25/08/10 15:39 PM
| Jaspet | 55.92 |
| Omber | 55.99 |
| Hemorphite | 62.18 |
| Pyroxeres | 68.21 |
| Hedbergite | 74.04 |
| Veldspar | 65.77 |
| Kernite | 88.68 |
| Plagioclase | 84.13 |
| Scordite | 68.17 |
| Spodumain | 75.94 |
| Dark Ochre | 95.49 |
| Gneiss | 95.24 |
| Crokite | 172.65 |
| Bistot | 216.26 |
| Arkonor | 270.56 |
|
On Measuring the Value of Ships
As a confessed and confirmed JOAT, I manage to get into a lot of things, but rarely do them well. As my corporation mates would probably affirm, I’m not the one to call for overwhelming DPS, scanning, stalking, mining, PI, hauling, racing, 1 vs. 1, or drone support. IF however you happen to need all of those things in moderation at the same time, then I am the one to call. This is symptomatic of having 55 million skill points in 279 skills. I like to do a lot and be able to fly a lot of ships no matter where I go. It’s a matter of taste that I don’t really have any battleship skills to speak of other than the very limited ability to fly a Tech 2 fit EWAR Scorpion. But for ships of smaller classes, I can at least make a showing, but am far from good.
With that background in mind, I think I am fairly qualified to speak on most ships and the whole gamut of possible roles those ships need to perform. To begin with, I recently had the opportunity to pilot a good friend’s strategic cruiser. Through a series of PVE and PVP encounters it worked well and performed above my expectations, even given the obvious stats and potential. It demonstrated the ability to adequately tank a larger amount of damage than expected, manoeuvre and fly with more agility and apply more of its damage potential to the targets than anticipated. Understand that I have been fairly reluctant to fly the Tech 3 ships as they are referred to, because I tend to overestimate hype and flavour. While I knew that they were good ships and competent in their ability and application, I did not fully realise how good until the other day.
After a particularly good stretch in the ship, I made the passing comment to the owner that, “This is what a 1/2 billion dollar ship should feel like.”
I look forward to picking out a couple of my own someday to fly around and abuse.
The silence was unbearable. Millions of neurons screamed in absence of any sensory input. It was as if the whole universe had been ripped away like a free will of a Sansha or the salary of a Caldari merchant. Dark, echoless space surrounded me and sheer endless black stared back at my soul. Before was a relative concept that was beginning to lose its cohesive shape and after was as distant as a point singularity. There was only the faintest of amorphous sensation surrounding what should have been now. The weight of thousands of days training and tens of thousand experiences demanded that something, anything, happen.
It was time to make a change – to rip open the veil and tear back the sky.
Electrochemical connections surged with pain and relief as long dormant paths of study were pulled to the fore of consciousness. What was once routine seemed muffled and disconnected in light of more recent solitude and stillness. The energy needed and required was straining my systems to their very core – and it was good. Today was going to be a good day. Who knows? If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll even get to die.
The first sensation is one of swaying stillness and the sound of a million silent voices. Suddenly there was a gut wrenching sliding and a visual influence and indication that an e-warp was underway and my ship was soon to be at its former location. I had only the faintest recollection of where that might be and was still busy checking my systems and their responsiveness. Or in my case the lack there of. Fully half of my ships modules were offline and the ones that were on seemed to be unwilling to respond. Why was everything still so slow.
Realisation dawned with the sickening force of a collapsing wormhole. I was finally jacked back into my ship and until I had finished the initial e-warp, the ships systems would be unable to comply. I quickly pulled up the camera feeds to try and get a bearing while simultaneously asking the computer for a quick and dirty 360˚ sweep of the local theater for anything remotely telling. Skills were like old friends that you hadn’t seen in years – you knew what they were then and it was going to take practice. Practice like time, was something that I might be out of.
