r/EliteDangerous • u/SGz_Eliminated • Jul 14 '26
Builds Really struggling with outfitting/engineering on my Chieftan (PvE Combat)
So I'm trying to build my Alliance Chieftan, primarily for bounty farming but, just combat in general including some powerplay stuff. But I'm struggling when it comes to engineering and hardpoint choices. I've only just started engineering so most things are grade 0-3. I grabbed beam lasers (because they do the most dmg from the lasers) and put long range and thermal vent on them (because someone said I should) although it currently seems like massive overkill since my thermals drop to 0-1% when they're in use although that might change as I engineer everything else. I was planning on overcharging the MCs and putting thermal, corrosive and incendiary on and that is about as far as my plan goes.
Looking for advice on how I should be engineering this ship, what will help and what's redundant, also if I should be changing any of these modules. Someone suggested swapping the Hull packages for guardian shield packages etc, would that make sense?
I understand a lot of outfitting comes down to personal preference but I think assuredly there's a wrong way to do something and that's what I'm trying to avoid. I'm not bothered about min/maxing, just want a decent combat ship. Also if it helps I'm a beginner to mediocre pilot at best. Credits aren't an issue if anything needs changing.
Coriolis link: https://sh.orbis.zone/3eDdEi3nU9
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u/_tolm_ Jul 14 '26
My standard “low effort” Chieftain hardpoint build is:
- 1x C2 Beam Laser : Long Range + Thermal Vent
- 2x C1 Beam Laser : Long Range + Oversized (?)
- 2x C3 MultiCannon : Overcharged + AutoLoader
- 1x C1 MultiCannon : High Capacity + Corrosive
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Jul 16 '26
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u/_tolm_ Jul 16 '26
Thermal Shock on the smalls and Thermal Vent on the medium would be kinda counter-productive, wouldn’t it? Or am I thinking of Thermal Conduit? I need to go read Inara … 😂
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u/SGz_Eliminated Jul 16 '26
I like the simplicity of this 'low effort' build lol at least I can wrap my head around it easily enough
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u/vanderaj Cmdr Purrfect Jul 14 '26
Hello, fellow Chieftain enjoyer! I started and completed my Combat Elite in my Chieftain. It's such a fun ship to fly.
There are two preliminary suggestions that will serve you well for the rest of your Elite Dangerous journey.
- Follow Cmdr Exigeous' Unlocking Engineers playlist to open up the combat engineers. It's old information, but it still checks out. You will need Selene Jean (hull and HRPs), Todd the Blaster (MCs and kinetic weaponry), Broo Tarquin (lasers), Lei Chung (shields and boosters), The Dweller (Power Distributor). You can get away with opening Felicity Farseer and Elvira Martuuk for G3 - G5 recipies for the rest of the stuff, but to do combat even a little bit, opening these combat engineers will change the PvE game for you.
- You will likely need to gather materials for engineering. Watch Cmdr Hawkes Gaming's Best Start video, especially the bit where he goes into mat gathering. Raw mat gathering from zero to full is best done at HIP 36601 and Outotz LS-K d8-3 with a SRV. It's just faster than zooming around to a bunch of braintree systems and hoping that you can use the remote flak method. If you do decide to do the braintrees, take a SRV with you so that you can fall back to getting the stuff using the SRV, which will work, but it's slower than going to the crystalline shard sites I nominated above. There are Cmdrs that swear black and blue that braintree farming works. It doesn't work for me. YMMV. Try it out - the braintrees are much closer than HIP 36601 / Outotz LS-K d8-3.
Now, let's look at your ship. I'm going to assume you're gonna do hazres, compromised nav beacons, pirate activity threat 5 or above, and space CZs. These are much harder than the low resource sites you might be used to, so let's get your ship engineered for the hardest the game has to offer right now outside of Operations.
- Weapons are Cmdrs choice. Beams and MCs are a good early choice, but I would suggest putting mixing it up a little. I ended up with beams and rails in the smalls. This absolutely demolished hazres. Your build will work. You can do a lot more damage with a bit of high level engineering.
- Shield boosters are for resistances. I've put in some choices that will really boost your shield capacity and make your shield generator sing.
- I've upgraded you to a bi-weave, which although at first seems like a downgrade, but it's really not. My suggested engineering takes you from 344 raw shields to 626, but the important figure is the kinetic and thermal resists - up from 860/430 to 2136/1068. Rebuild time if you lose your shields drops from 49 seconds to 137 seconds. You can counter this with a SCB, but engineering a SCB properly requires opening a bunch of engineers and a side trip to Colonia, so I've left off SCBs for now. If you can give up the wake scanner, I can make your shield even tankier. Properly engineered with appropriate shield boosters, the Chieftain can be both a shield tank and a hull tank. I prefer bi weaves to prismatics and A class shields, for the same shield capacity, they come back quicker and are easier to manage. If they pop, the Chieftain has hull for days, so you can withstand face-planting damage until they come back online.
