Hopefully yesterday will have put a dent into IPP’s lead.

Moon’s Spawn will be jumping out for an hour or so tonight to sell some Painite. I will try to post an exact time later.

Tomorrow, we will head out to the crystal shards for the day, (out Monday morning, back tuesday morning). Anyone who wants to top up their raw mats, should come along, the list of available mats is below.

HIP 36601 – C 4 A – Selenium – (Not crystal shards)
HIP 36601 – C 1 a – Polonium
HIP 36601 – C 1 d – Ruthenium
HIP 36601 – C 3 b – Tellurium
HIP 36601 – C 5 a – Technetium

Matt

I just got five deliver in the name of democracy which I have loaded into the space cow, hopefully a trit mission when I get back!

Matt

@squirrelking are you picking these up at Wylie or at one of the other stations?

I find I get the mining missions in Kuwembaa at Francisco de Eliza, which is unfortunately 21000Ls away. Still worth it for 6M for 36t of osmium, which I have stored on the carrier!

Matt

Stacked a few too many pirate missions, had five ships tearing lumps out of the vulture. Good job it’s fast enough to run away, when needed. Back to the carrier for a new canopy, get Alyana out of bed and into the Funship!

Matt

I have it on good authority that they were Imperials looking for a new source of slaves!

Matt

Yeah, not a fan of seal clubbing myself. I have gone one step further and been, ahem, ‘taking out’ IPP trade ships, in between running missions for NKL.

Matt

NPCs aren’t as logical as the rest of us. Good job, otherwise with their infinite chaff, almost limitless shield cell banks and no cooldown FSDs they would be proper pains!

I’m annoyed about the BGS, I was planning to go goid hunting this weekend and help out Down 2 Earth Astronomy in the battle for Leesti.

Matt

I haven’t seen anyone around either (not a surprise on PS4). It looks like someone is running missions back and forth between Akuntsu and Kuwembaa, which could be for Fed and Empire rank, but why not include NKL for some of the Fed?

I guess we’ll see whether it carries on!

I only drink and mine, with a half decent shield a few knocks on the roids doesn’t matter! Plus anyone can land on a fleet carrier!

Matt

I thought the CZ was trickier, yesterday. There seemed to be a tendency for the enemy to gang up on you. At one point I was fighting with a dropship, whilst tanking two vipers. I would have been dead in the Vulture, but the Funship has plenty of hull.

Matt

Looks like someone is working against NKL, IPP and Li Chotep have both made significant gains in Akuntsu and Kuwembaa over the last 2 or 3 days. Seems a bit more than coincidence to me, so I’ll run some missions between the Akuntsu and Kuwembaa and see what happens.

Matt

I agree, at any one time at least 50% of my ships have fines or bounties.

Matt

We’ve all got a past D0NK!

I didn’t know that about pirates.

I found some the other week, in a HGE in Outbreak. This was after 6 months playing, shall we say regularly, and I got the new material discovered message!

Previously I had traded across from either imperial shielding or core dynamics composites.

Matt

Dirty drives uses various firmwares. I have found lower tier firmwares at Private Data Beacons, but higher there could be value in missions for Modified Embedded Firmware and then trading down.

[Edit] Just remembered the real pain with dirty drives…….Pharmaceutical Isolators!

I have a note that I found some in a wing delivery mission.

For the wakes, like D0NK says make yourself a bubble bus with a wake scanner on board. Mine is my DBX.

Matt

That’s a wise choice, even when you’re kitted out for AX combat Thargoids can play too rough.

I have manged data by spending a couple of minutes outside busy stations scanning wakes and ships every time I go anywhere. A good source of wakes is distribution points (POIs) in famine systems, multiple sources every ten minutes.

Matt

@molgrips you are describing hull tanking and shield tanking

Hull tanking you power all of the points you can into the hull and have a relatively small, fast charging, shield. It is not just a case of coming back on if broken, if you are only being hit 20% of the time a fast charging shield will be increasing for the other 80%, 3s delay not withstanding. Your hull gets chipped away each time the shield drops and you clear off when you have 2% left!

With a shield tank all of you points go into shields. Instead of masses of hull reinforcement you have shield cell banks. As soon as the shields go down you leave, in some cases before the shields go down. Yes you have to leave when the shields go down, but if you have 2/3 SCBs, on top of 5-7000 shields, that takes a long time.

[Edit] For example a 6B SCB provides 1872 Mj.

The clincher for me is how strong a shield can you get. If you look at the clipper for example, you are never going to get enough points to make a shield tank as the base is too low. The courier however, for its size, suits a shield tank build.

Matt

My rule with shields is if I’m planning to fight, I run the biggest possible. In the Space Cow I run a 5 (max 8) and in the Python I run a 4 (max 6). In the Chief I intend to do the shooting!

NHSS threat five ‘can’ be a sensor, which I guess you could shoot for fragments!

Matt

@Squirrelking that’s a feature of the Chieftain, effectively the high pitch rate means that you are flipping over before you decrease speed and so you end up with a reverse vector.

It can be very annoying as you (I) have a tendency to do it in a particularly tense part of a scrap and leave yourself sitting at zero throttle as an angry Conda bears down on you.

You can boost as soon as your vector becomes reverse or try and control the turn, by not applying so much vertical thrust. I have found they help, but it’s the price you pay for such maneuverability.

Matt

Module reinforcement package.

I have one on the Chieftain, but still lose weapons like they are going out of fashion. I only have a class 5 shield though, as I need the cargo space, so I wonder whether improving the shields would help. I’m not that worried as I generally use it for single ship fights.

The Space Cow is great, but practice beating interdictions!

Matt

What’s the point of having all that hull if you’re not going to use it! Sounds like the Chief is going to pay for itself.

