Sidewinder Mk.I

Sidewinder Mk.I analysis

Nice starter ship for the newcomer, fun little ship for the veteran.

Introduction:

The ship every newcomer to Elite starts with, the Sidewinder Mk.I is a small multirole craft more than capable enough to fullfit the needs of a player beginning his career in space.

Tiny in size, with limited weaponry, the Sidewinder is certainly no world beater nor the best ship in the galaxy, but with a little bit of tinkering can get almost any starting job done, and do it well.

General description:

The Sidewinder Mk.I is a trapezoid-plantform spaceship, very small in size. It has pretty limited internal space slots and only two small hardpoints, so it's got a limited ability to load both equipment and weapons.

Looked down by many because of those reasons, the ship still offers pretty good features for the beginner. It's very easy to control, very cheap to outfit, and while limited in it's effectivity in those roles, it can effectively serve both as a light fighter, trader or even exploration ship, at least until the owner has earned enough credits to move on a bigger ship.

The ship has internal space as follows:

Power Plant: Size 2
Thrusters: Size 2
Frame Shift Drive: Size 2
Life Support: Size 1
Power Distributor: Size 1
Sensors: Size 1
Fuel tank: Size 1

2x Small Hardpoints
2x Utility mounts

2x Size 2 internal slots
1x Size 1 internal slot

Maneouverability:

This is one of the highlights of the Sidewinder. Even with the starting setup (with loaned modules) the ship has very fast pitch and yaw rates and, given it's small size, is very nimble and hard to hit. Obviously with upgraded thrusters it gets only better until, finally, fully upgraded with A-class thrusters it can challenge the most maneouverable ships in Elite: Dangerous in close fast-paced turnfights, while being able to remain out of the arcs of fire of bigger less maneouverable ships with ease.

The ship doesn't only have excellent pitch rate and yaw rate, it also has very capable and effective translation thrusters, which complement the great rotational performance of the ship. All in all the Sidewinder might not be powerful, but certainly is very agile.

Speed Performance:

While being very nimble and lightweight, sadly the Sidewinder is not a fast ship. In the best of scenarios, with the stock configuration the ship struggles to hit 320m/s under boost and 220m/s at top power without boost. And that is with full power distributor PIPs devoted to engines.

Even with the best thrusters available things don't get much better in the speed department, averaging around 240m/s without boost and 350m/s using boost, again with full power to engines. The Sidewinder is a pretty slow ship, at least for a combat craft and there's no real way around it.

Power Plant:

The ship has a size 2 powerplant bay. Brand stock the E-class power source is more than able to power the ship with energy to spare for upgrades, and with top class equipment (class A powerplant) it has more than enough power to deal with almost any imaginable setup possible in the Sidewinder. Of course it's possible to push the extremes with very powerhungry setups (using top-class fittings and a couple railguns, for instance) but even then with smart power management and setting proper priorities, the powerplant is large enough to deal with even those.
There are some limiting factors to the usefulness of the Sidewinder but the power plant is certainly not one of them.

Frame Shift Drive Performance:

While the stock FSD won't give too much out of itself (around 7-7.5ly jump range depending on loadouts and cargo), the Sidewinder is a very light ship and when fitted with a 2A Frame shift drive it has a pretty respectable jump range for a ship it's size (15 to 17ly range, depending again on loadouts and cargo). The fuel tank, however, can store up to 2 tons of fuel, which is not a lot but is not terrible either.

The upside of having a small fuel tank is that if you equip a fuel scoop it won't take too much to refill the fuel reserves - a class 1A Fuel scoop will top the tanks from empty to full in 47 seconds, while a 2A fuel scoop will do so in 26 seconds only.

While obviously this is not the most optimal exploration ship, the Sidewinder can indeed take on that role with dignity - in an ultra-lightweight configuration and fitted for exploration and discovery the ship can achieve up to almost 22.5 light years jumps making it an acceptable ship for the role. It's certainly been the case out there with several CMDRs going all the way to the center of the galaxy and back in their humble Sidewinders, and even doing full galactical circunnavegations in them.

