Elite Dangerous Outfitters - Vulture Revisited

Hey Space Cadets what is going on?
I'm Cmdr TwingTwang and welcome to the outfitters.

Today we'll be talking about the Vulture again. The Vulture is a space superiority starfighter that offers great performance and manoeuvrability.  Ballparking at around twenty million credits once equipped the Vulture also boasts incredible value for money in combat providing unparalleled bang for the buck.

In my first Vulture Outfitters article I gave my first impressions of the ship and  I had time to return to the vulture after a long time flying other ships and I've got to say I'm still impressed. The vulture turns on a dime, and while it's not super fast on the straight it is no slouch when it comes to holding position in combat. Most recently I've also been flying a sidewinder and a lot of the lessons I learned in the Vulture helped me in the sidewinder, and vice-versa.

General Loadout
I'm going to assume at this point that you have a Vulture to hand and enough money to fit Class-A Power Plant, Distributor, Thrusters and Shields.  My sensors and life support are D to save power and the Frame Shift is in power group 2, so inactive during combat.

This means you should look something like this before you start outfitting:

BH: 1I Lightweight Alloy
RB: 4A Power Plant
TM: 5A Thrusters
FH: 4A Frame Shift Drive
EC: 3D Life Support
PC: 5A Power Distributor
SS: 4D Sensors
FS: 3C Fuel Tank (Capacity: 8)

That build is going to total just under fifteen million, and leave you plenty of spending money for shields, weapons and toys.

Power Management
Like the viper - or any other fighter - the Vulture is really limited by its power plant. Even the 4A only gives you 15.6 MW to play with so you have to balance your priorities carefully but since your FSD can safely power down when the hardpoints deploy you can use the full 15.6 on your combat loadout. It only saves you an extra 0.45 but every little helps.

This Vulture build was designed with some of the community goal conflict zones in mind, so I've chosen a Class-D Life Support that runs all the time, instead of a Class-A that gets shut off when the hardpoints deploy.  An escort fighter can deal with the short flight time caused by the life support cutting out but a warship needs to stay in the fight a lot longer.

Hard choices in hard points
In my previous vulture outfits, I've been using paired C3 Gimbal Beams, dual E3 Gimbal Burst and dual E3 Gimbal Pulse Lasers.  Going back to the sidewinder has taught me to fly with fixed lasers again, and after trying several loadouts I flew my sidewinder with a fixed beam and gimbal cannon and had a lot of success with that combo.  The fixed beam allows you to track your target and ignore chaff, and the cannon allows you to start really tearing into the hull once the shields go down.

The dual gimbal burst lasers I used before are a quality compromise, and don't have the punch of the beams but only draw 1.65MW each - still a massive 3.3MW energy budget for weapons.

Dual C3 Gimbal Beams are only a fraction higher at 3.56MW, but drain the banks faster and overheat more readily.  In a long fight, your overheating beams will cut out and reduce your damage output so it might be that the lower rated burst lasers actually fare better. In addition, you'll have to reduce your shields or thrusters to find the power to run them.

The higher damage per second means the C3 Fixed beams cost a fraction more energy, and since the Vulture has no trouble staying on target they are a good contender, however having at least one gimbal really helps you target submodules for power plant takedowns so I've moved to asymmetric options.

The next option is the high power Beam+Plasma option. Costing 3.75MW it's not much more expensive than dual beams, and really does the damage. I found that heat problems upset me here, and while I dished out a lot of damage I also took quite a lashing as I had to use a lower-grade shield. Overall I didn't feel as comfortable using plasma - smaller targets were literally hit or miss, too often miss... Meanwhile against bigger ships like anacondas I found the my ship got super hot, and thermal overload shut down both weapons leaving me sitting duck in my reduced power shields.

Flying the vulture with a C3 Gimbal Beam and a C3 Gimbal Cannon worked out really well for me, and it's a tough call to say if I preferred it to dual burst lasers. Your beam laser is slower at slicing through shields, but the gimbal really helps it lock on to ship modules and get power-plants quickly too. The Gimbal Cannon is great at wrecking hulls, and can try to target modules too. This combo takes only 2.53MW which is a huge advantage and saves you an extra MW to for other systems.

