Elite: Dangerous Blog

This is the blueprint for the Core Dynamics Vulture. The Vulture is the attack-dog of space, far tougher than any ship of it's size and while as large as a type-6 transporter, the Vulture is almost as agile as an Eagle; plus with two large weapon hard-points it packs a hell of a punch! With the Federal Assault Ship and Fer De Lance, this ship is the third alpha predator of the Elite: Dangerous universe.

First introduced in version 1.2 for the Wings expansion.

Thanks to CMDR Aidan Abacus & the CMDRs of www.elitedangerous.de for German translations. Thanks to CMDR Nicou, CMDR Aymerix & CMDR Duita Rider of www.elite-dangerous.fr for French translations.

English Version 1920x1080 4096x2305

Deutsche Version 1920x1080 4096x2305

Version Française 1920x1080 4096x2305

I made the Combat rank of Elite this week after 18 months and 15 weeks of play-time. Which goes to show it can be done without any grind.

I was helping a new player (Awesome_Gamer) and thought a bit of bounty-hunting combined with a Community Goal (The crime crackdown at Morrina) would be a good way to introduce him to the concept of community goals and do some pirate-hunting for cash in the process.

Over the week of the CG my young Padawan went from a Cobra Mk III to a Viper Mk IV and put several million credits in the bank. He’s current goal is to achieve enough rank with the Federation for a SOL permit.

On Monday night I pushed the combat rank from Deadly that last 1% into Elite. I’m now looking forward to seeing what missions that this new status unlocks!

Choose your weapon

For the most part in Elite, I tend to fly around in multi-role ships favouring light armour and good jump range over ships with heavy combat loadouts and short range.

I’ve owned an Anaconda since February of 2014, so a lot of smaller ships have simply passed me by, having been added later. Although I own a Federal Corvette (The "Kharon") which is a monster of a combat ship, I hadn’t really tried any others.

During this week’s CG though, I took out my Federal Assault Ship on CMDR Ranualf’s recommendation and loadout advice and found it an amazing ship. Agile, tough and very adept at bounty hunting. Having found the change rather satisfying, I dusted off my Vulture from storage and took “Toomes” out for flight last night (Spider-man fans will get the reference). Wow! The thing is a killer. A space-faring attack-dog! Equipped with a C3 Beam and E3 Pulse I was racking and stacking the kills, but the best part was how it sounded. The audio effects are pure artistry! If you haven’t tried these ships, do yourself a favour – you don’t know what you’re missing.

Footnote: In case you are wondering why I have ships I haven't flown, it's because I have every ship, but until this February I only had four. The rapidly acquired collection of ships are for my VR shipyard at LaveCon.

What have the Romans ever done for us?

Yesterday I received the most forum reputation I’ve ever had for any single post! People were complaining on the forums (shocker there) that 2.1 was over-hyped. I pointed out that, just like the militants in Monty Python’s Life of Brian in the "What have the Romans ever done for us?" sketch, that you can give someone everything or nothing or something in between and they will STILL be unhappy.

To make the point with a bit of satire, I whipped up a GIF file.

The best bit (for me) was when someone reposted this on Reddit and people were making complaint posts underneath, about how it "..was outrageous for them to have to pay $60 for these fixes to be done when all the Horizons functionality should have been in the game at launch for free!"

Clearly the irony was lost. Everything mentioned (except skid marks) is free and available to everyone at the next release. My point made for me – you just can’t please some people.

Yep, there’s a sale on!

As of 4.45pm this afternoon, the major combat role ships of the game just got more affordable.

After listening to the community about the difficulty of raising the funds needed to purchase the upper end of the combat ships, Frontier have dropped the prices of the Federall Dropship and the new Fer-de-lance and the Vulture.
If you had one of these ships already, you will have been refunded the difference.

Federal Dropship 47% OFF!

Was 36,969,990 CR
Now 19,814,205 CR

Fer-de-lance 50% OFF!

Was 102,232,230 CR
Now 51,567,040 CR

Vulture 76% OFF!

Was  21,689,629 CR
Now  4,925,615 CR

The cost of the Vulture is 21.9 million credits and the cost of the Fer-del-lance is 102 million credits.

Fairly close to earlier estimates based on the cost of military grade bulkheads.

For players who don't have Beta access, I've make a video of my weekends play in 1.2 Beta.

Really impressed with the two new ships and the new Wings functionality.

The Vulture is here! The heavy fighter we've been promised and it's very different.
For a start it has "only" two weapon hard points.

It's the size of a Lakon 6 but as nippy as a Cobra and kicks like a horse.

The first thing you notice about the Vulture is the engine sound. If a cement mixer lorry barrel ran on an electric motor and span at 100mph, it would sound like a Vulture’s engine.

The cockpit is small and the pilot sits at the front alone. Very much like the Federal Dropship, there are steps back into the ship to your right and the co-pilot sits on a second level behind and above the pilot’s left.

On the Oculus rift, you can see down through the glass to ground below the ship’s nose.

When I first took off, I expected it to be heavy, a brawler like the Python. Not so. It leapt off the pad and thundered out into space.

From Dalton Gateway, I jumped to the next system, as this was faster than the 100,000 Ls trip to the Nav Point. The ship is very responsive and manoeuvres like a Cobra. With the two Class 3 hard points set up with C3 Beams I was burning through small ships like Eagles and Sidewinders in seconds - shields or not!
Larger ships like Pythons and Anacondas were taken down easily without resorting to shield cells. NPC's are easier than human opponents, but even so, this is one tough cookie!

COST

Nothing official yet, but generally the base ship costs the same as military grade bulkheads, which in this case cost 19.7M credits.

The good news is that the Class 4 FSD tops out at the 1.6M A rated and the shields and thrusters are Class 5, which tops out at 5M, so the total upgrades are far cheaper than something like a Python or Clipper.

I had a go with an alternative layout using 1 3C Beam and a smart missile rack. Fish in a barrel! Melt their shields, hit 'em with a missile or two and collect the bounty!

The new ship will be called the Vulture.

The ship is shown next to it's stable-mate the Eagle, bottom left.

As you can see, it's larger than the Cobra Mk III and is classed as "a heavy fighter" armed on a par with a Python or Clipper.

"Vulture"

As the bird name suggests it's probably a Core Dynamics ship, like the Eagle.

Mike Evans (Frontier Developer) mentioned that the Vulture would be THE heavy fighter ship (very good at flying and fighting, pretty much bad at anything else).

Specification confirmed by Mike Evans that has dribbled out via forum comments:-

• 2 x Large Weapon Hardpoints
• 4 x Util slots
• Class 4 Power Plant
• Class 5 FSD Drive
• Class 3 Life Support
• Class 5 Power Distributor
• Class 4 Sensors
• Class 3 Fuel Tank
• 2 x Class 1 slot (empty by default)
• 1 x Class 2 slot (empty by default)
• 1 x Class 4 (Class 3 Cargo Rack by default)
• 1 x Class 5 (Shield Generator by default)

In terms of speed, acceleration & manoeuvrability it will be similar to an Eagle, not as fast but more consistent across pip levels.