Firepower&Power Distributor: 

The Sidewinder is certainly no hard hitter, and the weapon configuration while usable and useful won't hit very hard. Two small hardpoints doesn't give any option to any impressive array of firepower but even then for most of the uses this ship will see, it's more than enough.

The power distributor is no world beater either given it's small size, but is more than enough to supply the weapons with the energy they need as long as the pilot is reasonable with his power demands. It's more than capable to feed a couple pulse or burst lasers for a good time, but beam lasers are too powerhungry for it so using them in pairs is less than optimal and will drain the capacitor in a very short period of time.

Some good setups, given the PD limitations and the size of the hardpoints, would be 2xPulse lasers, 2xBurst lasers, or a mix of 1xBeam+1xMulticannon. For all of those the Distributor is more than enough.

It's possible to mount two railguns on the Sidewinder to give some nasty suprise to those who underestimate it's potential - but with only 30 rounds per weapon it's usefulness is limited in PVE. 
 It's an hillarious weapon setup for lightweight PVP in wings, though, as nobody expects this craft to be any kind of threat for bigger ships. Four Sidewinders in a wing with dual railguns can give some extremely fun wakeup surprises to CMDRs who take victory for granted when they see they're only facing tiny ships.

Shields&Armor:

Being as lightweight as it is, it's expected that the ship can't take a huge lot of damage...and the Sidewinder doesn't really do it.

The biggest shield the ship can take is a class 2A generator, which is around 20% stronger than the stock one, and the stock 2E one isn't exactly tough to begin with. The fact that the ship is as small and maneouverable as it is is a blessing because, while they can hold a some hits for a short while, the shields can't take concentrated hits for too long without failing.

However, given the small size of the ship and the relatively low power the generators can put up, it regenerates and recharges really quick so losing the shields is not a world-ending event in the Sidewinder.
This also means that a Bi-weave shield is not needed at all for it's benefits in faster recharging and regeneration are relatively meaningless. Shield Cell Banks are also usually not needed in this ship.


Armor-wise the ship doesn't fare bad at all. It's base rating of 108 isn't exactly bad (the Eagle for instance is almost 40% lower), and while it certainly isn't a lot, it can be boosted with the use of better bulkheads and hull reinforcements to pretty surprising strenght.

One of the main advantages of being in a lighweight extremely cheap ship is that armor upgrades are pretty cheap (at least when compared with bigger ships) and they boost the total armor quite a bit. Military grade armor comes at 80k credits only, for instance, and the specialized armors (Reactive and Mirrored) at 132k credits. 

Investing in armor upgrades certainly makes no sense if you want to move to the next ship as soon as possible (and in most cases is what players would want to do), but they still are reasonable upgrades that drastically increase the resistance of the ship to damage and thus something to consider if you want to keep your Sidewinder for a while, or if you're just coming back to it to have some fun, which is perfectly possible in this ship.

Cargo space&Utility mounts:

The Sidewinder is certainly no big-time cargo mover but it's not bad for the beginner player who wants to get started in trading.

Full cargo capacity is 10 tons with no shields, but that's a setup I would strongly advice against using because of how vulnerable the ship is when shieldless. 
A more reasonable compromise would be using shields and accepting a lower 6 ton cargo capacity, which still is reasonable enough to begin with and is more than enough to take on some cargo or smuggling missions off the bulletin boards.


As utility mounts go the Sidewinder is well equipped for a ship that small, as you get two of them. That gives you flexibility to mix between different items to suit the ship to your preferred role.

Ship roles and suggested builds:

Combat&Bounty Hunting:

The Sidewinder is a respectable small fighting ship. Certainly when starting up, and completely stock, it's lacking in this department and combat while an option should be approached with a lot of caution.