Ships. Tens, hundreds, thousands of ships were cluttering up my inputs, demanding my attention and stealing my distracted mind to narrow alleys that would be less than profitable if traversed. As I neared the end of my warp bubble, I flipped to overview Gamma and started looking for exits. I threw as many distractions as I could quickly grab into the corner and tried as hard as I could to ignore the rest. My priorities were to get safe, get back online and get back to where I truly belonged. This was madness and I couldn’t be farther from the reality I understood and grasped.
Finally finding something that looked right I punched up the destination, diverted the cap to the drives and hoped the local group would just ignore my half functional ship and its limited cargo. As I landed on the gate, I realised I had miscalculated and was 15 km off the back of the gate and my propulsion was one of the stupid modules that wouldn’t respond. Pounding the interface didn’t seem to help make it active so I put the last remaining cap into the one remaining hardner and turned toward the gate. With blind luck I might make it before someone decided to liberate my conscious from my capsule… I don’t mind so much as I hate not being able to participate in the festivities. If I am going to die, I plan on at least leaving some ammo behind in their hull.
I hit the jump range and mash it, waiting for my systems to catch up with the trans-luminal displacement my ship has just experienced. As the scans loaded and I was able to get some rational data I realised I just jumped into…
On the Prevalence of Drakes in Alliance Tournaments
I have noticed that on more than one occasion, the commentators for the Alliance Tournament VIII and in previous year lament the presence of Drakes on combat teams. Reasoning varies from low DPS to just extending the inevitable. Over the years, one thing that has held fairly consistent is the appearance and usage of Drakes by teams in the Alliance Tournaments. There are always multiple teams that field multiple Drakes. They are in fact, one of the most often fielded ships and account for a whopping 44% of all battlecruisers and more isk was spent on Drakes than battleships. Whatever else they might be, they are certainly present on a large number of teams. In the Alliance Tournament VII they were the third most popular ship behind the Rook and Ishkur.
[caption id="attachment_828" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Dead Duck"]  [/caption]
As the general consensus is that Drakes are poorly suited for PVP combat, why then do they show up so much? The certainly aren’t a requirement for victory as multiple teams have finished well and strongly without any Drakes on the field. Losing teams that fielded Drakes lost every one of them. Winning teams that fielded them lost 2 with a 87.5% survival rate and those were lost in the first match of the tournament. There is a lot of Drake-hate across the board.
This animosity towards the Drake extends far beyond the tournament. If you show up in a Drake for non-Drake fleet roams, you likely face ridicule. If you post a fitting on Battleclinic for a Drake you will get flamed and the fitting locked [more of an endemic problem with using Battleclinic in the first place] and posting to Scrapheap Challenge often results in cries of “Ban 09′s” and now “Ban 10′s” [referring to the registration date of the poster]. People associate the Drake with low-skill, new players who want to run missions and without worrying about anything other than F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, F6, F7 [though now with grouping it has become even easier] and with Caldari Carebears who can’t be arsed to train for a real ship.
Maybe some of the FC’s with tournament experience can shed some light on this. I fully acknowledge the tournament doesn’t accurately reflect normal EVE PVP play. There are rules, there are boundaries, there are no Caps, there are relatively even numbers, there are no poddings…. Thus the expectations for what to bring may very well differ significantly than for a PVP conflict outside the tourney. In spite of all this, I think there are some valid reasons for their inclusion of the much maligned duck:
- Tank
- It will likely take more than one opponent shooting at it to be taken down.
- It can often stay on the field for a long, long time.
- It is not as cap unfriendly as the other tank options.
-
[caption id="attachment_829" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Incoming!"]
 [/caption]
Damage
- It can still produce a fair amount of damage:
- Heavy Missiles can generate between 330 [EM/Exp/Therm]-400 [kinetic] DPS
- Heavy Assault Missiles can generate between 450 [EM/Exp/Therm]- 570 [kinetic] DPS
- It can apply it’s damage over +70 km range for the Heavy Missiles
- Alpha strikes exceed 2,500.
- Drones can add another 80-100 dps with good skills.
Combined, this tank/damage combination causes two things to happen.
- Opponent FC’s hesitate to primary Drakes for the relative difficulty in removing them.
