Ships & Modules

So I got a NM not to long ago and i am having trouble with it. Most if not all of my skills for the ship are at 4 to 5. I am having trouble in my missions with haveing to warp away alot. I am using evemission servival. What i normally do is armorr tanking and that did fine in my abby, but this NM is killing me. It's fitted with all t2 and I use 6 mids for tank. I am at the point where i started to look at using a legion to run my l4 missions. Now, am i just not putting enough into my nm or am I missing somthing with shield tanking? This is my first shield tank ship is how i feel



4 tachyon


5 hardeners
1 large shield booster 2

1 cap recharger



3 Heat Sink 2

1 Imperial Navy Heat sink

1 Tracking Enhancer



3 CCC


gun dps with mult 870
cap with everything running 3 mins

Some counter-points.

1. Use a cap booster. Heavy Capacitor Booster II with Cap Booster 800s.
2. I usually will run 4 hardeners and no boost amp. I find I have enough resistances that I rarely need to use the booster anyway. 5 hardeners will not drain your cap, the guns do that, and no amount of using boost amps will stop that. Also, consider forking out for Imperial Navy tachyons. They do slightly less DPS than the T2, but are so much nicer to your cap, and the T2 ammo for beams is... not that great.
3. Deadspace boosters are v.nice. I use a Large Caldari Navy Shield Booster... occasionally. I very rarely need to turn it on.
4. Faction ammo or GTFO. Imperial Navy Multifrequency and Imperial Navy Ultraviolet are what I carry.
5. Large is enough for me. XL plus boost amp is what most people do, provides large reps. I use a large and run resist heavy and barely have to use the booster. 2 different methods, both equally viable... one uses a lot more cap though :)
6. 4 Imp Navy heat sinks, 1 tracking enhancer (repub fleet if you're flush) and 1 tracking computer (no script) are what I use. More tracking is always good though, and I do have the 5% implant along with maxed gunnery support skills.

OP, the nightmare isn't meant to sit and tank like a lot of other battleships can. It is a pure killing machine and operates on the principle of "wrecks don't shoot me". If your tank isn't holding, the solution is not to increase tank, the solution is to kill things faster.

No one ever had their tank broken by a wreck.

Try the discussion here:

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=167264&find=unread

You're missing the whole stacking penalty thing. Putting five hardeners on one ship means that you'll lose quite a bit of the effect to the stacking penalty.

I usually fit one XL shield booster, one shield boost amplifier, and either two hardeners (mission specific) and an AB or three hardeners (for missions that don't require moving a lot). The remaining slots are filled with cap rechargers, because I'm lazy.

All of that is just plain vanilla T2, no faction or other bling.

Tech II tachs are awful. They have the same damage before specialisation, see this post further down / range / tracking as meta 4 but have much higher fitting reqs and cap use and you won't use tech II beam crystals anyway because faction ammo is better 99% of the time.

Faction tachs are a damage increase over meta 4 and uses slightly less cap, but at similarly higher fitting reqs (the same as Tech II).

Discharge Elutriation rigs are better for cap than CCCs. If you use one EM rig, you can use two of the tech II version which are fairly cheap last time I checked. Of course, as energy weapon rigs they'll increase the power reqs of your weapons so they will require some fitting skills and might not work in all Nightmare fits even with said skills. You can make a cap stable on guns only fit with faction tachs and two CCC IIs but either or both of those are going to cost you.

Don't listen to this guy...

#1 - " They have the same damage / range / tracking as meta 4 but have much higher fitting reqs and cap use"
They do not have the same damage, at a minimum their DPS is 2% better, at lvl 5, its 10% better. Their cap use is much higher though, it is the same as T1 meta 0 tachs, meta 4 tachs use 20% less cap than Meta0/T2

#2 - " Faction tachs are at least a small damage increase over meta 4, but at similarly higher fitting reqs and cap use."
No, they don't have high cap use, they have low cap use.
The way it works with meta level 1-4: each meta level is 5% more optimal range and damage, 5% less cap use
Thus compared to Meta 0, meta 4 do 1.2x as much damage, have 1.2x the optimal, and use 0.8x the cap
T2/ Meta 5 does not follow this convention at all
Faction actions like it would be "meta 5" in the "meta 0-4 scheme" for cap use and damage, but not range.

Simply put, relative to Meta 0
Meta 4 = 1.2x damage, 0.8x cap use, 1.2x optimal
Faction = 1.25x damage, 0.75x cap use, 1.2x optimal

Factions do more damage and use less cap than meta 4
Importantly: Tech II tachs use 33% (!!!) more cap than Faction tachs, they use 25% more cap than meta 4
I think the spec skills need to come with a cap use reduction bonus (ie, soemthing like 2% bonus to damage and cap use instead of 2% bonus to damage, thus at level 5, they would do 10% more damage than meta 4, use 12.5% more cap)

Aurora is crap most of the time
Gleam is useful due to the tracking and DPS bonus, But a lot of the time I'd rather have pulse with scorch or IN multi

You must be talking faction Infrared, Aurora does the same damage as standard crystals, and gets +80% range...
But with a 0.25% tracking mod, and much higher cap use (and the ratio of EM to therm damage is different)
Its only really useful if you've got modules increasing your targetting range/someone giving you a remote sebo (in theory, you could train a series of trial alts to sit in a rookie frig and remote Sebo you, if thats your thing)

I often run with tachs in incursions, (though I prefer pulse for VGs, tachs are what you want for assaults and HQs)
Gleam is very much *needed*...
Otherwise... factions are nice relative to T2, T2 barely outdamages them, and sucks tons of cap - the 25% tracking bonus of gleam is really the only reason.


but again... its got the same optimal as pulses with faction multi, about the same damage, and only about 60% the tracking
Scorched pulses still give you more than 1.5x of the tracking of tachs, and depending on your fit, your optimal will be about 60 km - and your damage is equivalent to using gamma crystals (pretty much what the tachs would need to hit optimals at that range)

Once you get to T2, tachs really don't offer much over pulse unless you plan on engaging at over 60km