and a shield cell bank, the Squawker should make for an exceedingly nasty and very, very, very annoying dogfighting ship. The power generator is a heavyweight B-grade model to support the increased power draw, but the rest of the equipment is low-cost, lightweight D-grade - in fact while we're carrying a full compliment of guns and secondary equipment, our weight has gone down four tons, while the thruster array is optimally rated for about half again our mass. Frankly I'm afraid this thing might be a little too agile for some pilots. Yes, you can't take much damage, but the sheer agility of a lightweight turbocharged Eagle means you should easily be able to win most turning fights and simply stick to a target's blind angles. The rock to your scissors are ships with a heavy compliment of turrets, but that's why the God-Emperor invented chaff. The empty C1 internal bay you can alter to your liking - a hull reinforcement package if you feel like having some extra health, or an auxiliary fuel tank or a fuel scoop for extended travel range. (Speaking of travel, the lighter weight of the ship means our frameshift range has gone up to 10.5-11 LY per jump - not superb, but an improvement over the stock model!) As a sidenote, like with the tanky Sidey outlined earlier, this Eagle is somewhat designed to mirror its CQC counterpart - this way a newbie pilot can use CQC as a cheap training tool of sorts. As with the Sidewinder, the Eagle's weakness is larger ships - the default dogfighting build is perfectly capable of handling ships up to about Cobra size by itself, but struggles to inflict damage on larger, heavier vessels - at least singly. Frankly the idea of three or four of these things acting in concert is scary - just one Eagle can make for a supremely frustrating target to corner down, let alone when there's a whole wing of them. Death of a thousand cuts, anyone? And while we're on a roll, another design I was toying around with.. Blasted Adder The Adder, I feel, is one of those underappreciated designs out there. It's small, it's surprisingly nimble (as long as you haven't crammed twenty tons of biowaste in the back), kinda fat and makes funny noises. It's kind of like a Hauler and a Cobra3 had a derpy baby. It doesn't help that the vast majority of NPC adders out there are lovely (often shieldless) smuggler/pirate/miner builds that tend to disintegrate when you fart into their general direction. It is, also, currently the smallest, cheapest, and fastest way of getting into a ship capable of carrying a C2 weapon. This is of high interest to us. Essentially I took an Adder, crammed in as powerful a thruster array as I could, buffed the shields and power distributor, and filled up the weapon/utility mounts. With a couple of empty internal bays, this thing is actually a ton and a half lighter while carrying an identical thruster array to the Squawker - with an 8/10 maneuver rating (roughly equivalent to the Sidewinder) and a supercharged thruster array, this thing should actually be quite maneuverable for a glorified cargo shuttle. A 3A shield generator and a 2B shield cell bank paired with a chaff dispenser make you pretty drat tough for an Adder. FInally, for utility equipment, I added a KW-scanner and a frameshift interdictor - unlike the Sidewinder and the Eagle, the Adder has internal room to spare. (In fact, there's an empty C3 and C1 internal bay you can feel free to customize to fit your style). Now, those weapons. A pair of fixed burst lasers is pretty much on par with the previous ships I've touched upon, and then there's the C2 mount - But Draaaaaaaake/Zhoooorrrrr, I hear you groan. Torpedos are bad and expensive as gently caress! Actually, the humble and oft-misunderstoodt torpedo pylon has its benefits. See, the limited ammo count on a torpedo pylon makes them bad for 'general' play - most people wanting something to knock over heavy armor would go with a C2 cannon, railgun, or plasma accelerator. Let's do a quick price comparison: C2 PAC (Fixed): 834,200 CR plus ammo (200CR per shot) C2 Railgun (Fixed): 421,800 CR plus ammo (200CR per shot) C2 Cannon (Fixed): 168,430 CR plus ammo (20CR per shot) C2 Torpedo Pylon: 44,800 CR plus ammo (15,000 CR per shot) So in fact, with the cost of a single C2 plasma cannon you can buy a torpedo pylon and 52 replacement torpedos. Yes, in the long, long, long run, plasma cannons, railguns and the like are going to be more cost-effective than torps. Yes, when you sell the plasma cannon you'll get its cost back, unlike spent torps. However, for a cheap and dirty 'I'm going to buy and fit this real quick and go ruin some pubbie's day with my buddies' build, the torpedo pylon can't be beat. Furthermore, torpedos are largely self-contained - the power drain and thermal load of a torpedo pylon are negligible compared to a power-hungry and heat-intensive plasma cannon or railgun. This means you don't have to refit the rest of the ship to handle the increased load on your systems, further making them a surprisingly cost-effective option. Since the Adder has but a C2 power distributor, this makes things easier since we only need to worry about the lasers. Anyhow. This particular weapon loadout essentially makes you into an improvised two-shot bomber - you come in, attached to a wing of fighters (preferably Eagles, in our 'cheap fast ships' doctrine). Since you have a FSD interdictor, chances are you're the person who picked the target and yanked them down to play. You engage with your lasers, helping the other ships down the target's shields while maneuvering yourself into position. The moment their shields come down, you cram a torpedo down their afterburner. Try and target an important subsystem like their main drive, frameshift drive, power plant or shield generator - torpedoes being seeker weapons, they will attempt to actively home in on a targeted subsystem. The downside is, if they're carrying point defense, you have to get as close as possible before you release the torpedo - the further you pop your load from, the longer their PD has to try and shoot your torpedo down. A couple of torps is generally enough to neuter all but the largest ships - you just need to stay alive long enough to fire both torps. (Chances are they're going to become very interested in you once they figure out you came loaded for battleship). Once you've spent your torpedos, you're basically a bigger tougher funny-looking Sidewinder, so fly like one. A less-gimmicky but perfectly functional build switches out the torpedoes for something like a C2 cannon, multicannon or simply a laser of your preferred flavor. This basically makes you into a babby's first gunship - a surprising amount of punch for something of its cost, and better for general 'let's hang around in this area and kill pirates/annoy pubbies' ops. Torpedoes are more intended for taking out a single high-profile target fast, like ganking an annoying enemy Python or the like. Drake_263 fucked around with this message at 09:52 on Sep 17, 2015 |
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Sep 17, 2015 08:28