- Drakes are able to apply their damage over a longer period of time than similar ships.
Unless something changes significantly to affect the Drake’s tank or its bonuses, we will continue to see a lot of them fielded in the Alliance Tournaments.
On Reviewing The Ships That Make It All Possible
I saw Rixx Javix post about what he has in his hangar and naming conventions and thought it was a wonderful idea to review what I had as well. I’m late the party, but likely not the last. I absolutely love naming ships for practical as well as aesthetic reasons. I also have to admit that I’m going to play a little bit loose with the term “hangar” as I live out in unknown space where things are not as well defined and most all of my ships are in a Ship Maintenance Array. Living out of an SMA, reduces the number of spurious hulls we have on hand, but I usually have duplicate hulls already purchased in k-space.
Click on ships to see their descriptions
Buzzard
This is probably where I spend 75% of my time. It’s a tight little beauty that has been a good friend for a long time. Her name is Wrangler, a reference to the popular Jeep vehicle. It is the third buzzard I have owned with the previous two being Jeep and Cherokee, respectively. The fitting it fairly straight forward with covop cloak, mwd, nanos and grav-cap rigs.
Manticore
A very cool ship that I’m only recently getting experience with. I was waiting for a better grasp of bombs and training for torpedoes as well. The ship was originally named Hello Kitty, but is slated to be renamed Penticore after my stealth bomber role model.
Maller
This ship is a dual purpose gas miner and bait ship. When fully plated and resisted out, it has about 60,000 ehp and +70% resists across the board and completely passive. For mining gas, it works well with T2 harvesters as it has sufficient cpu, has a spare utility high slot [hello combat probe launcher] and cargo space. The first iteration was named Gas Man Cometh but version 2.0 has been named Tetris Reject in reference to it’s somewhat more angular shape [at least for a Amarri vessel].
Drake
Even after all these years, it still remains a combat favourite of mine. Everyone debates the efficacy of missiles in PVP, but honestly for small to medium gang roams, camps and hunting, they are fine. The buffered heavy assault missile drake is very nice and has a lot of utility. It makes a great second tackle, brings a fair amount of DPS and gets ignored enough to apply both damage and utility. The biggest problem with any ship is its pilot, and too many pilots are at fault for not adequately fitting this ship for use in a group. I used to name all of my battlecruisers with punctuation, so the first few were named, @, #, :, ., !, et cetra but later started giving them different names. The more DPS heavy HAM setup was Dramage [Drake + Damage], but it died and was replaced by Green Drakes and HAM which was eventually replaced by Baked and then Half-Baked. The second string was Safina Thania [Arabic for second ship] and a proto-type remote shield gang ship affectionately referred to as [] which harkens back to punctuation days. This is the only ship I have multiples of, though they are all stored outside the wormhole with the BPO somewhere.
Nighthawk
All I can say is wow. This ship is everything I ever dreamed it would have been when I was a little Bantam pilot in nappies. It almost makes me cry with delight and it’s just plain beautiful. Her name is Hag and she is every bit as mean as her name. I’ve run a couple level fives in her [where she was massively overtanked], have hunted for ne’er-do-well’s in wormhole space and refit at least 100 different ways. I’m growing more confident in her usage and like the idea of keeping her light and nimble.
Scorpion
I have a tri-mark armor rigged Scorpion in Jita to use in the wormholes, but have never actually flown this one. I’ve borrowed a corp-mates a couple time and have trained to use the full range of T2 ECM skills. At somepoint I’ll get out and get it imported. It’s currently named Sc 2 x Tri 1 x P
Guardian
If the Buzzard represents 75% of my flight time, this beauty is nearly the rest. It is a dream to fly and a nightmare to fit. I’ve written before about my respect for the Herculean effort required to get everything included on it that you want/need, but it is a wonder to fly. It seemingly creates cap out of thin air and makes the rest of the fleet fly with impossible tanks. In tandem with my Guardian buddy, it is a significant force multiplier. The first was named Fers Al Nahr Jo’an and was beautiful. It was lost to what I can only consider CCP mangled warp interface dynamics when the rest of the fleet didn’t warp with me. The replacement, Stop Dying, has been much more resistant and accounts for a lot of our wormhole fleet tank. This was the first ship I started keeping multiple copies of, as it is essential for us running the higher class wormhole sites.
