Ships & Modules

Greetings.

I've recently resubbed, read the patch notes concerning pirate ships and was intrigued by the buff to warp speed the Angel ships now have.

Are there any significant changes to the typical Machariel blitzing fit for level 4's ?

Thank you in advance for any and all replies.

So what's the blitzing fit?

Unfortunately, the Machariel is no longer king when it comes to blitzing L4s.

He's joking. Mach is still king, and rather uncontested. Warps in 7 seconds, 5.2 AU/sec, 1.2k dps with RF fusion and near 1.8km/s running gate to gate is not easily beatable. Even when shooting in falloff, you still got the mission completed and handed in when a polarized nightmare just arrived at the first gate.

I feel like the amount of focus it takes to fly a rattlesnake efficiently is worth -50mil/hour. god damn that thing gets good EFT dps and projection, but in practice.... I have some real doubts about the rattlesnake as a blitzing platform. It warps slow, its slow, its drones are slow, the missiles are slow, poor agility, meh scan res.

mach has a few issues of its own for sure, the whole falloff thing, or low dps (and still a ton of falloff) artillery. but in a bunch of cases WOW does it work.

My Dominix can apply 100% of its poor DPS from 150 km. Still in optimal of Warden II. With I believe like half DPS of what your Rattlesnake does. Projection is not everything.

IMHO Rattlesnake and Machariel are both kings. It depends on the mission and you mood. You want action - get into Machariel. You want to blitz L4 in relaxing manner - take Rattlesnake.

So how would you fit this blitzing Rattlesnake ?

I'd probably go in a slightly different direction:

5x Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher II (inferno/scourge auto-targeting heavy missiles)
1x Drone Link Augmentor II
3x Gecko, 5x Warrior II

Prototype 100MN Microwarpdrive I
Large Micro Jump Drive
2x Omnidirectional Tracking Link II, Tracking Speed Script
EM Ward Amplifier II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Pith C-Type X-Large Shield Booster

2x Ballistic Control System II
2x Drone Damage Amplifier II
1x Nanofiber Internal Structure II
1x Prototype Hyperspacial Accelerator

3x Large Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II

With Nomad implants this thing aligns and warps faster than a base Machariel (4.0 AU/s). Inertia is key here since this also influences your warp acceleration/deacceleration speeds. This leaves the rest of the slots free for any +3 missile specific implants. With a Gecko you want tracking speed as opposed to optimal range and then it just razes frigates. I prefer the Gecko to maximize DPS (it's also omni-damage) and attack battleships directly - using the rapid heavies for frigates and cruisers. For hard targets you can assign the Gecko and then you only need to carry 2 types of missile ammunition around.

Try switching to a 100MN microwarpdrive instead. With the huge signature radius on the Rattlesnake you're not going to be tanking a lot of damage with the afterburner anyway, and the microwarpdrive makes getting between gates, rooms and objectives a lot less hassle.

I used machariel for 2+ years, it has been the king for long time until bastion module. Immunity to ewar and tracking disruption, sensor damps and jamms just puts vargur in front of it (and paladin/kronos).

Just now saw its blitzing only, still Vargur with MWD works like charm, you just need 1 minute to stand still while shooting for one cycle and drop target fast.