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Dabir posted:I can see one immediate and obvious problem with this: The power plant isn't big enough to support everything you need for combat when deployed. An A-class power plant will do it. This is.. entirely true, and I have no idea how I managed that. It worked at one point, and then I must've changed something and not actually looked at the power specs again. Embarrassing! But yes, an A-class power plant will do it (I was trying to figure out how to stick with a cheaper B but it's honestly not worth the effort with that price difference). Screamer 1.01 OB_Juan posted:That Adder really makes me wish we could reload ammunition. As it is, a hypothetical a wing of that Adder and two Eagles would have a hard time getting anywhere due to short jump distance and no scoops. I purposefully left some of the internal equipment bays on the designs to customize for a given mission profile - the Eagle has an empty C1 equipment bay and the Adder an empty C3 and C1 to fit things like fuel scoops, aux fuel tanks and cargo bays into. That said, I love the idea of using the Adder's hefty primary tank and spare cargo bays for a convenient mini-refinery for on-the-fly refueling (I'd actually consider a noncombatant T6 perfect for this job, too). Also note that these designs are more aimed for the 'cheap and dirty' solution - so yes, they're in desperate need of an FSD overhaul. Just switching the Screamer's FSD for an A model will bring your jump range to ~19 LY per jump (and a bit over 18 for the Adder), which is.. pretty damned nice for a fighter. You only get three or so jumps per Eagle tank and five for the Adder, but that's what the scoops are for. You're also correct on the rebuy cost for an Eagle being pretty low, but I like shield cells on fighters. Yes, an Eagle can't take much punishment in the first place, but if you get one off before your shields fall, you've pretty much effectively doubled your shield strength.You're not aiming to win a fight by yourself - you'll be operating in a wing, and every second the other side is taking to try and swat you in your cheap annoying little fighter is another they're not using to shoot your teammates. The longer you stay alive, the longer everybody else stays alive. (That said, if somebody is trying to design a cheap disposable kamikaze eagle for maximum annoyance, I'd love to see what you come up with!)
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Sep 17, 2015 20:12
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Just for a blast from the past, I took a look at the Viper. Bounty Hunter This is pretty much the loadout I used to fly back in the glory days of the Viper, when the gottagofast space wedge was pretty much the biggest dedicated combat ship. I'd actually pick up those 'go kill us this named elite Anaconda' missions, three or four at a time, and then trawl through systems hunting down big fat pirate lords. It was fast, it was fun, it was glorious. Anyhow. Abandoning the 'let's see how much we can squeeze out of a lovely hull' mindset, while the Viper certainly has had its spot as King poo poo of Punch Mountain supplanted by newer designs (the Vulture, in particular), I feel the Viper is still very much worth a fly. It's still one of the fastest, if not THE fastest ship in the game. It's still the cheapest and most easily-accessible design in the medium fighter 'two light hardpoints and two medium hardpoints' class. Although the Vulture is more durable, the Viper also still has a respectable amount of shielding for a ship its size (and maintains a smaller target profile). (It's also extraordinarily fun to fly). The biggest thing to remember when you're fitting out a Viper (and, to a degree, the other dedicated fihters like the Eagle and Vulture) is that you're typically strangled for power. Most of the time you can have big fancy guns or a tough ship, not both. I chose to go with a tough high-speed design, which limited my choice of weapons severely - big C2 guns like railguns and PACs were right out thanks to their heavy power demands and heat output. Instead, my main weapons are a pair of C2 cannons, backed by a pair of C1 beam lasers. Take the shields down with lasers, target a juicy subsystem, get close and let 'er rip - if you can position both shots on target, just a couple of swoops can cripple a subsystem on an Anaconda-type target. Now, most of the time I advocate going with fixed laser weapons and gimbaled kinetics for ease of aim. You just line up the lasers with your target and the gimbal for the kinetics does the rest. Here, however, I went with the opposite - for several reasons. First off, gimbaled energy weapons actually take up less energy than equivalent fixed weapons, while gimbaled kinetics take up more. It's not a huge difference, but with an already-strained generator every bit counts. Second-off, gimbaled weapons lose about a quarter of their damage output, and I wanted to stick with bigger primary guns instead of diluting the impact the main cannons would have. Third, while the cannons are a pain in the rear end to aim with they're at least unaffected by chaff. (I've found that with certain pubbies, just knowing how to aim with fixed guns will get you accusations of hacking because clearly chaff should be an unbeatable invisibility cloak). Last but definitely not the least, the C2 wing mounts on a Viper sit so far back along the belly of the ship that they have pretty much zero traverse upwards. In this case the benefit you'd get from gimbals down there is so miniscule over the loss of firepower that it's just not worth the tradeoff. (If this was a Cobra, I'd definitely consider gimbaled main guns, seeing as the C2 mounts are right there on your nose). (If you're thinking of a more doghfighter build, the obvious simple retrofit just switches the C2 cannons for C2 multicannons - I still recommend fixed weapons, unless your aim is truly atrocious). Defense-wise, mil-spec armor, paired with an C3A shield generator, a C2B shield cell bank and a C3D hull reinforcement package give you a decent amount of survivability, particularly when paired with a chaff dispenser. (Back in my day we didn't have hull reinforcement packages, so I used to go with a fuel scoop - the scoop is lighter and gives you more strategic range, but the HRIP is a zero-power boost to toughness that the Viper definitely appreciates. Everything else is more or less scaled to 'how much more can I get out of the reactor', priority given to the thruster array and power distributor. Tweak and balance to your liking - one 'gently caress everything' type build like this downgrades the sensors and life support and removes the FSD interdictor in favor of a fuel scoop and a B-grade shield booster for further increased longevity (at cost of flexibility). The big kicker here is that while we're using a lot of A- grade technology, the total cost of the ship will stay well underneath five million - a relatively easy sum for even a new pilot to work their way into with a bit of help and guidance. Most pilots will want to avoid tangling with a whole wing of Vipers on the warpath - or if they don't, they will learn.