I found the gimbal frag cannon pretty good too. Its damage output at point blank range is scary good and its at that range you can afford the fixed-forward, which I think uses a lot less power. The gimbal cannon felt like it hit ship submodules, while the fragger doesn't really do anything that precise. Again this is a fairly low power combo at 2.8MW but I think I just preferred the straight cannon on the Vulture.

A note on the Gimbal beam is that it can struggle to track, especially against chaffing cobras. Just untarget the ship and it'll revert to fixed-forward, allowing you to line up your shot and keep dealing damage until the chaff expires.  I found the cannon doesn't suffer from this so much, as you will only shoot when you have a clear line of fire and by the time you open up the cannon your quarry will often have burned through their chaff. You can often just wait for the chaff to expire too, and use the chance to refill your laser banks and let your smoking guns cool down.

Lastly, if you are building an escort fighter or bounty hunter for a wing then a Class-A life support that powers down when the hardpoints deploy should be fine as you'll be returning to the station to collect the bounty anyway.  In a ship like this, I'l might pick the fragger instead of the cannon, as you will have time to reload and want to maximise your damage per second.

Thrusters
Soaking up a massive 6MW, the 5A thrusters eat your energy budget for breakfast and while you can save about 0.5MW for each grade you drop down I didn't fare as well with 5B thrusters so wasn't encouraged to fly with the 5Cs. It may be a placebo effect, and I've not done any serious instrumentation on their performance but even with the smidgeon of extra power you can throw into weapons or shields I found that Manoeuvring with the 5A was just that much better, so I'm going to keep recommending them.
I tend to divert power to engines to top the capacitor ready for a boost but rarely fly with more than one pip in engines, better power management helps.

I'd be interested in doing some instrumented tests on the difference between the 5B and 5A thrusters, because if the difference is slight, then the extra power may be better used elsewhere, but I ~felt~ better with the 5A which is all I've got to go on so far.

Shield Options
One trick I developed from flying a sidewinder recently is that you can afford to have an extra shield booster (or two) in power group 2. They will be powered down when your guns are out but you can stow your hardpoints and get an extra 20% shields strength (or more). This is super useful if you are trying to get out of the line of fire, or if you know you won't need to shoot for five seconds.

I tried a build without Shield Banks, which is a difficult decision.  In the vulture I'm rarely getting tagged so their main use is to increase your income by staying in the fight non-stop.  However I'm not flying the Vulture for the income, so don't mind holding my position for a minute and letting the shields restore before I get back into the fray. If you are a big PVP player, then you'll have more use for the shield bank, but I'll leave that discussion for another day. If you do want it, then add your shield bank into power group 2 or 3 as you won't have the juice for it during combat.

This leaves me with a 5A Shield bank and three Class-B Shield Boosters. One used the extra MW I freed up from my hardpoints and two of the boosters are in the secondary power group so don't activate during combat, but thats OK.  I found that with the weapons overheating I had to take breaks and anecdotally stowing the hardpoints helps them cool down so I was putting my guns away even for a five second break between ships and getting the benefit from the extra protection too.

For the technically minded, (or those on a budget) the Class-5C shield generator with a Class-B shield booster gives you better protection than a Class-A shield on its own, for a smidgeon less power consumption and about a tenth the purchase price. (600K instead of 5M Credits) I had to do a lot of value-for-money comparisons building a sidewinder on a budget, and a lot of lessons like this transfer across to the larger ships.  Your real currency is the power consumption in the vulture, not the purchase price, but it's a point of interest nonetheless.

The last note on shields, is that I'm probably being over protective here.  The shields on my vulture hardly ever get taken down, and while that could be attributed to the extra shield booster, the nimble turning circle of the ship does a lot of work for you. Its just as viable to put less energy into the shields if you do want to run two high energy weapons however every now and then you get sandwiched between two anacondas and the extra shields really pay off.

Closing thoughts
Overall, my Vulture build came to about 23M Credits so the insurance is a little over a million and I had a few million in the bank for insurance so wasn't much worried about wrecking a few in combat trying out different loadouts. A Vulture on a Budget can be had from about 16.5M by fitting Class-B Thrusters and Shields, and the insurance there is going to be a little over 850K, but the ship isn't quite as strong.

It's a competent ship with plenty of options but I found the biggest problem was those overheating lasers. Beam and Cannon was the most fun, and didn't drain the banks as much as the dual laser combinations, so I'm going to keep those for a while.

