How To Build A PvP-Capable Ship

A guide to put you on the path of gitting gud in PvP

By ryan_m17 and the Galactic Academy team

Table of Contents

What this covers

How to survive in Open

Why should I go into Open in the first place?
But isn’t open a wasteland of gankers?
I got killed once and there was nothing I could do!
OK, so what do I need to do to be able to live?
Prerequisites
Situational awareness
Use your sensors, including the one in your head
Basic outfitting principles
Type-7 Transporter
Weapons
Core internals
Utilities
Optional Internals

How to fight in Open

Prerequisites
Evasion
Boost timing
FA-off
Builds
Meta FDL
Weapons:
Core internals:
Utilities:
Optional internals:
Chieftain
Weapons:
Core internals:
Utilities:
Optional internals:
PvP Ship Tier List
Large
Medium
Small
Engineer effect tier guide
 Weapons:
Utilities:
Optional Internals
Core Internals

PvP Hotspots

Useful Sites/Utilities
What this covers
This guide will have 2 major sections: building a survivable ship for Open and building a ship
capable of participating in PvP fights.

The first is meant to prepare you for spending all of your time in open and being ready to fend
off and escape an attack from another player. We’ll go over outfitting concepts, layering
defenses, and situational awareness. When you combine these, you will be essentially
unkillable in Open unless you choose to die.

The second section will place you on the path to becoming a Trueborn FAO Lord™ capable of
dunking on any sort of lowly FA-on scrub with minimal effort. Prerequisites, ship building
concepts, and evasion will be covered at a high-level. This section, by itself, could be 30-40
pages if fully fleshed out but I’m too lazy to do that. I will heavily simplify things and it is not
meant to be a comprehensive guide, only a jumping off point.
How to survive in Open
Open play ​can​ be a dangerous place if you are complacent or unprepared, but with a small
amount of planning and situational awareness, you should get away easily Many players go into
Open right at the beginning of their Elite careers, get smoked by some guy in a Corvette, and
never return. It’s understandable, but for 99% of systems out there, you won’t run into anyone
looking to do you harm.

Why should I go into Open in the first place?

Open is the only mode where you can actually be in danger after a certain point. NPCs are
pretty much brain dead and no threat once you’re in a Vulture or larger. They can be safely
ignored in even shieldless ships if you know how to win interdictions, something that cannot be
said for other players. Every hollow icon you encounter could be a friend or foe and that adds to
the excitement of the game. You have a very real chance of losing unless you get your shit
together.

But isn’t open a wasteland of gankers?

No. Outside of some very populated systems, it’s pretty much just like solo/PG. You’ll see a
random player here and there but most PvPers sit in specific systems looking for fights, and
these are almost entirely predictable.

I got killed once and there was nothing I could do!

Fortunately for you, there actually were many things you could have done to not die, but you just
didn’t know them yet. Every death in Elite is the result of a series of mistakes that have to be
made. With some small changes in outfitting and behavior, you will have a very good chance at
getting away the next time.

OK, so what do I need to do to be able to live?

The best thing you can do for yourself is accept the fact that you’re going to die at some point.
You will make a mistake (or a series of mistakes) that will lead to you blowing up and eating a
rebuy. It happens to everyone. Most PvPers eclipse 1 billion in paid rebuys before they are
capable of fighting at a competent level. To simply survive, you shouldn’t be paying anywhere
near that much in rebuy, so don’t sweat this.
Prerequisites
You need to have some cash on hand and a T7 or larger. You will need to have multiple
engineers unlocked as well as a decent amount of mats on hand to modify some modules. This
part really doesn’t take as long as it seems once you get the methods down.

● Multiple rebuys on hand (5+, minimum)

● T7 or larger
● Farseer, Vatermann, Jean, Cheung unlocked at a minimum

Situational awareness
The single biggest survival skill you can learn is to be aware of your surroundings. If you can
avoid trouble in the first place, none of the rest of this guide matters at all. For example, if you’re
in a shieldless T6 in Open jumping into an Empire CG while Duval-aligned, you have made a
bad decision. You are going to an end-game PvP area with zero defenses where you are likely
to be seen and interdicted. Be aware of the “danger” you’re facing when you’re jumping to
places. PvP hotspots, Engineer bases, and special event areas are dangerous spots in Open.
Anywhere a “lot” of players will congregate is a target.