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Sep 17, 2015 21:10
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Adult Sword Owner posted:Where do I buy those 3A's you used on the Viper? Back when I was flying mine I shopped in the Beta-1 Tucanae / Atlantis / Caspatsuria triangle. Most high-tech worlds seem to stock a vast variety of Viper-compatible equipment, though. I'm currently in Xihe and while I haven't checked I think you'll find most of the bits you need/want there, too. RabidWeasel posted:Viper Mk. IV want
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Sep 17, 2015 22:35
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*makes a highly unmanly noise*   I now have a Python EEEEEEEE
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Sep 18, 2015 15:04
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I've a friend who has a thing for purple, you wouldn't have a good purple one handy? Preferably one leaning towards more of a royal purple - the kind of purple you see on the Vibrant packs - than pinkish neon purple.
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Sep 19, 2015 06:15
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Option B, imagine finding a Python in the assend of nowhere for like 25M, jumping on it, and then realizing the previous owner fitted it with a C2E FSD before selling it. ANd the station won't sell FSDs big enough for a Python. Predatory house flipping, Elite style.
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Sep 26, 2015 17:20
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I have the X52 Pro and it's been working out pretty well for me. The little scrollwheel on the throttle sometimes acts up (basically it'll randomly think it's being scrolled down, even if it's actually scrolled up at the time) and sometimes holding down the pinky trigger makes it randomly trigger inputs on the top of the stick, but aside from that it's a good stick. Still haven't figured out how to make the little thumbstick on the throttle work in Elite, though.
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Sep 28, 2015 06:44
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Truga posted:The little thumbstick actually presents itself as a mouse, like those nipples on laptops. If you want to use it as an extra joystick, you need to do some registry fiddling, and it involves sacrificing another axis for it, because for some reason most game engines are crap (unfortunately this includes elite) and only support 8 axis per device (x52 already has 7 axis). Eh, I appreciate the effort but I don't really need the little ministick - I was originally going to use it for eyepoint control, but then I got an 'Edtracker. Appreciate the sentiment, though!
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Sep 28, 2015 09:11
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lewtt posted:I'll give that a shot, thanks Paramemetic posted:All Courier loadouts are sensible because it is God's gift to us. A rate everything but life support and sensors. Put a 3A blue shield on it and 2 A boosters, and 2 chaff or a KWS and 1 chaff. Put any guns you want on it after that. 3 beams is hilarious, 3 pulse is simple and lets you keep your banks out, 2 beams 1 cannon is good, 2 MC 1 beam is good. One note to this - I recommend whatever weapons you put into the wing banks should be gimbaled or seeker launchers. The wing pylons are so far from eachother that they have poo poo all for convergence at short ranges - it's not as bad as the Cobra's wing mounts but comes pretty drat close. A nice cookie cutter build would be a fixed laser in the nose mount and a pair of cannons or multicannons in the wing banks (or vice versa, a pair of gimbaled lasers in the wing pylons and a big gun of your choice in the chin mount). Plasma cannons or railguns should definitely go in the chin mount for obvious reasons.
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Sep 29, 2015 14:45
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Literally Kermit posted:https://community.elitedangerous.com/node/300 Mite bigger than a fighter jet, actually: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4bEQlVvUvI Elite ships are frikken' huge and I love it!
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Oct 3, 2015 15:23
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DatonKallandor posted:How close do you have to be to get trade dividends? Do you have to be in the same station instance as the person with the ore is selling or is just being in a squad with them good enough? Same station instance, I believe. It's generally expected you're flying as an escort for the dude doing the trading. Also screw you guys, now I'm tempted to fit a pair of C2 mining lasers on the Lady and seeing how much painite I can squeeze out of rocks.. I am the minerpython scrub
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Oct 8, 2015 11:27
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Sgt. Anime Pederast posted:Don't all the ships in cqc have gimbals? They all autotarget It's not based on the ship, but the weapon - some ships like the sidewinder unlock certain weapons that have no gimbals at all. Sidey unlocks a fixed multicannon at level 14 or so, and a gimbaled at 50, for example. Also, a public service announcement for anyone playing CQC: Be aware that the CQC ship guns have a much, much shorter effective range than the ones in the main game. The standard pulses on the condor and sidey will start petering out at something like 750 meters instead of ~2km we're used to in the main game.
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Oct 10, 2015 13:41
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3 posted:Is it just me or has anyone else been sitting in witchspace for way too long today? I think there's something going on with the servers, I've had long
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Oct 12, 2015 23:18
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loving hell. For some reason, painite plus drones equals instant transaction server failure. I was mining earlier today. FIVE times I found a rock with painite, started mining, and the instant a drone with a painite fragment reached my cargo hatch I'd get booted out of the game. What in the actual gently caress,  ?
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Oct 13, 2015 13:42
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Armour is simply a measure of the ship's hull hitpoints, one point of armour equaling one point of damage from a given weapon. (Coriolis indicates a weapon's damage as both plain damage vs. armour, and megajoules (MJ) versus shields). Bulkhead upgrades add a percentage to your armour value (+40% for reinforced bulkheads, +95% for milspec composite), the two more expensive specialized bulkhead types theoretically add a damage resistance/weakness to thermal/kinetic weapons (no specific numbers provided) and hull reinforcement packages are a flat +x armour (on top of the bulkhead bonus, it doesn't get multiplied).
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Oct 15, 2015 09:27
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It's also nice variety from the typical grind. It takes a lot of time, has reasonable challenge and pays well - I've done two Sothis runs and worked up maybe fifty million in two days. I think I'll give it a shot or two more and fund myself a T9.
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Oct 15, 2015 19:16
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The combat benefit of chaff really depends on the ship you're flying. Chaff is best for small, nimble ships like Sideys, Eagles, Vipers, Diamondbacks - I'd say the biggest ships that really benefit from chaff are things like Cobras and Vultures. Any bigger ships than that (I'm looking at you Asp) tend to be so big that even if their gimbals are going nuts, chances are they're going to hit SOMETHING on you. It does, however, keep people in PVP from punking your subsystems regardless of ship size (assuming they're not using fixed guns).
