Ships & Modules

Currently my main char can fly all Gallante advanced cruisers but as I want to get into incursions (& armor tanking incursion fleets aren't as popular as shield), I thought I'd cross train for the Caldari Basilisk with the added bonus of not being far training wise from the highly rated Tengu.

As I already have good skills in Hacs, Recon, & reasonable skills in Interdictors & logistics etc. I'm in a situation where I'm 1 day away from being able to fly all Caldari advanced cruisers & I feel like a kid in a candy store, too distracted with all the new shiny toys.

I feel lazy for even asking this, but I'm wondering what other if any Caldari advanced gems are there worth looking at. I do like to try & engage in all aspects of eve so I'm interested in pve, pvp, stealth, solo, fleet, exploration etc... which is also why I need some help narrowing down the choice if any.

Maybe my gallante hanger is already good & just needs a tengu & a basilisk to complement it or maybe theres an uber mission boat that puts my ishtar to shame or a recon better than my arazu..?

Many thanks for all advice & pointers

The only good caldari t2 cruisers are the basilisk and the falcon (ok, maybe the rook, and the onyx is ok if you need a shield HIC). Otherwise, tengu does significantly better at both PvE and PvP than any of the other T2 cruisers, and the ferox is a better eagle, and the drake is a better cerberus.

-Arazel

You don't need to make it shiny for a lot of incursion communities, only a select few require you to have "the best" in skills and fitting. You can get away with all T2/named easily, and Logistics at 4. Mostly only need to be quick about posting your fit when they ask, for those communities without a wait-list.

Aside from that, the Onyx (HIC) is known to sport a good tank, but not so good dps. Falcon and Rook are of course good as well, though their role is pretty much jam or die at times.

The question you should be asking is probably 'what do I want to fly' instead of asking 'what can I easily win with' as I almost get the impression of. I know how it is to be lazy with finding out what to fly, but the most important aspect of eve is to have fun, do what you want how you want.

Thanks for the input.

The basilisk & tengu are 100% on my must have list & in all honesty I love my ishtar, it's an awesome ship & can snipe, rip through NPC's tank like a erm.. tank etc. so the cerb & eagle would have to bring something big to the table to make me spend the isk. The suggestion of the falcon seems like a unanimous idea & something I'll look into.

Kosetzu
I'm not after an easy win, I'm after a fun to fly & bring something valuable to a fleet which dosn't die too easily or if it does it's cheap enough that I don't care. I must confess I like flying lots of different types ship. that mmm new ship smell & the learning curve of getting something out of it is one of the things I enjoy, however theres been some mistakes, like being impressed with a drake so much I eagerly train up for a raven only to find out it's not as good as a drake.

Things to remember about cadari T2 ships:

1. caldari do not have HACs, they have recons.
2. tengu is OP
3. basilisk = not that great shield guardian
4. onyx = not that great shield devoter

basically if youre in a caldari T2/T3 cruiser/command ships and it isnt a Tengu or a Falcon then youre probably doing it wrong.

PS: incursions use BSs for DPS, not cruisers.

And you do not have any idea what you're talking about...

1. Cerberus is hardly a bad boat, I don't hear much of the Eagle but some say it works for limited roles so I trust in those who FLY THE SHIP.
2. Tengu is too good at too many roles for sure, but not at the same time.
3. Basilisk is excellent in applying fast reps, why do you think some teams used it over the Scimitar in the tournaments of it's so bad? (Yes I know tournament is controlled environment.)
4. Onyx has plenty of uses, you just can't see them apparently.

You seem like an armor fanboy so I don't expect you to understand... Try things out or listen to those who have before you judge things like that.

PS: Incursions have mixed BS/Cruiser dps usually, sometimes even BC.

Sounds about right. I'd just add "Rook" to list of acceptable ships. Nice DPS, nice range, nice ECM.

