Hello I'm commander WiggyB. This is Elite: Dangerous version 2.4 and welcome
to an unplanned interesting builds video. The episodes in this series showcase
some unusual and fun ship setups for commanders to try. I wouldn't necessarily
recommend these builds new pilots. They are really intended to provide some new
ideas and challenges for players who are a long way into the game. This particular
build is a response to Teddy Lindsell's comment on my DBS video. I was asked
to try and come up with a viable imperial eagle design for taking down
targets ranked dangerous and above. I'll be honest, this isn't a ship that
I've spent much time in. Previously I've only used it as a canyon racer or taxi.
After a quick glance at one I had in storage, it looked like the ship had
potential - so challenge accepted. Following some brief engineering I spent
a few days carving up the Neto Has RES. Many ships popped, but was my
Imperial eagle one of them? Before all that let's get back to the station for a
quick tear-down of the build. If you want to skip to the shooting then you should
find a quick link in the description.
Unusually for a tear-down, I'm going to start with utilities or more accurately
the utility - because this ship only has one mount and this dominates the rest of
the build. Double chaff is out, meaning that it must either be able to tank out
lots of damage or be great at dodging fire. If you've seen my other videos then
you'll not be surprised to hear that I'm going to be using the latter approach.
I haven't engineered the chaff launcher because ten shots turned out to be
plenty in most fights and also because I didn't have the materials to hand. Now
onto the hard points. This ship is a bit of a hybrid between my vulture and DBS
designs. It's fitted with a single size two plasma accelerator alongside a pair of
size 1 standard rails. No power play weapons this time. I did toy with placing
a hammer or a frag in the size 2 slot but decided against it. Two factors made
my decision. The first is that both plasmas and rails have high armor
piercing ratings and so are grate against larger ships.
Secondly, plasmas can accept the dispersal field secondary effect which
confuses turrets and gimbals. For a small ship with only one utility this could be
a lifesaver. In addition to dispersal field the plasma is modified to
efficiency grade 5. This stops the ship cooking every time I pulled the trigger
as it did before I engineered the weapon. The rails are modified to study mount
grade 5. Again this stops overheating. One has the super penetration mod for
enhanced module damage and the other has feedback cascade to damage cell banks.
The core internals are as you might expect. At the top I have reactive
composite bulkheads. These are un-engineered as RNGesus refused to give me
Core Dynamics Composites despite two hours of searching. On the plus side I now have
a large stock of every other rare material that can be found in a federal
system while it's in boom. The thrusters are modified to great five dirty. This is
a pretty good god rule and was the best from about 25 attempts. Pitch, roll and
yaw are all excellent. Top speed and boost speed are also better than for my
Vultures and Diamondbacks. The frame shift is optimized for range as I had
the drive in storage, although this is completely unnecessary for this ship. The
power distributor is engineered to charge enhanced grade 5. Again this
is a very good role. I was particularly pleased that the drop in weapons capacity was
minor and that engine capacity actually increased slightly. The optional
internals are all filled with random reinforcements that I had in stock. The
size 3 and both size twos are heavy duty grade 5. The size one hull reinforcement
uses thermal grade 5 to balance resistances. The final slot has a module
reinforcement
Looking at the stats, we have 1281 hull and good resistances
across the board. Not as tough as the DBS but far better than I was expecting - and
this is without engineering the bulkheads. Okay on to the shooting.
Let's start with something rather challenging this time - an elite federal
assault ship. This was at the end of my first trip to the has RES and was
my fourth fight. The eagle was a little battered, starting with 68% hull
and I only had 16 real shots left. I was expecting a rebuy or to have to jump out
this was really just a stress test to find the limits of the ship and to look for
potential improvements. The first thing that was obvious was that I was
struggling to stay behind the FAS. I prefer to boost as infrequently as
possible when I fight. In most ships a boost takes you out of the short-term
trouble but then leaves you 1 to 2k away from your target. This is
suicide in a small ship as you're then right back in the firing line and
massively out gunned or you're into prolonged jousting. As a result I prefer
to stay close with throttle and vertical thrust management. That definitely didn't
happen often in this fight.