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Oct 16, 2015 06:19
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I managed to so far resist the urge to cheese (mostly because it'd turn out I'd be working until they patched it out) but decided to try sOthis for shits and giggles. I've done three runs that have netted me maybe a total of 130M. Poured the first 20M into upgrading my Python, now I have 110M liquid sitting in my bank account and the last run kicked me up to Enterpreneur. I told myself I'd stop when I can afford a T9, but I'm tempted to go for one last caper, help me! Also, increasingly tempted to buy myself the 'military' paintjob pack on the Frontier netstore so I can fly a giant pink warehouse.  'Military Sand Red' my foot, that's pink.
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Oct 17, 2015 07:38
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I think stealth builds would be most useful in PvP. Computer pilots are surprisingly good fighters, sometimes, but not particularly imaginative - meanwhile most players won't really expect a stealth ship, much less have the skills to deal with one. It's just not a tactic the average joe is prepared to deal with, much like missiles and torpedoes. On a more practical note, stealthing (minimising your heat and/or signature not only makes you show ip as a sensor ghost or not at all, it also makes you unlockable. While it doesn't make you unshootable, it makes you a pain in the rear end to actually hit - particularly for the average pubbie pilot who relies heavily on gimbaled weapons. Cannons and plasma accelerators in particular are near impossible to hit with without the lead indicator, although lasers and railguns are less affected.
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Oct 21, 2015 00:26
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TheresaJayne posted:so get a friend to buy fish, drop it in space, then you scoop. all well and good Tried that with a newbie goon some time back - the stuff I dropped (and didn't abandon) was actually marked 'salvage' rather than 'stolen'. ?
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Nov 5, 2015 14:03
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ps am no frog posted:I want C4 missiles. Just missiles the size of a hauler flying towards you.  That'd be the C4 torpedo 
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Nov 10, 2015 01:52
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That's odd. Weren't they supposed to release the 1.5 beta last night? I fired up the launcher and don't have the option to download.
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Nov 10, 2015 11:46
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Libluini posted:They said the 1.5 beta comes in the week of Monday the 9th, not on Monday the 9th. Also durf, my inner clock is running a day ahead again and I thought it was Wednesday. If they stick to the usual Tuesday patchmas cycle it'll drop tonight, but you never know.
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Nov 10, 2015 12:26
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C4 PACs - I will put it this way, in-universe fluff says they use those fuckers for orbital bombardment when called upon. The sound of the plasma blast ripping through the atmosphere is enough to deafen unprotected humans for miles around the impact site. Also that Cutter and Corvette look both sexy as all gently caress to me. The Cutter will probably follow the Imperial design ethos - powerful engines, a big juicy power plant, enough bays to upgrade the shields a whole class if you want (and the power to run said beefed-up shield generator), paper mache and unicorn farts for hull integrity. If the iEagle, iCourier and iclipper are any indication, it's also going to be sliding around like a Tokyo Drift reject. It is going to be awesome. Meanwhile, I wanted to write something quick and short but gently caress it I can't write short for the life of me when it comes to internet spaceships - have a huge  effortpost!OK tadpoles, gather up. Let's talk about ships. Specifically, let's talk about the Diamondback Scout. Now, people who've been playing and making money for longer will talk about Vultures and Clippers, Assault Ships and Pythons - sure, we're talking about big expensive powerful ships. You, though - you've maybe gotten yourself into a Viper or the like, and you're wondering how to go from there. Maybe you've managed to scrounge up your first million, or had a friendly frog drop you a cargo of platinum or holyshit painite you've never seen so much money in one place, and you want to upgrade. You want something that can go fast and far, packs a solid punch, and won't mind carrying a couple of tons of cargo every now and then. You want the Lakon Diamondback Scout. Now hold on, I hear you saying. This Viper I have (been looking at) has the same exact guns on it. As does that Cobra, and the Cobra-3 is cheaper to boot.. You're right, but while the three designs are similar in certain respects - same hardpoints, named after snakes, all that lark - there're some differences. The Viper is the cheapest of the three. It's fast, it's mean, it packs a hell of a wallop for something its size and has surprisingly sturdy shields, but it's got a tiny fuel tank and an undersized power generator and frameshift drive. I love flying the Viper, but as soon as you start thinking of heading 50+ light years out.. not that hot. No finer cheap shooty ship for popping into that RES the next orbit over every now and then, though. And the Cobra.. ah, the Cobra. She's a workhorse, that one, about three times the price of the Viper. You have the same amount of guns, beefier systems, spacy internal bays - she doesn't have the shield strength of the Viper and her guns are positioned kinda weird, but she does have a sturdy armor, a big fuel tank and a solid FSD. You can easily fit a Cobra to carry 40-odd tons of cargo while packing a respectable punch for a ship costing about half a million or so - if you want to carry cargo from A to B and the dedicated freighter ships feel too undefended for you, the Cobra's a good choice. Also good for fitting a couple of aux fuel tanks and a scoop on and going exploring. However, the Diamondback. At a half mil or so base, she's the most expensive of the three. At first glance she looks like a compromise between the Viper and the Cobra - and that's pretty much exactly what she is, with a distinct identity of her own. First off, most her systems are on par with the Viper's, with the critical generator, thrusters, FSD and fuel tank upgraded to Cobra spec. She's a little bit lighter than the Cobra, but has similar shield and armor profiles - a sturdy hull and okay-ish shields. Same hardpoints as the other two, too. A little bit more internal space than the Viper, nowhere near as much as the Cobra. I'm not going to mince words. The Diamondback-S is about as fast as a Cobra, more nimble, and it's got a beautiful weapon convergence - though it has theoretically similar firepower to the Viper and Cobra, the Diamondback in practice has its guns positioned better for it to bring them to bear (an infamous hurdle for the Cobra) and the power ratings to actually drive all four guns at the same time for extended periods (which can be an issue with the Viper). It has weaker shields than the Viper, sure, but fully upgraded it actually surpasses the Cobra a little bit when it comes to shield ratings while remaining a smaller, more nimble target (the Cobra's wide flat pancake