Star Citizen Drake Corsair Ship Buyer’s Guide – Affordable Exploration
Welcome to a Star Citizen Drake Corsair – Ship Buyer’s Guide.
The Drake Corsair is now flyable in Alpha 3.17.4 it is a much loved Exploration Ship that is going to be used for a whole host of other operations and is available from $225 – 250.
We are going to take a look at the ship, it’s specs, uses as well as discuss where it fits into the game now and in the future.
TAKE ON THE UNKNOWN
You hear the song of far-off galaxies, of systems uncharted and frontiers untamed. The spirit of exploration is inescapable.
This is the spirit of the Drake Corsair – the bold, indomitable will of Humankind and its relentless pursuit of fortune, exploration, and knowledge.
Who knows what you’ll discover out there, but you can face the unknown with confidence thanks to the Corsair’s formidable shipboard weaponry and its unique convertible wings. It’s a worthy companion, supporting you in battle, discovery, and delivery, wherever the winds of adventure take you.
Expected Exploration Gameplay?
The Corsair is a mid tier Explorer ship really what I mean by that is that it’s a no frills Exploration craft that forgoes all the bells and whistles of the Carrack and Odyssey. Instead focusing on mid-long range exploration but in a much more compact package for upto 4 crew.
Scanning down POI, Anomalies visiting them. Finding Pirate & Outlaw Bases.
Visiting, Scanning and Surveying planets and exploring dangerous environments.
Operating relatively long ranges and being able to also take on combat missions, bounties, high value transport, a little bit of cargo hauling.
You’ve got room for a vehicle aboard to if you want to bring a buggy or a couple of bikes.
But you can do pretty much anything in game other than mining / salvage sort of specialist stuff… but you would be useful to assist in and defend ships that are doing that…
It’s a great ship FOR ANY FLEET.
There is a load of cool stuff to do now with the ship and there is a promise of lot of future exploration gameplay coming online in the future.
What’s it missing then?
It doesn’t have a Medical Bay and it also lacks True Self Sufficiency so it can’t mine and refine it’s own Quantumian Fuel like the Odessey can. It’s not as large as a Carrack either so it’s range is more limited… but it’s still going to be a pretty long range ship.
The ship is fantastically simple internally. It’s all over a single deck.
A Reasonable cargo bay at the rear with a ramp, allowing for 72 SCU but as I said you can get a vehicle in there like an Ursa Rover… so pretty big…
Then you have the main component and engineering room, on the starboard side you then have a sealed room that leads to an airlock with suit, gear and weapon storage.
Moving to the mid of the ship you have a relatively large living area here is 3 crew quarters, shared bathroom, food prep and seating / meeting area…
There is also a sealed elevator that will take you to the exterior of the ship… either at the top or bottom… yes you can pull one of the levers and walk on the top of your ship… Why would you do this… for an awesome vantage point, repairs, to use your ship like a fortress on the ground?
Moving to the front of the ship we then have turret access to the port and starboard manned turrets.
Then you move into the Cockpit, but there is a room to your left and that’s the Captains Quarters it’s pretty much the same as the other 3 crew quarters but just quicker access from the cockpit. The Cockpit is a reasonable size with the pilot chair up front and behind that is a Co-Pilot chair that will actually take you down into a like sub cockpit just for the co-pilot.
That’s it… you won’t get lost on this ship!
However even when marked out on my HUD I still seem to get confused where the external access to the lift is… that’s a me problem.
Firepower
The Corsair’s Firepower is very impressive.
The Pilot has access to 6 gimballed weapons, 4x M6As on the Nose and 2x M5As on the Port Wings… all of which are gimballed. This is a huge amount of pew pew to bring to bear on a target. And I’ve seen a load of threads calling for the Corsair to be nerfed already… However it’s not got a unique weapon like the Ares Ion has… it’s just running a lot of gun.
When fully crewed you have a remote turret (at the back and facing the rear) and 2x Manned Turrets port and starboard near the front of the ship that all have 2x S2 badgers repeaters each… so that’s another 6 pew pews…
This is going to make it great doing more dangerous missions, bounties, exploring and searching in pirate areas… it’s going to be great at scouting and reconnaissance too as it can operate pretty independently.
It feels like it has a relatively underwhelming set of missiles with 8 S3’s… BUT this will pack an extra punch when needed and If I can set it up with 16 S2s or 32 S1’s that might be more preferable to they way I’d want to use missiles with this ship.
With the Corsairs turret coverage and it’s very powerful forward facing guns, it shouldn’t have too many issues when engaging just a couple of fighters… but I wouldn’t want to get hit by any torpedoes… or be in a prolonged fight with a lot of ships…
I am looking forward to playing XenoThreat with this ship… I think it’s absolutely perfect for doing a mixture of attack, defence, cargo hauling then fleet battling.
Components
Components wise the ship runs a selection of S2s.
With 2x Power Plants, Quantum Fuel Tanks, Fuel Tanks, Coolers, Batteries & Intakes and a single S2 for other systems. Other than Shields which are a Single S3… and Computers where it has a S1 and a S2… what will that mean for AI blades and future mechanics… we don’t really know yet.
Ship Comparisons…
The Corsair is much much smaller than the Carrack and significantly cheaper too with the ship ranging from $225 – 250 compared to the Carrack at around $600.
Really the Corsair is comparable and is competing against the Constellation Aquila, MSR and 400i these ship are all comparable size and cost and are all very good at small multi-crew versatile gameplay… tho the MSR is less exploration focused and a bit more cargo / data running BUT it’s a much more difficult call for a player that wants to choice from mid tier exploration or multirole ships between the Connie Aquila, 400i and Corsair.
Well it’s not for me… My fav ship is the MSR… I’ll find reasons to use it and prefer it but after that I do have a lot of love for the Corsair and if you want an explorer and you don’t mind not having a snub craft that you’d get with the Connie then I think the Corsair is just an amazing choice.
If you decide to pickup a Corsair during the IAE 2952 you’ll get 10 years insurance, there are Warbond and CCU deals also you can also grab one of the 3 additional skins Black-Red, Green-Yellow or Yellow-Black. The ship has gone up from $215 since it was last on sale and now it’s between $225 – 250… which isn’t a massive jump. I think as far as Star Citizen ships go it’s worth the money. That said… you’ll be able to but it in game early 2023… and there is no rush.
Simple, Powerful, Versatile… that’s how I would characterise the Corsair and I think it’s in my top 5 ships… at least at the moment.
You can run the ship just solo if you want and you have access to that load of forward facing firepower BUT you might struggle with fighters just staying on your tail, especially other players.
Boom, that’s it for your Drake Corsair Ship Buyers Guide.