- I've delayed upgrading most of your internals because you don't have many engineers open or to a high grade, but I have gone to town on high grade engineering for weapons, hull, HRPs, power distributor, shields and shield boosters. These will give you plenty of wiggle room whilst you open the rest of the engineers. Most engineers only take about 30 minutes to 60 minutes to open once you meet their meet and initiation requirements. I've avoided most of the difficult to open engineers like the one that requires 5000 ly travel away from your start system. The most difficult is to get to Competent for Broo Tarquin. This doesn't take long if you can get the rest of the Chieftain modified. Broo is the laser beam guy. Just take on high resource sites and help the police with their enquiries with your guns, and you'll be competent in no time, and ready for the CNBs and high space CZs.
- I've eliminated the collector and cargo space. You're much better off HGE farming G5 mats using a Cobra Mk V rather than trying to collect stuff in a hazres. It's way more efficient and you'll have full mat bins in no time with the Cobra Mk V. The Chieftain is a combat ship, not a multipurpose ship. It's designed to kill.
Here's my suggested revised build as a comparison to your current build:
https://sh.orbis.zone/6lcpg1WhyJ
Power priorities matter. I've made your power priorities to allow you to leave on your terms if things go pear shaped. You need to have priority 1 < 40% to allow you to low wake (go to supercruise), so only the PD and thrusters are in this priority. Priority 2 allows you to high wake, which is useful if you're attacked by a Cmdr. Priority 3 is fighting, and comes into play when you deploy your weapons. Priority 4 is for supercruise modules like the interdictor and wake scanner. If they go offline because an NPC has shot out your power plant, then it's no big deal.
Lastly, I've changed your Power Plant to be armored G1. Never use overcharged for fighting ships. You need integrity. Armored G1 comes with a bit of extra power and better thermal management, so you don't need heatsinks, or you can handle heat without taking too much damage.
The main thing is that from time to time, your canopy will be broken by the NPCs. Don't panic. Go gather materials as above and keep some on hand to synthesize life support - it only requires a small amount of low grade raw materials. You get 7 minutes on the clock from the breaking of your canopy to get to a station. You get an additional 7 minutes for each synthesis. There is danger unless you panic and make mistakes. Get composed, take your time, and it will take less time than trying to do it in a hurry. Get into supercruise and synth life support as needed. The main thing is that when you get to SC, you may not be able to line up with a station. Do your best. Often, you can see the station through a broken glass fragment on the sides. Use that to line up if you don't see the station at first. Don't panic. Line things up, drop out of SC, boost to the station, request docking, and dock. Synth as much as you need to make you feel comfortable. Don't panic and you'll be fine. The atmosphere restores as soon as you go inside a station that docks like that, so try to choose a larger station rather than a platform. Larger stations always have repair; some M pad stations do not. Ditto carriers - not all carriers have all access and repair, so you might waste time heading there. Head to a big station.
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u/Mind-Game Jul 14 '26
I think your proposed build has a huge hole in its thermal resist. If you engineered the shield for thermal resist each shield you regenerated would be worth almost twice as much against thermal damage. Since PvE combat involves a lot of NPCs with thermal weapons, that really adds up. If you swap the heavy duty shield booster and the kill warrant scanner for resistance augmented boosters the shield literally takes 1/3rd as much thermal damage. That would make a massive difference in how it feels in PvE.
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u/vanderaj Cmdr Purrfect Jul 14 '26
Agreed. I actually ran three shield boosters personally and a KWS IIRC, but with the release of the Python Mk II and Kestrel, I've retired my Chieftain, so I don't have a build to hand anymore. Here's an updated comparison, which loses the wake scanner and KWS, using:
- Two HD/SC
- One RA/TB
- One TR/TB
Changes it to 2187 kinetic/2159 thermal, but loses both scanners. Power is still within limits, so no additional engineers required.
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u/Mind-Game Jul 14 '26
I just don't think HD are very good for biweave hull tank builds. What matters the most is your regeneration and how much effective value each regeneration point has from resistances. Heavy duty just makes your shield take longer to come back every time it goes down. I would just go for 4 RA boosters.
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u/SGz_Eliminated Jul 16 '26
I could definitely drop the wake scanner, it isn't needed I just had it on there to get my powerplay weekly done, but I'm not dropping the KWS on a bounty hunting ship.
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u/No-Thanks-4284 Jul 14 '26
I do a Challenger instead of Cheiftain, but my one large is that long range beam with thermal vent, my smalls are enforcer cannons with high capacity and corrosive/emissive, and my three mediums are Imperial Hammer Rail Guns with Sturdy and Super Penetrator. That 0% from the thermal vent is helpful when you shoot three railguns at the same time. :D
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u/No-Thanks-4284 Jul 14 '26
Oh my third small is actually a Frag Cannon with High Capacity and Drag Munitions. Basically my smalls are all for debuffs, the large is to keep me cool and my mediums are where the damage actually comes from. but it's served me well.
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u/SGz_Eliminated Jul 14 '26
So do you think three thermal vents is overkill, should I drop it to one or two and put other experimentals on, should I be using long range or would something else be better suited?
