I've slowly mastered my Fer-de-Lance thanks to all your videos, and who better to watch for advice with the Mamba then the one & only Vindicator Jones!! My opinion on the Mamba is, of course, the heat problem. That instakills it for so many reasons. Both the poor pitch/yaw and heat greatly outweighs all the positives of the Mamba. If they fix the heat problems then maybe I'll buy one as I can manage with the poor pitch/yaw as I'm a FA Off Pilot myself. I doubt it will replace the FDL Meta, but to each it's own everyone has their own taste. The Fer-de-Lance has a steep learning curve and as you said maybe you'll just have to get used to it, but with all that heat I don't want to waste my time focusing less on the enemy and more on the heat. Great video as always, VJ. o7!!
They said during the Livestream they would adjust its heat build up also i dont think he took advantage of the speed of this thing its hit hard get out kind of ship from what i seen with the stats because combat fitted engineer me and my friends were seeing it hit 615 to 617 boosting
@@cmdrnightfang4411 - Yeah, I heard, but here lately I don't bank off of Frontier's "fixes" for the game. Sure, they might fix the heat, but what will they do to impact the fix?
If the heat is such a problem, then switch your Hardpoints. put mulricannons on the medium and huge mount, and pulselasers oe what ever on your large/medium mounts
Good and well-balanced review VJ, and I agree with your comments. I found the same issues: the Mamba is a beautiful-looking ship so I bought one at Jameson's and spent an afternoon getting it engineered to the max. G5 Dirty/Drag, G5 Power Plant & Dist and 1 Huge PA (Efficient + TLB) with 2 C3 Thermal-vent beams to help with overheating problems. Awesome speed in a straight line but the poor pitch/yaw puts me at a severe disadvantage in the Haz RES. I'll stick with the Krait MKII which does everything I ask of it. Good to see you back by the way mate - o7 CMDR.
@@Shame_Wizard I don't know what you mean by tjat. You have to explain better, I hate responses like this not because the noob thing ...whatever...but explain why. Explain what you like and why you think it's better. Unless it's the FDL which I just don't have any interest in. Its Elites generic combat ship, very generic imo
@@vincentthekeeper2163 its just such an out dated ship many ships do what it dose but better and sexier, i mentioned noob because you were referring to "not needing to upgrade " when your flying that POJ , now if you just said you use the ship because you like the looks of it, i have no problems with it. to each their own , but bragging about its combat ability is like barging about a sidewinder and saying " i never need to upgrade from my sidewinder its the best small ship" when its not, get what im saying
Given the size of it's modules, I think the Mamba needs to be 50% the size it is now. I say this even if it would have to loose the huge hard point. It's bigger than a Python with tiny internals! It's just a ridiculous ship right now because of more than just heat.
I look forward to your opinions on the Mamba after Frontier have given it the once over. I'm really hoping this becomes a proper FDL competitor for PVP, just to mix things up a bit!!! Another great vid, glad you are still playing o7!!!
Nice video VJ. I agree with your points. I also swapped out my G5 modules from my FDL, and was underwhelmed by the performance. However, the surprise for me was the Krait Phantom, which I feel out performs the MKII. Give it a try.
Anyone wondering about the music, it's: Ace Ventura - The Spark (Ritmo remix), pretty old psytrance hit released in 2009. About the Mamba, I feel such big disappointment. I have been waiting for the next great combat ship so long as I'm huge fan of Elites combat, but now that we have stats and had a test drives, I don't believe I'm even going to buy one as that maneuverability is same as highly armored Corvette with bonus of heating so much that it's not anywhere suitable anything other than short fights.
I wanted to like the Mamba, but... it just handles so poorly. I don't know offhand how it actually compares to an Anaconda (which, for all its stupid low hull mass impacts some of its outfitting options to its benefit, is NOT a nimble ship), but at least with the 'conda I feel like I've got some weight to throw around so the sluggishness feels halfway appropriate. The top speed of the Mamba just does not seem to be enough to justify the manoeuvrability, even if you COULD reliably kill things in a single pass - and if you can't (especially when actually USING that top speed), you'll just need to turn around, at which point the poor manoeuvrability kills any advantage it might have had. For a ship that looks like it's a pair of engines strapped to a cockpit and was touted as a super-fast racing model, I was, to put it mildly, not impressed. (Also, drag racing in space sounds rather boring, and the ship's abysmal manoeuvrability means it can't do much else.) Heat, as mentioned, is awful. Thermal Vent would help a great deal, but I don't like being forced into that just to make it viable. Hopefully, FDev's promised tweak to the heat doesn't come with making one of the ship's other downsides even worse than it already is. And maybe this is just because I've been spoiled by multi-role ships, but outfitting it is just painful. Downsizing one of the mid-size internals to upsize one of the small ones seems like a terrible move - there's nothing useful I can think of to put in a size 2 slot that I couldn't scrape by with a size 1, but the current internals layout means I'm stuck with basically a single SCB at most, though given how badly the thing cooks already, even that isn't particularly appealing. I think that in addition to buffing its heat capacity or dissipation, FDev ought to give it at least a little more agility. Yeah, yeah, they wanted it to be super-fast but not have great manoeuvrability. But if the turn rates were at least manageable, I'd be okay with crappy lateral thrusters - a ship with a tendency to drift would be very much in keeping with the stated concept, and would at least mean that I can keep the guns on target. As it is (and speaking as someone who does NOT play Elite for PvP), the first Zorgon Peterson I climbed into was a colossal disappointment. Like, unfortunately, a good chunk of the Chapter 4 headline content. Exploration I'm okay with, but otherwise, it's not the headline features I'm looking forward to. -Mining: New mechanics are too hard to find targets for and at least an order of magnitude too little reward for the slots they take up and the time they take to execute. -Squadrons: Only one per CMDR, only 500 members each, tags always visible? Basically means it's a no-go for the one group I'd be most interested in it for, that being the Fuel Rats. -New ships: In addition to the above, the Krait Phantom just... doesn't impress me; I'd sooner go with the Python for raw combat ability, the AspX for exploration, or the Krait Mk II for killing power AND a bit more manoeuvrability. Though the Phantom feels more like a "personal preference" sort of bad fit rather than being outright painful to use. It's some of the smaller changes they're making that I'm actually interested in. For instance, I do like the way CZs work in beta; they actually feel interactive and like you can turn the tide of a battle (both due to the staged structure and the combat chatter you get from the faction's squadron leader), rather than "here is an unending pile of enemies, kill as much as you can before you get mobbed and forced out or blown up". And I like "request docking" and "add to/remove from ignore list" being handled as step-right options rather than a context menu on click - much less irritating for targeting materials - though I'm sure muscle memory will be my foe for quite a while.
