Elite Dangerous Outfitters - The Mighty Python

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

In this article we'll be talking about the Faulcon Delacy Python. The python is an often overlooked ship that I think you can have a lot of fun with.

Full disclosure here: I've pretty much ignored the python until now and dismissed it as not having a well defined role but after putting in the flight hours over the past few weeks I've got to say the python is more of a luxury cobra than a budget anaconda.

The fly-off-the-forecourt Class-E python isn't much to write home about, but no ship is until you really make it your own. Like any of my builds, I wanted a slimline refit to get a good jump range before I equip and engineer so after flying around outside the station to get the feel of it I went for the all-round Class-D with the A-Rated FSD.
This slimline refit is usually a good starting point for a build but for the Python it's worth going into a bit more detail because you have options.

Power
The 7D power plant gives out 22.5MW and weighs in at 32T. Replace this with a cheeky 6A which provides slightly more power at 25.0 MW, weighs only 20T and has better heat effeciency. OK, so the 6A is going to cost you 16MCr but it's a good base if you can keep the power draw down. The class-A heat efficiency is strongly recommended and the 6A is a lot cheaper than the 7A if you are buying your first python.

You can't quite pull the same trick with the Distributor - the 6A is better then the 7D but does add 8T to your weight and you have to choose what you pay for so you have to choose where to compromise. If its just jump range you need, then stick with the 7D, which was my starting point until I'd flown for a while and gotten used to the ship - more on that later but this is a component I upgraded fairly quickly.

Keep it slim
I actually didn't mind the 6D thrusters when I started flying, so I kept D-Ratings on everything else except the FSD, which is obviously the 5A and will give you a jump range in the 18-19 LY range depending on what else you fit.

First Impressions
When I first took the Python out for a spin, I maxed it at 212T of cargo space and flew it as a "Tons & Guns" delivery truck doing missions and flying a gold run without fear of interdiction.
I used the Python for the Tutumu Community goal - hauling 200+ of Gold hundreds of light years out, and it earned me 20M credits in no time at all as a long-distance freighter. As my flight time increased, I got more and more drawn to missions and pretty much stopped trading. So it didn't take me long to go back to the outfitters and start pimping my python.

Four 0A Shield boosters is a good start, but what I've found is my shields hold out for a while but my hull is getting torn open in seconds so - and hold your breath - I'm strongly advising military composites on the Python. It's not so bad in a wing, but when you are flying solo things can go South quickly. The problem really is how crazy strong the shields are compared to the hull, usually when my shields dropped I knew it was going to be an insurance payout.
Military composites cost a cool 50M on the Python - it's not a cheap ride compared to all the flight time I've put into space superiority starfighters, but the extra durability feels like it's needed and at this point I wasn't hauling long distance freight so the extra weight didn't hurt the jump range

As far as hardpoints go, I started with three large burst lasers and two medium multi-cannons. This was a power-draw compromise but not a great choice. Combat against almost any ship became a rhythm of me taking down their shields quickly but not being able to finish the job, so I switched to two medium lasers and three large MCs.
Overall, I found the MCs suit the python a little better than the fraggers that I preferred on the Vulture and Viper builds. They can be on gimbals to make up for the less responsive turning circle, and still do reasonable damage. In the end I replaced one of the MCs for a missile but in general I don't find missiles too reliable because of countermeasures so I don't think I'll be keeping it long term but it was worth trying out. With a bit of tweaking, higher dps short-range burst lasers and MCs with corrosive rounds this is quite a formidable bounty hunter.

Combat encounters are going to upgrade you to the big 7A power couplings, and I'd recommend these right off the bat if you can afford them. I didn't feel the thruster upgrades made a huge difference until I'd flown it around for a while, but once I had them I wouldn't go back. You get about 10% more on the turn and ~50m/s more on the boost, but if you are spending the money anyway then it's worth picking them up.

Price it up
And this brings me on to the price. Upgrading the Python feels super expensive, especially if you are used to smaller ships and there is a huge difference between a small ship that you can Class-A for 16M credits and a ship like the Python where each individual component costs 16M. Each. This isn't a ship you should buy on a whim and not something you can knock together cheaply but now I have it ticking over just so its a ship I've got a lot of affection for.
You can outfit a reasonable Python for just under 100M, but will pay a fair amount more once you have that top-tier Class-A refit.

(Image credit: http://elite-dangerous-blog.co.uk/)

Engineering
I'm going to touch on engineering briefly, although this is such a personal topic that I can't really give recommendations - you tweak the way you want to go. Always pay attention to how your ship is performing and use the engineers to nudge it the way you want it.  I AM going to say that loss of accuracy on your hardpoints really annoys me, you should prefer charge rate to capacity on your power couplings and raw dps over large ammo counts. I'm not building a warship to sit in a conflict zone for hours, I'm building a wing fighter with a sting in the tail so that you can seal the deal quickly and collect the bounty.
If you are engineering for jump range, there are plenty of lightweight components and obviously the drive tuning of your choice.
The Python is a good hunter, miner, and mission runner so collecting engineering components isn't going to be that hard for you.