I've not talked about colours yet ... I'm flying mine orange to match the Orion Arm Privateers who I'm flying with these days but I'm really coming round to the look of the blue vulture. Which scheme do you think looks best? Which paint style from another ship would you like to see on the vulture?

I hope these thoughts on the Vulture help you get the most from your ship.  Coming back to the vulture after flying small ships again has really given me a fresh perspective on it. What has been your favourite loadout - are you a beams or a burst pilot?

Elite Dangerous Outfitters - Combat Sidewinder

Hey space cadets, what is going on?
I'm Cmdr TwingTwang and welcome to the outfitters.

In this article we'll be looking at the ultimate underdog, the Sidewinder, and the upgrade choices I've made recently.  Since starting from scratch again I've flown the sidewinder for a lot longer than I did first time around, but its quite a system shock to be in the ship.

The shop floor sidewinder has class-E components across the board, dual pulse lasers and is a 4T vessel with a 6.96 - 7.56 Light year range.  While the ship was initially free, for fairness of comparison its got a purchase price of 32,000 Credits.

With only 1000 credits to my name I took this Class-E sidewinder out to a local conflict zone and shot up some bad guys to earn enough for upgrades.  I gave a review of the Class-E sidewinder in my first article and this will carry on from there.

Flight Feel
The sidewinder is the eternal underdog, and starting from Class-E doesn't help, but you have to fly it to its advantages - little as they are.  You have to get into point blank range to stay out of fire arcs, which is a dangerous place to be when it goes wrong but you can't outgun or outshield other ships to repeated lancing attacks are never going to go in your favour.
Corkscrewing around your enemy at point blank means vary carefully matching speed, tapping flight assist on and off when you need it and making boosts if you have to. You'll spend your whole time staring at a ships top surface or underbelly that will near fill your view but that's just peachy. Larger ships with turrets will tear you a new canopy, and I haven't found a way to deal with that yet but tight turns with fixed forward pulse lasers will do the damage against everything else.
Because of the way angular velocity works, if you are close enough you should be able to stay in the sweet spot for long periods of time. As you increase your distance you'll find they can turn quickly enough to level weapons at you, and your only response to getting shot at is to get closer.

Power Distributor
The first problem I has was my laser banks empting, so upgrades went into the power distributor to try and get more bank for the buck. Each grade above Class-E gets you about 10% more, with the Class-A getting you 40% more capacity and a 50% higher recharge rate to weapons and costing 20,000 credits.  The extra power to engines and shields is a well received bonus here - The class-E shields aren't enough to keep you safe if you get tagged, and its impossible to boost to safety with the shop-floor ship.

Shields
Even with a Class-A power distributor, and flying like I was in a vulture, I found that I still got hit in combat zones. Sometimes you'll approach a ship that you didn't expect to have turrets, or take hits from a second ship on your six. In these cases, you've lost your proactive stance and have to read the situation and react.
The Class-E shields are rated at 52MJ, and you get an extra +4 out of each class upgrade. Its not that significant but every little helps.  The Class-D is a snap at 6000Cr, and even the Class-C is affordable at just under 18000Cr.  The step up to the Class-B shields is a massive 53KCr... So here comes the science bit...
The Class-C shields with a OD Shield booster in your utility slot will cost 40K, and get you a 64.8MJ shield strength compared to the 53K you have to pay for the same protection from the Class-B shields on its own. The same goes for adding a second Class-D shield booster - cheaper and better protection that those big old Class-B shields.
However, You'll need to upgrade your Power Plant to Class-D for an extra Six Thousand Credits to be able to run the C-Shield and D-Booster combo. But its still cheaper and well worth it.

Mathmatical Madness?
I know it looks like I was overthinking the Sidewinder outfit, but I had plenty of time to think. Every few kills I scored, I'd get scratched up and it only takes getting destroyed and loosing your earnings a couple of times before you realise you need to dock, repair, and spend your pittance finding the most cost effective next upgrade.
My Power Distributor and shield setup is a 90K ship, and I viewed each purchase as the most important next thing to buy. Your experience may vary, but this is what mattered to me.

Obviously I'd love to spend the money on top-spec shields, but that spend comes in at about a million credits - ten times as much as my current bank balance, although I suspect even a top spec sidewinder is going to be a difficult ship to keep safe.