Use your sensors, including the one in your head

As you jump into a system, the first thing you should be doing is checking your friends panel
which will show other player-controlled ships in your instance. Quick quiz: what do you do if you
see the following in your instance and you’re in a shieldless T6?
● Fer-de-Lance
● Fer-de-Lance
● Fer-de-Lance
● Federal Assault Ship
● Federal Gunship
● Alliance Chieftain
● Alliance Chieftain

Leave. Leave is the answer here. This is pretty much the most danger you could possibly be in
while playing Elite. This means there are at least 2 wings worth of players in combat fit ships
currently sitting in supercruise. If you’re not prepared to tank the damage these ships can put
out, you have to avoid that damage in the first place by not being there. You cannot win every
fight. In Elite, you are not the hero, you’re a cog in a machine. You’re not fighting the good fight
by throwing yourselves at these guys, you’re just wasting cash.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, you’re in one of the ships we’ll be discussing below and you can
tank the damage a couple of these idiots can dish out. How do we not die here?
 ● Pay attention to what those ships are doing
● Select them in your contacts tab and see if they’re solo players or winged up together
● Check for clan tags
● Watch them as you’re flying to your destination

If one gets behind you, there’s now a few decisions to make: do you NEED to make it to this
station right now or can you come back later? If you need to make it, can your ship get away
with a safe margin of shields against the player or wing that is getting ready to pull you? If
you’ve answered “yes” to that last question, keep going. Give it a shot. If you answered no,
here’s what you do:

● Immediately plot a high-wake target to another close-by system. You’ll need this if you
get pulled
● In most ships, you will not win the interdiction, so if pulled, instantly submit
● Upon drop, pop a chaff and a heatsink if you have them (why would you not have them?)
and immediately spin around and boost back past your attacker. This gives you a bit of
distance right off the bat from your attacker, as they will likely not be expecting this
● Move pips to 4-2-0 to give you the most shield strength you can get
● DO NOT FLY IN A STRAIGHT LINE. Even if all you’re doing is pitching up and boosting
as often as you can, this is better than flying in a straight line. No, rolling your ship isn’t
helping either. Try and fly as erratically as you can here because every missed shot is
more margin for you
● Watch your FSD cooldown timer and the second it is up, begin your high-wake to your
pre-selected system
● Continue being evasive and do not try and line up your high wake until the charging bar
is essentially finished. Experienced players will try to hit you with a Grom Bomb that will
reset your FSD here

At this point, if you did all of the above and you were outfit correctly, you will get away in less
than a minute. Don’t worry about people chasing you down because unless you were a specific,
planned target, they’re not going to be following you out of where they were.

Basic outfitting principles

The general rule for building a survivable ship is that if you can avoid damage, build your ship
with mid-tier defenses and utilities that will help you avoid that damage. If you can’t avoid
damage, you need to build so that you can eat ALL of it and still get out. In this section we’ll go
over an engineered ship to show these concepts in practice.
Type-7 Transporter
This ship is built to be a shielded trader, capable of tanking 1-3 players for long enough to
high-wake away to safety. 276 cargo, 900+ MJ shields, 872 armor plus heat sinks and chaff.
The engineering done here will be done by a few easy to unlock engineers to the level that they
are capable of. You do not need to be G5 engineered to simply survive.

● Farseer:​ Thrusters, FSD, sensors, power plant

● Cheung:​ Shield, sensors (if you want g5)
● Jean:​ Armor
● Vatermann: ​Shield boosters

With just these engineers unlocked, you can craft a ship that is all but unkillable.

Weapons
● None.​ You will not be needing or using weapons on this ship. Seriously, don’t waste
your time.

