Missions & Complexes

I used to risk expensive ships ratting as you can see here (and do you wanna know the funny part? the clone I had in that ship had a full crystal set, a pashans hardwiring and four other +6 hardwirings lol, I'm serious, it's like a 6 bil clone, thank space-GOD they didn't have a dictor). in certain cases, I still do, like dropping a couple carriers on a Fleet Staging point 3 to do it and get it over with in 5 minutes for example.

But for the most part, it's a dumb thing to do. No offense to the fine fellows in this thread, but some of the loot pinatas you guys posted in this thread are ridiculas. Some of them would take weeks of ratting just to pay off their int initial purchase. With tiercide, Tech1 BSs are more than adequate for pulling in great isk quickly.

The Raven is ok, but the Typhoon, Armageddon and Dominix, wow. The 'Geddon and Dominix are generaly much better for null sec PvE than their 'Navy" upgrades. The Typhoon Fleet Issue (if rigged and fit right) is in my experience a bit better than the regular Typhoon but honestly, not by much.

I've been using 2 of these for the last several weeks (dualboxing is really easy with drones and fof missiles):

[Armageddon, Cheap is Good]
Domination Large Armor Repairer
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Dark Blood Armor EM Hardener
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II

Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II
Omnidirectional Tracking Link II
Omnidirectional Tracking Link II

Cruise Missile Launcher II, Mjolnir Auto-Targeting Cruise Missile I
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Mjolnir Auto-Targeting Cruise Missile I
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Mjolnir Auto-Targeting Cruise Missile I
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Mjolnir Auto-Targeting Cruise Missile I
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Mjolnir Auto-Targeting Cruise Missile I
Drone Link Augmentor I
Drone Link Augmentor I

Large Anti-Thermic Pump I
Large Anti-EM Pump I
Large Bay Loading Accelerator I

Hobgoblin II x14
Curator II x10

Currently fit for Blood Raider/Sansha space but works the same everywhere. 900 DPS with max skills and +3 missile hardwirings. I warp to 70, launch drones and start FoF missiles and watch them mow NPCs down. 17 to 20 mil ticks per ship (34 to 40 mil per tick total before corp tax).Each ship cost 200 mil. Even with nothing but low end ticks, this set up pays for itself in 3 or 4 hours. Everything after that is pure profit except ammo expenditures. As i said above, I also use other ships, Dual domis are great and no ammo expense unless you lse a drone, I just like FoF missiles so I use the geddons.

For comparison, a mach hull costs about 885 mil right now, if you got 35 mil per tick, it would take you 8 or 9 hours of anom farming just to pay for the unfit hull, if you add a deadspace or god forbid officer fit to that mach, your talking way longer while being a super juicy target.

I have yet to lose one of these cheap ratting ships, but if I did the loss wouldn't hurt much, wouldn't be embarrassing to my alliance on a killboard, gives me the option of standing and fighting against pvp raiders and would be easily replaceable, probably from null sec sources whereas if you lose a deadspace pirate ship, you WILL be making a trip to empire to get all the parts for it again lol.

All in all I always say use what you like and what fits for you, it's just that with me I decided to stop pressing my luck using expensive ships to make isk with.

CCP destroyed null sec players and alliances income, even the CFC has to rent space now, maybe they want everybody to pay for their subscriptions with real money, but that a debate for another topic maybe, using those shinnies does not justify anymore, but ultimately its your choice, mach still work if you warp at 30 and snip the frigates before they get too close, i hear isktar are still good and do almost as good as the mach with a 1/10 of the price.

A combination of fighters being bad against smaller targets, travel time for the fighters, and rats possibly switching over to your fighters... they aren't cheap to replace.

Very good start.
To optimize the fit further you should put in the fifth DDA II (meaningful difference in volleys).

The garde carrier is a tad different, though. Instead of drone control range rigs you can optimize with the glitched drone scope rigs to put garde optimal at 80. This matches the one link augmentor and a 50km warp in (sanctums 20).

Bouncer carrier runs best angels, garde scope carrier rest.

While we're at this. I have a few questions.

During my prolonged EFT warrioring I concluded that my Blood Raiders ship should be either: Machariel, Nightmare, Typhoon Fleet Issue or Rattlesnake.

I'm feeling like going Rattlesnake (or Fleet Phoon for same reasons) because of safe range (I'm sure I'll have enough tank for Havens at 70-80 km) and lowish cost (Phoon will get expensive though). But I have my doubts.

So for you, who had pleasure living in Blood Raider space, my questions are:
1. How much tank does one need to tank Blood Raider Havens at 40km? (Nightmare case)
2. How much tank does one need to tank Blood Raider Havens at 0km? (Machariel case)
3. Is it possible to farm Blood Raider Havens in a Machariel without letting any ship past 15 km? Theoretically a lot of Battleships will try to orbit at 40-50km and escape 20-30km mark. I guess I could chase them with AB, but if that'll make impossible to shoot everything within ~15km Machariel seems to not worth it over Nightmare.

All of the above keeping in mind neuts. If they'll make me shoot at sniper ranges I'll just go with Rattlesnake or Fleet Phoon for more dps at said ranges.

Yes that helped a lot, thank you.

But when you say you warp in at zero with Rattler this means you torp fitted? What kind of drones go with that? I thought sentries can't track at 0 range. Or you just MJD away and start shooting with cruise missiles and sentries?