ventral/dorsal profile does it no favors in a dogfight). Granted, the Viper is smaller and tends to make a more difficult target to hit in the first place, but you're built to be able to take a couple of licks and keep on swinging. You also have four utility hardpoints instead of two, which can directly increase your endurance further via extra shield boosters, point defense modules or whatnot. Furthermore, although the DBS starts off more expensive than the Cobra, when fully upgraded it actually ends up about a million cheaper - mostly because the Cobra has to rock around a class-4 shield generator over the DBS' class-3 model. Being more lightweight with an equivalent frameshift range gives birth to the Diamondbacks' greatest benefit - it has flat-out superior frameshift range to either of its competitors. A halfway fit Diamondback can easily hit 15-20 LY per jump, while a fully A-rated model reaches something like 25 LY per jump (and a travel-fit lightweight model, stripped down, can do thirty). It can also do six or so of these jumps in one go before needing a refill. This combination of solid firepower and extensive travel range (with or without carrying a couple of tons of cargo while at it) is what makes the Diamondback a solid ship in my eyes - a Cobra or Viper can be configured for combat, travel or light courier work as necessary, but a Diamondback-S can do all three at the same time. Put together, these features make the Diamondback a particularly solid ship in your early career - you're not bound to a particular system, you're free to move where missions or whims take you, and you don't need to spend time and money refitting your ship everytime you want to switch roles. It is, also, a very, very fun and deadly ship to fly - a solid enough punch paired with a small, nimble chassis to make it difficult target for larger ships to actually hit. It is particularly valuable for a player who does plenty of long-range traveling, or quick strike ops - you don't have to choose between a speedy travel ship and a solid hitter when your fighter is your speedy get-over-there ship. About the only thing it can't do earlygame is carry large amounts of cargo, but that's what the Cobra and later the Lakon-T6 are for. It's also outgunned by larger combat ships like the Vulture and the Fer-de-Lance, but seeing as those cost literally ten and a hundred times as much as the humble DBS does.. Those of you interested in PVP may also appreciate knowing that properly fit Diamondback may also pull the role of a stealth fighter - I'm not familiar with the ins and outs of stealth design myself, but those who are, please feel free to chip in. Weapon Options The way the Diamondback's hardpoints are configured - right around the cockpit, tightly clustered - paired with its high maneuverability makes the Diamondback particularly suited for fixed weapons, while limiting your fire arcs to the back and sides of the ship. Turreted weapons aren't as effective as you might like to be - although let's face it, those are mostly intended for big fat slow ships anyhow. I tend to prefer a couple of fixed laser beams paired with gimbaled kinetics, but nothing prevents you from going the other way if you're confident with your aim. That in mind, some tried-and-true weapons configurations as follows: 2x C1 Beam Laser, 2x C2 multicannons - the quintessential cookie-cutter bounty-hunter. High endurance, high efficiency - down a target's shields with the lasers and chew up their hull with multicannons. Has ammo for hours of fun, but tends to have trouble damaging ships bigger than itself. Really best for mincing up ships about its size and smaller. 2x C1 Beam Laser, 2x C2 Cannon - the big boy bounty hunter. Big bore howitzers increase your oomph against larger ships - particularly when targeting subsystems - but limit your effectiveness against smaller targets. Little nimble ships like the Eagle and iCourier in particular will disintegrate if you can hit them, but will make you work for it. 2x C2 Pulse/Burst Laser, 2x C1 Multicannon/Cannon - Switching your main guns to lasers and using class-1 kinetics ups your oomph against shields and makes you less reliant on ammunition at the cost of reduced output vs. hull. Be aware that the power distributor can't really handle a pair of C2 beams, thus the pulses or bursts. Really have trouble swinging against anything bigger than, say, an Asp. 2x C1 Beam Laser, 2x C2 Railgun - The flying sniper build. Though limited in ammo, your railguns are effective versus both shields and hull and excel at sniping out subsystems on larger ships - cracking shield generators, neutering drive arrays and smashing power plants. Your ammo pool is extremely limited, but you're perfectly capable of outright crippling targets much, much larger than yourself. Consider mounting a heat sink launcher to dissipate the railguns' excessive waste heat. 2x C1 Pulse Laser, 2x C2 Plasma Accelerator - The Plasmaback. This build flies much like the 'heavy bounty hunter' ship, with fixed main guns and a much, much higher heat output/power demand. What you get in return are main guns that are also effective against shields and with superior per-shot damage and armor penetration (subsystem damage) compared to the kinetic cannons. The power distributor, however, can have trouble keeping up with the PACs - thus the low-heat backup pulse lasers. Remember to let your weapons cool down a bit between shots, or you'll end up firing only one PAC at a time. 2x C1 Beam Laser, 2x C2 Dumbfire Missile Rack - Diamondback-K (Kermit Edition). Although missiles were nerfed to be near-ineffective against shields in an earlier patch, dumbfires still remain one of the fastest way at utterly savaging an unshielded hull - targeting subsystems in particular lets you swing a fair amount above your own weight. Your ammunition, however, is expensive (250 credits per warhead) and your ammo pool is fairly limited - this build isn't really effective at long bounty hunting RES runs, but can give you that needed extra edge on an assassination mission. 2x C1 Beam Laser, 2x C2 Seeker Missile Rack - Dogfighter supreme. Seeker missiles are in sort of an odd spot right now - they're effectively negated by shields, point defense turrets and ECM pulsers.. therefore nobody uses seeker missiles. Therefore, nobody uses point defense turrets or ECM pulsers. This build is extremely effective against other fighters - particularly the lighter, more nimble ones - as long as they're not prepared against missiles. If they're loaded up with point defense, you're effectively stuck with two beam lasers. If they're not carrying point defense, they're about to have a Very Bad Day. Has a psychological effect in PVP - most pubbies tend to panic when the  WARNING - INBOUND MISSILE pops up. Unless they're the ultraparanoid type like yours truly who feels the need to mount at least two point defense modules on everything, up to and including the freaking outhouse. The downside is that your ammo is even more expensive (500 CR per warhead, yo) and your ammo reserves are even tighter than with dumbfires. This crosses into the realm of the outright hilarious if you can get your hands on those Pack Hunter swarmer missile racks from Li-whats-his-face.2x C1 Torpedo Pylon, 2x C2 Burst Laser - Loaded for battleship. Even more so than the two regular missile builds, this thing is pretty much the definition of throwing money at a problem to make it go away. Each one of your warheads costs 15K, and you don't carry reloads, period - you pull the trigger once (or twice) and you're done. Again, this isn't really effective for general play, but it's nasty as living gently caress against single big targets, like that pirate lord Anaconda or pubbie autism king with the 250K bounty on him - down the shields with lasers, target the shield generator or power plant, get close and give them a two-kiloton slap on the rear end. Be aware that torpedoes are noticeably slower than seeker missiles - although you can't outrun one of these (unless you're in a Viper or the like, at extreme ranges, and already burning like a motherfucker) the more range you have to your target, the more time they have to shoot your torps down. If your target is packing point defense, you need to pretty much get your nose up their grill before you pull the trigger. Oh, and do yourself a favor and make double-sure the torps are in a fire group you won't trigger accidentally - if you have one of those coolass joysticks with the flip-top guard over a fire button, that's what you want to go for. Torpedoes still do explosive damage and are mostly negated by shields, and nothing sucks more than splashing 30K worth of ordnance on some pubbie's shields. Why C1 torpedo pylons? C2s carry twice the torps but leave you with piddling C1 lasers against heavy shields. On the other hand, if you can convince a wing of goons to fly with you.. Drake_263 fucked around with this message at 04:51 on Nov 11, 2015 |
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Nov 11, 2015 04:47
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Danknificent posted:As long as it's going somewhere, that works for me. Right here and now, this is about scratching my space itch. If it clicks and it's my new gaming home, that'd be great. If not, that's okay too. Note that one of the big things about Elite is how the various ships are, theoretically, all good and useful in their own niches. A ship that costs 10 of 100 times more than yours isn't necessarily 10-100 times more effective than yours - each hull has its own niche, strengths and weaknesses. If your goal in the game is to get into the biggest trade ship to make shitlots of money (that'd be the Lakon T9) that's entirely valid. It is, however, equally valid to find a cheap simple ship you enjoy flying and stick with it. Whatever floats your boat! (My goal? I want to fly every single ship in the game and write lots of about them)
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Nov 23, 2015 19:52
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MisterZimbu posted:Is there a way to tell which direction your ship is pointing? I think it'd be neat to find something interesting in the distance, then find it on the galaxy map and plot a course there; but I don't see anything on the HUD resembling a compass I can use. ManicJason posted:I may have missed an easier way, but I always just point toward something recognizable and far away like a nebula, then go into the galaxy map and point the camera from my current system toward that object. There actually is a navigational compass on the HUD - it's the little circular indicator to the upper left of your radar. Your navigational target (locked station, locked stellar object) is represented by a blue dot. A solid dot in the center of the indicator means it's directly in front of you; a hollow circle is behind you. When you request docking permission from a station it'll even change to point at your assigned pad! Libluini posted:The DBS not so much, if you fit it for exploration you have no cargo, for example. So you can fight and explore at the same time, but if you need cargo space, tough poo poo. I guess as long as you're travelling in the bubble, you could throw out the fuel scoop for some cargo space, though. Thronde posted:DBE or DBS are both good candidates for your cheap do it all ship now it seems. Personally I don't like the DB-Explorer much - sure, it's the cheapest ship with a C3 mount and has a huge travel range, but it's slow on the turn for its size (and not tough enough to make up for it) and is kind of awkward to fit. I quite like the Scout model for a long-range fighter-type ship, though - it's a nice combination of solid and nimble and packs a hell of a jump range for a fighter-type ship.
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Nov 27, 2015 20:00
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jaffyjaffy posted:Picked this up in the sale after a few friends convinced me. It reminds me of X3 without all of the empire building stuff I never bothered to do in X3, which is a good thing. Much like X3 I got into the game (even after reading both OPs and watching the tutorial videos) with that wondeful overwhelming feeling of a space game. If you can get courier/cargo transfer missions on your little SIdewinder, that's a fair way of making a bit of money for your next ship. A more entertaining way is to get yourself a buddy or two and go hunting in an RES - you can locate and scan pirate NPCs, who'll give you bounty vouchers when you get them down. A basic Sidewinder can't handle the bigger ships but things like other Sideys, maybe Eagles or even CObras can be manageable - especially if you have wingmen. As for your next ship, well, that depends on what kind of a gamestyle is your thing. If you want to shoot at people, the two next logical ships are the Eagle and Viper or the Diamondback Scout - the Eagle is a fast cheap agile interceptor, the Viper a heavy fighter that's a bit clumsier but a lot faster and with better guns. The Viper and DB-S have equivalent gun mounts, the Viper is a bit cheaper and faster, but doesn't turn quite as sharply and tends to have issues with its power systems and frameshift drive. Personally I loved flying all three. The 'big boy' dedicated fighter ship is the Vulture - relatively speaking a lot more expensive at 5M base, it's essentially a huge slab of armor with two bigass thrusters on one end, a pair of giant guns on the other, and an absurd shield generator. Ridiculously maneuverable for something its toughness, too. Meanwhile, pure trading isn't the most exciting thing, but it makes a solid steady income if you can find a nice trade route. The Hauler is the cheapest trader ship that can carry easily around 16 tons of cargo if you refit it. The two next ships in that vein are actually multipurpose ships - the Adder is a slightly bigger, better armed Hauler, while the CObra is a relatively well-armed light ship (equivalent guns to the Viper and DB-S, if a bit awkwardly positioned) that can be configured for a majority of tasks from combat and light exploration to cargo transport (around 40 tons of it, actually). The next actual dedicated cargo transport is the Lakon Type-6 light transporter at 1,6M or so (and 100 tons of cargo capacity) The Adder and the Cobra make for solid early game choices if you can't decide what kind of a ship you want to fly, too. Both can be fit to perform admirably in a variety of roles, making for a rather flexible playstyle, and the Cobra in particular is an iconic ship - it's basically the Elite equivalent for the Millennium Falcon. If you want to explore, you can do that in an adder or Cobra, but for longer ranges you probably want to get yourself into a Diamondback Explorer or an Asp. Both have big fuel tanks and powerful frameshift drives. Furthermore, one of the more important explorer components (an advanced discovery scanner) will cost something on the order of 1,5M by itself, plus about a quarter million for the detailed surface scanner you'll want to make the big bucks.