For the record, a Class-A sindewinder isn't going to cost much more than a million credits as the shields and power systems are going to be your biggest purchase. I know 1M sounds like pocket change to experienced pilots, but when you start out it's a daunting milestone.

Internal Systems
I found myself buying other ship systems one at a time as I could afford them, and not worrying too much about the exact build. The importance of the Power, Shields and Weapons took priority over everything else, and had I really focused on shields it would have cost every credit I earned.

Weapons
The dual laser pointer setup of the stock sidewinder quickly gets tiring, but the other options aren't super inspiring either.
The gimbal pulse lasers have the same power consumption as the fixed-forward, and although my fire arc wasn't a problem they do make it easier to target subsystems and take a little pressure off of the turn.
The fixed forward beams cost about 37K each - half as much as the gimbal beams and after getting used to pulse lasers for so long the extra damage output is really appreciated and you've just about got the energy to run them.
My biggest problem with the pair of small hardpoints was the lack in killing blow. The dual beams will take down shields - maybe slower than you are used to but they manage it. The problem is they take several sustained bursts to slice through all but the smallest hulls and I found a number of enemy ships fleeing the battle and making the frame shift jump.
Fitting one beam and one cannon or frag cannon is a problem in the sidey, as the projectile weapons require different target leading to the laser. Even at point blank range this can still make a difference, and for this reason I'm going to recommend one gimbal and one fixed if you don't want them both on gimbals.  I found that a fixed beam and gimbal cannon felt pretty good.
The beams cost 37K for fixed and 74K Gimbal.
Cannons come in at 21K for fixed and 42K for the gimbals
The 1E Fraggers are 36K and 54K for the Gimbals.

I didn't try multicannons, and while I know they are favourites of some pilots I've never really got on with them. The choice here starts to become a personal one, although I usually recommend frag cannons for escort fighters and cannons for conflict zones.
The cheapest option, 37K fixed beam and 42K Gimbal cannon, works surprisingly well and I liked that a lot - and not just because of my limited funds. I found most ships that fire chaff do so fairly early, so the gimbal beams lost track early and slowed down the initial fight. This pilots choice award goes to the beam+frag combo rather than the straight cannon because I liked the additional damage per second and didn't mind the trips back to the station to re-arm as I could claim some bounties.
The downside of the extra time taken to break down shields can be a problem

With its fragile hull the combat sidewinder is a dangerous way to earn a living, but you can still pick up bounties as long as you don't overcommit. Conflict zones are a lot more dangerous than single bounties because you aren't equipped to deal with more than one ship at once and the sidewinder gets outnumbered quickly. Unlike the larger fighters, life in a sidewinder can switch instantly from full shields to punching your ejector seat so I'd recommend cashing in bounties frequently and repairing even small scratches in your hull - overconfidence doesn't just cost you your insurance payout, but you lose bounties which is the larger tragedy.

Conclusions
The sidewinder is a much more competent ship that I'd previously given it credit for and while it's no match for a vulture you can still deal the damage if you can stay out of trouble.  The insurance cost is very low although repairs, insurance and ammunition do add up when you are on the poverty line.

I've more than answered the question "why does anybody fly a sidewinder?" although I'm very unlikely to switch back to one once I have the couple of million needed to buy and outfit a Viper. I'm not sure if I'm going to stay in my trusty sidey until then or switch up to the Eagle and repeat the process.  I suspect the Eagle is going to earn money faster than the sidey, and with a bounty hunting community goal this week every it'll pay to take every advantage I can get.

Any other thoughts from dedicated sidewinder pilots? Have you every gone back to the Sidey for a bit if wing-and-a-prayer space-flight?  Which loadout did you settle on?  If you have any outfitters articles you'd like to see, thoughts feedback or comments then let me know.

Don't forget to like, share, favourite, follow and subscribe. I'll be back soon with a review of that Eagle. Until then, fly casual.

Elite Dangerous Outfitters - Green Stinger Viper

Hey Space Cadets! What is going on?
I'm Cmdr TwingTwang and welcome to the outfitters!

In this article we'll be looking back at some viper builds and trying to improve upon them.  In previous articles I've presented the quad-beam wingman viper, designed to aggro and harass targets, and the Red Venom Viper with big A2 Frag Cannons that was a great space superiority starfighter but its limited ammo meant it lacked staying power in a conflict zone.