Core internals
● G3 heavy duty/deep plating lightweight alloy:​ This is a great improvement for any
ship because it’s basically free HP. Lightweight alloy bulkheads have zero mass and the
heavy duty engineering adds 76% armor for zero mass increase here.
● G1 armored/double braced plant:​ For a 4% mass increase, you gain 61% integrity on
this module. In the event that your shields get cracked, your plant will be more difficult to
take out.
● G3 dirty drives/drag drives thrusters: ​Significant agility/speed boost here for a
minimal cost
● G5 fast boot/double braced FSD:​ This isn’t a huge necessity but it is VERY nice if you
get hit by a grom bomb, because your FSD will be ready to go again in like 2 seconds.
Double braced experimental adds some integrity in case your shields go down so it
doesn’t get sniped out as quickly.
● 4D life support:​ Need that jump range, right?
● 4A distro:​ this ​could​ be engineered by The Dweller if you want to, though I’ve left it
stock here. Not really a huge benefit for the T7, but the option is there. Charge
enhanced/super conduits if you decide to do some rolls.
● G3 lightweight sensors:​ Jump range

Utilities
● 2 G5 Heavy duty/super cap 0A shield boosters:​ These add a TON of shielding to your
ship at a significant weight penalty, but these 2 here will make it so no one gets through
to the squishy insides of your flying cardboard box.
 ● Heat sink/chaff:​ Basic defensive countermeasures that will take some pressure off your
shield

Optional Internals
● G5 Reinforced/Hi-cap prismatic shield generator:​ Reinforced adds a significant
amount of shields to your ship that will be increased by your HD boosters. If you don’t
have prismatics unlocked, use a standard generator and drop the heatsink for another
HD booster.
● A shit-ton of cargo racks:​ self-explanatory

The target you’re shooting for is 700+ mj minimum on any ship that cannot avoid damage.
Anything larger than a T7 should be easily able to reach these levels.
How to fight in Open
Fighting other players in open, simply put, is the greatest challenge there is as far as combat
goes in Elite. No NPC can replicate the behavior of a competent human player. Maybe you want
to play the good guy and try to make CGs safer for everyone. Maybe you want to kill everything
in your path. This section will help prepare you for participating in this portion of the game.

Prerequisites
To be viable in PvP combat, you’re going to need a LOT of cash, pretty much all engineers
unlocked and maxed out, as well as a fully engineered medium ship. You will be dying often at
the beginning, so I would recommend 200-300 million in cash before starting to fight. Make sure
you are FULLY ENGINEERED before you start trying to fight or you will get absolutely smoked.

Evasion
The name of the game in PvP is evasion. Players are VERY good at doing damage to you and
the ships we fly are generally built to tank a bit of damage but avoid most of it. If you try to
face-tank in PvP, you’re going to get rolled by someone that knows what they’re doing. You get
in, do your damage, then do your best to avoid the damage coming back to you from your
enemy.

Boost timing
The simplest way we do this is boost timing when jousting in a 1v1. Most 1v1s devolve into both
players boosting towards each other, firing, then turning around and doing it again. With boost
intervals being the same for each ship, the tendency is to boost as soon as it’s available for both
sides, leading to fairly predictable boosting for both yourself and your enemy. The object here is
to delay your boost a little bit at semi-random intervals to put yourself in a better situation.

Let’s say you and your enemy are boosting towards each other and getting ready to pass.
You’ve already boosted and you’re getting ready to line up your shot. If you have a shot, it’s
safe to assume that your enemy ALSO has one, so you want to take your shot then immediately
move to hopefully deny your enemy a clean shot at you. The way you do this here is to shoot,
and immediately boost while thrusting down AND left/right. This will move the reticle for your
enemy enough that if they shot at the same time, their shot will likely miss.

FA-off
Almost all top-level PvPers fly FA-off in PvP. It is absolutely not a requirement at the beginning,
but if you keep with it, you’ll eventually learn it. The main advantage here is that with FA-off, the
direction you’re facing is now decoupled from the direction you are travelling. This gives you
much finer control over your aiming compared to an FA-on pilot. Increasing time-on-target (ToT)
is a huge game changer if you’re coming from FA-on flying. Additionally, it allows you to fly in a
less predictable fashion, get spun back around quicker, and really evade more shots than if
you’re FA-on.