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Nov 28, 2015 14:14
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Xtanstic posted:If I have to grind rank, it is a universal thing, not a faction specific thing right? Like if I fly off to another system miles away I don't restart from zero (because the quest giver name is different)? First off, there's three 'types' of factions: Major Factions (Alliance, Empire, Federation), Galactic Powers (Space Khaleesi, the Federation President, Bitchtits Torval, Li Yu Whats His Face), and minor factions (LHS 6749 Democrats, whatever). Besides these, there's the Pilot Federation - they're the ones keeping tabs on your scouting/combat/trading/CQC rankings. Pilot's Federation rankings are universal. They're literally measured simply by how much money you've made with that particular activity. In-game, the P-Fed pretty much uses them as a measurement of your experience, and upkeeps a human-space-wide reputation network - NPCs will use these as a yardstick of your experience on whether or not they'll make a mission available to you). Galactic Powers have missions, salaries and reputation rewards in the form of access to unique equipment (such as multi-shot swarm seeker missiles, more powerful shield generators, and experimental weapons), but should be ignored at this point. The system is fiddly and too grindy to really be worth it, unless you feel the desire for a week or two of nonstop grinding in order to cash in a couple of millions a day for a salary. Minor Factions are the NPCs offering you missions on stations. Each Minor Faction has a simple 'standing' marker to you - hostile/unfriendly/neutral/friendly/allied. People who don't like you are marked on your radar as red and may even attack you on sight if you've pissed them off enough, while people you're friendly with are marked as green on your radar. A good standing with a minor faction unlocks some missions from them on the bulleting board and gives you a slight reduction in ship hull/outfit costs in stations controlled by that faction. Performing missions for a certain minor faction will, in time, increase your standing with them. Technically this reputation is universal, but you tend to only see ships belonging to a faction in a system that actually belongs to them, unless Shenanigans are ongoing. Major Factions are the three main factions. These guys will sell you certain ship hulls unavailable to other factions. Ranking up with them is a bit more involved - basically certain minor factions are aligned with one of these major factions. Performing missions for minor factions aligned with a given major faction will increase your reputation with said major faction, until they'll start offering you promotion missions. Complete the promotion mission and you get promoted with that major faction. There's no indication of your current progress between ranks or anything so you just have to perform missions and hope nothing's broken this patch cycle. You CAN be ranked up with multiple factions at the same time - currently I'm a Federal Ensign AND an Imperial Count. This, too, is universal, though you can't really see another player's faction rank. Major factions also have the same hostile/unfriendly/neutral/friendly/allied scale as minor factions, and this is universal. Piss off the Federation as a whole enough and you'll become a persona non grata in Federal systems.
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Nov 30, 2015 21:28
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Forcyte posted:Saw this tip on Reddit, and it's worked well for me. I used to go hunting for pirate Anacondas in my Viper. My go-to loadout was a pair of C1 burst lasers in the nose mounts and two C2 cannons in the wing slots. Basically you want to target their power generator or main drive and hammer that with the cannons when their shields go down. The recent penetration fix might have made cannons less effective, though - you'll want to attack from below and behind, where there's the least hull between you and the generator. Railguns might be more effective at component sniping, but C2 rails are difficult to fit on a Viper. Torpedos at point-blank range also quite capably cripple subsystems, but you only get four and those things are expensive.
