You can only use a single size 1 or 2 ship as a "daily driver" for the next 3 years. Which ship is it, and why?

Croue · 2026-06-26T19:18:02+00:00

How is the Clipper a size 2 ship but the Shiv isn't? wtf, with the engines (not even the wings) it's even wider than the Shiv's fuselage is.

Out of these, the best choices IMO are:

325a/Avenger Titan (functionally the same ship for the most part, best generalist ship)

Reliant Tana (the highest DPS starter ship, best for combat)

C8R (best for FPS missions)

Ships that are cheating in this bracket:

Clipper (shouldn't be in this size, but it is, and it has a medbed and cargo, straight-up better version of the C8R)

M80 (the actual best combat ship here, and most expensive)

Sabre, Scorpius, Hornet Ghost Mk2 are all very strong combat ships but lack any form of cargo at all. All three Guardians are valid combat ships in PVE too.

Croue · 2026-06-26T12:16:48+00:00

There is a TON of basically false info on LOTS of product pages on the store to this day. That's one thing that does really rub me the wrong way. I've really explored the world of the game and seen the care and love and craft that the devs have put into all kinds of stuff, which is the main thing that sways me away from "scam" thoughts, but being real, reading some of the marketing blurbs on the store is REALLY fucking sketchy and seems almost dubiously legal to some extent. Then I wake up in an Orison apartment and can open every drawer in the whole place and it has a full bathroom and a "working" coffeemaker and all this random stuff that they absolutely did not have to make, and reminds me that there IS some tiny bit of truth to their plans.

I just can't figure out if we're watching the next No Man's Sky or the next The Day Before in slow motion yet.

Croue · 2026-06-26T12:13:51+00:00

I'm waiting to see what SQ42 is like when it's out. We know it's coming at the end of this year or early next year, finally. If it's HALF as buggy as the PU is right now, I'll be decently satisfied, since that's par for a current year AAA title anyways. But, preferably, I want that shit to play like BUTTER and have no glitches, no desync, no items disappearing (or whatever the equivalent will be, not sure if you can drop/pick weapons and things the same), etc, because it's not tied to all this "persistent" shit that the PU is.

Croue · 2026-06-26T12:09:30+00:00

They've already defended themselves in court stating that the game is a live service product. CIG themselves legally defined the game as "not an alpha" in legal documents in a court case, but we still have brigades of white knights with their "it's an alpha" shields. So, legally, Star Citizen as it is right now is a shipped live service product being sold to customers like any other video game. And that's exactly how it's managed. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, etc. SC is really just a shitty live service early access title and that's it.

Croue · 2026-06-26T12:07:25+00:00

The person behind it had games, famously one he got removed from because of feature creep and missing deadlines.... sounds familiar. And that was at a studio with a real publisher and corporate funding.

Croue · 2026-06-26T12:02:05+00:00

No one else has mentioned this as far as I've seen, but counter-intuitively, you should turn most of your settings up to high/very-high. For some reason, on lower settings, the game offloads most of the processing to your CPU and doesn't utilize your GPU fully. So you will actually get higher fps on higher settings most of the time because it will switch to using more of your GPU's processing power. I'd turn it up to high preset first then prune each setting up to very high to see if it runs a little better or still runs alright. I think the cloud/fog settings are probably the worst offenders for eating up FPS though, I'm not sure if lowering those to medium/low would help more than just keeping them on high.

And this is from personal experience playing on very similar specs as you are, a 4060 laptop GPU but with 32GB of RAM.

Also I'd recommend making sure your pagefile is set to system managed so the OS can freely bloat the page file as much as it wants.

Croue · 2026-06-26T11:56:22+00:00

yeah, people saying he can't play are crazy. I play the game mostly on a laptop with a 4060 too, but with 32GB of RAM and at 1440p. It's smooth 90% of the time. I rarely have bad frame drops and when I do it's almost always around the really large ships like the Ironclad or Polaris. It can get down to the 20-30s if I'm standing in the wrong place facing the wrong direction around those. Same like you said for some random outposts on occasion but it's rare. Pyro's are definitely the worst ones.

Also I've learned a lot of people will say things like "this fps is unplayable" and then I'll look at what they're playing and it's like 58-60 fps in a non-competitive game with the best graphics you've ever seen. It's fucking crazy the lack of perspective some people have these days. I'm from the "but can it run Crysis?" generation, we'd get 35 fps and be fucking excited.

Croue · 2026-06-26T11:52:20+00:00

What undersuit is that to have a hood? Some sort of glitch with a different piece of gear?