The Red Venom
The Red Venom Viper was a good contender for an escort fighter role. The hard hitting A2 Frag Cannons really tore into hulls once the shields were down and their peak-power-to-damage makes them a top pick for a power-limited Viper loadout. They are backed up by a pair of E1 Gimbal beam lasers in the small hardpoints - in combination with the Vipers tight turns you should be able to keep any ship in your sights while you empty the banks and then unleash the fraggers.
The Red Venom is taking a little gamble as an escort vessel - usually it sees 0-1 starfights between chance to dock and reload, but in the case of a second - or third - interdiction you have to start a fight with no ammunition.

The Wingman
The Wingman Viper build relies on quad beam lasers to light up the skies, and is a warzone build designed for sustained sorties by avoiding the ammo limited weapons. It it great in a swarm when you can tag team against a large ship, or you can perform a sustained lance with the beams in conjunction with an opportunist hard hitter like a Missile Gunboat Asp to score quick kills.
Quad beams are also a great way to aggro and draw attention as a convoy escort vehicle, with your freighters packing seeker missiles to compensate for the lack of punch in the wingman build.  A Sixer with dual B1 Seeker missiles can add a lot of muscle as soon as the quad beams have worked away the enemies shields.

Of course, the Solid Gold Viper isn't a serious combat vessel - its a premium ship for a prestige audience and it's a choice to dress-to-impress instead of getting stuck in.  I'm not going to talk about the loadout as a serious ship - I guess you could fly a wing of these with competent pilots and fare well enough though.

Adding staying power to the Quad Beam Wingman viper is pretty tough.  It suffers from Thermal Overload on the weapons, causing them to cut out and the overall temperature raises into the 100-130 range often enough in a dogfight.  Having flown it in anger for a while I can only recommend adding heatsinks to help out. The large power draw of those beams puts it in the 12.22 MW range and it really can't afford the power for the bigger shields and thrusters that it wants.

The Red Venom is a better starting build. At only 11.41 MW, it already has Class-A thrusters and can afford to put the extra power into Shields or shield banks.  Running out of ammo on your primary damage dealers is quite a hassle so the first thing we are going to do is swap out those big A2 Fraggers for D2 Beams on a Gimbal mount.

This leaves the small hardpoints up for grabs, as beams on there are going to draw too much power.

Cannons or Missiles?

The lure of Frag Cannons is very strong for their amazing power-to-damage ratio and high damage-per-second value and it's possible that Fraggers on the small hardpoints is acceptable, since the Size-2 beams on the medium hardpoints will see most of the action, but the Frag Cannons chew through their ammunition quickly and as we are trying to add more staying power I'm going to discard them.

This leaves us with the two real choices for low-power high yield weapons pictured here.  The B1 Dumbfire missiles take the crown for highest impact damage, and can be a crippling one-two punch with the larger gibmal beams.
And lastly I'm going to highlight the E1 Cannons on a Gimbal mount.  They don't pack as much power as the B1 Dumbfires by a long stretch, but the 16 shot missile rack isn't up to our criteria for a long fight. In the end the 100-round Cannons win out as the biggest-damage high-ammo small hardpoint weapons.

To finish the build, I'm going to spend the extra 0.4MW on either a pair of Point Defence turrets, or on upgrading the main shield generator from 3B to 3A. Actually the difference between the 3B and 3A shields isn't that great, so I'm going to try out the point defence turrets this time around. It's possible that I'll revisit this if I think I'm taking too much heat.

And that completes our build.  The Red Venom Viper has been reconfigured to use D2 Beams as its primary and E1 Cannons the hammer on hulls once the shields are down.  The old Red Vipers A2 Fraggers were real can-openers when you bought them to bear, and the replacement cannons aren't going to be as deadly but the faster shield takedown combined with increased ammo makes this a much better ship in larger fights.

Green Stinger Viper
So following my experiences with the Red Venom and Wingman builds, its time to introduce the Green Stinger Viper.  Its not got the poison of the Red Venom, but still has quite a sting from those dual cannons.

The Green Stinger

Thanks for reading, I hope my flight time helps you in your outfits and builds. If you've got experience flying the Viper, or there is another ship outfit you'd like to see then let me know.

I'm Cmdr TwingTwang, and this has been the outfitters.
As always, Fly Casual.