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Dec 12, 2015 01:44
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Cowcaster posted:Cool. The PGS thread makes it sound like railguns and plasma accelerators are the cream of the crop when it comes to weaponry, just that the ammo count on the former makes it lousy for PvE hunting. It doesn't really mention anything about the latter besides "it's awesome, but has punishing heat levels" but it looks like from the video the travel time is slow as hell and not great for hunting. Plasmas and railguns tend to be good for more specialized 'gently caress xxx in specific' type runs - when you're hunting a specific target and you're not too worried about the limited ammo pool. Both guns also have a tendency to put out a poo poo-ton of waste heat and drain your weapon capacitor pretty fast, making them awkward at best on most dedicated fighters. Thankfully the Cobra's power systems are beefy enough that you can likely run either if you really need/want to. Personally for a 'cookie cutter' bounty hunting build, I'd recommend a mixture of kinetic and energy weapons - thermal damage like lasers downs shields faster, while kinetic weapons deal more hull damage. (Kinetic weapons are also extremely light on your power core, so you can fire a bunch of multicannons while letting your cap build back up for the lasers). Multicannons are best for dogfighting against ships of about your own size, while the heavy cannons are a pain in the rear end to aim with but are more effective against large armored targets. Lasers - pulse lasers are the most cap efficient but low-powered weapon, bursts hurt more but take up more power, and beam lasers end wars but take up ridiculous energy. I recommend bursts, then turn it up to beams if you think you can handle the heat. Plasma cannons are effectively always-fixed cannons that do thermal damage (making them more effective against shields than standard cannons) but put out large amount of waste heat when fired. An A-grade power distributor on a Cobra can likely handle maybe two shots with dual C2 plasmas before things start overheating. Railguns are powerful hitscan weapons that deal both kinetic and thermal damage (making them highly flexible) and have extremely high armor penetration (excelling in sniping out subsystems) but put out extreme waste heat and have a verry limited ammo pool. I recommend pairing these guys with a heat sink launcher. Missiles are expensive to run (individual ammo costs are very high) but powerful weapons, especially as they'll be buffed in 1.5. They deal explosive damage which is extremely effective against unshielded hulls but of limited effectiveness against shields (effectively zero shield damage in 1.4x, more in 1.5+). Dumbfires carry about twice the ammo, fire three times as fast, and have to be lead. Seekers home in on your target but carry less ammo and fire more slowly. Personally I would rather recommend dumbfires against big slow targets and seekers for dogfighting against small nimble craft. (Missiles are also kind of in a weird spot in PVP - nobody uses missiles since they can be countered by point defense and the like, so nobody uses point defense, so..) Be aware that on the Cobra, the secondary mounts are pretty widely spaced - they're almost on the very back corners of the hull, so they can be awkward to aim with, particularly at close ranges. I recommend gimbaling whatever weapons you use here - or going for seeker missiles. TLDR: Cookie Cutter Bounty Hunter: I'd recommend two C2 multicannons and a pair of C1 gimbaled burst or beam lasers, depending on your funding and power systems. gently caress Your Clipper, Man: Same as above, but switch the multis for C2 cannons. Yes, they're difficult to aim with at any further than spitting range, but whatever gets a lovetap from dual C2s is going to feel it. Screw Aiming Ahead With Multicannons: C2 burst or beam lasers (fixed), C1 gimbaled multicannons. Easier to aim with and less reliant on ammunition, though less effective against heavy armor. I Could Aim, But With This Thing I Don't Have To: C2 gimbaled burst/beam lasers, C1 seeker missile launchers. You know how Eagles and other fast-moving ships are a pain in the rear end to pin down? Not anymore. Also note that though your ammo counts can be limited on weapons that aren't multicannons, 1.5 adds the ability to synthetize ammunition on-site from recovered resources, thus making you less reliant on returning to base for a rearming.
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Dec 14, 2015 21:16
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Cowcaster posted:This post is informative and useful, thanks! I aim to please and entertain! Also, if you're mainly interested in the mercenary life, I'd consider switching from the Cobra to a Diamondback Scout. The Cobra's a perfectly functional fighter ship, but it's really more of a multipurpose ship - the secondary weapons are positioned kind of awkwardly for a fighter and the wide flat pancake silhouette makes you an easy target from above/below. Meanwhile, the DB-S has a neat tight convergence on its weapons (making it more flexible on the weapon loadouts you can handle) and turns a lot better than the Cobra while retaining most of the extensive frameshift range, and it has two more utility mounts to boot. The only thing the Cobra is superior on, really, is straightline-speed with the huge-rear end afterburner and cargo capacity. (The DB-S is also slightly cheaper to outfit in the long run, with a smaller set of life support and sensor modules). Edit: actually looking at the stats, the DB-S has an identical fuel tank and frameshift drive to the Cobra while being a little bit lighter, with lower-class (And thus smaller, lighter) modules. It's not much of a difference but a combat-fit DBS can have a pretty impressive frameshift jump range for a fighter. Drake_263 fucked around with this message at 09:55 on Dec 15, 2015 |
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Dec 15, 2015 08:27
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Ciaphas posted:
A nice easy 'cookie cutter' build is a pair of pulse/burst lasers and a gimbaled multicannon. If you can handle aiming fixed lasers, go for it - you get more punch - but gimbaled is fine, too. Seeker launcher in the top mount would be cool but missiles will cost you 500CR apop.
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Dec 16, 2015 20:15
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Cowcaster posted:Can anyone tell me how dangerous it is logging out in the middle of space? Because horizons has been crashing a hell of a lot on me and I've scanned my drives, updated my graphics drivers, and checked all the necessaries to determine that elite: horizons hates my computer and I like to crash when I'm flying around in space a lot. It's not dangerous at all. If you log out while in space, you'll log back in at approximately the same spot. If you were in supercruise, you'll be back in realspace when you log in. If you were inside or near a station, undocked, you'll log in at about 8KM away from the station. Logging out at an RES or similar instance will log you back in at the same place (though it will re-randomize the instance so the same specific ships won't be around). Edit: Though if you logout at an RES the game might occasionally log you back in about 10m away and pointed directly at a big freaking space rock. However, Frontier customer service is pretty good about responding and returning your stuff if you die because of a glitch like that. Drake_263 fucked around with this message at 11:37 on Dec 19, 2015 |
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Dec 19, 2015 11:35
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So I was tooling around in LTT 15574 with a friend earlier. Bought a new Viper MKIV to try it out, C-fit it, and hit a hazres to test it. There were three players in there besides us, all in Vultures. a minute or so later one of them messages me with 'wrong system mate' and opens fire, with his friends joining in. Naturally I bugged the gently caress out. Trip report: A Viper mk4, while slower than the mk3, will still outrun a Vulture with some effort. It will, also, absorb a surprising amount of punishment - I had C4C standard shields and milspec armor and got off with about 80% hull. Probably didn't hurt that I was jinking and chaffing like mad and they likely were using gimbals. The game also crashed just as I finished my jump out, so we might see a salty post on reddit/brown sea. Also, if you're in the area, keep an eye out for these mongoloids - they seem to have claimed the area, or are trying to. Three Vultures in a wing, leader was named little_watto, lil_watto or something like that. At least I assume he was the leader since he engaged first.
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Dec 19, 2015 21:44
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Paramemetic posted:gently caress it, brother we're gonna scramble a hit squad for you. I pledged to Aisling back when that was a Goon Thing to do. That said I don't usually hunt there - it's right next to the newbie systems and a friend of a friend just started the game so I decided to pootle over there. Kind of disappointed I wasn't flying my Python, the Lady Hel has a mean right hook and C3 chin plasma accelerator.
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Dec 19, 2015 22:28
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