I've had people recommend Pythons specialized mining, and you could easily dedicate a hardpoint and the internal capacity. I think I'd be tempted to have a mining refit, and then switch back to general purpose rather than carrying a little bit of mining gear around all the time but there is space to keep a refinery at hand all the time if you wanted to. For me, just adding a SRV was enough for me to drop planetside and mine some materials for engineering but I can see the attraction of full on mining.

I guess the roundup wouldn't be complete without touching on skimmer missions. They seem on-vogue at the moment. Obviously you can hunt skimmers in a Python and it'll do the job just fine if that's the way you roll. It's overkill for that sort of thing, but a rock solid weapons platform with a good jump range so well suited to the task.

Closing thoughts
Overall the python is super versatile. I started out by saying I'd overlooked it as a poor-mans anaconda and I had low expectations of the ship but it feels like a super luxury cobra. Its a mission runner, it's a trader, its a smoker, it's a midnight joker and it's a space cowboy that I'm looking forward to flying for a long time.
So far it's not come up short in any area - sure the Asp can jump further and the Type Nine carries twice the cargo, but its a similar gunner to the FDL and the Python has been great for running missions, gaining faction rep, collecting engineering components, and I've used it to haul kilotons to Community Goals and put thousands of light years on the clock - and it has done all of that with gusto. 

"The Python cruiser: Freedom in a box from Falcon Delacy" Five stars, would fly again.

This is Delacy "Tango-Whisky-India" signing off, until next time, fly Casual everybody.

Elite Dangerous Pilot Academy - When Vultures Fail

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. Again.  

The Vulture is a space superiority starfighter that caught my eye from the day it was released. You can pick up an empty Vully for a cool five mill, and you'll spend ten to fifteen on top of that before you are ready to fly.

My first impressions of the Vulture were really good but I had super trouble balancing the power management. That little 4A Power Plant gives you 15.6MW, which should be plenty but you have to make a lot of compromises to make it work.
I found myself flying with one laser and one cannon - Personally I've always liked the Fraggers - which has a lower power draw but its limited ammo doesn't have the staying power if you wanted to sit in a conflict zone for hours.

In my Vulture first impressions, I recommended 3E Gimbal Pulse lasers which are good overall and in my revisited article I've already talked about power management and hardpoint options. I've settled on the Class-B thrusters and dual gimbal Pulse lasers and added the Military Grade Composite as standard. Partly because I have a little more cash for this sort of build now, but also because my hull was being chewed up quickly once the shields went down.

I'll put links to the old articles at the end and won't labour over the outfitting. here. For reference, I think this is the Vully that I'm launching with these days. 99% sure all the details are right but this isn't an outfitting article.

https://coriolis.io/outfit/vulture/2patgFalddksif31e1e0404070h4a032o--.Iw19kA==.IwBhrTIig===

Right - preamble out of the way - on to the heart of the matter.
The Vulture has served me well for simple one-on-ones, against those bigger ships it takes a while to bring them down but you can turn on a dime and just keep chipping away. However, it failed me in a convoy. I was in a trade wing of Lakon-9's hauling kilotons of gold and had switched to the Vulture to run fighter escort. It was a follow-the-leader convoy and I was Nav-Locked to the ship in front of me - should be a routine mission and if anybody interdicts a Lakon-9 they will find themselves facing the full fury of a Vulture as I light them up.

But the problem with Nav locked jumps is there is a quite a delay (compared to having an XO call the jumps and everybody engages at the same time) So the Niner that jumped in first was a distance from me before I arrived, and when the interdiction was called he wasn't on my radar.  At this point, all you can do is follow the shipping lane and wait for the wing beacon so you can jump in.
To cut the story there, I did manage to jump in, but the Niner had taken too much damage and even as I drained my weapon banks, the ship I was supposed to be protecting opened up like space tuna and shed its glittering cargo everywhere.
Now, I was paid to protect the convoy and I just cost them I dunno five or ten million? by not being able to act in time. On the plus side, I scored revenge and earned 120K from the bounty but my good fortune somehow didn't console the freighter captain that had lost out.

And this is where the Vulture fails. It wasn't the delicate power balance, or the shield configuration. I hadn't launched with the wrong loadout or equipped the wrong hardpoints. It was the game that surrounds the game that mattered. I've replayed the encounter a hundred times in my head. I could have jumped sooner - I could have bought a Class-A sensor, maybe that would have got me in faster.
Was this a task that just wasn't suited to the Vulture? It felt like escort duty was ideally suited to a Vulture - almost guaranteed one-on-one fights, against a distracted opponent, backed up by the five turret cannons of a fat niner. Surely this should be easy pickings? Food for thought.

So on to the lesson learned. If you are flying a combat sortie, then own that mission. If you are flying escort then you are the CAG. If there is anything that compromises the safety of your mission then you are the authority. The wing might plot the route, but you are in charge of security, keep the wing together.