The Eagle was close to worthless before t3 BCs. It's entirely pointless now.
The Cerberus had a fairly useful role as ewar/logi suppression and general ranged DPS support with HMLs, now entirely obsoleted by the Tengu. It still does antifrigate work well, but as noted, the NavyCal is probably better.
Basilisk is very fat relative to the Guardian, and doesn't have its EHP either.
Onyx is alright as a shield HIC, although it still suffers from "not being a Devoter".

Sound the squid fanfare of dismay...

Falcon is still Falcon, useful when you have the upper hand. Limited in practical use today, but not bad at what it does good. Cryptic, no? It's not a bad ship, but it's also largely overrated by solo-small players who still ramp up rage. Few people at other scales care, they hardly ever see the ship. It's the end result of the "Falcon rage nerf". Still cause rage, eligable use lost it's appeal, so now there's almost only rage-inducing use of the Falcon left. The irony.

Tengu is very good. It doesn't need further commentary, does it?

Cerbs have not had roles since Recon range bonuses were removed and 150km probing introduced, today they additionally suffer from 200m loss to 50m snipers with twice the damage, more mobility etc. A gimped 200m ship to shoot frigate is not a role no matter how large the shoes you try to horn on are. Nano-damp Cerbs of 2007 were my first love in EVE. If someone remember that guide, i wrote it. Could be squeezed in until the SHAC era, too slow since.

The Eagle is like the Cerb but worse, Rails was never it's problem: speed was. The ASB Beagle suffer from "not capless weapons". Try the Hawk for that instead, much more interesting for that intent and purpose. One of the main upsides of ASB is that it's a capless tank (this includes the ability to switch active hardeners to passive boost amps or stacked injection for equal or better results). Don't underestimate the drawback of having to deal with cap on a system entirely designed around having the ability to disregard it. I'm not here to ruin your fun, just don't misplace "fun" with "good".

Rooks were quite interesting as Drakeblob killers in small-medium until ... you guessed it, 200m lossmails to 50m sniper BC. It can't be stressed enough how utterly mindblowingly stupid the introduction of Tier 3 BC were. Three for three.

The Basi (as all Caldari support) saw an upswing with 100mn and the various heavier shield concepts that sprung up after Crucible (Rokhs, et. al.). If Minmatar had monopoly before, Caldari at least have some niche there now. Not bad, but allround i'd say Oneiros had more to gain from Crucible leaving the Basi last in an overall well-balanced class. Not bad.

The Onyx as a super tackler, where supers are killed by other supers and they are all armor tanked? No. The interesting thing about the Onyx is rather it's range bonus. Stick it with a sniper gang, skirt 150km, overlap, warp + bubble if hostiles attempt to bail and Lachs can't cover scatter. For almost any other intent or purpose you'd use any of the other HICs. Niche is the tune of the Caldari tech II pipe, but at least this time around it's useful and a tad box-out interesting. Cool.

wow, a guy actually defending both caldari HACs! o.0
i know people use both basis and onyxs, mostly people who cant fly scimmis and broadswords.

yes, i fly mainly armour, but i also fly shield.
my point was not that armour is better, but that it is different.
in armour, the brick options work better, ie: devoter and guardian. in shield the speed/kite options work better, ie: scimmi and broadsword.

as for the tengu, what i meant is that it can do every T2 cruiser/CS DPS role better than the T2 ship by a LONG way.

i love when people assume i have no clue what i'm talking about. i like to consider it free kills :)

as for the rook, yeah it works too but there are very few cases where the tiny DPS is better than a covops cloak.

PS: if your incursion fleet is using BCs, then i got some bad news for you...

Of course i do, come on man you need to spot the irony .

The first line was a dead giveaway, i was being purposely bitterish.

Look at the inference:

Falcon - good, but ECM is poorly scaled (good small, bad big).
Cerb - bad (good in 2007, useful until 2009, not very good in modern sniping, bad since Crucible).
Eagle - bad (since forever, but not because of Rails, it just never had any advantage anywhere).
Rook - became bad with Crucible, was actually a really good option prior to that, with it's buff.
Basi - good, the class is balanced overall, the others are probably broader but Basi got wider with Tengu and Rokh.
Onyx - good, i gave a pretty nifty suggestion there of what make it stand out, though it's not armor tanked.