If you’re using mouse+keyboard, you will want to turn relative mouse on. If you’re using a
HOTAS, you will need to set up custom curves for sensitivity. You will absolutely suck at first,
but stick with it and it will click. Here are some easy things to do that will help you to learn
FA-off:

● First, undock at a station, turn FA-off, fly out of the slot, stop, request docking, and fly
back in and dock all in FA-off. Do this until you get comfortable. This will help you learn
to control your lateral/vertical thrusters.
● Next, go outside the station and boost around it while trying to stay facing it the entire
time. Use your thrusters to maintain a consistent distance from the station.
● Finally, go to an asteroid belt and boost around while trying to avoid the rocks.

Builds
In this section, I’m going to go over two G5 fully engineered PvP builds and explain the outfitting
concepts behind them and that they’re used for.

Meta FDL
This build utilizes a bi-weave shield with SCBs, 2 heat sinks, 3 PAs, and 2 rails. It is a good
all-around ship that is viable in both 1v1s and wing fights. It’s capable of taking down nearly any
ship in the game, engineered or not. It relies on evasion to survive. When shields drop, turn off
the HD booster, pop a heat sink, and go full evasive until your shields come back up. Very
do-able in a 1v1, much harder in a wing fight.

Weapons:
● 1 huge efficient oversized PA: ​This is a huge damage dealer with nearly 160 mj of
damage per shot. PAs are unique in Elite as 60% of their damage is absolute damage,
meaning it ignores resistances. The other 40% is split 50/50 between thermal and kinetic
damage. Efficient is chosen because of the 20% damage boost, -45% distro hit, and
-60% thermal load decrease.
● 2 medium efficient target lock breaker/dispersal PAs:​ These both do a decent
amount of damage, but the experimentals are just as important. When target lock
breaker hits your enemy, it deselects you on their ship so they will have to manually
select you again to be able to fire back effectively. This is incredibly annoying and very
strong. Dispersal applies a chaff effect to all gimballed weapons when it lands that
persists even if your target deselects you.
 ● 2 long range feedback cascade/super penetrator rail guns:​ Rails on this build are
used for utility mainly, and damage second. They still do a significant amount of damage,
but the effects are why we are carrying them. Feedback cascade can be used to cancel
SCB charges, seriously decreasing the health pool of your opponent. Super penetrator is
for module sniping after shields go down. Long range helps with enemies that are further
out because we can take advantage of the micro-gimbal effect fixed weps have at
distance. It helps with module sniping greatly.

Core internals:
● Lightweight/deep plating reactive bulkheads:​ this gives a significant boost to hull
health along with better resists against kinetic and explosive weapons at the cost of
decreased resistances against thermal weapons. Alone, this would be bad, but we’re
going to pair it with an HRP later that will balance resists for us. This is chosen because
the FDL relies on speed and the lightweight mod helps us balance health with agility.
● Armored/thermal spread plant:​ Pretty much the best-in-class upgrade for power
plants. Boosts integrity by 120%, power capacity by 12%, and thermal efficiency by
~21% with thermal spread experimental. Plant sniping is a big part of combat once
shields drop because you can instantly disable a ship if you’re good at it.
● Dirty drive/drag drive thrusters:​ There’s no other choice here. Nothing is better.
Significantly increases speed and agility.
● 4D FSD:​ PvPers generally live at CGs and use taxi ships to get there, so the FSD on
their ship only needs to get usually 1 jump away, so d-rated is the way to go here. Saves
on weight.
● Lightweight life support/sensors:​ Saves on weight

Utilities:
● 2 resistance augmented/super cap shield boosters:​ These will help balance your
shield resistances to take advantage of your SCBs and provide a nice strength boost to
your base shield. Super cap experimental adds a bit more MJ to your shield as well.
● 1 heavy duty/super cap shield booster:​ This one adds a large amount of raw health to
your ship at the small expense of slightly lowered resists (-2%). With all the boosters
together, you have 857 mj.
● 2 ammo capacity heat sinks:​ On this build you really only NEED one ammo capacity
heat sink for your banks because you’ll be double-banking, but the extra is to help you
drop focus if in a wing fight while shields are down and you’re waiting for them to
recover. If you primarily 1v1, drop a sink for an extra chaff.
● Ammo cap chaff: ​Pretty much a requirement to have at least one, ideally 2. Forces
gimbal players to basically waste ammo or do no damage to you while they’re up.
Optional internals:
● Thermal resist/fast charge bi-weave shield:​ Thermal resist is chosen so that you can
balance your resists with your shield boosters. Fast charge helps you take advantage of
the regen rate of your bi-weave.
● 2 rapid charge/recycling cell SCBs:​ Rapid charge is pretty much a requirement here
so that your SCBs don’t get cancelled. This decreases the window your enemy has to
cancel them by 40%. Really useful mod.
● Thermal resistant/deep plating HRP:​ This is for adding a bit of hull and balancing out
your armor resists.
● Expanded arc interdictor:​ Helps for pulling people from SC

