Ships & Modules

So, I'm planning on training an ares to fly... fitting aside I just need some advice on tackling range.

Initially I figured I would tackle as close as possible, no turret would be able to keep up with me tracking wise... but smartbombs. So I figured move out past smartbomb range, say 8-9km but I can get hit with a heavy neut. Ok move out past heavy neut range, but now im trying to tackling orbiting at 20km+ doesn't seem like my speed is all that great for speed tanking if I have that wide an orbit.

Not to mention a missile boat buddy of mine says he can pop me with cruise missiles no matter where I tackle from.

I know my speed will reduce the damage I take, but what's the best range for tackling... and what about defender missiles to counter his cruise missiles?

P.S. I have a tracking disruptor fit but still at 20km doesn't seems safe to try tackling, evemon says with implants i can hit 6400 m/s without overheating MWD

All situations are different of course, there's almost too many to cover each one. You mention interceptors and it seems your targets are battleships (with the comments about heavy neuts and outrunning guns) but a few rules of thumb:

<13km: Smart bombs aren't the thing you need to worry about its webs, especially if they are using close range guns ie blasters, autocannons, and to a lesser extent pulse lasers. Even if you are able to outrun their guns (via TD or whatev) you still become vulnerable to medium/heavy drones when you are webbed within this range. I say 13km because that's the range of overheated t2/meta4 webs. On any ship with a web bonus, especially something like a vindicator you should expect Fed Navy webs which puts the range out to 18.2km, and you will be obliterated by a vindi within this range.

To be honest, vs battleships the list of situations where it's safe to tackle <13km is shorter than the list of situations where it's not ok so you're better off avoiding web range and possibly losing a target than trying to tackle within web range and dying 7-8 times out of 10 (and still losing the target).

it's hard but not impossible to avoid heavy neut range, harder if you only have Interceptors IV unless you're using faction disruptors. One option is a cap injector as with 1 heavy neut they can only neut you every 24 seconds, but no interceptor has enough free mids to bother fitting one.

Ares gets a range bonus for tackle. Intercepters V lets a T2 disrupter tackle from 30 out, before overheat. Faction point and Command boost can add much more.

Most likely, you will have to lose a few ships until you know whats a good target and whats not.


Edit Here: Practice with some corpi's on different ships. Let them shoot at you.

I usually roll with an AB only fit with the Executioner, but a DP fit could totally work. I wouldn't really want to do a MWD fit due to scram/web.

-Liang

Ed: I'm sure I have some loss mails in the Executioner you could peruse. :P

If you're in an Ares your warp disruptor range is 28.8km, and you can overload it to 34.6km for almost 2 minutes. Heavy neuts shouldn't be a huge problem. They won't stop your mwd mid cycle, their cycle time is quite long, and unless you already have drones on you or someone else is shooting you, your opponent won't be able to blow you up that badly, unless you're flying into web range or w/ no transversal. The Ares is a great ship but you should not be dual propping it (rather, why not just use a Taranis?). I fly my Ares with a t2 signal amp, mwd, point, scram. some variation of the lows and highs, but I like the idea of using a dc and blasters to fight drones and other ceptors that get close.