Elite: Dangerous PvE - Mobius

As requested by another member in another thread, here's my current Fer de Lance build.

Coriolis link: Ascalon - Lanceor's Fer de Lance (as of 10 Mar 2017)

Core Internal:

• Mostly A-grade stuff as you'd expect.
• D-grade sensors and life support.
• Lightweight alloy for hull - FdLs rely on agility and are not hull tanks.
• Thrusters are G5 Dirty.

Optional Internal:

• Shields were engineered for Thermal resistance. Once resistances were up to scratch, Bi-Weaves were much more effective than Prismatics - lower power draw, more effective SCB use and greater endurance. The Prismatic's extra capacity was almost never used.
• Firing off two SCB's recovers over 2 rings of shields. You'll need to use a heat sink if you don't want to cook your ship.
• The HRPs are for hull resistances and aren't really needed. Feel free to replace them.

Weapons
Trigger 1: 1 x C4 Beam Laser (Fixed) + 2 x C2 Railguns

• Excluding Frag cannons and Torpedoes, these are the two highest DPS weapons in the game.
• Beams are the easiest fixed weapons for newbies to learn.
• The beam laser acts as a laser pointer, making the rails easy to aim.
• Rails have incredible burst damage.
• Thermal vent on the beam helps to keep temperatures down.

Trigger 2: 2 x C2 Multicannons (Gimballed)

• Mainly used for the corrosive shell effect to increase the DPS of the above weapons by a further 20%!
• I'm thinking of switching one to incendiary rounds to shield-strip small ships.

Utility Mounts

• 4 x 0A Shield Booster - standard stuff - engineered to shore up resistances
• 0I Heat Sink Launcher - 1. Fire off an SCB. 2. Wait for temp to go above 80%. 3. Fire a heat sink. 4. Wait for temp to drop below 40%. 5. Fire off second SCB. 6. Enjoy having full shields.
• Point Defense - I replace this with a KWS in RESs.

Engineering

• IMHO, it's only necessary to grind Grade 5 materials for the Thrusters and the Shields - the rest you can simply upgrade with whatever mats you have available.
• Without engineering, the C4 Beam runs out of puff quite quickly. It's still playable allowing you to test out the build, but I'd get an efficient mod on the Beam laser and/or Charge Enhanced on the Distributor as soon as possible.
• I tried overcharging the C4 beam - not good!

Build Strengths and Weaknesses

• Mind-blowing DPS against medium and large ships.
• Beam fires forever with 3 pips to weapons.
• With fixed primary weapons, small fast ships are very annoying. I usually turn off the railguns and hose away with the beam.
• Planning to swap one of the two Corrosive MCs for an incendiary one to help shield-strip small ships.

Last bit.....

Go for corrosive over incendiary.....

Any further hit by any weapon causes more damage.......

Cmdr Kharma wrote:Last bit.....

Go for corrosive over incendiary.....

Agree. I currently have two corrosive MCs but I plan to swap one of them for incendiary. I'll update the OP to make it clearer.

How many more times......

Effects.....DO NOT stack.......

That choice is wise then.......

I always run corrosive and incendiary on the M/C's......

Cmdr Kharma wrote:How many more times......

Effects.....DO NOT stack.......

Yes, I am aware that corrosive effects don't stack. And I don't appreciate being told off like I'm an idiot either.

Running railguns and an overcharged powerplant, an important design consideration was to reduce temperatures wherever possible, so Emissive Munitions, and Incendiary Rounds were ruled out. I also didn't want to lower DPS, so that leaves Auto-loader, Smart Rounds and Corrosive Shell as the only options.

Since side mounted gimbals don't cover the full field of view, having a corrosive MC on each side increases the chance that at least one round will hit and debuff the target for five seconds.

I hope that explains why there's two corrosive weapons on the current build.

Being new to the engineering side of things and the modifiers being a little tricky to grasp the actual change when the slider moves - you've helped me no end showing me your mods - I've only got my fsd modded atm giving me just over 20ly range but when I was roll levelling my powerplant for example I got swamped by numbers - the FdL is quite unique I'm finding in regards to handling, certainly not an eagle so was unsure on armor, weight and dirteh drives...

I'm running 4 pulse and one multi, which I feel I'm missing out on quite a bit of dps, using gimballed pulse I quite often have a useless MC underneath struggling to track a target

Noticed the bi-weave build, mines heavy shield tank until the update hits, running over 1k mj shields so scb's are a waste of power usage seeing as one charge would be the equivalent of trying to run a town off an AA battery

I know I need to practice with this ship, certainly not as easy to fly as a vulture, this is one where you definitely benefit from time behind the controls...

I have noticed the response of the lateral thrusters under boost is amazing... Does having the dirty drives alter the thrusters in any way?

Going to be working on my engineers fer sure - this ship is going to be my mainstay into a
Mess around in open...

I have contemplated using my grid to complement this ship, I ain't used it in a while as I got over the gimmick side of it quite quickly.. But I feel the extra few maps available in finger reach would be beneficial - anyway finished rambling lol, thanks for the insight - ascalons little brother is about to be born and it's an angry one lol

Edit - I've been toying with rails and pa's - aside from needing more practice hitting a target I also value uptime in a res in a pve session - my mc lasted over 50 minutes last night in a cz, with possibly 30% of that time it was redundant tracking targets, whilst I will play and test I have been thinking laser is the way to go for staying out of the station

Maybe I'll change that thought when I can hit more on target

Yes, the two biggest improvements I found were from Thrusters and Shield Thermal resistance. If you think the thrusters are good now, get some G1 - G3 mods on them and you'll feel the difference immediately. Likewise with the shields. That's why I think it's worth grinding all the way to G5 for these two.

4 Pulse Lasers and 1 Multicannon is a good, reliable combo that has no major weaknesses (except chaff - but you can deselect the target for that). They can become deadly if you engineer them. You could also try these variants that play in the same way and work without engineering:

• 2 x C2 Beam Laser (gimballed), 2 x C2 Multicannons (gimballed), 1 x C4 Multicannon (gimballed)
• 2 x C2 Pulse Lasers (gimballed), 2 x C2 Multicannons (gimballed) 1 x C3 Beam Laser (gimballed) (switch to C4 if you can get it engineered with the efficiency mod)

To learn fixed weapons, beam lasers are by far the easiest. This is the build that I learned fixed weapons with, and evolved into my current build:

• 1 x C4 Beam Laser (fixed), 2 x C2 Pulse Laser (fixed or turreted), 2 x C2 Multicannons (gimballed)

With the latest patch, railguns had their ammo capacity more than doubled. I also got them engineered for extra ammo so they outlast my multicannons nowadays.

Anyway, feel free to ask about anything FdL related. I surf the web all day at work and can usually answer pretty quickly.

Added a link from the Fer de Lance loadout thread, here viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2621&p=28796#p28796 .

Does the Point Target factor of beams still work nicely with Rails? (meaning your beam is an aidf to aim your Rails accurately)

Also note Rails have some kind of auto-lock against internals if fired from far away.

Though: I discovered it hard to get down shields with rails. Am I wrong or are they still ineffective against shields?

I know you and the FdL are one and the same, in harmony, lol seeing as you was flying one months and months ago when we where in a wing together and she's still your weapon of choice... I'll be taking your knowledge and using it to better my own on this fine combat ship