How do you progress past a Vulture?

[Charlotte]

Hit a wall in my bounty hunting career. Was enjoying earning a few 10k bounties at low rez, 100k at high rez, but now I'm trying haz rez for the big money 300-500k my vulture is constantly obliterated by ships I *should* be able to out manoeuvre.

Its a shame because I really like the vulture, but I feel like I need a bigger or better ship to take on more PvE bounties.

But the thing is I can't seem to make enough money to progress. I had my eye on a cheiftain, 19 mil credits, but you need around another 50 mil to buy weapons, shields, upgrades and such. Even grinding high/haz res, being selective who I hunt, stealing kills from the AI, its still going to take a heck of a long time to get anywhere near that many kills for. Ideally I'd like a Fer-de-lance or a Python, but 50-100 mil credits plus outfitting won't be happening for a long time.

Is there some trick I'm missing? I've wanted to try other forms of money making, exploring, trading, but all the ships available are too small, and don't have a good enough jump drive to get past 20 or so Ly

I haven't been able to touch engineering, I made it out to see Felicity Farseer in my vulture over several hours, only to be greeted with a 'you need meta-alloys' message. From what I gather they're tied to hunting aliens over the other side of the map, somewhere I definitely won't be travelling to anytime soon. So please don't suggest I 'engineer my vulture' because it feels like its more trouble than its worth.

Any help would be appreciated. This game is great but so much content is needlessly walled off its very frustrating.

[Dolphin Bottlenose]

You can try some passenger missions, flying a Dolphin. Or doing some cargo delivery missions in a Type-6 or Type-7, depending on what you can afford.

These activities require you to get better reputation with your local factions, for them to give you better paying jobs. Just run a few missions for them, and they will like you more and more.

[Kidm0bius]

atm if you dont mind the grind, hickam survey to mainani data runs can net a good amount for just a little boredom (always take to mainani and take back to hickam) most of the data missions have a time bonus (atleast half of my max data load).

You could sell your current ship and buy a Diamondback Explorer, beefed up with a standard A grade FSD, advanced D scanner and a Detailed surface with a meh shield and a 4A fuel scoop is about 40ish LY/jump and all for about 2->10mil depending on station and if you want srv, AFMS, etc. if you wanna explore. Go to the top of the galactic plane then go away and down from bubble(most people travel in a corodor so doing zigs and zags away from bubble and up and down will help with finding stuff). Also, if you find stuff stating "unexplored" ignore the "discovered by" they didnt scan the system and you'll get alot of money per system if you scan all but asteroids with a detailed surface scan (including suns) (i dont scan asteroids but im not OCD lol). There is the road to riches but so many people do it that it might not be worth it anymore lol.

Use eddb.io to find a place close enough to do everything. try the place i go to, when you use eddb.io click stations plug everything in to look for a alliance chieftan, in an empire system only one pops up belstry or something like that lol then bookmark it on the system map so you know where to go for ships. (this place has like 20~ ships for sell and up to grade 7 parts (mostly)) just remember if your in a different major faction you'll be shot down O.o (i dont do powerplay because of that i wanna free to go where ever lol)

[Ardariel]

stick on vuture until you get enough money and rep for federal gunship. It have immense firepower and able to carry fighter bay. So you can use fighter to take initial aggro and then to obliterate target. Dont forget to buy good hull, cause without it you would be melted fast. GS is hulltank, not shieldtank like vulture. But, generally, whiile you progress your enemies would become tougher. SO if you wont learn your ship (any ship you fly) - you wont be able to get big bounties anyway. Even NPC conda with fighter can outmanouvre and melt through 5k shield corvette isf you just plainly use flight assist.

I would recommend to focus on learning vulture atm. Cause if you gonna bounty hunt and have issues with keeping enemy in needed position on one of best at handling ship in game - you not gonna have good experience by just switching ship. All of them have it have weak sides and features you need to learn.

[Kevlar]

The game, presently, assumes you will engineer things so ditching engineering will hurt you in the long run, specially with a vulture that screams for a overcharged power plant. More, Dangerous and elite npc, that roam HAZ res sites, often have the equivalent of engineered ships.

With that said a fairly well built vulture should not have many problems on a 1 vs 1 with any npc ship. After the eagle, the vulture is the most agile ship, to the point that with engineered thrusters , even with flight assist all the time, it should be able to consistently outmanoveur any big ship.

As such I have to agree with the guy above , if you are having that many problems with a ship that generally is able to stay on the enemies six, you will have considerable problems to achieve success with the obvious vulture upgrades, all of them less nimble than the vulture, bigger and easier to be hit.

[Agony_Aunt]

You shouldn't need to engineer a Vulture to easily beat most NPCs as long as you have it A rated. Engineering of course helps, especially getting thermal resist shields and dirty drives. Just choose your targets with care. Don't bite off more than you can chew.

Check the rank of opponent before engaging. Elite opponents can be tricky.

[DownSouth05]

Meta Alloys are sold at Maia is I remember! You just need one right? Its been awhile but I am about 99% certain you can buy them at Maia.

Bounty hunting at this point might be a stretch in the Vulture, its a great ship don't get me wrong but at your precieved skill level Haz Res is just wrecking you by your own admission.

So time to take a step back and make money some place else.

Exploration: Try this https://www.alpha-orbital.com/pathfinder You can make ton just running the planet scans on this list. I try to do 10 to 20 a day and I make between 15 and 23 million. Its not allot but it adds up

Mission Running: Run data packs between two systems in a "boom" economy. Preferably in Imperial or Federation space so you can rank up into faction ships along with making some money.