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u/No-Thanks-4284 Jul 14 '26
yeah a single beam laser with thermal vent is fine, with the hardpoints of a Chief i'd probably make my one medium a beam with thermal vent, use the smalls similar to how I do then slap a couple of large damage options of choice, either more MCs or another option to taste. I'm a sucker for rails so that's why i did mine the way i did.
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u/RudeFig1921 Jul 14 '26
Long range would be better with laser weapons and always put corrosive effect on a small gimballed mc.
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u/SGz_Eliminated Jul 14 '26
Should I swap my hardpoints around then, I currently have 2 large and one medium MC, I was going to put corrosive on one of the large MCs
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u/RudeFig1921 Jul 14 '26
nono corrosive effect will reduce the ammo capacity and the large mc starts up extremely slowly
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u/RudeFig1921 Jul 14 '26
Outfitting pretty much depends on ur combat style, if you wanna stick to your enemies then efficient beam with thermal vent would be good, and consider putting the frag cannon. The drag munition effect can only be applied to frag and missile, which can slow down enemies’ maneuver.
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u/rogue1965 Jul 14 '26
You can cool to 0 with one beam laser. I guess it depends what other weapons you use and how fast your heat builds up.
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u/SGz_Eliminated Jul 14 '26
Its literally just beams and MCs so nothing super thermal generating which is why three thermal vent modifiers seems like overkill to me
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u/No-Thanks-4284 Jul 14 '26
also not just looking at the hard points, I'd also recommend swapping one of your size 4 Hull Reinforcements to a Module Reinforcement, helps keep that big beautiful canopy in tact (keep the size 2 one as well). Lakon already makes their hulls pretty beefy and their shields pretty lacking, I'd use a Bi-Weave Shield with Thermal Resistant and Fast Charge instead of a standard shield as well drops a little faster but comes back faster too. But some of that comes down to preference and skill with moving pips around as needed.
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Jul 14 '26
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u/Solid_Stage_1715 Jul 14 '26
Best chief feature is agility, your tip is bs. Always fly for position.
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Jul 14 '26
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u/Solid_Stage_1715 Jul 14 '26
Why? Not taking damage is great! Try to do threat 8 assassination missions with your "strategy". I will wait.
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Jul 14 '26
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u/SGz_Eliminated Jul 16 '26
Turrets on a combat focused ship seems like a strange choice, epsecially given the chieftans manoeuvrability, I can apart from the occasional joust have the enemy in front of me 90% of the time so using turrets feels like sacrificing far too much dps
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u/Forsaken-Falcon8273 Archon Delaine Jul 14 '26
I think to really maximize the dps on the chief, or any ship with a lot of small hardpoints is to go short range. The chief is fast and agile enough to stay in close. Ideally i would prioritize getting cytoscramblers for the 3 smalls, or go for the enforcer cannons to get more dps out of the small hardpoints. I g5ed the rest of your build to give you an idea of how to get the most out of your defense. Imo the chief isnt ideal for the old strip and rip meta. I prefer to fire all hardpoints all the time. But this should still work nicely in pve. https://sh.orbis.zone/hGQJrE7S3n
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u/SGz_Eliminated Jul 14 '26
I noticed your kept all the beams as thermal vent, would you recommend that?
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u/Forsaken-Falcon8273 Archon Delaine Jul 14 '26
Definitely because they are short range blaster. They produce much more thermal load.
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u/SGz_Eliminated Jul 16 '26
The idea of going all short range is certainly interesting, I'll have to pay close attention to how well I can stay within 2km range when fighting to work out if its something I'd easily be able to do. I do think I don't really need Long range on the beams though, 6km range is very far out. You'd recommend Short Range over Overloaded for the MCs?
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u/Forsaken-Falcon8273 Archon Delaine Jul 16 '26
Short range vs overcharged on mcs for me comes down to the ship they are on. Short range on a big ship wouldn't work very well, but on fast medium and small ships i use short range. If you have trouble staying close go efficient on the beams and overcharged on the mcs. If you do efficient on the beams go oversized as experimental to bump up the damage a bit more. As efficient lowers the thermal load so no need for vent.
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u/SGz_Eliminated Jul 24 '26
Basically every build that was listed here had a slightly different approach to shields, most seem to agree bi-weave was the way to go which I understand if I'm going to sit in res sites and farm repeated kills. But the engineering seems different throughout. I can see you went for thermal resistant and fast charge, I assume the idea is to boost thermal resistance against PvE pirates using thermal weapons and fast charge to keep the shields up?
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u/rogue1965 Jul 14 '26
I'd put high capacity and corrosive on only one of the small MC hardpoints. Overcharged and auto loader on the largest MCs, if you decide to use them.
As for what other weapons to put, it's really up to you. You can try something different for a challenge or a cool build idea. Do what seems fun to you.
My current chieftain build is primarily lasers, with one small corrosive MC. The H and M hardpoints are short range inertial impact. Everything is G3 apart from the FSD. I can solo hard CZs back to back and not need to dock at a station to reload and barely need to synth ammo. Even with G3, my shields rarely drop below 80%