Not sure if you could notice it with the short time you where messing about in the ship, coupled with the hugely distracting heat problem, but when I was trying it out I had a H gim. Multi, 2x S gim. Multis, and 2x L gim. beams, banged 3 points to shields 1.5 to Engines and Weapons (using a charge enhanced PD with no experimentals) and was still able to boast almost permanently. There was only a couple of times chasing down fleeing ships in a CZ that I had to change my pips to get better speed. Not a comprehensive test, to be sure, but I think that the boom and zoom style of combat will be the thing for this ship. Once the heat issue is sorted your plasma horror might be a real viable option.
Cmdr vj, thanks for another cool vid, liked and subbed. I thought I already subbed, but whatever. I'm enjoying many of these 'first impression' vids by various authors. I trust you understand you'll need to do this again in...what, a few weeks, hopefully. I'll be looking for it, and the other cmdr's too. And then these vids will serve as historical archives of the Mamba before the Great Adjustment...l can dream, ok? (Serious, not sarcasm) I was hoping you would be the one who did the 'lowest-possible-temp' build, you know, for the archive, and science, (and possibly even a chance to, let's say, 'have a friendly chuckle' with members of Frontier, not to embarass, mind, just good fun) but it's ok, somebody else probably will. I know I will, as soon as it goes live. Btw, all these rides are sweet to me, precisely because they are NOT perfect, which would be boring, though that may seem hard to believe, or even comprehend. Wonder what N'qan, and some others, will try with these 'ladies.'
I think they should push the speed higher, give it a break on heat, and if possible improve the weapon's convergence to really make it a boom and zoom specialist.
Better to use your multicannons on the larger weapons and the lasers or rail guns on the small weapons. To get the pitch to do what you wanted to do you're going to have to go reverse thrust. So when I'm fighting with my mamba is forward thrust reverse thrust forward thrust reverse thrust. It is my favorite combat ship even over the fer-de-lance
It seems like Frontier is purposefully releasing poor ships, with the intention of performance enhancements with engineering. But the ships released before engineering don't have the massive pre-built design flaws, which seem to make them always the better choice post-engineering. Ships released before the engineers just have a better starting point. I was excited about the mamba. Oh well.
ive found much more luck with the mamba in the new conflict zones. where its speed seems to be more useful instead of the turn fighting style traditional bounty hunting needs. its able to kite the ships in there and get out of range quick if too many ships target you at once. slapped on some fragment cannons and some thermal vent beams and had at it. did really well there in a boom and zoom style ship
True enough, but then engineer an FDL and you can do the exact same thing with better convergence using fixed weapons.... So.. umm.. Yeah.. But like I said, this is a first impressions video, not a complete review. I will need to spend some time in the cockpit and figure out its quirks.
yea i get ya, was mostly a suggestion to see if you can find a spot you like it. its c3 hardpoints do offer a bit more when going against larger targets cause of the armor pen they can give over the FDL's c2's making it more favorable for CZ, as there are many more large ships there. but yea, i HATED this ship at first. couldn't stop it from overheating, couldn't keep things in front of me, really felt like i was flying a gunship, or python. but once i gave it some burst dmg weapons and took it to a CZ, it really started to shine. its speed really caters towards a jousting type fight, rather than a tight turning one and Fdev have said they are working on the heat issue it has, hopefully opening it up to use PA's and railguns, as those would fit its flying style more oh yea and dirty drives very much help the pitch speed, i have been able to blackout my pilot quite a few times from pitching up now
Heat management is far superior on the FdL which gives alot more freedom for loadouts, less internal damage from overheating (from boosting for crying out loud), and allows for more attack sustainability by not having to stop firing before you explode.
Definitely needs beams with thermal vents and a combination of energy and solid weapons to give the distributor a break. Might make a good assassin with torpedoes on the small points and some good shieldbreaker beams on the bigger ones. Dunno. I might reinstall. Still thinking about it.
Hey Jonesy, like you I found the Mamba very sluggish handling wise with exactly the same results heat wise too. I really like the aesthetics and engine note and will withhold final judgement until after fdev apply their tweeks. I think it could be a great ship but in its current format I wouldn't have one. On a slightly different note I also have tried the Krait phantom and although it's a fairly nicely balanced ship I was left wondering what I would use it for. For combat the mkII has the fighter option and an extra hardpoint, the phantom wouldn't make a great trading ship or miner and there's much better options for exploration so where does its niche lie? I'm beginning to feel that Frontier have just introduced these 2 ships to expand the fleet available to us without giving enough thought to what you can actually do with them, I may well be wrong, and I hope I am. We will have to wait and see what modifications are made before the end of beta testing. Great to see your videographer skills aren't as rusty as your flying, lol. Great to see new content from you again and I eagerly await your next installment. o7 Cmdr.
Nice to see another VJ video. I noticed your beam turrets seemed to have a high fire rate, were they engineered? If so how were they actually hitting their target? I remember my rapid fire gimballed lasers couldn't hit a thing with the jitter penalty.