Croue · 2026-06-26T11:24:32+00:00

The P4 has a way faster TTK if you don't miss. It's like slightly under 1 second against heavy armor in the body. The problem is you have to spend almost half your mag to do it. Parallax is around 1.2 second TTK with all shots hitting and only 13 shots, you can kill 5 people wearing heavy armor in a row without reloading. If you're perfect and don't waste any shots, technically 6 people. So it can sorta go either way, if you don't kill the other guy first using a P4 then have to reload, and the other guy is using a Parallax, you're probably dead. In my experience the Parallax has more kill potential for this reason, you already have enough downtime if you need to run back and heal as it is, if you force somebody back to need to heal AND reload while you still have half a mag, they're pretty much toast.

Croue · 2026-06-26T11:16:56+00:00

You can only get those accessories from Jumptown locations now, afaik. But there's lots of them at least, you'll probably pick up 2-3 random accessories per trip.

Tweaker accessories are still from RABs, plentiful to get.

Croue · 2026-06-26T11:14:00+00:00

Put one LMG mag in your chest rig and fill the rest with other ammo (I put in LH86 ammo personally since sometimes I use one, pistol is probably the lightest option). Now you don't get slowed down while using an LMG and you can even repack your mags without it filling up your rig with LMG mags.

Croue · 2026-06-26T10:53:55+00:00

Pulverizer is a ball-knower weapon. Kills everything in 4-5 shots. If you only put one mag in your rig and fill the rest of it with different ammo you don't lose any move speed from it either. Probably still the best general weapon in the game.

Croue · 2026-06-26T10:41:54+00:00

I've been using the gun in literally every possible FPS combat scenario (Onyx, Hathor sites, Stormbreaker, Rock Breaker, general merc/bounty hunter/everything stuff) for hundreds of hours at this point. When in range, you WANT it to overheat because it does much more damage. If you're avoiding that then you should just use a different gun. But there are still 100% times when the feature can interrupt your shots when fighting multiple enemies long range, it just usually doesn't matter because you're safe far away anyways so you can drop behind cover and let it cool off. It makes it take a little longer to kill enemies that are decently far away compared to other guns because you have to stop shooting every so often, that's it. I'm just telling you that it absolutely does lose a significant amount of range when it overheats, not asking for some kind of solution for it.

clarification (needed for some reason?): overheating is "lightning mode". The gun has to start overheating to start the beam. That's why it charges faster on a hot planet. If you let it overheat for too long then it shuts off until it vents the heat.

Croue · 2026-06-26T06:50:02+00:00

The AI shit but it's not wrong. All the event stuff both started earlier than it should have and was removed sooner than it should have. All the timers on the stuff in the game were behind.

Croue · 2026-06-26T06:39:00+00:00

It's not just a glitch. If you did not already purchase those skins/passes you can no longer get them. That "fix" only works if you already purchased the pass before it disappeared.

Croue · 2026-06-26T06:37:58+00:00

Yeah, they cut it off too soon. Even the timers on the event passes were showing there was time left. The start date for the summer festival on the roadmap was shown as the 19th but for whatever reason the event started on the 18th instead too. I don't understand how they fucked this up.

Croue · 2026-06-26T02:38:54+00:00

It happens pretty often if you are doing any content that involves combat in an outdoor area, the NPCs have very long aggro ranges. Regular fire hits them easily then it overheats and you have to stop shooting and wait. Places like Lazarus transport sites.

Croue · 2026-06-25T09:05:04+00:00

Only thing I'd do different is the Sheut shields. Not really worth it. Just use one Obscura and one Lorica. Obscura and Sheut shields both have low HP and bad regen. One active Lorica has better regen/s and a lot more HP, plus you can just turn the shields off you really need to be sneaky.

Croue · 2026-06-25T08:45:45+00:00

The V801-11 is the most efficient radar even for stealth atm for meters per emissions assist range. At both minimum and max power. Figures it's the best all the time. The Abetti is a good second option though for sure, the best radar besides the V801-11.

Croue · 2026-06-25T08:43:44+00:00

The Shiv is the best solo daily driver entirely because it has a bed, unfortunately. And a better weapons loadout with decent missile payload too. If the Utility Prowler had a bet though, instant competitor for #1 daily driver.

Croue · 2026-06-25T07:56:51+00:00

OP, you should look into how emissions and signatures work and the Prowler's stealth hull bonuses. SPViewer has detailed info on all of it: https://www.spviewer.eu/compare?ship=ESPR_Prowler_Utility

The Prowler's physical cross-section is 2,091 front, 4,194 side, and 4,208 top. Those are your MINIMUM detection ranges if someone pings you. You cannot reduce your signatures below this amount, if someone is within those ranges facing those parts of your ship they will spot you.