Hulk
As a carebear, where would I be without my trusty asteroid obliterator. I’ve lost a fair share of them, but keep using them as it only takes a couple of hours of mining out in the wormhole to replace it. It isn’t rigged, the tank won’t survive a gank, but it mines and mines and mines. And when it’s done mining, it sits in the SMA without making a peep. This is the only ship that has been through so many names that I couldn’t begin to tell you them all. Both because I’ve lost a fair few and I tend to rename it often while I’m mining. The current one is named Banner’s Brain Child and the first one was named Lou Ferrigno
Charon
It’s big. It’s slow. It’s really big and slow. The Luxury Yacht has been with me longer than just about any other ship. She’s made multiple trips from Gallente to Amarr space and back hauling everything from ice and ore to ships and once an entire load of garbage.
Orca
The first Orca was a splurge. I didn’t really have the means to replace it if I lost it and wasn’t entirely sure what I would do with it, but I wanted no, NEEDED that ship. I loved that ship so much I gave it away to a corporate spy/thief. Disaffected and disturbed I tried to be bitter but knew I had learned another lesson I needed to know anyway, namely: Every last one of you are lying, cheating, disgusting scum who deserve to be shot in the back of the head with an auto-cannon. Er…, no wait, that’s a different post – lesson learned – don’t fly it if you can’t afford to lose it. The backstabbing cheating part is only partly in jest. I later bought another Orca, not to replace it, but to defy pirates and sell it in Aunenen for a hefty profit on their scam order. Managed to slingshot the Orca past the perpetual gatecamp with a web and dock at the offending station to find that someone had filled the contract about 15 minutes before. So what do you with a massive, slow ship in a system full of deranged pirates looking for juicy kills? Web it and fly it back out just because you can. Because it survived that trip, I decided she must really like me and decided to call her Keeper. She is.
And that sums up the list of ships I keep. I used to have a lot more, but now I tend to limit them to what I’m using currently and a couple of backup hulls kept in Jita.
On Using Battleships In Wormhole Operations
Full disclosure: I don’t typically fly a battleship. I am predisposed to a battlecruiser or cruiser sized hull. Having said that, we use a lot of battleships in our wormhole operations and they are essential to have if you are going to try and harvest or live in a class 4 or higher wormhole system. They can serve nearly every possible function from combat to mining to logistics with the right fitting and pilot. Having said that, some battleships tend to perform better in wormholes than others.
Amarr
Armageddon: Generally not as much damage as it’s brethren, but a very tankable, fairly easy to fly battleships for wormhole operations.
Apocalypse: Middle of the road – without a damage bonus pilots would likely be better served in either the ‘baddon or the ‘geddon.
Abaddon: The king of the DPS. Paired with a remote battery like the Guardian, it can seriously bring the hurt. It tends to be something of a lame duck with regard to capacitor.
Caldari
Scorpion: THE electronic warfare boat for running w’hole sites in a remote repair gang. It can run in either an armor or shield gang and still keep the Sleepers tied up in knots.
Raven: With a fair bit of rigging and some plate, it can make an ok torpedo boat for killing things, but would benefit from a shield gang to really dish out DPS.
Rokh: Not particularly good at Sleeper PVE combat. Could be useful for some PVP given the right skill set. Typical w’hole pvp doesn’t involve a lot of sniping.
Gallente
Dominix: The workhorse/mule/ox of w’holes, the Dominix brings its intrinsic flexibility to the wormhole in spades. The ship can be used for RR, neut/nos’ing, DPS, gas mining, just about everything in a pinch.
