Syylk

Pilot

Name: Katrina Le-Feir (UIT)

AKA: "Kitteh burger" (meow!)

Stats: here

VOKB Stats: here

Deneb Run Racing Career

DR #	Standing	Config	Lap Time
100	1st	A	45:27
99	1st	A	28:34
97	1st	A	27:36
96	-	-	Host
95	-	-	Host
94	2nd	A	29:24
93	1st	A	28:05
92	2nd	A	27:42
90	3rd	A	30:57
89	1st	A	30:10
87	1st	A	31:34
86	2nd	A	31:50
85	1st	A	30:21
84	2nd	A	27:59
83	1st	A	29:12
82	-	B	DNF
81	1st	B	29:09
80	1st	B	-
77	3rd	B	33:46
75	7th	C	35:08
74	5th	D	-

Config	Ship	Nickname	Powercell	Equip
A	Orion Hornet Convoy Guardian Elite	"Millennium Kitten"	Fast Charge	-
B	Orion Hornet Convoy Guardian Elite	"Red Dart"	Fast Charge	-
C	Warthog Mk II Upgraded	-	Fast Charge	-
D	Warthog Mk II Upgraded	-	Fast Charge	Law Gun

Why the Orion Hornet?

The table below shows the most popular ships used in the Deneb Run, along with their specs. It's ordered by ship mass, from lightest to heaviest:

Ship	Faction	Level	Licenses	Armor	Cargo (cu)	Ports	Mass (kg)	Length (m)	Thrust (kN)	Speed (m/s)	Torque (Nm)	Turbo (m/s)	Drain	Accel (m/s²)
EC-107 Bus Hunter	-	-		6800	12	2S	3700	10	210	65	7.0	210	50/s	56.7
Raptor Protoype	TPG	~290	4/4/-/-/-	8300	8	2S	3900	17	200	55	8.5	220	54/s	51.3
Vulture MkIII	-	-	4/3/-/-/-	8600	2	2S	4000	12	220	65	7.0	220	55/s	55
Hornet Convoy Guardian Elite	Orion	720	4/5/1/-/-	13000	10	4S	5600	17	240	65	7.0	220	50/s	42.8
Warthog MkII Upgraded	-	-	2/2/-/-/-	9400	8	1S, 1L	5700	10	230	65	7.2	220	50/s	40.3
Atlas X-Type Elite	TPG	~290	1/-/1/4/-	8500	38	1S, 1L	9200	14	375	65	12.0	210	50/s	40.8

Let's start saying that there's no "perfect" DR ship: as most things in Vendetta Online, your own flying style indicates what ship yields the best balance for you. I encourage you to try the various ships and see for yourself how you perform with each one, which one is most appropriate to your flight preference. I prefer the OHCGE, whose strenghts and weaknesses are as follow:

It has an infiniboost engine

I find infiniboost (an engine that drains the battery at a rate equal to or less than the rate at which the battery recharges) extremely important in the DR: especially in troublesome sectors, I want to be able to jump while traveling at full speed. The Raptor and the Vulture must let go the turbo boost just before the wormhole (at best) to let the battery recharge fully for the jump. That last slowdown can (and often did!) spell death in the most dangerous legs of the lap, where every kind of bolt/bullet/rocket/missile is raining on your vessel.

Infiniboost lets you also set up a turbo lock bind, to be used to emerge from wormholes and just forget about battery recharge. The breakeven point to be able to sector jump with a Fast Charge battery is 67 energy points out of 250. As soon as you reach this value, usually looking for a straight and clear path out of the wormhole, you can engage the turbo lock, wait for the 3km mark, and be done with the wormhole sector.

It's fast

The Deneb Run is a timed race, and having good top speeds (both cruise and turbo) is indeed critical. Cruising at 65 m/s and boosting at 220 m/s, the Hornet has the (nominal) highest speeds among the contenders. While the acceleration leaves a lot to be desired, there are enough "long streak" race segments (think Itan or Sol II) where you can catch up and outrun slower ships. As a rule of thumb, on distances greater than 4000m, a higher top speed can compensate for a slower acceleration, even more so with infiniboost. It has also a cruise speed of 65 m/s, which means it's faster than the Raptor when the turbo is not engaged - like when you're just waiting for your battery to replenish, as in the Bractus-Odia wormhole.

It's quite resilient

With an armor rating of 13000, it's the toughest racing ship. The Deneb Run is a dangerous event, where players and NPC are supposed to fire onto racers. You will cross sectors where Strike Forces, battling capital ships, unrats, and especially other players are ready to vaporize you, so having a solid hull is very, very important in my opinion.

I often docked in Odia M-14 with just a few percentage points of my ship framework. With anything else than an Orion Hornet, that stray flare, or that neutron burst, could have meant the premature end of my run. Too many debris of ECs (half the armor of OHCGE) and Vultures (2/3 of the armor) float near the wormholes of Sedina, Metana and Bractus to convince me that's a good idea to give up good protection during the race.

It's heavy and clumsy

The downside of the Orion Hornet is quickly assessed: its acceleration and manevuerability are only slightly better than those of a concrete brick. Even the large Raptor has better acceleration, due to higher thrust/mass ratio. The weight, acceleration and spin torque prevent this ship from being able to efficiently dodge, or quickly align toward the wormholes. It needs some training to compensate its inertia, and on the short distances it's left in the dust by lighter vessels with explosive accelerations, like EC, Vulture and even Raptor.

The length and cross section are rather large, making it an easier target to hit than the smaller and thinner ships.

It's a corporate variant

You need an high standing with Orion (720) to be able to purchase it. Gaining such standing may be non-trivial, especially since Orion is a gold/gray space faction, the missions needed to increase the standing can be boring and/or dangerous, and the risk of hopelessly ruining the reputation with Orion by doing a wrong move is always lurking.

Furthermore, Orion has only four stations: two in Azek, one in Dau, and one in Latos. The other ships are much more available, across the entire galaxy; even the TPG Raptor and Atlas X are present in nine stations, spread over five systems.

Only the EC-107 is more difficult to obtain, since it needs a whopping 50 bus kills to unlock the tiny, darting racer.

It won the DR 100

...And it's named Elite. What else could you possibly want?