Postby AJH » Wed Aug 31, 2016 1:29 pm
Honestly, I'd probably stick with the Cobra until you can afford the aspx, but here's my reasoning. At the low levels of trading you'll be able to do, even in the Type 6, you are going to spend a lot of time traveling to and from ceos with delivery missions. Instead, you'll probably find better credit generation (not to mention doing federation rank farming at the same time) by doing full stacks of data deliveries between sothis and ceos. That might be a little bit off currently as sothis' mission board is down last I checked, but it should come back up soon and will make data delivery a faster money maker.
The reasoning behind not changing from a Cobra to a Type 6 is that when doing data delivery, particularly short range data delivery, your time getting in and out of the station is where you save time, and for that, you want a fast and maneuverable ship, of which the Cobra Mk3 excels. The AspX also excels at getting in and out fast, but adds more cargo space for doing longer range deliveries.
A full mission stack of data deliveries should get you between 1 and 2 million credits, so it doesn't take many cycles to get you to an AspX anyway. You can do deliveries if you prefer, but then a month from now you'll find yourself doing data deliveries in your AspX for rank grinding anyway, (I got my Anaconda and turned around after doing a few large delivery runs and bought a fully speed kitted aspx for doing rank grinding, which is what I'm working on in game now) so why not just do a little bit of it now and save yourself losing 10% of the hull cost of a Type 6 when you end up transitioning to an AspX anyway.
Keep in mind that the speed of your ship is also much more key than shields for surviving an interdiction. Shields keep you alive if you can't outrun, but you end up stuck dealing with mass lock factors that slow your ability to jump and against ships with lots of firepower, that can be a problem. Ships with lots of fire power are generally slow though, especially the ones that can mass lock you. If you simply outrun them, you can easily boost out of effective weapons range and run away easily. In my Cobra Mk3 or AspX with A rated thrusters, my normal speed is in the mid to upper 300s with mid 400s on boost. That will outrun pretty much anything and jump away quickly. Even with A rated thrusters on the Type 6, you are looking at 250 or so normal thrust and 350 or so with boost. That's going to be substantially harder to run in, making shields much more critical.
I'd also recommend against A rating most of your components. FSD should always be A rated and if it is a ship built for quick local deliveries and running from interdictions, A rate the thrusters as well. D rate most other things for the weight savings to give you more speed and jump range. The possible exception to this is going A rated with the distributor since that will give you extra boost capability over a D for a little more weight, but it will still get your overall local speed up due to boosting more. Don't bother with B though. C is sufficient, A just gives you more performance for the same weight. B is heavier and not enough of an improvement in boost performance to be worth it in my opinion.