I can’t help thinking that turrets are cheating, especially as the big weapons…
The Viper mk. IV is a sidegrade to the Cobra mk. III, not an upgrade. It’s a sidegrade in the tankier direction, for sure, but it’s handling is much slower and stodgier than the Cobra. You’d be disappointed in it without engineer upgrades.
Here’s my opinion about your Cobra spec:
Ditch the electronic countermeasures for A-rated shield boosters. A-rate your shields, thrusters, power plant, power distibutor, and FSD. Replace the docking computer and inerdictor with HRPs. Use multi-cannons in your medium hard points. In summary. Those B- and C-rated modules are doing you no favors. Bi-weave shields would suit this build well, also.
Your opponents will not have that problem. 
If you still insist on eschewing turrets, get gimbals instead. Still need to face your target but not directly at them.
Yeah, been building up to that throughout, expensive to do though, I don’t have anywhere near the capital. A rating everything is an obvious target for whatever ship.
I actually use the interdictor a fair bit for stuff, but I’ll look at the HRP for the docking computer (which I only have because lazy).
I might also have to get over my aversion to turret/gimballs 
I spent a bit of time putting all this stuff into Inara, but it remains to be seen how often I can be bothered to update it - the netlog thing is a good thing to have.
For fast, maneuverable ships (such as the Cobra Mk. III), I never use turrets, myself. But if you use a mix of lasers and multi-cannons, which works well, it helps for one pair or both pairs to be gimballed, unless you are very, very good. In DPS terms, fixed > gimballed > turreted, but the most important feature is how much you can keep the weapon on target, which depends on skill, maneuverability of the ship, and the quality of thrusters and whether they’re engineered or not with Dirty Drives. For fast ships, fixed can be great as your piloting skills improve. I use turrets on my Anaconda, Corvette, and Python.
Of course the disadvantage to gimballed and turreted weapons is that a lot of NPCs spam chaff which throws them off. That’s one of the reasons I use fixed, for lasers at least, and gimballed for multicannons, and also because kinetic weapons have a different targeting solution than lasers.
ETA: Anyway, you’ll get more bang for your credits by A-rating the Cobra Mk. III than by moving to a Viper Mk. IV, in my opinion.
I should say, I thought maybe your B-rated modules were to make your build tankier. B-rated modules are heavier but also have higher integrity than A-rated. A fun thing to do is take a ship that’s good for ramming (like the Orca, Clipper, or one of the Federal ships, especially the FAS), and load it up with B-rated modules and HRPs to maximize ship mass and integrity, then smack it into your enemy. This can be remarkably effective. But probably not with the Cobra, for which survivability depends to large extent on its agility.
Guess I’ll be around sooner. Completed the main quest line in FO4 allied with the Railroad and taking a break before doing anything else with it. I have two other active characters, one for finishing the game with BoS and one for the Minutemen, but they’re on hold.
Updated to the current version and copied the necessary xml settings. Ready to go when the mood strikes.
Been out of it for a long while. Just reloading and seeing whats what.
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Let’s see if the folks in Aditi still like me enough to give good missions…
Try Quince as well if it’s on lockdown.
After a week or so, my Cobra III is nearly fully updated, with just the just from B to A FSD needed.
Once I’ve got that, I’m going to be reconfiguring for a long distance journey out to get Meta Alloys in the Pleiades, which’ll mean putting in a fuel scoop and, likely, moving to Closed Play.
No need to go Closed. Join Mobius!
Send a request to Mobius to join his private group. We got so large that Frontier had to split us between hemispheres! Those on your side of the pond are in just plain Mobius, over here are in Mobius PVE.
We have a Facebook presence as well.
Seconded: join Mobius PVE.
I might look around for a “guild” later when I start getting interested in the politics and powerplays and such. At the moment, I’m just bumming around, so I shouldn’t really go into Open at all, there’s no advantage to it whatsoever.
Mobius has a guild but joining them is not a requirement for participating in either private group. All ya gotta do is not intentionally fire on another live commander.
IOW, it’s the same as playing Closed but with the chance of encountering other players, virtually all of whom* will do one of three things:[ul]ignore you. [li]say hi/salute (o7).even the odds during a dogfight (may include offering to wing up).[/ul][/li]
*Gankers sometimes infiltrate the groups but they’re quickly found and booted. Pretty sure the most active of them have gone back to Eve.
Just earned Elite Trader. Woo-hoo! Also, just passed 2 billion CR in assets. o.O
Well, I joined Mobius, and mostly stay in there now, and occasionally see people. I’ve got an Asp now as well as the Cobra, and am just tooling around thinking of engineering stuff
2.2/1.7 to be released 25th October. I had some fun with the fighters in Beta but I’m still not 100% sure if I’m sharp enough to use them in the real game where I actually care what happens to my ship.