Looking for feedback on general purpose ship progression plan

[AJH]

I've been working on a progression plan for general purpose ships and was looking for feedback on it. The idea is to start in each level of ship, build up until it is near best in class, then save a little bit past to get enough for a mid-range version of the next class up. Rinse/repeat.

My plan is to go Sidewinder->Cobra Mk3->Asp Explorer->Python->Anaconda. Here is a link to the comparison.

I'm still pretty new (been playing a week and a half), but the general guiding principle was to start with relatively energy efficient weapons early on to start out without needing too huge of a power supply, keeping jump ranges as long as possible and making sure that every step is an overall upgrade in survivability and damage output. As much as possible, I tried to keep the upgrades advantageous for trade as well, though in a couple cases I had to reduce cargo capacity a little.

I mostly favored thermal weapons early on, but in larger number of hard points I added a kinetic or thermal kinetic group to increase damage on targets with shields disabled. I also attempted to take vehicle shapes into consideration in choosing types and numbers of turreted hard points vs gimbaled. I am not much of a fan of fixed hard points for the most part.

Any thoughts, suggestions or feedback are welcome.

[HazCat]

That's actually the path I followed, though I stopped at Python when I realized the Anaconda was limited to large landing pads. And there were a couple little detours into a Courier and Clipper and Vulture... because they look cool and met an "I wanna' shoot NPCs today" need.

In this particular effort, Coriolis is your best friend.

As for weapons load-outs, I tend to favor energy to strip shields and kinetic to pound the hull once the shields are gone. Fixed vs. gimbals vs. turret is a matter of taste and the maneuverability of the specific vessel.

I suspect you'll get a LOT of advise with your post. Good luck and welcome to the deep dark!

[Feldspar]

My advise is not to set yourself a strict path, you never know when something else will catch your eye, you'll find doing something else more interesting or you'll learn something new that invalidates what you planned (I rarely make it through a play session without spearing off in a new direction).

As for having a quick glance at your builds, I think you'll want to stock more multicannons, they really chew through hulls in a way lasers never can and smaller weapons get a penalty to damage against larger ship hulls. Remember that lasers, especially beam lasers, empty your capacitor and if you are not careful can overheat your ship in seconds.

When it comes down to it, your main guide to outfitting a ship should be your experience, only you know what you prefer, don't be afraid to play around with loadouts in game to find something that works for you.

[JohnLuke]

You've got a good ship growth path setup there, just remember to do what you want to do at the time. Diversions into combat or trade specific ships are great for fun and/or profit. A multi-roll ship will do several things fairly well, but won't be great at any one thing.

Personally (and this is just my opinion) I am not a fan of burst lasers. I recommend running pulse lasers. They consume less energy, create less heat, and cause nearly as much damage. You'll have more fire time since the capacitor won't drain as fast as burst, so true 'damage over time' is longer with pulse.... assuming that you can keep your target in your sites. If you want short burst thermal attacks, go with beams when the price is in your budget. But.... several beams (like on your Conda build) will drain your capacitor very fast.

IMO, Plasma Accelerators are a fun "once in a while" kind of weapon. I use them on rare occasion, but they are a weapon of opportunity to say the least. If you can't get your target aligned to fire the PA (fixed, slow weapon) your shots will miss far more than they'll hit the target and it can get quite frustrating.

I'd stay away from the "B" rated modules whenever possible. They are considerably heavier than a C module and typically don't gain you much in efficiency. Also, D modules are lighter and more efficient than E modules and are quite cost effective.

At the end of the day, there are many many outfitting options and we all have different opinions of what is best. Play around with configurations and ships to see what suits YOUR play style.

Hope this helps a bit.

[Darr Valen]

Bronchosaurus' Elite Trader's ship progression guide
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... d=54143565

An oldie, but a goodie.

[AJH]

My advise is not to set yourself a strict path

Yeah, don't intend it as a strict path, just a general guide. I'm sure I'll switch it up a bit as I go through and get used to handling and such, especially as I build towards my "ideal" build in each class. This is mostly to get a general idea of where I'm headed so I can plan for when I have sufficient resources to jump from one ship to the next and to see if I'm missing anything conceptually that might be of benefit to me. Easier to build something to my understanding and ask for feedback than try to ask the questions I don't even know to ask.

