Outside of those two possibilities (very improbably possibilities - worst that could be happening is loosing the cockpit glass and having to pull out for repairs) - I have not had an instance of a catastrophic blow out even when I would loose shields.

Have you watched my video on the tovera engagement? Also, please feel free to shoot me a dm here on in EGS official discord or comment more in "discussion" section (will create it just now) if talking here is inconvenient!

Or

- Receive a Heavy Plasma Artillery (green plasma ball) hit directly to the cockpit in a way that blows out the upper part of the glass and the pilot seat at the same time aaand kills you all at the same time. Or just blows out your pilot seat and kills you at the same time due to the lag-shot pen. The former has never ever happened to me. The latter can only happen if you have the repair hatch under the pilot seat open (it shouldn't be) at the time you receive damage, but was otherwise was carefully engineered out. And I never died when the pilot seat got blown out and always had the time to run into the back, hop into the emergency seat and drive the ship out. Worst that happens there is you'd loose the nose Vulcan.

Hi Gamble! Ouch!
I likely will - have the ideas that is. I need specifics - how did get shot down?
I have flown the Vanguard against Toveras in class 5 sites for over 50 hours during development and know in detail how she takes damage. The only two ways to loose her fast - faster than you have the time to react to incoming catastrophic damage and pull out - are:

- Approach a Tovera from the top, bottom or behind at the start of the fight before you had the time to strip the principal threat guns.

Hmm maybe something went wrong , but when i got even remotely close to a Tovera it blew this ship to pieces in less than 2 seconds... any ideas?

Thank you, Ente!!

This is Awesome! Really nicely done!

Thank you, Fil!!

Very cool build Sandro!

And then the second torp launcher appread to be a lucky find when I shot at one of the two ventral heavy plasma cannons and was surprised by a much bigger and brighter explosion - turns out a well placed hit or two on each side there knocked out tovera's shield generators without damaging anything else overly valuable.
So the fight duration went down by over a half, the emp bomb load could be reduced and I could now take extra torpedoes on board to take out domed missile turrets to clear a parking space in a much more natural boom and zoom fashion. And with a reinforced cockpit cage the risk of glass blow out went down drastically.
But so between this development track and the recent increase in the SV block hit points, the Vanguard is now a little bit overarmored for the purpose.
I have new project in mind that should simplify the fight a little more I think. But I need to work out the shaping first (god damn elite dangerous simple yet difficult to precisely pull hull lines).

I wanted to avoid the damage to the internals as much as possible and so was reticent to introduce the torps. So I added just the one on the starboard side to help killing the big guns and the drives, and optimised the armor layout to withstand some 55 minutes of sustained pen damage from a tovera - that's how long it took to disable her.
But the damage was still excessive and the risk of loosing the cockpit glass to the heavy plasma was still too high for general use recommendation. I also had to restrip shields all the time and do the miserable laser cannon strip with the vulcans on one of the tovera's nacelles while hiding its the thin edge shadow from the rest on the move - before torping out the drives (you can't fight a stationary tovera).

Thank you very much for your kind words, legend_slayer!
I hope she serves you well! Vanguard is a combination of form and function creation, and it took me a while to figure everything out. She was originally tested to fight with just 4 Vulcans against imerats and kamirats and worked well enough there, but struggled against a tovera - those heavy plasma guns and beam cannons were messing up the aim too much for consistent burst fire and did too much damage.

Thank you, commander.GX, I hope you enjoy flying her!

Killing a Tovara in an SV is a peak Empyrion accomplishment, topped only by building a ship that can do so. Kudos on both the beautiful / functional ship design, and the skill to take down supercaps with it. I will definitely be trying this out in our server!

real nice looking SV thanks

Thank you, Xaar QC!

Awesome design man!

Thank you very much, skawuscha, Myrmidon and urialia!! I hope she serves you well or inspires you otherwise!

P.S. WS description is still incomplete actually, I hope to add a bit of technical imagery and how-to's next week.

coolest shaping, nice work!

Cool strong SV and excellent description on workshop plus the photos. Thank you for sharing such a good creation with us

Fantastic! This ship really shows whats possible in this game.