User:Nikolai Albinus/The Eagle Owner's Manual

When you start the game, you will find yourself in a Sidewinder MkI. It's a tiny multipurpose ship, free to replace and actually quite a nice ship. It will never excel at anything, but it gets you started.

Miners and traders might buy an Adder, but combat pilots will invariably find themselves in an Eagle MkII. For just under 45k, less if you can find a station with a discount, you get what is undeniably the first real combat ship of your career. You'll probably be looking to upgrade at some point, with the Viper MkIII a common choice, but trust me when I say that nothing compares to the Eagle.

Basic Combat

There is an art to fighting with an Eagle. You cannot soak up punishment, so you avoid getting hit in the first place. You are not carrying very large weapons, so you learn how to keep your enemy in your sights until they explode.

The basics are fairly easy; keep the enemy ship in your sights and keep shooting, use thermal weapons against shields, use kinetic weapons against the hull, and don't get hit. That's all there is to it against NPC ships. You do need to be careful not to shoot allied ships (system security especially) for fear of incurring a bounty, but the only real 'trick' is just to keep moving.

Practice fighting before you buy any real upgrades beyond maybe your weapons. The Eagle is cheap enough that you can make a few mistakes and many of the lessons you learn from the Sidewinder carry over. If anything, the Eagle is just an exaggerated version of the Sidewinder in combat; Sidewinders are lightly armed and manoeuvrable, Eagles are a little better armed (one extra hardpoint) and more manoeuvrable.

The one combat manoeuvre you need to watch out for as an Eagle pilot is when an enemy boosts away to gain distance and then turns to fire at you. This is, in many cases, the only way for the enemy to hit you. Don't let them do it. It takes time, even in a Cobra to get away from you. During this time, you should be shooting them, setting your throttle to maximum and boosting as often as you can (even reassigning power from systems to engines if required) to keep them too close for this technique to work. In the end, even NPC pilots will often manage to turn on you and you'll take some hits, but make them pay dearly for it. If your shields are still up, you can often weather a couple of these manoeuvres without taking hull damage.

Power Management

Eagle pilots should get used to reassigning power using the pips system on the lower-right corner of the screen. Against small and agile ships with like other Eagles, the default power-setup will usually be fine. Hit them when they are in range and your weapons are pointed in their direction, turn to keep them there and don't worry too much when they slip away.

Against most larger ships, a single pip to engines will be enough to keep your target in your sights, so adding points to weapons will help you fire more often and destroy them faster.
Against a target which keeps trying to run, you can throw power to engines to increase speed and decrease the time between boosts. Take this power from systems (add weapon power first, then engines) if your shields are still healthy to let you continue firing.
When your shields go down, consider taking power from weapons to give to systems.
If you need to run, put four points into engines and two into shields. As much as you want to run, you need your shields to stay up as long as possible. Boost as often as you can and wait for your FSD to start charging.

Pros and Cons

Pros

You are agile. In most cases, you can keep even a Vulture in your sights without entering their firing arc.
You are small. Even most players will need gimballed or turreted weapons to hit you, so you are basically immune to the most dangerous weapons. Only luck or a clueless pilot will let you hit an Eagle with a Railgun.
A well-flown Eagle with the right upgrades can take down almost any NPC ship short of Capital ships. Very few feeling compare to destroying an Anaconda, a ship worth almost 150-million credits.
Eagles are cheap. The bounty on two or three kills will easily make up for the insurance costs if you are ever shot down.

Cons

You are slow. No matter how fast you turn, there are a lot of combat ships which can outrun you.
Your hull is made of tissue paper. Once your shields are down, your hull will drop from 100% to 0% in seconds. Even a Sidewinder can be dangerous if they have a kinetic weapon and a clear shot.
Your mass lock factor is tiny. Large ships can easily stop your FSD from charging from a considerable distance and yet you can count on one hand the ships even inconvenienced by your proximity.

When to Give Up

As far as I am concerned, there are two times to just give up. The first is when you are getting shot and the second is when a fast-moving enemy turns to run without being close to death.

A good PvP player will be able to use Flight Assist to their advantage. They will often be able to fly away from you (avoiding a turning battle they know they cannot win) while still pointing all of their guns in your direction. Against an enemy like this, you might as well use that superior manoeuvrability to turn tail and run while they are still struggling to change heading. Similarly, a ship with turrets does not need to face you and can often go about their business while the turrets shred your shields and hull.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are the Cobra MkIII pilots. With three pips to their engines, they will leave you in the dust very fast and they are not the only ones. If you have them down to under 10% hull and no shields, you can sometimes finish them before they escape, but it requires luck and skill in equal measures. Other ships, especially larger ones, will just engage their FSD and leave the fight without having to move away; an Eagle does not have the mass to disrupt any reasonably-sized ship's FSD.

Upgrades

Let's start with a simple truth that might not be obvious to everyone; 44,800 CR gets you a basic entry-level Eagle, but that's just the starting point. You can slowly upgrade your ship until it's probably worth 2-million or more. Not all stations will sell all of the upgrades you want, so you will need to search around, but you can really sink a lot of money into what is one of the cheapest ships in the game.

Power Issues

As I explained earlier, the Eagle has a few minor issues with power. If you hold down the trigger, you'll run out of power faster than you realise. A brand-new Eagle can get a couple of shots off and then you have to wait for the weapon capacitors to recharge. After a short break, you can fire again. This is fine while you are still learning and your targets are Sidewinders or other Eagles, but you'll soon find yourself with the enemy in your sights and no power to blast them.