I spent the afternoon engineering everything to grade 5. Got acceptable stats on paper, but the horrible convergence means that the only thing you can run fixed is the huge hardpoint. Not that it matters, you won't hit anything because of the horrid pitch rate. apparently its 39'/s with neutral pips, but it feels WAY slower. I'm having a really hard time keeping anything even remotely quick in my crosshairs. I was so excited for this ship and its one of the biggest disappointments in the game so far. It either needs a class 7 distributor and the smalls changed to medium hardpoints and moved closer to the center, along with the large ones, and class 6 thrusters for more raw speed to justify the horrid pitch rate and make boom and zoom actually viable. or a (fully engineered dd with dd) pitch rate of at least 46'/s. And for the love of god, give it one more class 2 hardpoint at least. Why'd they have to make the best looking ship in the game so utterly BAD at the only thing it can do, combat?
I get the sense that this ship is supposed to be tinkered with. It's meant to be your "baby" in a sense. The problem is that rather than make a vessel that can be radically improved with engineering, it instead needs that same level of work just to be workable. It's fun enough in the beta, but I have no practical place for it in my fleet on the live servers. The heat problem will likely be fixed, but the lack of maneuverability is a deal breaker. This is a annoying on a combat ship, but an absolute no-no on what's supposed to be a modified racing Chassis. Why is the racer and combat ship out turned by the multi-role Krait series?
Indeed, I have a strong sense of this also. I think there will be a good build for this, but it will be specific, and that you will have to fly it a certain way.. But first we need to get rid of the heat issue. As for being a racer.. hmmm.. I will keep my ieagle for that. with 931m/s boost
Mamba is a superb pvp ship, you just don't fly it like a pve player. A long range weapon and lateral boost and reverse make it very, very hard to beat. If you try to fly this like a turner or even a jouster you will struggle. A few hours after this goes live there will a great gnashing of teeth in open as these things wreck players who think it is weak.
(honest question) how should I fly one then? I really like the ship's style but I'm struggling to be effective with it in hazres situation. Do you have any ideas?
@@lucasZr113 YMMV, depends on your loadout and comfort with maneuvering rather than 'flying'. Pull your target out, this thing has bonkers boost so you can boost away, FA off flip, and burn whatever follows. As you are faster you can control the distance. Your insanely high boost speed with a full combat loadout means you can lateral boost very effectively and FA off and rotate to face your pursuer and again control he range Try long ranged weapon to strip shields, maybe something long range with a thermal vent if heat is an issue in that huge HP. Separate the pack. Use the ships strengths, if a ship is noticeably worse than another at doing X kind of flying then don't try to do X figure out what Y is, play to it's strengths. For me the Mamba turns very well if I boost one way then switch FA off and rotate rather than trying to fly a loose turn or boost turn. Time to kill might be longer than having an "all guns blazing, shields soaking up all the damage, huge outgoing dps, trying to get the fastest turns in" kind of approach, but if you control the distance and have the speed then with those frankly massive shields, the engineering that FD gives you to control heat and buff the speed even more you should be able to have fights on your own terms. I'm no ace pilot. Average at pvp. If you want some real sound advice as the pure pvp heads, you know the ones that pull over an unprepared ship and melt it in short order. Those cats know their way around the different flight styles, sensible loadouts and strategy far better than I do and if you ask for help will most often give it. This ship can dictate range and speed in almost every fight.
Shezzer Broon spot on ! A lot of players haven’t caught on about lateral boosting which allows quite often to have guns on sight at all times. that’s how I roll. All ships get built to allow full pips to engines a 1 n 1 in sys and wep. Kinetic weapons only. Frags r great combined with long range multi’s.
But is it? with very weak convergence with the large hardpoints, (which is extremely important for long range attacks) and a fully engineered FDL having similar boost speeds, better thruster control and maneuverability, I still feel the FDL is a better choice.. Time will tell I guess.
Lol yeah I heard this thing overheats too much...not my cup of tea. I also passed on the Krait Phantom and bought myself an mk2 version simply for the fighter bay. The little bit of LY range really didn’t work for me...though it is smaller and more maneuverable so this might please others, especially landing in jagged guardian planets.
They are revising it. and it needs it.. Right now the over heating is utterly ridiculous making the ship practically unusable at all. Even after fixing the heat issue, FDL is better.
This is something that can be seen when looking at the ship I fly the most. My anaconda would make the eyes of any pilot bleed at first glance. A mess of retardedly placed modules, with no consistency what so ever. It has all shield tanking and no hull. It has SRVs and fighters. It has almost all limpet controllers and 80T of cargo. And it also has an interdiction module and all exploration. Its slow, it's fat, and i would not trade it for anything else. See, when the engineers dropped I pretty much had lost all interest in what the game could offer in term of content. The insane grind that just kept on growing burned me out after I had to kill literary a million NPCs to achieve a somewhat decent anaconda. I did not enjoy trading at all and exploration didn't feel very satisfying due to the procedural nature of the game. But with in all this I still had friends that from time to time would play the game and start out, or even strangers not knowing what to do. And I thus dedicated my entire account to helping people. My fit may be awfully but it is what I need for a default thing they can do everything and help everyone i come across.
@@Matt-ux1lv Why does the Type-10 have a spoiler by default? Why does the Keelback have access to a fighter bay? Why does a Type-9 have a lower hull mass to a python? Why is a Fer-De-Lance considered a multipurpose ship with about 4 optional internal slots and 5-6 utility slots? FDev makes weird decisions pretty often, but this one in particular seems to be a bit of pandering in the sense of them being afraid people won't appreciate the ship if it isn't combat oriented, because racing isn't an official thing, therefore not profitable, therefore calling the Mamba what it is, a racing ship, wouldn't go over well. So, slap hardpoints and utility slots on to avoid criticism over a creative choice
@@EpicWinNoob I mean fair enough, but most of those are more oversights than key design decisions. I do however agree that the hardpoints are the result of pandering to combat players - what I would argue is that they've caved to the point that the mamba is in actuality a combat ship, even if by lore or original design it was for racing.