With some limited upgrades however the ship starts coming into it's own and fighting for a profit on wanted ships in Nav Beacons, Low Intensity, and even standard, Resource Sites, is perfectly viable and can rent you good money in little time.

It's also a very good ship to get started in the combat role given how unexpensive it is and how low the insurances are. As a result, if you lose one your bank account won't receive a huge hit.

A good, capable and effectve low-cost combat fitting for new players who have already done a bit of money with missions or some previous combat might be as follows, for around 270k credits (click the link):
Low-cost fighting Sidewinder.


A good top-of-the-line, A-rated Sidewinder build (for those who want to use the ship to have fun or maybe train for combat with little economic risk) would cost around 1.8 Million credits and look like this (click the link):
A-class fighting Sidewinder.

Be sure to set your power priorities according to the build.

Trading&Smuggling:

For a starter ship the Sidewinder can take on trading without too much problem. For sure you won't be hauling massive cargoes around the galaxy but the builds included here will give enough room to make some decent early profits, and to take on most of the cargo missions the bulletin board has to offer for the newcomer.

In all trading ships there's always the question about wether to devote as much internal capacity as possible in cargo racks, foregoing shields, or to keep the shield and accepting lower cargo capacity in exchange for safety. I'd strongly suggest going for the second, but as always the option of not using a shield is there for the player to take, if he understands the risk-

A good, low-cost trading outfit, weaponless but with shields, chaff and heat sinks to help escaping interdictors, would look as follows:
Shielded Cargo Sidewinder.

A much riskier, but more capable, shieldless trader would look the same but swapping the shield generator for a class 2 cargo rack. Use at your own risk.

Exploration:

As tiny as it is the Sidewinder can be a decent explorer, if a bit limited. With little internal room to spare an SRV Bay is not really an option unless you want to give up the Detailed Surface Scanner, and I rate the latter as vital for exploration, so visiting planets might be out of the question ,but again, it's you who decide - it is possible to fit a vehicle bay by giving the Surface Scanner up.

 It also ranks as the cheapest exploration ship in the game when fit for that purpose - and the several instances of CMDRs doing amazingly long trips in it means the ship indeed can fullfit the role, and with style.

Be careful though, when fit for exploration there's simply no room left for shields nor Automatic Repair Units - any damage you take in deep space will stay until your return to civilized space, and said return will be a bit risky given that you have no shields.

Other than that this build makes for a pretty good explorer:
Explorer Sidewinder.

Mission running&Multirole:

It's possible to fit the ship to be very cheap and able to take on most of the missions beginners can accept in the Bulletin Boards, involving both combat and cargo delivery. In fact this is probably the best use a beginner can give to this ship, so it's a very solid starting build to go with:
Mission Running Sidewinder
 

Pirate&PVP:

These are roles the Sidewinder is not really effective at. For pirating the internals are simply not enough to deal with the fittings a pirate ship needs, and for PVP it's just too lightweight and weak to prevail against almost any ship it'll find.

It's possible, however, to use this ship in PVP when in a wing with multiple other players. It is mostly a gimmicky build but four well flown Sidewinders fit as follows can give a nasty surprise to any one of the medium-sized ships in the game, mixing stealth abilities with railguns for some good fun times and laughs:
Hybrid PVP RailWinder

CONCLUSSION:

The Sidewinder, no doubt, has limits in what can do. It's obvious that any new player trying it out will want to swap it for a more effective ship as soon as possible given the limits the design puts on what the ship can actually do.

That said however, it is a very respectable starter ship, allowing for very different roles and builds to adapt to almost whatever a new player will want to do while he stays in it. It's maneouverable, nimble, small, and fun to fly, a great training tool and a fun, cheap, ride for getting experience in combat maneouvers. It can even be more than a decent explorer.

All in all a ship worth flying and experiencing, and in many cases (Personally, I do it quite a bit), worth coming back once you already have much bigger ships just to have some inexpensive fun times doing stuff just for the joy of doing it.