Chieftain
The Chieftain is considered a hybrid ship. It has shields to mitigate some damage and a ton of
hull underneath to keep you alive while your shield regenerates. Your shield WILL GO DOWN
EARLY AND OFTEN in this ship. It is very agile with a number of hardpoints that can be used
for utility. Very fun ship to fly.

Weapons:
● 2 large overcharged target lock breaker/dispersal PAs:​ These PAs are the lion’s
share of your damage. Overcharged is a REALLY thirsty mod as far as distro goes, but
each landed PA is doing 141 mj of damage to your opponent. TLB and dispersal are the
mods on these to help with gimbals.
● 1 medium+1 small overcharged/screening shell gimballed frag:​ These do a good
amount of damage as well, and since they’re gimballed, they have good ToT. Screening
shell makes it so you can fire much more quickly and get that damage out quick as well.
● 2 small overcharged corrosive/drag gimballed frags:​ These are really utility
weapons. Corrosive decreases the hull hardness of the ship you’re shooting boosting
your damage a bit on the smaller hardpoints, and drag makes the enemy ship maneuver
like it has 0 pips in engines for a period.

Core internals:
● Lightweight/deep plating reactive bulkheads:​ this gives a significant boost to hull
health along with better resists against kinetic and explosive weapons at the cost of
decreased resistances against thermal weapons. We’re going to add a ton of HRPs later
that will balance our resists and increase our hull by a lot.
● Armored/thermal spread plant:​ Pretty much the best-in-class upgrade for power
plants. Boosts integrity by 120%, power capacity by 12%, and thermal efficiency by
~21% with thermal spread experimental. Plant sniping is a big part of combat once
shields drop because you can instantly disable a ship if you’re good at it.
 ● Dirty drive/drag drive thrusters:​ There’s no other choice here. Nothing is better.
Significantly increases speed and agility.
● 4D FSD:​ PvPers generally live at CGs and use taxi ships to get there, so the FSD on
their ship only needs to get usually 1 jump away, so d-rated is the way to go here. Saves
on weight.
● Lightweight life support/sensors:​ Saves on weight

Utilities:
● 2 resistance augmented/super cap shield boosters:​ These will help balance your
shield resistances and give you a better buffer for damage.
● 1 heavy duty/super cap shield booster:​ This one adds a large amount of raw health to
your ship at the small expense of slightly lowered resists (-2%).
● Ammo cap chaff: ​Pretty much a requirement to have at least one, ideally 2. Forces
gimbal players to basically waste ammo or do no damage to you while they’re up.

Optional internals:
● Thermal resist/lo-draw bi-weave shield:​ Thermal resist is chosen so that you can
balance your resists with your shield boosters. Lo-draw helps you manage your sys cap
better because of how quickly this shield recharges naturally when it’s broken. Nearly 8
mj/s on the C6.
● 1 C5/3 C4 heavy duty/deep plating HRPs:​ Big hull boost along with resist boosts.
● Thermal resistant/deep plating HRP:​ This is for adding a bit of hull and balancing out
your armor resists.
● C4/C2 MRPs:​ This is to help prevent your modules from getting sniped out while your
shield is down.
PvP Ship Tier List

Large
1. Cutter
2. Corvette
3. Conda

Medium
1. FDL
2. Chieftain
3. FAS
4. Krait
5. Challenger
6. Python
7. Gunship
8. Crusader
9. Dropship
10. Everything else

Small
1. Vulture
2. Viper mk 3
3. Cobra mk 3
4. DBS
5. Courier
6. Almost everything else
7. Cobra mk 4
Engineer effect tier guide
In this section, I’m going to list out the “best” mod for each module along with some alternatives.
Keep in mind that there are so many options here that I won’t be going over really niche ones
that work in a few builds.