@@Matt-ux1lv True, though again, it's more of an excuse than a solution. If it were a faster, more maneuverable ship than the Fer-De-Lance with smaller hardpoints and *minor* overheating problems as a result, it'd make more sense. The Mamba in it's current state feels like they'd strapped a tank turret and a couple .50 cals onto a Formula 1 racecar
It'd be balanced that way as well, trading outright damage for mor evasion and the ability to straight-up run away, or the alternative of risking overheating by continuously dealing high dps while attempting to encircle and evade the target better than an FDL
I'm not super into combat! it's a ok looking ship, I wont buy until it may gt some frontier attention buffing, and even then, i'm unsure what I would use it for....
Stock impressions are worthless these days and a waste of time of both the creator and the viewer. When new ships come out it makes much more sense to throw some already engineered modules from another ship in them and give impressions based on that. Also the Mamba is not the second coming of the FAS or Chieftain. Of course its pitch sucks (especially unengineered), it wasn’t built for that. It has good lateral thrusters and tons of speed though and is made for jousting at high speed and dodging fire while doing so. Going to a Haz Res and face tanking NPCs while practically stationary does not give any kind of first impression worth talking about. Edit: I see you eventually did that, but you wasted 7 minutes before doing so and you’re still flying the ship wrong. Not all ships are about “holding position behind the target at all times”.
Sorry, but no. A lot of my viewers do not engineer a lot. In fact there are MANY players in Elite Dangerous who do not engineer at all. So thats why I always show A-Rated stock first, and then finish on an engineered version. Watch the whole video and towards the end I install fully engineered modules on the Mamba.. Also a Stock A-Rated FDL, Chieftain, FAS turn MUCH faster than an A-Rated Stock Mamba.. As for thrusters, I dont know what you were flying but thrusters on the Mamba are subpar at best, only after engineering do they eventually pick up some of the slack.. And yup, your right, Face tanking NPC's in a HazRes does not make a good first impression.. Hence my complaints against the ship. You cant turn effectively in the blue, and can only get caught in boost jousting turns if you attempt to boost. This just highlights exactly what I was saying in the video, the Mamba has issues. That being said, as I also said in the video, I have just come back from a 3 month Hiatus, so I am quite rusty, and have no doubt that has an effect on my perception of the Mamba., hence why its called a first impression rather than a review. I do not review things until I have spent a good amount of time in the cockpit and have worked out all of its quirks and found a build that seems to work for me.
Vindicator Jones you would be surprised how many of your viewers and PvE only players Engineer to at least G3 levels these days because it got so much easier. I’ll give you being rusty, it happens. I agree with the speed. To really be what they said it was going to be it should be boosting to around 620-630 imo. At least it maxes out under normal thrust at about 480-490, that’s actually really good. Also they are fixing the heat in Beta 4 next Wednesday so that’s good. So some advice. In the Mamba in a Res, or in PvP combat, try using Efficient PAs and Cascade/Pen Rails on the smalls. Find a Conda/Python/etc. while at a distance hit it with rails and then boost towards it and alpha it with the PAs, as you pass use a boost bleed turn or go FAoff and 4 PIPs to Eng and reverse to gain distance on the other side, hit target with rails if banking and while at the 2-6 km range, go to FAon, repeat. Additionally you can use other long range weapons like LR pulses. One thing you didn’t talk about here with the PAs on the Larges and Huge, is that the convergence is not great. It’s not like an FDL or especially a Krait MKII. You really have to make a decision when to fire all 3 or one or both of the Larges will sometimes miss the target.
CMDR Fly Auburn I actually watch his videos for stock impressions I hate engineering I think it ruined the game quite frankly. It's all about effects now
Hrm. I can't say for certain, but I feel that Jones may somewhat like the color purple. Just an impression I'm getting.
I've slowly mastered my Fer-de-Lance thanks to all your videos, and who better to watch for advice with the Mamba then the one & only Vindicator Jones!! My opinion on the Mamba is, of course, the heat problem. That instakills it for so many reasons. Both the poor pitch/yaw and heat greatly outweighs all the positives of the Mamba. If they fix the heat problems then maybe I'll buy one as I can manage with the poor pitch/yaw as I'm a FA Off Pilot myself. I doubt it will replace the FDL Meta, but to each it's own everyone has their own taste. The Fer-de-Lance has a steep learning curve and as you said maybe you'll just have to get used to it, but with all that heat I don't want to waste my time focusing less on the enemy and more on the heat. Great video as always, VJ. o7!!
They said during the Livestream they would adjust its heat build up also i dont think he took advantage of the speed of this thing its hit hard get out kind of ship from what i seen with the stats because combat fitted engineer me and my friends were seeing it hit 615 to 617 boosting
@@cmdrnightfang4411 - Yeah, I heard, but here lately I don't bank off of Frontier's "fixes" for the game. Sure, they might fix the heat, but what will they do to impact the fix?
If the heat is such a problem, then switch your Hardpoints. put mulricannons on the medium and huge mount, and pulselasers oe what ever on your large/medium mounts
Good and well-balanced review VJ, and I agree with your comments. I found the same issues: the Mamba is a beautiful-looking ship so I bought one at Jameson's and spent an afternoon getting it engineered to the max. G5 Dirty/Drag, G5 Power Plant & Dist and 1 Huge PA (Efficient + TLB) with 2 C3 Thermal-vent beams to help with overheating problems. Awesome speed in a straight line but the poor pitch/yaw puts me at a severe disadvantage in the Haz RES. I'll stick with the Krait MKII which does everything I ask of it. Good to see you back by the way mate - o7 CMDR.
