Elite: Dangerous Blog

I've added all the Zorogon Peterson ships to the Vehicle Codex this morning. Adder, Fer-De-Lance, Hauler and Mamba.

This is the blueprint for the Zorgon Peterson Fer De Lance. The chosen ship of bounty hunters and PvP players everywhere.

First introduced in version 1.2 Wings expansion.

You sir, are in my space!

I popped into Ballandin Gateway yesterday evening and took my Fer-de-lance into the outfitting to swap some internals around.

When I surfaced, I came face to face with an Adder, in my spot. And I quite literally mean “in” it – his ship was embedded in the nose of my FDL!

I have no idea what happened, but I guess he was inbound to my pad when I returned to the surface. Is this an example of failed A.I. or a warts-and-all simulation of real like parking issues?

We exchanged insurance details and my paint work has been subsequently repaired. Although I’m sure that someone has “keyed” the side of my Anaconda…

New in 1.2 Shield Boosters are a bit of a mystery to me at least, or were until today anyway.

They increase your shields (says so on the tin) but what does that actually mean?

Well, your shield strength is rated in Mega Jules (MJ) so, for instance if you are in a Cobra with a class 3E Shield Generator the shield is rated 61.6MJ and the best shields are a 4A, rated 125.5MJ.

You can see a full table of shield ratings here on Reddit.

What the shield booster does is multiply that figure by its “multiplier” value. If you bought a 0E Shield Booster which has a multiplier of 1.04, then your shields maximum strength would go from 125.5MJ to 130.52MJ.

What's more is they stack; if you buy more than one (two are possible in a Cobra) the multiplier values are all added. The way it does this is to calculate the increase percentage and adds that – an A rated shield booster is plus 20% (1.2) so two is plus 40%. The Cobra’s shields with two 0A Shield Boosters got from 125.5MJ to 175.7MJ!

What’s the catch? The first is power consumption. The Shield Boosters suck power like Frankenstein’s monster! The 0A Shield Booster draws 1.2MW. The second catch is recharge time. If you lose shields, the time they need to recover is much longer. How long? I haven’t been able to get a solid number yet.

Another factor for considering shield booster is cost and weight. Top end shields are expensive and heavy.

CMDR jgm on the Frontier forums has noted

I could take a 5D shield and add two 0C boosters and end up with a better shield than a straight 5A at a fraction of the cost, with lower mass and power usage.

This gets you better shields at 4% of the cost and a little over half the weight!

My 5A Fer-De-Lance shield generator has four 0B Shield Boosters, taking the shields from 478.8MJ to an eye-watering 779.16MJ!

I was watching MaxUrsa's twitch stream last night in combat with his wing and I thought to myself "that looks like fun". So I took my Fer-de-lance into the same system, and found my way to a resource extraction site. When I exited super cruise I found there were a lot more NPCs than there used to be in 1.1; there were dozens more than I could count, so I had no trouble finding wanted ones to shoot.

Before long I was engaged in combat with an Anaconda, but luckily it was already busy shooting somebody else, so I had no trouble taking down his shields, and with my B4 Canon destroying its hull.

Soon a group of federal ships and joined me and were attacking the wanted ships around me, even a federal Anaconda had joined the fight!

Small ships like sidewinders and cobras are fairly easy to take down in the Fer-de-Lance, so I concentrated on Pythons, Asps and Anacondas. After around 20 minutes I realised my bounty amounted to in excess of a million credits. Time flies when you're having fun!

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 Fer-de-lance is a medium size ship that is a fast-moving platform for firing lots of guns. Described as a “luxury bounty hunter” ship, it’s tough, well armed and probably expensive - hence the "luxury" tab.

It looks very nice, the shape is like an upturned boat with wings painted like a bowling shoe! The sounds - think electric Ferrari – are as sexy as the Clipper. With FOUR medium hard-points and one HUGE hard-point, it's the most heavily armed ship after the Anaconda.

The interior is very shiny with glossy textures and rounded edges. Very reminiscent of the Clipper, despite being from another manufacturer.

COST

With no official word, it’s guesswork. This is the internals layout. Despite the (alleged) huge price point of 90-100M Cr the FDL is quite cheap to trip out.

With Class 4 FSD and Shields, the top equipment costs 1.6M (a bit less than the Python's 51M Cr Class A items)

Jump range is not high on this ship, not really a surprise, but fully loaded out (like mine) it still jumps a respectable 15Lyr and with a Class 4A fuel scoop, you take mere seconds to refuel. You’ll only get four or five such jumps out of the 8T fuel tank though, so scooping isn’t optional.

With D rated internals and no armour, the ship jumps close to 18Lyr.

Let’s face it though, you are not going to buy this to go exploring.

SLAYING THE PIRATE

The true beauty of this ship is in its fighter capability. It’s the great white shark of Elite. With the four medium & one huge hard-point for weapons you can devise a load-out that kicks any butt.

I tried a stint with four Class 2E pulse-lasers and a Class 4B cannon, then four Class 2F multi-cannons and a Class 3C Beam laser. Both configurations were pretty effective, but the pulse/cannon combo had the advantage of not running out of ammo very fast.

People say to me “Why isn’t the Fer-de-lance as fast as a Viper?” and I reply “Because it doesn’t have to be!”

My advice to traders is, if you see and FDL coming, run away…