Weapons:
Beam/Burst/Pulse lasers:​ Long range is almost always best in PvP because humans will
manage distance better than NPCs do. Efficient can be viable on bigger ships, but not as useful.

Cannons:​ Overcharged is generally the best effect here because of the huge damage buff with
a minimal distro hit. Long range is an option if you have trouble landing cannon shots, and short
range blaster is good if you’re fighting up close. It does more damage than overcharged but at a
cost to range.

Frag cannons:​ Overcharged is best, hands down.

Dumbfire/Seeker missile rack:​ Both high capacity and rapid fire are viable here, depending on
what you’re using them for. I prefer high capacity, personally, but a case can be made for either
one.

Multicannons: ​Overcharged is best, hands down. Rapid fire has uses in PvP but for PvE,
overcharged is best.

Plasma accelerator: ​Efficient is best. Zero downsides.

Rail gun:​ Long range is best. Significantly increases the range, and if you add feedback
cascade (cancels SCBs) or super penetrator (module sniping) you get a thermal load decrease
as well.

Torpedo pylon:​ Only really viable on meme ships. Sturdy would be best here.

Utilities:
Chaff/Heat sinks: ​Ammo capacity. Lightweight can be useful on exploration ships but for
combat, more ammo is always better

Electronic Countermeasure/Point defense:​ Shielded is slightly better as long as you have the
power to run it, if not, reinforced is fine as well. Not super useful in PvE or PvP though.
Frame Shift/Kill Warrant Scanner:​ Long range or fast scan. Personal preference here. I prefer
fast scan.

Shield Booster:​ Resistance augmented or heavy duty. Resist is almost always better in PvE
but it really depends on the specific ship you’re using it on as to the right combination of each.
Reach out to a mentor for advice here.

Optional Internals
Auto Field-Maintenance Unit:​ One of the rare modules where engineering it at all isn’t good.
You only have one option here and it’s not worth it.

Hull reinforcement package: ​Heavy duty is almost always best. If you need to balance resists,
a thermal resist one on the smallest HRP you have can help as well, though this is really only
useful for PvP.

Shield Cell Bank:​ Specialized is best for PvE, rapid charge is best for PvP.

Shield Generator: ​Thermal resistant is the main one for bi-weaves, reinforced for prismatics.

Core Internals
Armor: ​Lightweight when you want to preserve speed at all costs or when the trade-off is worth
it. Heavy duty when you need the extra armor.

Frame shift drive: ​Increased range, no contest.

Life support/Sensors: ​Lightweight, though long range sensors can be useful on big ships if
you have a ton of spare power.

Power distributor: ​Charge enhanced. Nothing else is worth it.

Power plant: ​Armored is best for most ships, but if you have extra headroom like on ​this
Chieftain build​, you can get away with a low emission plant. It will significantly improve your heat
generation. Overcharged should almost never be used except on seriously power-hungry builds,
and then use the lowest grade you can get away with.

Thrusters:​ Dirty drives, no contest.

PvP Hotspots
● CG systems
● Shinrarta Dezhra
● Eravate and surrounding systems
● Engineer bases
● Powerplay expansions/capitals
● Special event areas (new thargoid/guardian stuff)
Useful Sites/Utilities
Galactic Academy Discord:​ ​server run by a bunch of great people focused on helping newbies
and those wanting to learn more about Elite (shameless plug)

Galactic Combat Initiative Discord:​ PvP-focused server for training people up

PvP Hub Discord​:​ Server for getting organized PvP fights going

https://eddb.io/​: useful for finding stations selling specific ships/modules, finding good surface
prospecting and correct system states for material farming.

http://edshipyard.net/​ best site for putting together ship builds

https://inara.cz/galaxy-engineers​ link to list of engineers

https://inara.cz/galaxy-components/​ link to list of materials and where to find them

https://inara.cz/galaxy-blueprints/​ link to list of engineer-able modules and effects

EDEngineer​ utility to help gather materials list for planned upgrades

EDProfiler​ ​great utility to adjust video settings on the fly before launching the game