I have a fully engineered FAS, I haven't needed to upgrade on medium sized combat ships. It handles like a dream and the hull is amazing
Agreed. My FAS was my fav combat ship b4 Eng. Once Palin became a thing, the FDL quickly took the fore.
Still love the FAS, tho.
Vincent The Keeper lol fas , noob
@@Shame_Wizard I don't know what you mean by tjat. You have to explain better, I hate responses like this not because the noob thing ...whatever...but explain why. Explain what you like and why you think it's better. Unless it's the FDL which I just don't have any interest in. Its Elites generic combat ship, very generic imo
@@vincentthekeeper2163 its just such an out dated ship many ships do what it dose but better and sexier, i mentioned noob because you were referring to "not needing to upgrade " when your flying that POJ , now if you just said you use the ship because you like the looks of it, i have no problems with it. to each their own , but bragging about its combat ability is like barging about a sidewinder and saying " i never need to upgrade from my sidewinder its the best small ship" when its not, get what im saying
Good to have you back man. Keep up the great videos!
Glad your back. Loving the channel overhaul.
Given the size of it's modules, I think the Mamba needs to be 50% the size it is now. I say this even if it would have to loose the huge hard point. It's bigger than a Python with tiny internals! It's just a ridiculous ship right now because of more than just heat.
Mamba:
When you Boost into outer space in Hydro Thunder
I look forward to your opinions on the Mamba after Frontier have given it the once over. I'm really hoping this becomes a proper FDL competitor for PVP, just to mix things up a bit!!! Another great vid, glad you are still playing o7!!!
Nice video VJ. I agree with your points. I also swapped out my G5 modules from my FDL, and was underwhelmed by the performance. However, the surprise for me was the Krait Phantom, which I feel out performs the MKII. Give it a try.
Anyone wondering about the music, it's: Ace Ventura - The Spark (Ritmo remix), pretty old psytrance hit released in 2009.
About the Mamba, I feel such big disappointment. I have been waiting for the next great combat ship so long as I'm huge fan of Elites combat, but now that we have stats and had a test drives, I don't believe I'm even going to buy one as that maneuverability is same as highly armored Corvette with bonus of heating so much that it's not anywhere suitable anything other than short fights.
I wanted to like the Mamba, but... it just handles so poorly. I don't know offhand how it actually compares to an Anaconda (which, for all its stupid low hull mass impacts some of its outfitting options to its benefit, is NOT a nimble ship), but at least with the 'conda I feel like I've got some weight to throw around so the sluggishness feels halfway appropriate. The top speed of the Mamba just does not seem to be enough to justify the manoeuvrability, even if you COULD reliably kill things in a single pass - and if you can't (especially when actually USING that top speed), you'll just need to turn around, at which point the poor manoeuvrability kills any advantage it might have had. For a ship that looks like it's a pair of engines strapped to a cockpit and was touted as a super-fast racing model, I was, to put it mildly, not impressed. (Also, drag racing in space sounds rather boring, and the ship's abysmal manoeuvrability means it can't do much else.)
Heat, as mentioned, is awful. Thermal Vent would help a great deal, but I don't like being forced into that just to make it viable. Hopefully, FDev's promised tweak to the heat doesn't come with making one of the ship's other downsides even worse than it already is.
And maybe this is just because I've been spoiled by multi-role ships, but outfitting it is just painful. Downsizing one of the mid-size internals to upsize one of the small ones seems like a terrible move - there's nothing useful I can think of to put in a size 2 slot that I couldn't scrape by with a size 1, but the current internals layout means I'm stuck with basically a single SCB at most, though given how badly the thing cooks already, even that isn't particularly appealing.
I think that in addition to buffing its heat capacity or dissipation, FDev ought to give it at least a little more agility. Yeah, yeah, they wanted it to be super-fast but not have great manoeuvrability. But if the turn rates were at least manageable, I'd be okay with crappy lateral thrusters - a ship with a tendency to drift would be very much in keeping with the stated concept, and would at least mean that I can keep the guns on target. As it is (and speaking as someone who does NOT play Elite for PvP), the first Zorgon Peterson I climbed into was a colossal disappointment.
Like, unfortunately, a good chunk of the Chapter 4 headline content. Exploration I'm okay with, but otherwise, it's not the headline features I'm looking forward to.
-Mining: New mechanics are too hard to find targets for and at least an order of magnitude too little reward for the slots they take up and the time they take to execute.
-Squadrons: Only one per CMDR, only 500 members each, tags always visible? Basically means it's a no-go for the one group I'd be most interested in it for, that being the Fuel Rats.
-New ships: In addition to the above, the Krait Phantom just... doesn't impress me; I'd sooner go with the Python for raw combat ability, the AspX for exploration, or the Krait Mk II for killing power AND a bit more manoeuvrability. Though the Phantom feels more like a "personal preference" sort of bad fit rather than being outright painful to use.
It's some of the smaller changes they're making that I'm actually interested in. For instance, I do like the way CZs work in beta; they actually feel interactive and like you can turn the tide of a battle (both due to the staged structure and the combat chatter you get from the faction's squadron leader), rather than "here is an unending pile of enemies, kill as much as you can before you get mobbed and forced out or blown up". And I like "request docking" and "add to/remove from ignore list" being handled as step-right options rather than a context menu on click - much less irritating for targeting materials - though I'm sure muscle memory will be my foe for quite a while.
engineering is ABSOLUTELY required for the Mamba, otherwise it handles like hot garbage.
Not sure if you could notice it with the short time you where messing about in the ship, coupled with the hugely distracting heat problem, but when I was trying it out I had a H gim. Multi, 2x S gim. Multis, and 2x L gim. beams, banged 3 points to shields 1.5 to Engines and Weapons (using a charge enhanced PD with no experimentals) and was still able to boast almost permanently. There was only a couple of times chasing down fleeing ships in a CZ that I had to change my pips to get better speed.
