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Thread: Level 8 components or the lack there of
If you're outfitting a ship entirely with looted parts, one or more of several things are gonna happen:
a) you're gonna get a major headache
b) you'll have an inferior ship
c) you'll spend millions of credits on high-end REd parts barely better than crafted ones at a fraction the price
Always start with crafted parts. An Advanced X Wing can hold a full compliment of Mark IV (level 7) parts with room to spare. Upgrade and downgrade as necessary. For instance, a Mark IV Capacitor is a waste of mass when a Mark III does a perfect job with Capacitor Overcharge 3. Armor is generally a waste of mass. You don't need a 20k mass droid interface when you can purchase or loot a low level one with speed under 20 and mass under 5k. Ditto with reactors. Any level 3 or 4 reactor with about 12k energy, plus overload, will be sufficient.
Upgrade your guns and engine to Mark V. Leave everything else Mark IV. You may already have looted guns slightly better than crafted Mark Vs with similar mass (primarily in the vs Shields and vs Armor stat). Go ahead and swap those in. Incom Tri Cannons (available as a pilot quest reward for levelling, and as loot) are good guns similar to crafted Mark Vs.
Hope that helps.
Looted guns/Crafted guns, just depends on how lucky you are in drops. Otherwise, go with the reward Incom Tri's.
Crafted Armor, Crafted Shields (unless you want to take the weight of the reward Protecto Net Shield)
Looted DI/Crafted DI, just depends once again. My looted DIs are usually better than the crafted ones, but not always.
Looted reactor if you can, there are 12k reactors at level 2. If not, you may have to go with crafted.
You can get level 2-3 35.0 looted capacitors. That's more than enough for most loadouts.
LOOTED ENGINE. Crafted engins are crap, no matter how well experimented, they are still inferior by a very long way. Considering the fact that your performance is heavily dependent on your engine, don't fall for the BS of all the idiots making "speed demon" engines. That's fine if you want to drag race, but your 60.0 YPR will get you smoked whether you are in a Y-Wing or a JSF. Use no engine, at the high end, with YPR less than 70, preferably get over 75 and then RE it to 80+.
Alarien wrote:Looted DI/Crafted DI, just depends once again. My looted DIs are usually better than the crafted ones, but not always.
The only looted DIs I have seen that beat crafted are pre-nerf level 1-3s and current drop level 6 and 10. REd Level 6 have a speed and mass right between Mark III and IV crafted. A good quality Mark III is 18 speed 2600 mass, Mark IV is 15 speed 6600 mass. Loot level 6 can be around 16.5 speed for 5k mass. Level 10 are almost always faster than Mark V, but are really too heavy and a waste of mass on anything but a POB.
I have only ever seen a couple looted reactors that generate more energy for the mass than crafted. A well made Mark I reactor generates 12.4k energy for 1275 mass. Run RO4 on it and just buy another one when it decays.
Finally, in my opinion and experience, crafted engines are fine for PVE. If you want to be successful in PVP against good pilots, an REd engine makes a big difference. If you want PYR, a Mark V can be built at 98-99 speed, 71/71/61.4 PYR. With +20 in skill tapes, 72.6/72.6/61.4. If you favor pitch or yaw, one of them can be made experimented to 75-76 or so.
A well REd level 8 or 10 is still better of course, but it takes a lot longer to loot 8-20+ engines to RE a good one than to make enough credits to buy a Mark V to use in the meantime.
Without my stats in front of me, I can't tell you what DI I'm using, sorry. I do have a crafted on my Bel, but I have a faster looted on my X-Wing and the mass difference is negligible. As for reactors, I have gotten so many level 1-4 reactors that are 12K or better that I don't see paying for a crafted one. I do use a 16k on my Adv X and it might be crafted, however, 16k is really a lot and only necessary because my X isn't running anything that's RE at the moment. RE'ing my stuff would put the reactor drain down to where the 12-14k reactors are plenty.
"If you want PYR, a Mark V can be built at 98-99 speed, 71/71/61.4 PYR. "
Good enough in PVE, yes but good enough in PVE is a far cry from good. I can outfit an A-Wing with junk equipment and a tier 3 post nerf reward engine (62.3 YPR 79.0 spd) and take out any NPCin DS without issue. Good enough in PVP, not by a long shot. While it might get you to do better than a good chunk of people running their basic JSF, those people are probably not serious pilots, so killing them doesn't really give you a warm and fuzzy. Bringing up either the yaw or the pitch substantially above the other tends to make for some funky turns in my personal opinion, best to have them close. I think 75 is the minimum competing Y or P in PVP against people who actually try to build PVP ships. Again, that's my personal opinion and experience.
Alarien wrote:
As for reactors, I have gotten so many level 1-4 reactors that are 12K or better that I don't see paying for a crafted one.
It is not as if a Mark I or Mark II reactor is very expensive... If it's lighter than crafted or you have mass to burn, use it, but I wouldn't spend much time farming for a reactor.
Neverthless, this has nothing to do with the original post. To go back to the topic of level 8 components, don't use a level 8 reactor, it'll be too heavy.
Learn about the parts you get as pilot rewards from the Pilot FAQ, and work to get the best of those RE'd. The L8 Shield and Gun you are given are nice, but can be made much much better through RE, and this should be the main goal of any pilot in tier4/early mastery. Plenty of threads out there on how to pick parts for a good RE, just remember to shop and hunt with equal diligence, there are a lot of vendors with good filler parts on them for cheap.
Use crafted items as your baseline, but do not rely on them forever, the goal is to slowly replace them with the REd parts that will give far superior performance.