Elite: Dangerous PvE - Mobius

Hi!

So I've been exploring for the last 250hrs or so of play time and now I'm coming back into the bubble and I want to try something else for a change. I recently bought a HOTAS nothing special and I'm upgrading to a x56 HOTAS soon so I want to get familiar with flying with a HOTAS.

Is there a ship that you would recommend for a "first time" bounty hunter? I was thinking of a Vulture but I just can't make up my mind what would be a decent ship for bounty hunting and getting to know the feeling for flying with a HOTAS.

Any tips and help is welcome!

o7 CMDR Lizzylizard

I had the vulture briefly and it just felt too small and soft, but after my Python, which is a lot more tanky, my combat style isnt instinctively to move out of the way yet ... Oppps!

So after selling the Vulture I bought myself an FDL and spent the last week engineering it... Jump range is ermm... low... Fully kitted as a fighter even with G5 FSD its only getting 16Ly jump range so i either use my Python or Asp to get somewhere and then ship the FDL out to me although its usually parked in Azrael for the OoM combat stuff.

I have to say it flies like an absolute beast, sounds great and feels like a real fighter! I actually find myself laughing out loud fighting pirates now, rather than struggling with the Python to get into good firing positions.

So I'd say from loads of write ups, the Vulture is a great low cost fighter, but to me it just felt too fragile, so if you've the credits which i guess you will have after 250 hours (!!!) of exploring, IMO go for the FDL...

Theres a great post by Lanceor on his FDL build and them in general which i found very helpful:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7262&hilit=Lanceor

Hope that helps, and good luck

Q.

Engineered correctly the Vulture and the FDL are shield tankers. I have both and use both a lot.


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Mr_McBride wrote:Engineered correctly the Vulture and the FDL are shield tankers. I have both and use both a lot.


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I'd definitely pick a vulture over a python any day for pure combat.
And the Vulture is about 120 million less.
And the yaw on the Python is now just plain gag-bysmal.
It's still worse than a conda or a t9 even.

It is no longer the god of all combat it used to be, but then again the python used to be brilliant as well before engineers.
Before engineers and the great big nerfing of things you could take on any group of npc's in a c rated vulture and expect to win, now you might have to pass on that wing of conda's, and maybe even that higher tiered conda as well, unless you have engineering mods out the wazooo.

If you do loose shields in a Vulture now you will probably loose the canopy pretty quick.
But if you can get some light engineering, particularily up the thermal resists on shields they can take a lot more damage.

I'm very new to the game so not the best at combat and I use the x52 Pro.

I fly a Vulture, KWS with remainder as shield boosters and gimble pulse lasers x2. I don't run bounty hunting missions but hang out at the Exioce high res site, purple gas giant, and farm there with the System Authority Ships. I have not engineered any of my equipment... have not gotten to that point.

It is a good way to figure out how your ship handles going through the astoroid field. And with them taking all the fire you can get used to combat without much danger.

In a CZ I change out the KWS for another shield booster.

Hard part is setting up the HOTAS with all its buttons. I found a guy on Youtube who has his HOTAS key bindings set up for download so I used his set up.

I think if you are fairly new to combat, with a low combat ranking and low ranked opponents, you can have some good fun on the cheap with a Viper Mark III.

The key thing when setting up a HOTAS is thinking ahead of time about how you want to use it, and making sure that you never need to take your fingers off the triggers to use thrusters or look around and etc. In the heat of combat, you want to be able to fire you primary and secondary weapons instantly. I see many setups where someone has to take their thumb off the thrusters in order to fire their secondary weapons, and I just don't see how they can have any success doing that (at least against elite ranked opponents - not the beginner cannon fodder).

Vulture is perfect for HazRez bounty hunting and reasonably cheep as well. I have a fair number of ships now, all A-Rated, but I frequently got back to the Vulture for bounty hunting. FDL is very good too but, in addition to the much higher price, it requires a great deal of skill to fly effectively and I wouldn't reccomend learning to fight in it.

I have had fun at Nav Beacons, LoRes and HiRes sites with an Imperial Courier. Will some strategy, you can avoid visiting the rebuy screen too often, if at all.

My iCourier is stock, only thing A-rated is the FSD, and think the power plant as well. Am at work, so don't have the Coriolis-link to the build, but it works for me at this stage. Have unlocked Farseer and Mcquinn, so need to pay them a visit for some engineering at some point.

If any of our newer player (or someone with limited combat experience) is interested in winging up with someone with considerable bounty hunting experience under his belt, I'm volunteering some time this weekend. I'll be around Saturday through Monday (three day weekend!). I'm in the USA but play at UK friendly times as well due to my weird work schedule. If interested, send me a PM so we can coordinate a meeting time and place.

Voice comms are strongly encouraged. Discord is best, Teamspeak is okay, and in-game comms can be used if no other options are available to you.

The Vulture is the first ship I felt comfortable using in combat (bounty hunting), before moving on to the Imp Courier. Great entry-level fighter. I highly recommend having more than five minutes of life support; the cockpit canopy is pretty fragile, and it sucks to lose millions of creds in claims because your canopy broke and you can't make it to the next station.