Trade: I am not a fan of pure trading and I admit I am not good at it. My wing mate is after to me to actually buy modules for Cutter and use i for trade and I keep saying "tomorrow" lol

SuperCruise Bounty Hunting: Can get boring searching for targets and the income is weak but if you add in a collector limper controller you can easily collect all the mats they drop instead of trying it in a has res :D

Mining: Can be relaxing after awhile and FD should be putting the mining missions back again soon. Until then its just refining the ore and selling it and you will be getting the 500 tons of mining done for Selene Jean when you get her unlocked.

Here is an explore build 26 LY jump range and if you engineer the FSD you can really get up there: https://coriolis.io/outfit/asp_scout?code=A0p8tdFalddisif4ml-----020243-2i2f.Iw1%2FkA%3D%3D.Aw1%2FkA%3D%3D..EweloBhBGA2H4FMCGBzANokMK6A%3D&bn=Asp%20Scout%20

[dragonmalice]

Felicity is awesome to have, but she isn't the only path you can take. Elvira is out of the way, but she's easier to unlock and offers some mid level shield stuff that will be immediately helpful to you - as well as FSD upgrades. Just use Inara or a similar website to plan ahead - bring the bribe and whatever materials you need with you. I was in the Vulture for a long time before I got Horizons - it was amazing before engineering, but it's unstoppable with it.

The T-6 is awesome as an early game multi-purpose ship - can't recommend it enough for light cargo or even passenger hauling. The trick is to pick a home system, take all of your missions from that system, then return for more - this will max out your rep there and get you better pay. Figure out which local systems have only 1 starbase, pick 1 or two, and grab every data mission going to them while doing your cargo and passenger runs - then run them when you're full. It will boost your rep, and the time bonuses are crazy good right now as mentioned. The Dolphin is also very good here (tho if you plan to arm it, I think the weapon placement on the T-6 is better).

A Diamondback or Asp explorer is also highly recommended - it will make short work of tracking down the bribes for engineers, any exploring you may want to do, and running errands. The DBX actually has slighly better jump range and is decent in a fight, so don't worry about taking the cheap road here if you don't want to pony up for the Asp.

In short, branch out - mixing it up stops you from burning out. Besides, if you do nothing but bounty hunting, you're killing your local rep with some factions. It takes very little mission work to counteract that.

[Napoleonic S]

Or you can build a multi purpose asp to do a bit of everything, from cargo, passenger and mining... To spice up you game play with variety.

[D K]

Honestly you point out a crippling flaw with ED, the combat gameplay peaks in reward at the vulture level. After this, you can kill a bit faster by engineering and upgrading to the large ships eventually, but your combat earnings remain mostly the same. We will SEE what the kill warrent scanner changes bring, but I'm not optimistic.

Combat missions and thargoids both need huge reward boosts to fit in with the risk/reward of mining/trading/exploration now. FD have done a great job working on the income of those professions, now let's fix the most common.

My best advice to you is to branch out and enjoy the rest of the game for a bit. The credits will come easier as you explore and find great places trade or run missions. There have been several success stories lately of new folks going exploring in an asp and coming back to enough CR to buy a conda. Exploration pays well now and it's easy to forget how long you've been racking up credits if you enjoy it.

[TiberiuS]

I have never bought a Vulture, so no idea. Maybe it's a dead end.

[DownSouth05]

From what I've read, "bounty" pay outs are the only money oriented activity that has not been bumped up regarding how much is paid out. Trading priofits have increased supposedly, and mission running payouts have also been bumped up. Bounty hunting, it seems, is stagnant and aside from the pleasure of winning an engagement and collecting all the mats that drop it really is not the way to make serious amounts of cash.

Yesterday I went out to a Haz Rez in my engineered corvette. It was like shooting ducks in a barrel. I made about 6.7 million in bounties in about 2 hours. Where as if I ran data packs and some cargo between Sothis and Ceos I could have made 40 million in the same amount of time.

Of course running the Corvette was allot more fun for me than endlessly undocking, evading interdictions then docking again. Its all a question of what makes it all fun for you.

[funkynutz]

Originally posted by Celestia:

Hit a wall in my bounty hunting career. Was enjoying earning a few 10k bounties at low rez, 100k at high rez, but now I'm trying haz rez for the big money 300-500k my vulture is constantly obliterated by ships I *should* be able to out manoeuvre.

Post your outfitting using coriolis. There might be some glaring issue we can help you fix.

Its a shame because I really like the vulture, but I feel like I need a bigger or better ship to take on more PvE bounties.

Vulture can kill anything in the game.

But the thing is I can't seem to make enough money to progress. I had my eye on a cheiftain, 19 mil credits, but you need around another 50 mil to buy weapons, shields, upgrades and such. Even grinding high/haz res, being selective who I hunt, stealing kills from the AI, its still going to take a heck of a long time to get anywhere near that many kills for. Ideally I'd like a Fer-de-lance or a Python, but 50-100 mil credits plus outfitting won't be happening for a long time.

Get some wingmates to help you out. Should be able to make 5 mil an hour easy in the Vulture ina haz res.

Is there some trick I'm missing? I've wanted to try other forms of money making, exploring, trading, but all the ships available are too small, and don't have a good enough jump drive to get past 20 or so Ly

For exploring, try the Hauler or DBX.

I haven't been able to touch engineering, I made it out to see Felicity Farseer in my vulture over several hours, only to be greeted with a 'you need meta-alloys' message. From what I gather they're tied to hunting aliens over the other side of the map, somewhere I definitely won't be travelling to anytime soon. So please don't suggest I 'engineer my vulture' because it feels like its more trouble than its worth.

It's not the other side of the map. That's about 65000 to 75000 Ly away. Maia's less than 500Ly, and can be reached in the Vulture... Get hauler or DBS/DBX instead though, it'll make the journey a lot quicker.