Personally (and this is just my opinion) I am not a fan of burst lasers. I recommend running pulse lasers. They consume less energy, create less heat, and cause nearly as much damage. You'll have more fire time since the capacitor won't drain as fast as burst, so true 'damage over time' is longer with pulse.... assuming that you can keep your target in your sites. If you want short burst thermal attacks, go with beams when the price is in your budget. But.... several beams (like on your Conda build) will drain your capacitor very fast.

Yeah, at least early on I've found that I end up tending to do a lot of fire and evade, fire and evade circling matches, so I was prioritizing burst a little over sustained. I then was figuring plasma accelerator for when I can anticipate getting a shot lined up. One of the advantages of VR is it seems to make leading a lot easier as I have much better visibility of the direction of travel of my target making it so I can power up while getting on target and time it out right in theory. That's still very theoretical as I've not even fired a rail gun yet, let alone a PA. I kind of see it as an extension of the hit and evade approach though as long as I can anticipate the hit timing. That is all, of course, quite subject to change as I get in to seeing how the larger ships actually handle.

I'd stay away from the "B" rated modules whenever possible. They are considerably heavier than a C module and typically don't gain you much in efficiency. Also, D modules are lighter and more efficient than E modules and are quite cost effective.

That's super helpful info. I'd noticed that D was lighter and more efficient than E (hence why I throw a D in life support) but it generally seemed like D class stuff in next level typically came up lower than A class stuff in the previous and until I had mostly A class, I didn't have enough to be able to trade out for Cs or even Ds. I also tried to avoid Bs. I hadn't directly noticed the cost relative to performance gain yet, but I did notice Cs seemed like a pretty sweet spot. I mostly go in to Bs only when I run in to either falling short on my jump distance requirements or get issues with insufficient power. I also went with Bs for shields in one build I think because I wanted to preserve at least the same level of durability as top of the previous class of ship. I think with the anaconda I ended up doing a couple of additional Bs simply because they fit in to the upgrade budget as I was having trouble getting the Anaconda to use all the resources invested in to a fully souped up Python. I suppose that means I could just jump from the Python early, but I kind of like the idea of seeing what each ship can do when maxed out along the way.

[Orkekum]

I went all over. I started with sidey. Then adder, cobrA,courier, had a t6, asp at some time, replaced with a clipper. courier changed into vulture, clipper went mining and python replaced clipper. Then i got fdl to replace vulture. Then sold everything but asp and vulture to get anaconda. Soon back FDL. Two python and conda went mining. Clipper got to cargo and sold one python

[Schmobius]

I will say that if you're looking for something after the anaconda, the Cutter actually makes a decent multi-role ship after a lot of engineer mods. Chiefly to FSD, power plant, and thrusters. I've also modded my shields and shield boosters for survivability, even after that maneuverability increase, because it's still not cake to get things into your forward sights after 2.1.

But the internal slots on the Cutter are amazing. I have 6 SRVs (going on an expedition), both discovery and surface detail scanners, an auto-maintenance unit, (modded) A6 shields, and even an 8C fuel scoop, and I still have over 300 tons of cargo space. Ditching the giant fuel scoop and moving to a class 6 would leave me with almost 600 tons of cargo space. I also do extremely well at policed nav beacons where the targets can get distracted a bit by the cops, and would probably do nearly as well at a RES site with backup, though I haven't tried weaving through asteroids yet. I run 8 shield boosters, but you could put a wake scanner or point defense on there in a couple slots probably. Because 8. You have to enjoy driving a big ship though.

As others have said, you've laid out a good plan, but don't be too afraid to deviate for fun.

[baudelier]

You might want to consider the Viper MkIV over the MkIII Cobra. Head to head the Viper has better armour and Shields, better jump distance, better hard point placement and, costs less.

I did a comparison of my Viper HMS - Aetherstone to a similarly speced Cobra on Coriolis. Here are the builds.

https://coriolis.io/outfit/viper_mk_iv/ ... Atherstone

https://coriolis.io/outfit/cobra_mk_iii ... Gp%20cobra