Ships & Modules

I don't think the Mordus belt rats are very hard to take down, a simple dual rep active tank Sacrilege should have no problem dealing with them.

Yeah I did notice changes in dps when running the besieged site when killing the first 2 BS in the first wave, but it wasn't anything major. I used a standard Tengu with a Pithum C-Type booster, 2 hardeners an SBA and HAMs and had no trouble tanking even the 2nd wave.

The Mordu's belt rats are certainly not comedy rats. I have yet to actually find a cruiser but the frigate can be beaten by a competently fit T1 cruiser pretty easily. It does significant damage to a T1 cruiser though so I suspect attempting to solo it in a T1 frigate will result in tragedy.

The battleship will web and scram you though and deals a fair amount of damage which I suspect is omni but can't confirm. I tried to kill one in a dual rep Thorax that deals ~500 dps and I couldn't get the thing off of 100% shield. I needed to call in a helper as well or it would have killed me when I ran out of cap charges. It probably tanks in the area of 600 dps. I was able to solo it in a shield Ishtar using Geckos but it took a while to bring down. With a Sacrilege I think you may have problems both breaking it and disengaging if you can't break it. I have seen HACs lost to the battleship so be careful, it's no pushover, it does carry at least a billion ISK or so in BPCs after all. Most critically is that these rats will hard tackle you, scrams and webs, so you will be vulnerable to other players while taking them out.

My guess is that you could probably beat the cruiser in a Sacrilege but I would be very scared of the battleship without a friend. My guess is that this why I've seen quite a few battleships in low sec belts of late. Something around the grade of tank and dps for level 4s should allow you to kill the battleship but it will be like tanking a full room.

All this being said don't be too worried about players, find an inactive part of low sec and have a look around. I've made several billion off the BPCs already from a pair of battleships and 3 frigates, so it is definitely worth your time if you can get them.

EDIT: To be completely honest I'm not 100% sure if it's an actual scram or a long point as I've always been either close that I turned my MWD off to avoid signature bloom to help tank or was using an afterburner which isn't affected by the scram anyway.

The belt rats are not really tough at all.

Stratios with a kinetic hardener and a IN EANM was able to deal with the cruiser in the belts. Caldari drones chewed them up pretty well, although I might try EM after reading the site reports. Might drop them faster.

Garmur fell to Acoylte drones before it could test out my Asteros tank.

Could you provide more than that?

I already listed approximately what it takes to break the battleship's tank and how much tank you will need to survive it, so what were you flying and how much dps were you doing where you couldn't break the cruiser? Would be helpful if you could let us know.

Overall, a frig isn't your best bet for Mordus hunting. Especially since you can't fit a cloak on a Slicer. Even more so because you are taking a kiting ship against a much better kiting ship that is bonused to make it more effective at fighting frigs.

I would recommend a Stratios if you have the ISK. More than enough tank for even the Barghest, and at the most you will need a friend in another cruiser to break the tank on the BS, depending on your skills.

I would imagine any T3 would faceroll mordus as well, but I can't speak on that as I have only used the Stratios for that purpose.

If breaking the rats tank is more of a problem than tanking their dps, I'd go with Ishtar cause it can get really high dps with a decent tank. If tanking the damage is an issue then I'd go with a Deimos, excellent tank with still very good dps. I suppose a Cerb or Vaga might work as well, but the rest of the HACs have quite low dps compared to these.

The Phantasm doesn't really have great damage, it's just okay, the main advantage it has is in AB speed. Augoror Navy Issue is a similar deal, the damage isn't bad, but not great, and the thing it capitalizes on (huge buffer tank) isn't very applicable in this situation. That leaves the Sacrilege and Zealot, the Zealot has more damage potential but a smaller tank and the Sacrilege has more tank, less dps (assuming both are active armor PvP fit for work in lowsec). However I'm not sure how much tank is needed, if you can shield fit a Sacrilege to have enough tank to tank the Mordus rats that might be able to get more dps. I'd go with the Zealot personally. However the only way to find out what works is to go out there and try.

I speed/sig tank for tags with a Manticore using javelin torps and a TP. Would this still be possible against the Mordus rats?

Mordu cruisers are weaker than clone soldiers.

I used a shield stratios with an MSE and an invuln.

and Geckos.

Orthrus didn't stand a chance.