Not a comprehensive test, to be sure, but I think that the boom and zoom style of combat will be the thing for this ship. Once the heat issue is sorted your plasma horror might be a real viable option.
very good video. I can almost forgive that bad pun at the start
Cmdr vj, thanks for another cool vid, liked and subbed. I thought I already subbed, but whatever. I'm enjoying many of these 'first impression' vids by various authors. I trust you understand you'll need to do this again in...what, a few weeks, hopefully. I'll be looking for it, and the other cmdr's too. And then these vids will serve as historical archives of the Mamba before the Great Adjustment...l can dream, ok? (Serious, not sarcasm)
I was hoping you would be the one who did the 'lowest-possible-temp' build, you know, for the archive, and science, (and possibly even a chance to, let's say, 'have a friendly chuckle' with members of Frontier, not to embarass, mind, just good fun) but it's ok, somebody else probably will.
I know I will, as soon as it goes live.
Btw, all these rides are sweet to me, precisely because they are NOT perfect, which would be boring, though that may seem hard to believe, or even comprehend.
Wonder what N'qan, and some others, will try with these 'ladies.'
I think they should push the speed higher, give it a break on heat, and if possible improve the weapon's convergence to really make it a boom and zoom specialist.
Better to use your multicannons on the larger weapons and the lasers or rail guns on the small weapons. To get the pitch to do what you wanted to do you're going to have to go reverse thrust. So when I'm fighting with my mamba is forward thrust reverse thrust forward thrust reverse thrust. It is my favorite combat ship even over the fer-de-lance
I feel like everyone else has opinions about ships, but when Vindicator Jones speaks, you listen.
At first I hated it but now I love it, fast and the weapons are perfect for my fly style.
This, the 'splody asteroids and the new mining/belt scanning equipment I really can't wait for, wish this came out sooner 😬
after all..it is a racer so if you want to tune it you have to go for efficient with low heat/s or even consider thermal vent experimental
It seems like Frontier is purposefully releasing poor ships, with the intention of performance enhancements with engineering. But the ships released before engineering don't have the massive pre-built design flaws, which seem to make them always the better choice post-engineering. Ships released before the engineers just have a better starting point. I was excited about the mamba. Oh well.
ive found much more luck with the mamba in the new conflict zones. where its speed seems to be more useful instead of the turn fighting style traditional bounty hunting needs. its able to kite the ships in there and get out of range quick if too many ships target you at once. slapped on some fragment cannons and some thermal vent beams and had at it. did really well there in a boom and zoom style ship
True enough, but then engineer an FDL and you can do the exact same thing with better convergence using fixed weapons.... So.. umm.. Yeah.. But like I said, this is a first impressions video, not a complete review. I will need to spend some time in the cockpit and figure out its quirks.
yea i get ya, was mostly a suggestion to see if you can find a spot you like it. its c3 hardpoints do offer a bit more when going against larger targets cause of the armor pen they can give over the FDL's c2's making it more favorable for CZ, as there are many more large ships there. but yea, i HATED this ship at first. couldn't stop it from overheating, couldn't keep things in front of me, really felt like i was flying a gunship, or python. but once i gave it some burst dmg weapons and took it to a CZ, it really started to shine. its speed really caters towards a jousting type fight, rather than a tight turning one
and Fdev have said they are working on the heat issue it has, hopefully opening it up to use PA's and railguns, as those would fit its flying style more
oh yea and dirty drives very much help the pitch speed, i have been able to blackout my pilot quite a few times from pitching up now
Heat management is far superior on the FdL which gives alot more freedom for loadouts, less internal damage from overheating (from boosting for crying out loud), and allows for more attack sustainability by not having to stop firing before you explode.
Definitely needs beams with thermal vents and a combination of energy and solid weapons to give the distributor a break. Might make a good assassin with torpedoes on the small points and some good shieldbreaker beams on the bigger ones. Dunno. I might reinstall. Still thinking about it.
It gives me the impression that an effective loadout might be a class 4 efficient beam laser with thermal vents and full MCs
FDev have said that they're aware of the Mamba heat problem and other channels have said the Phantom is an awesome exploration ship.
Hey Jonesy, like you I found the Mamba very sluggish handling wise with exactly the same results heat wise too. I really like the aesthetics and engine note and will withhold final judgement until after fdev apply their tweeks. I think it could be a great ship but in its current format I wouldn't have one. On a slightly different note I also have tried the Krait phantom and although it's a fairly nicely balanced ship I was left wondering what I would use it for. For combat the mkII has the fighter option and an extra hardpoint, the phantom wouldn't make a great trading ship or miner and there's much better options for exploration so where does its niche lie? I'm beginning to feel that Frontier have just introduced these 2 ships to expand the fleet available to us without giving enough thought to what you can actually do with them, I may well be wrong, and I hope I am. We will have to wait and see what modifications are made before the end of beta testing. Great to see your videographer skills aren't as rusty as your flying, lol. Great to see new content from you again and I eagerly await your next installment. o7 Cmdr.
Great to see another video from you =) And very cool new intro btw
You were in a haz rez with the mamba? I thought they were missing in the beta??
A few people have said that to me, but I have had no problems finding res sites.. lol
Odesian ant saidthe mumba has a serious heat issue when he flyed it
Going up against Noam Chomsky at 6:20! You evil you. How dare you? :)
He deserved it, he called me a poopy pants ;)
Nice to see another VJ video. I noticed your beam turrets seemed to have a high fire rate, were they engineered? If so how were they actually hitting their target? I remember my rapid fire gimballed lasers couldn't hit a thing with the jitter penalty.