Hyperion: Bringing the largest base armor amount for Gallente and a 5% bonus to damage per level, the Hype should be able to really dish out some DPS by bringing 8 turrets to bear. If you are running a RR gang, the ‘thron might be a slightly better bet.
Megathron: For killing Sleepers it works well and doubles as a very good PVP boat.
Minmatar
Typhoon: After years of training, the Typhoon brings some of the best combination of tank, DPS and alpha strikes known to New Eden. Serious. Train. More.
Tempest: A great ship to bring to bear against the Sleepers. It only requires the large projectiles for decent damage and can fit into either a shield or armor gang with relative ease.
Maelstrom: Ever so slightly favouring shields, the Maelstrom is another effective way to throw hurt at the sleepers.
Again, I stress that my own lack of experience in flying battleships may let some of the finer nuances of using them against sleepers in wormholes escape me. If you use one currently in a wormhole and care to comment, please let me know. I’m more than happy to redact posts to reflect the changing reality of EVE.
On Flying Battlecruisers In Wormholes
The battlecruisers mark the real level of entry into effectively working in a wormhole. They are extremely versatile, usually sport a decent tank and quite capable of handling the first two classes of wormholes alone and the middle two in groups. They can fill nearly any role and provide a decent amount of bang for your buck. They will usually fit cruiser sized weapons and couple that with nearly the tank of a battleship. The Tech 2 variants called Command Ships have even more tank and greater fire-power potential, but a much higher cost.
Amarr
Prophecy: The Golden Eagle. The Space Brick. Very, very hard tank. Limited damage. A remote-repair fleet of Prophecies can be a nightmare to face down.
Harbinger: Often the better choice for Amarr battlecruisers due in large part to the damage bonus. It’s much easier to tank enemies when they are dead.
Caldari
Ferox: Suffering from the same issues as the rest of the Caldari gun platforms, it can be difficult to fit everything you need on the Ferox to be effective. The tank is substantial but the DPS will be lacking. When utilized correctly in a PVP encounter, it is a phenomenal sniper dealing up to 180 DPS at 150 km.
Drake: The mission runners’ friend makes a fairly easy transition into wormhole space. It also tends to lag behind the other battlecruisers in damage dealt over time [DPS] though if fit with Heavy Assault Missiles it can wreak havoc at about 20 km.
Gallente
Myrmidon: The battlecruiser drone boat suffers a little bit in PVE from the Sleepers predilection for moving their aggro toward drones. It can fit a wicked tough buffer tank and throw a lot of drones at the problem. It makes for a great all around utility ship due to it’s inherent flexibility.
Brutix: Designed to bring pain. Often to both parties in any given conflict. Some of the most face-melting DPS comes from this ship fit to gank.
Minmatar
Cyclone: Can be an effective ship, but as with any Mimatar ship, it will be the pilot who determines how good it can be. This ship rewards the well skilled pilot with a frightening ability to kill things.
Hurricane: The Cyclone’s big bad brother likes to get in and mix it up. He throws projectile slugs around with a careless abandon that can make short work of enemies.
I apologise to all the Minmatar pilots out there because I don’t have experience flying and fitting their BC’s. I am relying on the words of one of my corp-mates as well as the general consensus of those that I’ve talked to before. To make up for some of this seeming anti-Minmatar sentiment, I dedicated the post title to their most common fittings. As always, I will probably miss something so feel free to offer other opinions.
On Flying Frigates In Wormholes
There is very little I want to say about the backgrounds of any particular race flying around in New Eden. They all have issues and a primary reason for being out here in a wormhole is putting all of that background in the background. We have all agreed to check our baggage at the last station we undocked from and acknowledge that out here, we can’t afford to be bickering about belief, conflicting over capitalism, seethe over servitude or advertise autonomy. Out in the wormhole, every pilot from every race is closer to their clone and a long way from any government or authority.
I preface the post with all of that to say that no single race’s ships are inherently better, just different. Out here in the wormhole it comes down to answering the question, “Does it get the job done?” With regard to frigate-sized ships, I am going to take a quick run through some of them and point out some of their strengths as they pertain to living out in a wormhole.
