It doesn't matter if this ship is up against fast and agile Vipers, FdL with the usual one or two Vultures as wing mates, or the heavy hitters like Conda or Vette: it shreds them all and dances around them like it's nothing. Yes, yes, in a well-engineered Python Mk2 or FdL you can also kill a lot of people, and with a Vette with a sh*tton of shield cell banks and boosters, you hardly have to do anything. BUT: none of these ships has the same fun factor like the Mandalay. The combination of Rails and Frags is also very kind to the limited distributor = it was never an issue. What a banger of a ship!Elite: Game talk
10 Nov 2024, 3:16pm
It doesn't matter if this ship is up against fast and agile Vipers, FdL with the usual one or two Vultures as wing mates, or the heavy hitters like Conda or Vette: it shreds them all and dances around them like it's nothing. Yes, yes, in a well-engineered Python Mk2 or FdL you can also kill a lot of people, and with a Vette with a sh*tton of shield cell banks and boosters, you hardly have to do anything. BUT: none of these ships has the same fun factor like the Mandalay. The combination of Rails and Frags is also very kind to the limited distributor = it was never an issue. What a banger of a ship!10 Nov 2024, 6:12pm
MeowersRayman.Glad i wasnt there back then. Gambling was very fun back then /s
Me neither. 'Grindy credits' stuff is what people who were here for a longer time told to me. I've created my account four years ago (Almost. Night from 6 to 7 January '21), and realising that I can trade even slaves, drugs and battle weapons, but can't obtain a simple piece of periodic table raw materials, gave me a fair amount of perplexion. And of course that circle of pain, where you rolled three times to get the 99% done and seven more times to finish the job. But then I was already accustomed to grindy games and 'seemingly random' but secretly rigged rolls, so not seeing the option of 'your module gets destroyed during the procedure with ...% chance' was already good.
Saw once an old engineering with rng thing and yeah it was fun for og players back then for sure. /s
10 Nov 2024, 6:26pm
Meowers[...] realising that I can trade even slaves, drugs and battle weapons, but can't obtain a simple piece of periodic table raw materials, gave me a fair amount of perplexion.
I think of the raw material names as placeholders that ought to be (but never were) replaced with something that makes more sense
MeowersAnd of course that circle of pain, where you rolled three times to get the 99% done and seven more times to finish the job.
At least you were guaranteed to finish the job eventually, unlike the original engineering…
Rayman.Saw once an old engineering with rng thing and yeah it was fun for og players back then for sure. /s
Yeah, it was an exercise in frustration with no bounds. (Except in the beta, where you paid for engineering with fish
)10 Nov 2024, 6:29pm
RawnuAfter a delightful afternoon of massacre mission, I can confirm that this Mandalay built is best for killing Elite NPC pilots in wings
Cmdr Rawnu,
how did the four modified Guardian Plasmas work for you on your other ship? Curious because I want to test them on my Mandalay...
10 Nov 2024, 7:19pm
DiQueueRawnuAfter a delightful afternoon of massacre mission, I can confirm that this Mandalay built is best for killing Elite NPC pilots in wings
Cmdr Rawnu,
how did the four modified Guardian Plasmas work for you on your other ship? Curious because I want to test them on my Mandalay...
The Mandalay doesn't have the Power Plant to feed 4 X 2B MODIFIED GUARDIAN PLASMA CHARGERS, you can fit 2 X and then some alternative low Power Draw weapons.
It's that or your shields...
10 Nov 2024, 8:16pm
DiQueueRawnuAfter a delightful afternoon of massacre mission, I can confirm that this Mandalay built is best for killing Elite NPC pilots in wings
Cmdr Rawnu,
how did the four modified Guardian Plasmas work for you on your other ship? Curious because I want to test them on my Mandalay...
For Human combat, the issue is, as Thinder mentioned, the Power Plant. You can run 2 medium * 2 small and have to rearrange some of my build e.g. get rid of one SCB, flow control the others as well as flow control the shield boosters. In the other 2 medium slots you could fit two long-range beam lasers, one thermal vent, the other oversized. Or, if you use the MPCs to get rid of the shields, you could run 2 medium short-range MCs, one corrosive, the other oversized. I might test this build, but I don't have to small MPCs which means another Guardian grind.
For AX combat, things look different as you go shieldless and thus gain power. This build here is with 4 medium modShards, an absolute beast: https://edsy.org/s/vKwLm8a. If you have a ground port or a starport working, you can leave the cargo rack, the repair limpets, and the AFMU at home.
But for all other purposes, I would recommend the Rails/Frags combo, it is highly effective in 1:1 situations and the build can withstand 1:3 situations. 1:4 is too much, then you better run!
10 Nov 2024, 8:27pm
EDIT: Fixed the link, should work now
Last edit: 10 Nov 2024, 10:16pm
10 Nov 2024, 8:56pm
Thinder,
thank you for your views. I like your guys builds! I have sketched a ship which barely works out in terms of power (not using overcharged or guardian powerplants for heat and integrity reasons):
Mandy with 4 Guardian ModPlasmas
I read, the distro would start recharging already when the plasmas are fully loaded but not released yet. I was hoping for some relief due to this effect. Shields could be better though.
I played with 6 Plasmas as well (in EDSY that is) but I am concerned about the armour. My AXCZ build is a classic Python with a lot more hull. Mandy is much more agile but then again I am definitly not the best pilot...
The other option I was looking at was 4x Class 2 frags plus 2 Cytos. After all I want to use some more of my Powerplay weapons :-)
10 Nov 2024, 10:23pm
Particularly as I’ve seen proponents of the boredom boat (6 shard Conda) also say that they use a weapon focused distributor on it. And that thing runs with a class 8, not a 5.
10 Nov 2024, 10:27pm
Kasumi Goto… that certainly has the potential to get toasty even if the Mandalay has good heat performance by default. I might consider using a weapon focused distributor especially for those times you may be tempted to fire all six at the same time.
Particularly as I’ve seen proponents of the boredom boat (6 shard Conda) also say that they use a weapon focused distributor on it. And that thing runs with a class 8, not a 5.
I experimented with a weapon-focused distributor but in the field it did not make a big difference. And the heat is ok, alarm's will go off again. After a while. You can have one fire group with all 6, for the coup de grace, and another with 3'n'3. That should help. I will test it next week and report. If I'm not boiled.
10 Nov 2024, 11:10pm
10 Nov 2024, 11:13pm
11 Nov 2024, 1:34am
MeowersThey are weird folks anyway. Arsenic? What kind of a steampunk Victorian era poisoning is that?
The stuff you need for level 5 engineering for the FSA. Ok, may not you, but I do.
11 Nov 2024, 2:31am
Maybe it would do better at AXCZs, haven't tested it there yet as I didn't have time to play since Saturday evening. But the worst thing about AXCZs and space ports is Frontier's missile warning system that sucks more than the fact that I'm still alive: caustics are getting a higher 'priority' (as far as I understand) being mostly a nuisance compared to the swarms which are constantly triggered by the mess. Or sometimes it plainly doesn't work, and I don't have a spare pair of eyes to keep them on the sensors all the time.
Who knows, perhaps I reached perfection, at least for my personal way of playing.
If only there was a way to stuff even more heatsinks into that thing.
Or I'd like to create a monstrosity and attach two Tier 2 guns to the Tier 4 hardpoint, Flaks or Shards, depending on the situation.
Having a modernised Flak would've been great too. Or at least a simple button bind to switch between Leading/Trailing aiming modes.
Last edit: 11 Nov 2024, 2:57am
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