"Seems like this ship runs very, very hot..... well let's put full PAs on it" xd
I spent the afternoon engineering everything to grade 5. Got acceptable stats on paper, but the horrible convergence means that the only thing you can run fixed is the huge hardpoint.
Not that it matters, you won't hit anything because of the horrid pitch rate. apparently its 39'/s with neutral pips, but it feels WAY slower. I'm having a really hard time keeping anything even remotely quick in my crosshairs.
I was so excited for this ship and its one of the biggest disappointments in the game so far.
It either needs a class 7 distributor and the smalls changed to medium hardpoints and moved closer to the center, along with the large ones, and class 6 thrusters for more raw speed to justify the horrid pitch rate and make boom and zoom actually viable.
or a (fully engineered dd with dd) pitch rate of at least 46'/s.
And for the love of god, give it one more class 2 hardpoint at least.
Why'd they have to make the best looking ship in the game so utterly BAD at the only thing it can do, combat?
I get the sense that this ship is supposed to be tinkered with. It's meant to be your "baby" in a sense. The problem is that rather than make a vessel that can be radically improved with engineering, it instead needs that same level of work just to be workable. It's fun enough in the beta, but I have no practical place for it in my fleet on the live servers. The heat problem will likely be fixed, but the lack of maneuverability is a deal breaker. This is a annoying on a combat ship, but an absolute no-no on what's supposed to be a modified racing Chassis. Why is the racer and combat ship out turned by the multi-role Krait series?
Indeed, I have a strong sense of this also. I think there will be a good build for this, but it will be specific, and that you will have to fly it a certain way.. But first we need to get rid of the heat issue. As for being a racer.. hmmm.. I will keep my ieagle for that. with 931m/s boost
Hear hear. There's nothing that quite compares to the need to boost twice just to hit your actual top speed, amirite?
Mamba is a superb pvp ship, you just don't fly it like a pve player.
A long range weapon and lateral boost and reverse make it very, very hard to beat.
If you try to fly this like a turner or even a jouster you will struggle.
A few hours after this goes live there will a great gnashing of teeth in open as these things wreck players who think it is weak.
(honest question) how should I fly one then? I really like the ship's style but I'm struggling to be effective with it in hazres situation. Do you have any ideas?
@@lucasZr113
YMMV, depends on your loadout and comfort with maneuvering rather than 'flying'.
Pull your target out, this thing has bonkers boost so you can boost away, FA off flip, and burn whatever follows. As you are faster you can control the distance. Your insanely high boost speed with a full combat loadout means you can lateral boost very effectively and FA off and rotate to face your pursuer and again control he range
Try long ranged weapon to strip shields, maybe something long range with a thermal vent if heat is an issue in that huge HP. Separate the pack.
Use the ships strengths, if a ship is noticeably worse than another at doing X kind of flying then don't try to do X figure out what Y is, play to it's strengths.
For me the Mamba turns very well if I boost one way then switch FA off and rotate rather than trying to fly a loose turn or boost turn.
Time to kill might be longer than having an "all guns blazing, shields soaking up all the damage, huge outgoing dps, trying to get the fastest turns in" kind of approach, but if you control the distance and have the speed then with those frankly massive shields, the engineering that FD gives you to control heat and buff the speed even more you should be able to have fights on your own terms.
I'm no ace pilot. Average at pvp. If you want some real sound advice as the pure pvp heads, you know the ones that pull over an unprepared ship and melt it in short order.
Those cats know their way around the different flight styles, sensible loadouts and strategy far better than I do and if you ask for help will most often give it.
This ship can dictate range and speed in almost every fight.
@@rankcolour8780 thanks for the explanation! I will try to contact people about those stuff. Thanks again!
Shezzer Broon spot on ! A lot of players haven’t caught on about lateral boosting which allows quite often to have guns on sight at all times. that’s how I roll. All ships get built to allow full pips to engines a 1 n 1 in sys and wep. Kinetic weapons only. Frags r great combined with long range multi’s.
But is it? with very weak convergence with the large hardpoints, (which is extremely important for long range attacks) and a fully engineered FDL having similar boost speeds, better thruster control and maneuverability, I still feel the FDL is a better choice.. Time will tell I guess.
Lol yeah I heard this thing overheats too much...not my cup of tea. I also passed on the Krait Phantom and bought myself an mk2 version simply for the fighter bay. The little bit of LY range really didn’t work for me...though it is smaller and more maneuverable so this might please others, especially landing in jagged guardian planets.
Vin Diesel Jones! Dig ya style. Hopefully we can collab at some point.
Mamba is not about a dog fight. It's rather about boom-zoom IMHO
Will you do an impression video on the phantom?
Weirdly, I am doing a joint video with The Yamicks on the phantom.. So that's gonna be interesting!
Hey buddy, good to cya
I sure hope they WON'T touch heat, or everyone and his dog will be flying Mamba. At least now it takes some brains to fit and fly the thing.
They are revising it. and it needs it.. Right now the over heating is utterly ridiculous making the ship practically unusable at all. Even after fixing the heat issue, FDL is better.
Are we talking about overheating near planet surface or in general?
How would this work for Thargoid Hunting?
oh my god this ship is so beautiful!
I wish the fdl had this cockpit and that is really it haha
how is the shield vs FDL, stock and engineered?
This is something that can be seen when looking at the ship I fly the most.
My anaconda would make the eyes of any pilot bleed at first glance. A mess of retardedly placed modules, with no consistency what so ever. It has all shield tanking and no hull. It has SRVs and fighters. It has almost all limpet controllers and 80T of cargo. And it also has an interdiction module and all exploration. Its slow, it's fat, and i would not trade it for anything else.
See, when the engineers dropped I pretty much had lost all interest in what the game could offer in term of content. The insane grind that just kept on growing burned me out after I had to kill literary a million NPCs to achieve a somewhat decent anaconda. I did not enjoy trading at all and exploration didn't feel very satisfying due to the procedural nature of the game.