I managed to find 5 deliver clothing in the name of democracy missions for NKL. Picked them all up in the Space Cow, jump to the next system, land at a couple of bases, easy 10M. I got 25% onto my next Fed rank as well, so a profitable evening.

Matt

Moon’s Spawn is due to be on station in Akuntsu for at least the next week, while I put a real dent in the controlling faction. At some point this week I will jump out briefly so that V8ninety can sell his tritium, but it will jump straight back.

I love those tritium missions, though if I can I mine the tritium (keep that brass in my pocket etc.). My best missions last night were a couple of Corvette pirate missions, not sure I want one now after beating them fairly easily in the Vulture (one I had to beat twice as it ran off the first time!). I think that was the one which dropped Imperial shielding mats!

Matt

I had to replace my controller last week, it kept making me perform impromptu barrel rolls.

That sounds like it was going well. I didn’t realise you were so close to Elite.

Matt

I haven’t tried an SLF. Just a guess, but I can’t see them lasting too long against Interceptors. Likely they’d be fine against scouts.

I think the argument against the Fed ships is the speed. But that really plays to the boost away method. I’m sure interceptors have been killed in worse ships and as you say, they can be made super tanky.

Matt

@D0NK I make that two successful trips! Twelve on one hull is certainly more than I’ve managed.

Matt

I think that’s fairly common.

Usually the reaction from my wife/daughter is ‘oh look it says your ship is destroyed, did you mean to do that?’

I keep meaning to head out to the shards. That could be a carrier trip if anyone fancies it.

Matt

I run Hi Cap on missiles, which increases clip and capacity. The amount you can run before reload and the amount you have on board. For packhounds the number launched increases with High Cap. Combine with a drag experimental.

I will synthesize multicannon ammo occasionally, as the top/bottom combination on the Funship tends to mean the top gets used most. I wouldn’t bother using the Chieftain for prolonged combat thought, I have at least two ships which are more effective. For mugging condas that come to interdict you, there is nothing finer, but in that case there are only one or two ships and you can absolutely spam the packhounds.

If I want to sit there for an hour racking up millions, lasers/multis and NPC fighter. Use the multis to get the hull down and soften it up with corrosive, then leave it to the lasers and fighter.

Matt

@D0NK the cytos I run overcharged. oversized (150 shield damage per second!). You can get more damage from short range but damage stops at 0.5km. I run them on a separate fire group, as once the shields are down they are just twinkly lights, so the power isn’t really an issue.

Before I got the packhounds I ran seekers, which are pretty much as good for damage. It does mean it’s not a sit in Haz Res build as the missiles soon run out.

Matt

@squirrelking my Chieftain is set up for piracy, but the weapon loadout is all cytoscramblers in the small, packhounds in the medium and multicannon in the large.

If you went lasers and multicannons it would be very effective. The time on target with the Chieftain is huge. I think multicannons are pretty good ammo capacity, compared to frags or cannons.

Matt

I’m ok as long as I only have one type of projectile weapons, otherwise the mixture of shot speeds is an absolute nightmare.

Another reason not to fight Vipers, they adore chaff. Saying that you can always drop targeting and use them fixed, or get so close that they hit anyway!

Matt

Only cannon in a Huge class, no frag.

Wylie has 3C fixed and gimballed frags

Matt

It’s definitely a change from the standard combat.

I do the same except I am based on Celeano. Jump range isn’t terrible in the Krait, but it isn’t 60Ly, that’s for sure.

You gonna have a crack at an interceptor?

Matt

@molgrips 5A Reinforced High Cap, 4 boosters 2xheavy duty super caps and 2x resistance augmented super caps

Pesonally I don’t run like that, because it’s a once it’s gone, it’s gone build. I run bi-weaves at around 500 but with around 1:40 recharge.

@Perchypanther give those goids hell!

Matt

Not waving anything, but I can get that in base shield in my Vulture. Double with resistances.

For some kind of large ship shield tank you need over 5000, more for a resistance build. The three small burst lasers on my chieftain do 150 per second against shields, so I’d be moving onto the packhounds in about 8-9 seconds.

Matt

I’m into the Krait for about 160 million and another 40 million so far on rebuys.

The latest craze appears to be interceptors without a HUD!

Matt

If you want to take down an interceptor, smaller quicker ships are the meta. My Krait II is based on the AXI recommended build. The guns are for scouts, so all turreted AXI multicannon. For interceptors gauss and flak are the way to go.

With a conda, from what I can see you need a real tank, because you are not really quick enough to get away.

Check out wiggyb on youtube for a great cyclops video.

Matt

The difference between the conda and the python is that one is large, one is medium.

@molgrips in which case you can tweak that build. I run 192 with a fuel scoop, I only swapped it out this week for mining from the carrier. You can see my build on INARA.

I only have a class 3 shield, but in the Python you should never get interdicted by NPCs.

The best QOL upgrade is G5 Dirty Drag drives, then you are quick/nimble enough to get away as well.

Matt

The reason the Python looks like a more capable miner is because it is. Unless you are going for three to four hour marathon mining sessions 200t is perfect. It has enough hardpoints to equip all three techniques at once. What’s not to love?

Matt

Done, just let me know when you have taken your rocks so i can shut down access.

Thanks
Matt

The Moon’s Spawn is on her way to Kunti

I have the following on board:

Molgrips: 598 tons
Squirrelking: 190 tons
Crewlie: 1170 tons
V8ninety: 888 tons

I will set up a sell order on the carrier for 1958t at ~5000 Cr, once the carrier is in system. Happy selling and thanks for the mining.

Matt

I’ve just noticed on INARA, if you hover over the red demand numbers it tells you the maximum to not affect the price. It suggests 221 for Kunti (885).

That would be great.

Matt