The first upgrade is usually your Power Distributor, since this is the component which defines both how many times you can fire before the capacitor is empty and how fast it recharges. You don't need to jump straight to an A-rated capacitor yet, especially since that will cost you more than your ship, but each upgrade will make a difference and I personally considered it a priority. A better Power Distributor also improves your engines, letting you boost more often, and your systems, letting your shield regenerate faster.

The other half of the power equation is your Power Plant, which gives you the power for running all of your systems. Eagles run very short on power very fast. Each upgrade requires more from the reactor and the last thing you want is to deploy your weapons only to see your systems go offline. I have done this and it was not fun to flee in terror when I discovered that I could not have my engines running at the same time that my weapons were deployed.

Even with an A-rated power-plant, you will not have enough power to install every system you want. My Eagle has a B-rated Shield Generator and Frame Shift Drive alongside D-rated sensors because that's all I can manage. Get used to downgrading non-essential systems, setting power-priorities and tweaking your capacitors in combat whenever you want to upgrade your ship.

Hit the Target

Weapons can be a bit of a personal choice, but the tutorials (you did play through the combat tutorials before buying a combat ship, right?) make it fairly clear that you need thermal weapons to take down the shields and kinetic weapons to break through the hull.

You start with a pair of fixed Pulse Lasers and an empty Hardpoint. If you want, you can keep those fixed guns; the Eagle is quite agile, so you can often hit what you are fighting, but I upgraded them to gimballed pulse lasers. Gimballed weapons lock onto your target as long as it's fairly close to the middle of your screen, so I like to use them.

Your third hardpoint is a good place for a kinetic weapon. The obvious choice is a Multi-cannon, which is basically a chain-gun bolted onto your ship. You might also want to consider a Cannon, which fires slower, but does more damage when it hits. Kinetic weapons use bullets rather than sapping your weapon capacitors, so you can use them alongside lasers.

As an agile ship, you can fly Eagles right up to their targets - I have sat at point-blank range for minutes at a time before now - and that makes the Fragment Cannon a possible choice; it's a space shotgun, so it's more effective the closer you can get it. Some pilots may also like to use a Missile Rack, capable of firing dumbfire missiles (which fly in a straight line) and seeker missiles (which lock onto the ship and cannot be fooled by Chaff), though an Eagle can be destroyed by the splash damage from the explosion if you are not careful.

Given the issues with power management, I would recommend against a Railgun or Plasma Accelerator even if you can afford them. A class-1 Torpedo Pylon might likewise look like fun, but would have very limited application unless you are fighting as part of a wing against large ships.

Due to the low power-reserves of an Eagle, some pilots will prefer two kinetic weapons and a single laser. This will tax a lower-rated Power Distributor far less, allowing you to fire more often. It will take longer to reduce a ship's shields, but will increase your stopping power once the enemies shields are down. Also, many ships you hunt will have no shields. Many NPC pirates in smaller ships swap their Shield Generators for Cargo Racks, so kinetic weapons are far more effective in these cases. You will also come across battles already in progress where target ships have had their shields taken offline by previous combat.

Everything Else

As a small, agile fighter, most of your focus will be on thrusters. Better thrusters mean more speed and better manoeuvrability. You will also want to keep weight low, so A-rated components are not always going to be the best for you. With the best thrusters for your class, every ton of weight you can save makes a far greater difference. Conversely, weight is far less important with E- and D-rated thrusters.

A common mistake is to upgrade your Sensors at the cost of more useful components. E-rated sensors will still pick up other ships and you'll identify them long before you are in range to shoot at them. Systems like Cargo Scanners and Kill Warrant Scanners have their own internal range and effectiveness ratings, so all you need scanners for is to find a ship and tell you whether it's wanted or not. Similarly, upgrading your Life Support is often a waste; I only ever seem to see the canopy crack and fail a few seconds before my ship exploded. The one time I needed to use my Life Support system, five minutes was (just) long enough to rush to the nearest station.

If you want to be a bounty hunter, a Kill Warrant Scanner is not a bad choice for your Utility Mount. Pirates might prefer a Cargo Scanner, but you only get one choice. A Chaff Launcher might help you against turrets, but you are better off just learning to hide in blind-spots. I have never been successfully hit by a missile, so I have never needed Point Defence Turrets or Electronic Countermeasures, but they might help you feel more confident facing PvP encounters. A Frame Shift Wake Scanner lets you chase foes who jump to other systems, but it seems a little pointless unless you are on an assassination missions and those often end badly for solo Eagle pilots.

While the Eagle tends to rely on shields more than hull, power issues make me question the use of Shield Boosters and Shield Cell Banks. On a related note, the weight of a Hull Reinforcement Package makes it less than useful for an Eagle. The best defence is staying out of your target's sights, so dance around it rather than trying to survive a couple more direct hits. For this reason, you might not want to buy A-rated shields if you can make do with C or B.

Long-Term Viability

Many pilots consider the Eagle to be a stepping stone on their way to a Vulture or Viper MkIII, but the combination of low cost and high agility sometimes makes it hard to sell your Eagle. There's certainly a sentimental attachment for me, having learned to fight in one.

Even if you are planning to trade it in later, I do recommend upgrading the Eagle over time rather than buying another stepping stone ship. An Eagle with 2-million credits of upgrades is easily a match for a 2-million credit fighter with no upgrades in my opinion. I also think that moving from an Eagle to a Vulture is going to be a much more natural transition than moving back to an agile ship after spending time in a flying brick like the Viper.