Two minutes in and I was extremely happy to see his shields pop. Unfortunately
he then started some kind of ninja evasion technique and was still on 78%
hull when his shields came back up. By then I had to do some dodging on my own
as I was still struggling to keep behind him. I'm just glad that he had gimbals
and fixed weapons. A turret on the top I'd probably already have be dead. After
about eight minutes things were looking grim. I'd taken his shields done again
they'd already come back up. My chaff and rails were empty and I only had a few
plasma shots left. It was looking like time to make a run for it if. It then
occurred to me that I've been surface prospecting recently. Happy days -
I had materials to synthesize both rail and plasma ammo.
With that done it was game on again. A couple more shield cycles and to my
surprise I was very much on top. Even without chaste the dispersal field from
the plasma shots and keeping away from his guns that kept me in one rather
perforated piece. When I finally collected the bounty we've been fighting
for 13 minutes. Superb fight. What's more I was starting
to like this little ship. Once I'd got to grips with the flight characteristics,
slowboats it's like the Federal Gunship and Federal Dropship proved easy meat. I
wasn't able to stay behind them as easily as I can in a vulture - I'd need a
good bit more practice for that - but a dangerous Gunship and deadly Dropship
both went down without causing me any damage.
Both of these ships had fixed or gambled weapons so really had no chance of
hitting an eagle unless they could somehow turn and face it.
At this point I think it's fair to say that the challenge had been met,
Rather surprisingly it is possible to kill dangerous deadly
and elite ships with an imperial eagle,
Next up is a dangerous anaconda. Like the previous two it was pretty easy stay
behind.
The top mounted turret did cost me a bit at hull. The plasma and missiles didn't
come into play at all.
I did try and get deadly and elite anaconda kills. Unfortunately other
players and NPCs kept jumping in to help. I lost count of the number of times that
this happened. Here's a couple of quick examples.
Second from last battle - an anaconda eagle-wing. I'll let the first part of this
fight play out because it really shows up the major weakness of this build -
small ships. Trying to hit an eagle with rails and plasmas is a challenge all of
its own. Trying to do it while dodging asteroids have being pounded by an
Anaconda - now that's pressure.
At this point I was beginning to think it was rebuy time. And then a couple of shots landed.
That was a full two minutes of soaking up fire while chasing the eagle and the
hull is still at 72%. Now on to the big boy.
Thankfully this ship wasn't covered in terrorists like so many of the others I
fought. All that was needed now was time and enough ammo.
Ten plasma rounds to spare. That's a little too close. So we'll finish off with a
suicide mission to show the limits of this build. Here is a two clipper one
dropship wing. The FDS has dumb fire missiles which will pulverize pretty
much everything on an imperial eagle if they hit. Fighting this ship first neutralises the threat
The dropship's shields proved to be surprisingly weak and at
this point I had my first glimmer of hope.
I should point out battle going on in the background seems to be entirely
independent. The Clippers kept firing at me throughout the entire engagement.
And that's the first one down, two more to go.
And amazingly that's the first clipper down too with 67% hull remaining. One more
to go.
As this was the weakest ship of the three it proved to be a pretty easy
kill. All three down with 61 percent hull remaining.
When I took on this wing I genuinely expected to lose heavily. I was hoping to
take one or maybe two ships at a push. I really didn't expect to fly out with
chaff and ammo to spare. Great fight and a fantastic little ship. I'd highly
recommend one to any commander who would like a challenge. Okay so that's it for
this video. Please do leave a like in a comment if you enjoyed. It I'd be
interested to hear about your adventures and small ships. If you hated it please
let me know why. Constructive criticism will be gratefully received. o7 and
fly dangerous commanders. WiggyB out.
No comments:
Post a Comment