But with in all this I still had friends that from time to time would play the game and start out, or even strangers not knowing what to do. And I thus dedicated my entire account to helping people.
My fit may be awfully but it is what I need for a default thing they can do everything and help everyone i come across.
I mean the ship is basically made to be for pure speed, never thought of it as combat-oriented
.... them why does it have a class 4 hardpoint, 2 class 3 hardpoints and 6 utility mounts?
@@Matt-ux1lv Why does the Type-10 have a spoiler by default? Why does the Keelback have access to a fighter bay? Why does a Type-9 have a lower hull mass to a python? Why is a Fer-De-Lance considered a multipurpose ship with about 4 optional internal slots and 5-6 utility slots?
FDev makes weird decisions pretty often, but this one in particular seems to be a bit of pandering in the sense of them being afraid people won't appreciate the ship if it isn't combat oriented, because racing isn't an official thing, therefore not profitable, therefore calling the Mamba what it is, a racing ship, wouldn't go over well.
So, slap hardpoints and utility slots on to avoid criticism over a creative choice
@@EpicWinNoob I mean fair enough, but most of those are more oversights than key design decisions.
I do however agree that the hardpoints are the result of pandering to combat players - what I would argue is that they've caved to the point that the mamba is in actuality a combat ship, even if by lore or original design it was for racing.
@@Matt-ux1lv True, though again, it's more of an excuse than a solution. If it were a faster, more maneuverable ship than the Fer-De-Lance with smaller hardpoints and *minor* overheating problems as a result, it'd make more sense. The Mamba in it's current state feels like they'd strapped a tank turret and a couple .50 cals onto a Formula 1 racecar
It'd be balanced that way as well, trading outright damage for mor evasion and the ability to straight-up run away, or the alternative of risking overheating by continuously dealing high dps while attempting to encircle and evade the target better than an FDL
I think you have an addiction to PA's
Yes, I am in therapy
@@VindicatorJones it's okay (I love them too) that and Railguns
Nice ship but my conda pitches like twice the speed
I heard FDev fucked the Mamba up even more. Barely fixed the heat issue, Dropped the max speed and ruined its pitch speed...
:D what's the first piece of music?
I'm not super into combat! it's a ok looking ship, I wont buy until it may gt some frontier attention buffing, and even then, i'm unsure what I would use it for....
You're better of with gimbal here.
Music?
Um "haz res" ??? Aren't there no res sites in beta??
Arent there? I see them everywhere.. lol
@@VindicatorJones um yeah there are forum posts with bounty hunters complaining and everything, it's even listed as a known issue somewhere
Try gimbaled
What a waste of money... At this point I rather use a fed gunship... Or a type7 (sarcasm)
Stick with the FDL
Thanks, I hate it
NO FDL is better
Stock impressions are worthless these days and a waste of time of both the creator and the viewer.
When new ships come out it makes much more sense to throw some already engineered modules from another ship in them and give impressions based on that.
Also the Mamba is not the second coming of the FAS or Chieftain. Of course its pitch sucks (especially unengineered), it wasn’t built for that.
It has good lateral thrusters and tons of speed though and is made for jousting at high speed and dodging fire while doing so.
Going to a Haz Res and face tanking NPCs while practically stationary does not give any kind of first impression worth talking about.
Edit: I see you eventually did that, but you wasted 7 minutes before doing so and you’re still flying the ship wrong.
Not all ships are about “holding position behind the target at all times”.
Sorry, but no. A lot of my viewers do not engineer a lot. In fact there are MANY players in Elite Dangerous who do not engineer at all. So thats why I always show A-Rated stock first, and then finish on an engineered version. Watch the whole video and towards the end I install fully engineered modules on the Mamba.. Also a Stock A-Rated FDL, Chieftain, FAS turn MUCH faster than an A-Rated Stock Mamba..
As for thrusters, I dont know what you were flying but thrusters on the Mamba are subpar at best, only after engineering do they eventually pick up some of the slack..
And yup, your right, Face tanking NPC's in a HazRes does not make a good first impression.. Hence my complaints against the ship. You cant turn effectively in the blue, and can only get caught in boost jousting turns if you attempt to boost. This just highlights exactly what I was saying in the video, the Mamba has issues.
That being said, as I also said in the video, I have just come back from a 3 month Hiatus, so I am quite rusty, and have no doubt that has an effect on my perception of the Mamba., hence why its called a first impression rather than a review. I do not review things until I have spent a good amount of time in the cockpit and have worked out all of its quirks and found a build that seems to work for me.
Vindicator Jones you would be surprised how many of your viewers and PvE only players Engineer to at least G3 levels these days because it got so much easier.
I’ll give you being rusty, it happens.
I agree with the speed. To really be what they said it was going to be it should be boosting to around 620-630 imo. At least it maxes out under normal thrust at about 480-490, that’s actually really good.
Also they are fixing the heat in Beta 4 next Wednesday so that’s good.
So some advice. In the Mamba in a Res, or in PvP combat, try using Efficient PAs and Cascade/Pen Rails on the smalls.
Find a Conda/Python/etc. while at a distance hit it with rails and then boost towards it and alpha it with the PAs, as you pass use a boost bleed turn or go FAoff and 4 PIPs to Eng and reverse to gain distance on the other side, hit target with rails if banking and while at the 2-6 km range, go to FAon, repeat.
Additionally you can use other long range weapons like LR pulses.
One thing you didn’t talk about here with the PAs on the Larges and Huge, is that the convergence is not great. It’s not like an FDL or especially a Krait MKII. You really have to make a decision when to fire all 3 or one or both of the Larges will sometimes miss the target.
CMDR Fly Auburn I actually watch his videos for stock impressions I hate engineering I think it ruined the game quite frankly. It's all about effects now
The ship is trash dude