Amarr:
Magnate: As the basic astrometrics frig, this is a great backup for scanning, or running around helping to clean up after a radar or magnetometric sight. With the addition of sized rigs, it can easily be rigged with gravity capacitors to boost scan strength allowing even fairly low level pilots the ability to scan down wormholes and most signatures.
Crucifier: Makes a good disposable tackler for PVP. Emphasis on disposable as they will melt quickly.
Executioner: Well, it’s faster than a shuttle, slightly sturdier. Very good for running away.
Inquisitor: Just don’t fly this in a wormhole. Please.
Tormentor: Cheap. Leave it at home. Better, refine it an build something else.
Punisher: Good PVP frigate to throw on the bulwark of invading gankers. Not good for much else.
Anathema: Great Tech 2 scanning ship.
Caldari
Heron: Good backup scanning machine. Rigged, it can make short work of finding sites if and when you can’t be in a Buzzard.
Condor: At least it can fly away from trouble quickly.
Bantam: Good intro miner, lousy wormhole ship. Reprocess or blow up and salvage it.
Merlin: Can be an evil, nasty tackler for PVP.
Griffin: Why are you undocking in this?
Kestrel: Makes a good hacking/analysing/salvage frigate.
Buzzard: Caldari covops scanning for the win. [Ninja Edit]
Gallente
Atron: See Condor above. Run away.
Imicus: Like the Caldari Heron and the Amarr Magnate and the Minmatar Probe, this is your backup for scanning when things go south. Or when you don’t have covops skills on an alt you left parked in the system before you all got run out by Evil Overkill Corp.
Tristan: Not bad for some PVP damage, but likely need bigger ships.
Incursus: Itty-bitty blaster boat beats boys! Thanks for the heads up Owen.
Maulus: Insure, blow-up, salvage.
Navitas: See Above.
Helios: When you absolutely must scan. Scan in this. It is a sweet covops ride.
Minmatar
Probe: Scan. Scan. Scan. Scan. Somewhere is some action.
Breacher: Seriously?
Burst: At least the killmails will be funny.
Rifter: PVP the living daylights out of things with this. Rinse and repeat. Rather like scanning only you use more ammo.
Slasher: Fly. And Fly. And Fly. Right on back to the station for something else to fly.
Vigil: At least you can fly quickly to get something else to fly.
Cheetah: Our serious scanning swag swears by this animal. His scanning prowess definitely doesn’t hurt either. Seriously, Minnie Pilots Rejoice – This ship scans very well.
Summary
Frigates are fairly limited in their usage. They will pretty much insta-pop to everything that they run into in a wormhole with the exception of other players in PVP encounters. Assault frigates can last longer, but I ran out of space to cover all of those. Perhaps we’ll get back to that another day.
On Flying & Visiting Wormholes
Last time I wrote about some of the skills and methods necessary for finding wormholes and the action inside them. I suggested that Astrometrics V was beneficial but I never meant to imply that it was required. Sorry.
The whole of scanning is probably is probably something that everyone else seems to already know or expect that someone interested in visiting a wormhole would already know. The same thing for fitting your ships and flying in said wormholes. The reality is, that until you’ve been out and done something, it is all just theoretically. Sure EFT/EVEHQ says your ship does 800 DPS, but not until you engage the enemy do you see if the fit has merit for actually delivering that damage to the enemies’ ships. The same is true for visiting wormholes, until you get out and do it, do the scanning, get some practice, you’ll never really know.
So for those of you looking to actually do something in the wormholes that you are now finding, what is the next step in the process?
First, what kinds of wormhole systems are there? There are six basic classes of wormhole system each with increasing levels of difficulty of combat sites as well as increasing levels of reward. With practice and experience you will begin to recognise the class of system you are in from the color of the star and its surrounding system. From the deep blues of a class 2 system to the angry red of class 6 systems, you will have an idea of what you’ve come across. Additionally, when you find a wormhole, you can check it’s ID and cross-reference it against other tools like Wormhole Thingy or Static Mapper.