Bringing this round to the title - when do Vultures fail? When they aren't being vultures. Fly like a vulture, fight like a vulture, find the right role for your playing style, and bring home the bacon.

This is Cmdr TwingTwang signing off. What have you been flying lately and how has your play style changed since you started?

References:
My first impressions outfitting article.
http://spaceplaneblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/elite-dangerous-outfitters-vulture.html

And my revisited thoughts after flying it a little while.
http://spaceplaneblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/elite-dangerous-outfitters-vulture.html

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 Rules of Acquisition - War profits

Hey Space Cadets, What is going on?
I'm Cmdr TwingTwang and welcome to the Rules of Acquisition.

I've just got back from the conflict at Lugh and wanted to make sure everybody who hasn't done their part gets over there and helps out.  This war won't be won without you, and even including the travel time from Leesti-Lugh this has been the highest Credit-per-hour experience I've had so far.

The four of us headed out there together, a Class-A viper, a top-spec combat cobra with me flying one of the two Vultures.  There are a few conflict zones to choose from in Lugh, and we flew out to Lugh-11 to rendezvous with the capital ship there. Even if you aren't a combat pilot the experience of an epic space battle is well worth the trip out and its a new splash of gameplay.

In a busy combat zone, you need a ship with staying power so you are talking about beams or burst lasers.  I'll have to write a separate outfitters article about the Vulture, I've tried a few different hardpoint options and the Pilots Choice award goes to Gimbal Burst lasers.

With a bit of practice I managed to reach about 1M Cr/H in bounty, and after a few hours cashed in the 12M reward I had earned.  This made it a 15M credit adventure taking a few hours. I really could have stayed out in the stars smoking fools all night but alas I decided to cash in the bounty and get back to civilised space.

The biggest point to be said, is that you can make 1M Cr/H in bounty in a combat zone, but the big 12M payout is available as a mission that you can do just the once. So this was an exercise in reaching that jackpot as soon as possible, then cashing it in and going home.

There are plenty of pilot tricks and combat training you can go through to deal the highest damage per second, but I'm going to leave those on the back shelf and talk about the profit bottom line - this is a Rules of Acquisition article not a Pilot Academy.   To reach the maximum profit, you need to tag as many ships as possible per hour.  You don't need to scrap the highest number of hulls, just contribute enough damage to register for the bounty and then switch targets.
This is where high power Burst Lasers really score well. The short controlled bursts needed to get credits for the kill won't overheat your weapons and will give you a few seconds to cool off and recharge before you hit the next ship.

Just like stopwatch-rares or high-volume freighting, I strongly recommend instrumenting your combat as seeing how much your ship is making. Having a stopwatch ticking away in your eyeline really helps you focus on that profit line. After your 30 or 60 minute limit is hit, check your bounty and try to beat that target.  Switch up your style and see if its led you to a higher or lower income.

The second step is to compare this figure to your trading totals.  E.g. If you are naturally a T7-Pilot, then you'd normally earn two million credits an hour plain sailing.  A Sixer will make a cool one million in the same time frame.  The bigger Fat-9 and Anacondas can carry hundreds of tonnes, and make a significant amount. So much that you don't fight in the war for money - and the profiteering advice doesn't really hold up.  If you drive a Lakon Fat-9 then you go to war for fun, its not about the money.
But I'm a T7 Pilot, so normally pull 2M without breaking a sweat and ended up taking about half that per hour in the combat zone.

A short (few hours) run at the conflict zone gave me a really high return, and while I coulda, woulda, shoulda, stayed there for hour after hour I realised that you can hit the 12M reward very quickly and cash out for a great hourly rate.  Any longer time I spent was likely be become less credit efficient, so stopping and switching back to my T7 was the right move for my bank balance.

So, back to war profiteering. Fighting the war costs me about 1M Cr/Hour.  Thats the profit and loss bottom line. And its not pretty.
One million in bounty, minus the two million lost from not trading, means I'm losing a Million Credits per hour.  However, I'm gaining a flat once-only fixed fee of twelve million.  So.. I could fight in the war for precisely twelve hours and break even.

Every minute after twelve hours is a net loss. Every minute less represents my war profit margins.

With that established, the quicker I can earn that twelve million and bail, the higher the profit margin in going to be.  Granted, I probably could have reached the fifteen million mark in fewer than fifteen hours, so continued to turn a profit for as long as I'd wanted.  But that sounds too much like hard work. This is an article about war profiteering - getting the highest income from the lowest effort, and that sweet spot seemed to be a few hours of awesome fun and a jackpot payout.

So that's my war profiteering, cold and calculating. I ran the numbers, smoked some fools and flew home with pockets full of gold.  If you have war stories, tactics, or profit numbers leave a comment - I'd love to hear from you.

I'm Cmdr TwingTwang, making money one war at a time. Fly casual Everybody.