As a whole, that's not a very negative summary.

We do disagree on a few principal points though:



Traditional SHACs after Crucible:
Flying a Tech II Cruiser (200m+), in a long range setup (~25k ehp) as a mobile sniper (with a 1200 mwd-sig) have become a death-trap with Tier 3 BC, who can match your speed, reach, volley you etc. Some may still be used as support thanks to a slight edge (eg., fully tanked 65k Lachs) in similar (BC) gangs. Overall though, any such use is taking a step back because most common BC gangs are so large that they replace the support with bubbles or smaller throw-aways. The end effect the Tier 3 BC had was almost completely obliterating both older "SHAC" (mobile sniping) options that could counter other (Tier 2) BC gangs, and on top of that effectively limiting the scale at which those ships were run (medium).


Tier 3 BC and HAC creativity:
It would be nice to hear more about how or why you consider the Tier 3 BC a needed and positively effectful addition. Though we are most likely going to disagree. I don't really see any larger positive use with any Tier 3 BC. I consider them quite similar to the Falcon nerf. They are not very effectful where intended (larger scale, anti-drake etc.), but extremely effectful and alienating where not intended (smaller scale, etc.). Some people consider isolated creative offsides like Vaga-Talos good for the game, i consider them allround bad - even if the ship is good (good as in powerful).

In this particular topic it affect both Cerb and Eagle as well as Rook because they all meet the generic pattern of having their core-setups leaned towards LR. Being creative is cool and all but i think you overstep it when you conclude that ASB-Beagles or AML-Cerbs are powerful shooting lesser opponents. That's why i used the Hawk reference because the Hawk is actually good at ASB while the Beagle merely have the option to run one, as everything else. Ships that are impopular and look engageable are not "good" because of that, merely appealing.

It's a terminology thing: What you imply by "good" or "positive effect". I've always disliked the Tier 3 BC because i belive they removed more creative use than they gave. I said pretty early on that i feared they would have a repressive and depriving effect on smaller scale once larger scale adapted to them. It comes with the whole design philosophy around them: high offensive application, defensive holes. It's one of them typical scale-balance things. It's skewered effect-wise when scaling up (opposite to ECM).

If you look at popularity i turned out to be completely right. Small-medium thrived immensely December-February 2012. Three months until we began to see 50-man+ gangs with the new ships. I'm coasting off topic now, but i think it's an important lesson to keep in the back of your head with this solo revival that you, Kil2, Kovorix et. al. are positive influences in, that it works because you fly under the radar in the current meta. I'd love to talk about that extensively with you some other time, but this is not the place.


ECM rage and Falcons:
Speaking of the Falcon: it's definately ECM, like you say, but the rage mainly manifest around the Falcon. Why? Because it's cloaky and thus more likely to randomly appear in a small scale fight to ruin the day. People do not have a tendency to warp in Rooks for that. I have seen Scorpions used at range and throw-away Blackbirds, but it's not very common. The rage is limited to the Falcon not because it's ECM would be stronger, but because it's the cloaky ECM boat. It's just a sidenote of course, i'm not even sure why i felt i had to explain it.


Balanced HICs and useful niche:
Given the direction the game is taking i'm prepared to agree with you on the Broadsword. Though, that's a bit of a semantics issue as well. I wasn't trying to say the Broadsword was awesome in my last post, merely that armor norm and shield is niche for the most common use of HICs. The point was rather that the Onyx actually have a quite interesting niche with it's ability to HML-snipe and pop backup-bubbles, because it's actually that good at HML reach, damage and tank. The Broadsword have it's own niches with speed and rush, but overall i'd agree with you that the Onyx is probably more useful in current trends. Overall though, the class is well balanced and popularity is mostly tied to generic tank type for common engagement, which is why people see the Devoter the most (not because it would be too good).