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Discussions Rules and Guidelines
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Thirdly learn to quick turn so you can shift where you are taking incoming fire and last but not least learn to pick your battles and try not to let yourself get into the middle of a group instead trying to keep the majority of your enemies on one side of you.
Grind for higher-level equipment and/or a new ship as soon as you find yourself overwhelmed in any battle. Once you've got the magnitude of weapons and systems to handle the next level of Risk, everything falls into place and you can really start to earn the big bucks.
As @Cookie said above, it is more important to get better equipment than it is to get a bigger ship. The 'better equipment' scales up to bigger ships, so when you have the better equipment, then it is time to upgrade to a bigger ship.
Hellion is faster, and very similar manuverability to the Icarus (the difference is close enough that it's pretty impossible to tell them apart). Along with the Hellion getting a few hidden bonus stats, *and* having a better profile. Even if the Hellion cost significantly more than the Icarus, it'd be an easy win for me.
There really is no reason to use the Icarus, even if you include the "difficulty" of obtaining a Hellion (which can actually just be as simple as carrying some cargo, flying to a red devil base, and dropping it when asked, thus setting the local area red devils temporarily friendly so you can dock. You don't even need to grind reputation), the Icarus just does not offer anything substantial.
The Mastodon is a great first upgrade for those who wont use the Hellion, and while it isn't quite as fast as the Icarus, it's far cheaper (which factors into the difficulty, as you yourself mentioned). The Tennhausen is also such a huge upgrade that it makes no sense going for the half-way measure of the Icarus, especially when, as you said, improving the equipment is far better than buying a new ship.
Mastodon, Hellion, Scarab, Barracuda, Tennhausen, Sturville, Manticore and Minotaur are basically the best ships. Going bigger than the Minotaur is just a bunch of trade-offs, gaining in one area, losing in others. The Scarab and Manticore just provide utterly insane power for their cost, and really takes a big step beyond them to make a difference. That said, I do personally prefer to use other ships, such as the Arcturus, but I'd never claim that that makes them better.
To the OP, basically stick to the ships I mentioned, and focus on increasing your equipment, only changing ships if the new one provides something significantly different (such as going from Scarab to Barracuda because you want to make money running dead drops). In Mark 6 gear, even the Rasputin is beastly, though I wouldn't recommend doing this. Find a ship that you are comfortable with, and fly that. For me, it's usually the Hellion, or if I am not using that this run, I'll use Tennhausen.
Since there really is no money lost buying and selling ships and parts, trying different ships really doesn't cost you anything, and doing something like selling *all* of you weapons and switching to a Barracuda to quickly run some missions can help your financial situation greater. It's a lot of micromanagement, but there's no reason why you can't just change ships based on what you expect to do. In short, don't be afraid to try things. I used to think that the Scarab and Manticore sucked, but after using them, my opinion *greatly* changed.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2377371668
I agree with most of what you say about ships, other than the Scarab being an excellent choice for cost-effectiveness. It's all turrets, and that's all expense after expense after expense after expense after expense after expense after expense! Sure it can do a lot of damage, but you pay a fortune for it. If you don't mind the grind for all those credits, sure, but I feel like a lot of players don't invest the hours I do into this title. I really love the Scarab as a pursuit ship, because its firepower in the forward arc is just disgustingly good. But inexpensive? Certainly not, especially if you go the laser light show route.
The reason I say the Hellion and Tennhausen are good choices is their above average broadside counts for their price points. You only pay for broadsides once, and the cost is the same for a Hammerhead corvette as a Blackgate dreadnought. The Hellion is a very early upgrade to an impressive 5 broadsides, which really helps with trading shots up close and personal against double chevron ships that might be next to impossible to even damage through their shield regen with less firepower.
What are these hidden bonus stats you're talking about with the Hellion?
Now that is something we agree on. The Hellion is just insane, and about half the price it should be.
It's also not hard at all, the hard part is trying to gain Merc rep while keeping both Militia and Red Devils happy (There's also some Dreadnaut hunting missions that provide rep for both).
If you're at least half capable with the Rasputin, you can hunt the Double Jacks for Red Devil missions from the Outlaws station, and get access before getting enough money for the Hellion.
If your argument is that it is balanced at that price because of the reputation wall, then I also disagree, see the other Red Devil stuff, they're terrible (the shields are OK, but Niche, but their Destroyer is hot garbage).