Class 1 wormhole systems are fairly basic and can easily be soloed by a well tanked cruiser or speed tanked by assault frigs. Always keep moving. Class 2 systems will require at least a battlecruiser usually, unless you are very good at piloting a very tough cruiser. Class 3 anomalies can usually be taken on in a well tanked Drake, but will likely need a battleship and the radar and magnetometric sites will require a small gang to accomplish. In flying solo in the first three systems, understand that drones will not be as effective due in large part to Sleepers switching their focus to attack your drones. They can however be a good escape mechanism.
Class 4 systems will require a fleet of remote repair battlships or a pair of logistics cruisers. Additionally, utilising an electronic warfare boat such as a Scorpion or Rook can ease the pain. As you move into class 5 systems, it becomes necessary to have a larger group of battleships as well as logistics and ewar. Class 6 sites require the presence of 8-10 battleships, ewar, logistics and several people even bring in carriers [though they bring an additional spawn of Sleepers when they come.].
I would suggest that the best way to learn about what to bring to a particular class of wormhole is to ask the people who have been there. Give me a call, or drop in on the exploration channel in EVE. Talk to any of the other bloggers who regularly post about their experiences in wormholes. Given the nature of the people who live in wormholes, they are likely to have very strong opinions about the best way to do something, but they have invaluable insight and experience.
Wormhole Blogs:
After writing this, I think I’ll also put together a Wormhole Blog List for people to easily reference who is posting about their life in W-Space!
 This is in response to a post by ASTRAL DOMINIX. His Harbinger fit will have a hard time running any level 4′s alone. The incoming damage is often at or above 400 dps and medium rep and resists alone aren’t going to get it. I agree with some of the commenters that the Drake can be a great mission boat, but after having run several hundred level 4′s in it and later in a Raven, I learned one very important fact: I can blitz multiple level 3 in a gank fit drake faster than I can run a level 4 [in a Drake].
I’m not going to suggest that you switch to running in a Drake unless you have a specific desire to become a full-time mission runner, and even then I would probably just suggest that you skip the drake and head straight to training for a Raven. I love the utility of these mid-sized ships and prefer to be in a battlecruiser hull if I can.
For example:
- Average Level 4: 5-10 million
- Payout: 300,000-500,000
- Bonus: 300,000-500,000
- Bounties: 1.5-4 million
- Average Level 3: 1.5-3 million
- Payout: 100,000-200,000
- Bonus: 100,000-200,000
- Bounties: 700,000-1,000,000
Then if you fit a drake to run the level 3′s in say, 10-15 minutes each, you can really clean up. It is fairly easy to blitz them for about 10-15 million per hour.
Obligatory Drake Fitting:
[Drake, LVL 3 Blitz Drake]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Shield Power Relay II
Photon Scattering Field II
Heat Dissipation Field II
M51 Iterative Shield Regenerator
Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
‘Malkuth’ Heavy Missile Launcher I, Scourge Heavy Missile
‘Malkuth’ Heavy Missile Launcher I, Scourge Heavy Missile
‘Malkuth’ Heavy Missile Launcher I, Scourge Heavy Missile
‘Malkuth’ Heavy Missile Launcher I, Scourge Heavy Missile
‘Malkuth’ Heavy Missile Launcher I, Scourge Heavy Missile
‘Malkuth’ Heavy Missile Launcher I, Scourge Heavy Missile
‘Malkuth’ Heavy Missile Launcher I, Scourge Heavy Missile
Medium Warhead Rigor Catalyst I
Medium Warhead Rigor Catalyst I
Medium Core Defence Field Purger I
Hobgoblin I x5
Fitting Comments:
1. It’s a tight fit CPU-wise. You may end up needing to drop back to named modules for the tank to free up a little more.
2. The shield resits are interchangeable depending on what you are hunting [fit for Sansha].
3. The ‘Arbalest’ heavy missile launchers are expensive [16 million!], but can usually be resold for the same amount when you move up to a bigger/better ship.