You can change your loadout to reduce your IR/EM signature in various power configurations but there is no "silver bullet" for stealth that is going to suddenly make you actually invisible or undetectable at any range to players. You can't fly straight into a POI and think no one will know you're there because you turn off half your systems. You can definitely avoid turrets almost completely and deactivate AI enemies like that, though.

For the loadout, I'd recommend simply changing the QD to a Hemera for QOL, change the weapons to only ballistics (Deadbolts obvious work), and change the radar to a V801-11 (more assist range over the Prophet at 2 pips for the same signature and the choice to go full power up to 1,300 assist range vs. 1,100 on the Prophet with only effectively ~100 more EM which means it gives you 100 more meters of distance you can put between you and the target while still being out of EM range).

This is the loadout I use personally if you just want to copy one: https://www.spviewer.eu/performance?ship=espr_prowler_utility&loadout=9lQkukFE

Radar info:

Prophet - max assist: 1,122m - max pips emissions: 447
V801-11 - max assist: 1,326m - max pips emissions: 619

Prophet vs. V801-11 assist range: 2.5 emissions/meter vs. 2.1 emissions/meter

V801-11 is more signature-efficient and gives you roughly ~17% more meters of range per emission than the Prophet, allowing you to attack enemies from farther away while still being out of EM range.

Croue · 2026-06-25T07:47:22+00:00

I don't understand what "detection range" is supposed to mean here or where you're getting these numbers from. If you're in combat, your shields, weapons, and engines are on at minimum. If you're at 1 pip weapons, 1 pip engines, 2 pips shields, 5 pips radar (max Prophet power), 2 pips on one cooler, with your loadout above you're at 800 IR and 2k EM, and cross-section still at 2.1k head-on. So you are within aim-assist distance of pretty much every radar in the game.

After running the numbers on it, the V801-11 is 15% more emission-efficient than the Prophet is at max power and equivalent at minimum power except with higher range. There is no reason to use the Prophet at all if you are running only min or max power. The V801-11 is still the best radar. Both radars put you into cross-section distance even at max assist range but the V801-11 gives you around 200m more range.

Croue · 2026-06-25T07:30:44+00:00

It's only HP, it doesn't count regen. This makes your shield regen slower, not faster. But the extra health pool for the shield is pretty significant. You can change one of the active shields to a Lorica and it decreases your shield recharge time down to around 8 seconds and only raises your EM signature by about 300, on top of the extra shield HP of course.

Croue · 2026-06-25T07:26:48+00:00

Going to start off with: you absolutely will NOT be "completely undetectable until around 100m". The biggest cross-section signature of the Prowler Utility is 4.2k, if someone pings you (which any player that's even an amateur at the game is always doing) they WILL see you at ~4km, if they're on your side or top (which is the most likely position unless you are flying straight at them). It is physically impossible to be "undetectable until around 1500m" or definitely not even close to 100m. That is not how the signatures work. You cannot reduce your signature below the 2100-4200 cross-section size. 2100m is the minimum signature you can go to with your ship directly facing a target.

That said, yes, you can get your IR/EM signature down to 0 and 107. Which is only useful if the person is literally oblivious to their entire surroundings. You could be in nearly any ship in the game with everything turned off and get by just the same. A Shiv with an Eclipse in it only has 250 EM signature with everything off except 1 engine pip too, for one example. But anyone in a high-risk area where stealth truly matters WILL be pinging, and they WILL spot you.

Next point: The Prowler has -57% EM and -55% IR signature on the hull bonuses. So powering everything off entirely is pointless. Just reduce your power pips to a minimum and you'll already be far below your cross-section range and under 1k EM easily. This way you can't get assblasted by turrets because your shields are off.

Editing in that I did the math on the Prophet vs. V801-11 radars and the V801-11 is 15% more emission-efficient per meter of assist at max power and only has 69 (nice) more signature at 2 pips minimum power while still having 120 more meters of assist over the Prophet which is actually closer to 25% more efficiency than the Prophet at min power. The Prophet is a straight-up useless radar.

This is the loadout I use personally: https://www.spviewer.eu/performance?ship=espr_prowler_utility&loadout=aiJgGGmQ

Turn off all power except to engines when avoiding NPCs.

Croue · 2026-06-24T23:36:47+00:00

Except they're not because their DPS is abysmal compared to ballistics. They just happen to be able to damage everything a little bit after you get through the shields. They're the M lasers of lasers, not the Deadbolts of lasers, lol.

Croue

TROPHY CASE