'Better' ships than Cobra MkIII?

[Governmentyard]

I appreciate we've all started out with the MkIII and loved it, it's a cracking all-rounder. Fighters and traders can part-ex their MkIII for something more appropriate, but are there any standard or non-standard ships which improve stat wise on the MkIII in all areas?

I'm playing as basically a trader who likes a scrap but will try a little of everything and I imagine this will be my path through the game. I've no desire to keep buying ships depending on where my career whims take me and I want new vehicles to be improvements across the board if possible, though I suspect it may not be.

Any reccommendations?

[Cody]

Hi Trenchtown,

I only play with standard ships, and if you want to trade AND fight, the good old Mk III seems to have it all.

If I had the skills I'd design my own, but it would be very similar to the Cobra.

[Davidtq]

I appreciate we've all started out with the MkIII and loved it, it's a cracking all-rounder. Fighters and traders can part-ex their MkIII for something more appropriate, but are there any standard or non-standard ships which improve stat wise on the MkIII in all areas?

I'm playing as basically a trader who likes a scrap but will try a little of everything and I imagine this will be my path through the game. I've no desire to keep buying ships depending on where my career whims take me and I want new vehicles to be improvements across the board if possible, though I suspect it may not be.

Any reccommendations?

Time to roll up your sleeves and get ready for some DIY?

Ive put together an oxp somewhere which creates a new custom Cobra, you can sort your own paint job in any old paint program and edit the stats to suit yourself, if you're interested I will upload it somewhere or another. You can then customise the ship entirely to suit what you want.

[Cody]

That sounds good, DTQ.
Thanks.

[Zbond-Zbond]

The BoaClassCruiser does everything better than the Cobra, and it is easier to dock in an emergency, fleeing your homicidal co-traders and demented law enforcement goons who can't tell an honest trader from The Thing From The Pit. I think it's very good

[Rustybolts]

*Blatant Plug Alert*
You could try a Python ET Special or my own S.T.E which was designed to be a step-up from the Cobra III.

It has 0.390 ls speed and a 40t cargo expandable to 55t.
I have reduced pitch n roll stats to 0.8 and 1.8 it has 3 missile slots and 3 energy banks.
Or as other people have suggested create your own ship to fill this niche.

[Lestradae]

Try Realistic Shipyards - downloadable via the page in my sig.

Loads of ships there, many of them step-ups from the Cobra Mk III (if you have the money) - and a ships databank that contains the stats of these ships so that you don't have to buy the cat in the bag

Have fun

L

[Cmdr Wyvern]

Some more shameless plugs:

Xarik - A swift and agile fighter/trader craft with good survivability. It doesn't carry quite as much freight as a Cobby, but it makes up for that in being better armed and relatively cheap to own and operate.

Dragon AN - The Dragons are a heavy fighter/escort/torpedo boat class, and as such are built for hot-zone combat. The AN is the lightest armed of the three, yet has a freight capacity equal to the Cobby, while packing a better missile loadout.
Dragon SE - Faster than the AN, sports an autoturret in place of the aft laser mount. Carries less freight, but can get in and out of a fight swiftly, and can simply outrun most opponents.
Dragon M - If you fancy a career in bounty killing, then the Dragon M is the weapons platform you're looking for. Extremely tough and brutally armed, the M is death incarnate. Bounty hunting is it's sole purpose however, as it's limited to a mere 15tc of freight.

Kirin class - These are a class of superfreighter, and as such carries a massive amount of freight. They're not as fast as the abovementioned and certainly not cheap, but they're armed to the teeth and tough as combat boots, and able to stand their ground against most opponents while doling out a lot of damage. A smalltime hood daring to attack a Kirin is soon regretting his folly.

[Screet]

I'm playing as basically a trader who likes a scrap but will try a little of everything and I imagine this will be my path through the game. I've no desire to keep buying ships depending on where my career whims take me and I want new vehicles to be improvements across the board if possible, though I suspect it may not be.

I second the recommendation for the Boa Class Cruiser. In my eyes, it's the best standard ship.

If you've made some big amounts of money with it, you may want to look out for the neocaduceus (omega variant).

The Caduceus comes with a cargo hold slightly bigger than that of the CM3, thus much more tiny than that of the BCC, but it's a very powerful ship should you have (or want) to fight.

Screet

[saint]

As a fighter, I find that the TIE is a real winner, I installed rattlecutters and they end up in debris, their awesome weapons just pass around this little gremlin.
Too bad it has NO cargo... just some precious metal and gemstones.

Adding a couple of missile pylons is both "closer to the prototype" and lets you do some weapon trading between planets and rock hermits (or even better, between Zero G Factories and rock hermits... provided you added commies to your Oolite install).

[Davidtq]

sorry forgot about this topic, Ive been spending way too much time flying the last week or so... if you want to try it out Ive uploaded it here :-

www.dsw.co.uk/diycobra3.oxp.rar

Most of the stuff you could want to edit is in the shipdata.plist file in the config folder, simply open it in a text editor and play with the numbers to suit yourself. Paint over the texture then get rid of the black lines and hey presto your own customised cobra.

By default the ship will be for sale lots once you've bought it you can edit the shipyard.plist in the config folder and change the number under "chance" to zero, then there will be no more for sale and you personalised cobra is unique to you.

[saint]

Since Oolite is not multiplayer, changing the "player" ship should work too, except that if you change the default instaled equipment...

Working on hte player ship should let you point to a modified set of models using different and custom textures. Am I right ?

[Davidtq]

Since Oolite is not multiplayer, changing the "player" ship should work too, except that if you change the default instaled equipment...

Working on hte player ship should let you point to a modified set of models using different and custom textures. Am I right ?

Yes but then every time the ship turns up in the hsipyard it will have "your" personalised texture, makes it feel less exclusive if they're for sale every where, and of course youve got to trawl through all the different ships and roles to get to the right part, I made this one so its all nice and easy to find, the ship isnt even available for computer roles, its as easy as I could think to make it for a person to have their own custom Cobra Mk 3.

Even the keys are kept simple in shipdata, as I ve used the "like" label, and then just added the data I thought it was likely for someone to want to edit. Trying to keep it simple so someone with no experience of OXP'ing could have their own modified ship without having to learn to much about how the whole thing works. Thats the idea anyway

[Zbond-Zbond]

Just accidently bought a StarseekerPersonalShuttle, which didn't have the cargo capacity I wanted at the time, so I went to a higher TL to trade it in, and the best I could do was a PythonClassCruiser.

This OXP ship is really very good, with enough room to trade in the high profit lines, and an excellent scoop camera (available as an external view) which is unique to this model, as far as I know.

Definitely worth a look.

[saint]

Yes but then every time the ship turns up in the hsipyard it will have "your" personalised texture

True! Beware of the MultiHuedAncient... TIE!
(Could have been a paintwork nice on a dragon... But TIE dance so nicely...)