4. Tech 2 Launchers are perhaps a bit to tight to fit here. ‘Malkuth’ are used to cut down on CPU requirements.
5. The dual-rigor catalyst rigs are key. They are the equivalent of having two target painters built into every missile you fire.
Now listen all you swingers, don’t you try to tag along
I know monkey see, but monkey’s dead, for you it would be wrong
Put a dime in my jukebox, you’ll only hear this song
And it won’t be fun for long -(TMBG)
The end is nigh!
The end has passed and off into the night we continue swimming past planets, moon and stars. Wormholes open and close and wars and rumors of wars are left in our wake. All and all, everything continues on as it did before, so what is different?
Training for the Damnation has been completed. Mostly. Sort of. There are few days left to fit the armored warfare links, but everything else is fit and fine. I should be jumping for joy, holding parties in low-sec pirate filled dens of iniquity and generally announcing it to every stray passer-by I meet. Instead I’m merely looking at the next couple of weeks of training and thinking, “Now What?”
The whole trip to Damnation has been a grand adventure. It marks the third, major, long training plan I’ve completed. The first plan was learning skills, which can be debated ad nauseam both on the forums and in various other postings. They were long, arduous and imminently debatable, however I have never once regretted doing it. The second was maximizing my asteroid warfare potential, including a few weeks on Exhumer V, Cybernetics V, and a host of ore specific refining skills to level IV for tech 2 crystals. Again, there were parts of it that I probably could have cut corners on, but I haven’t regretted being able to field a really sweet Hulk, that can mine about 27 m3 of ore per second without being in a gang and significantly more with a good Orca pilot boosting.
Finally, the trip to the Damnation, which has been a slightly longer journey than the others. Over all it was uneventful and all the skills that I have picked up in the interim have been useful across the board. In the beginning it started with the look for a decent armor tanked missile ship to swim alongside my remote armor repairing corp-mates. The Sacrilege was an option, but wasn’t really able to fit a decent remote rep fitting. The Damnation could do that, had enough tank to be able to use ballistic computer systems without sacrificing tank and could still theoretically fit a RR with it’s missiles. The DPS worked out to a similar end as the Drake with the added benefits of helping the whole fleet’s tank.
Now that I’ve reached the Damnation, I have to admit I’m feeling rather blasé about the whole thing. I love flying it. It corners like an Orca, tanks like a very large plated battleship and hits about like a Drake, but from slightly farther away. This is all well and good, but my eyes were taken by something else shiny that had cropped up along the way.
Somewhere along the way I realized that in and amongst the skills for a Damnation, was hidden the skills for a Guardian logistics ship. So on a whim I began to research them, ask questions and look at fittings for them. I got to looking at just how the efficiency of remote repair modules compared to their ‘local’ counterparts. What did it take to use them and or abuse them. Since the Guardian is also bonused for energy transfers, I threw that into the mix as well, looking at how that could be used to the best advantage. I began to develop a real sense of respect for 0.0 fleet logistics pilots and the work they do. Flying a logistics ship well takes a fair amount of capacitor savvy, shrewd targeting and really tight fittings. Tried and true skills like weapons upgrades and advanced weapons upgrades have no effect on RR’s and Xfers, so it’s down to rigs, reactors, PDU’s and CPUs to make it work.
[Editorial Aside]:
I tend to scoff when I see CPUs, PDUs and Reactors on a lot of fits. They are mostly used to compensate for a severe lack of real fitting skills or to ‘tide one over’ until their skills catch up to their hulls. [I still maintain it would be an interesting study to compare the number of killmails between the pilots having 'helper' modules like CPUs/PDUs/Reactors versus their opponents.] I fully understand that even given max skills and an expensive implant, occasionally you still run into a fit that just won’t. I myself have used these modules to great success in the past and will continue to do so in the future and even recommend some fittings that do so.
All of this to say, “Congratulations logistics pilots for making it all fit. Large remote modules on a cruiser hull with a tank that survives and makes things so much easier for the other pilots to just shoot things.”
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