Other Great Ships

The starter ship offers great maneuverability and two utility slots, however its lack of health pool, small distributor, and slow speed hold it back significantly.

The Eagle is extremely maneuverable, but offers only a single utility mount and cannot be considered tanky by any means.

The Diamondback Scout is fast and maneuverable, but is held back by a small healthpool and expensive core modules.

Compared to its predecessor, the Viper Mk. 4 trades speed for more survivability, while also being much more expensive.

The Imperial Courier offers some impressive shielding, offset by empire rank requirements and bad hardpoint placement.

The Cobra V brings extreme agility, and high firepower for a small ship. But it has a smaller distributor and the same small power plant as the Vulture, limiting it somewhat. It is purchasable for credits for Odyssey owners only.

This ship combines many strengths (Good shields, speed, boost multiplier, laterals/verticals, hardpoint placement), which makes it extremely effective in PvE, and marks it as the meta in PvP. The reason it is not part of the recommended progression is because the available medium-size weapon choices and the ship's handling are less newbie friendly. This build uses efficient beams, so range control is a must.

Compared to the Alliance Chieftain this ship trades speed and maneuverability for more healthpool and more hardpoints.

All things considered the FAS is a straight downgrade from the Alliance Chieftain, offering worse hardpoint convergence, worse optional internal layout and worse lateral/vertical thrusters. Viewing past these deficiencies it's still an interesting and potentially fun ship to try.

The obvious comparison for the Mamba is the FDL, to which it loses on hardpoint placement, maneuverability and optional internals, gaining only speed in return.

The cheaper version of the Krait Mk.2 retains many characteristics, but loses one hardpoint and one class 6 optional internal, gaining only a slight speed advantage in return.

Internal Layout is very similar to the Krait Mk 2, but it gets a very different flight model, slightly more tankiness by having bigger shield cell banks, and cannot fit a fighter hangar.

The Python Mk II offers significant damage and maneuverable flight, but is held back by its undersized power plant and distributor.  If you don't have access to Pacifiers, then use gimbaled fragment cannons instead.

Also a worthy contender for the best PvE ship in the game. Compared to the conda it gets even better survivability, but it loses the great hardpoint placement in return. Having two converging huge hardpoints can only partially make up for it.

While this ship comes with a unrivaled combination of tank and speed, the remaining maneuverability specs really leave to be desired. The hardpoints however are also good and the C7 distributor not a very significant issue.