Ships & Modules

Everything was an experimental fit at one point, your fits may become the next flavour-of-the-month.

Just never know.

The interesting argument in this thread is the larger question, and i'd say it's already been answered, as most popular concepts have been considered experimental at some point in time.

Besides the obvious question of unique or popular in a setting of archetypes... You can break down the question into three pieces with different definitions of "experimental": there is a constant good and bad, there is focused and general, and finally there's situational right and wrong (suitable or not, yet not necessarily good or bad).

I look at ships in EVE, and try to instill the same in the friends i fly with, something along these lines: there's always a tactic suitable for a given situation, there's always a gang-concept (a composition) suitable for a given tactic, there's a ship suitable for a (role in a-) given gang and there's a setup of modules for a given ship. If you want to complicate it further (and i always do) you can also say that there's a given role for a certain personality and a given ship for a certain role.

It comes back to the word archetypes i used above. If you fly alot of different gangs and try to be unique, you will quickly realize that being unique is difficult. There may be alot of tweaks, variations and hybrids, but most concepts out there have some familiarity (AHACs first came with MWD, then dualprop and finally lone AB, yet whatever propulsion type you aim for or what kind of ship you base the concept around it's still in the larger archetype of mitigation-oriented gameplay tied to the term AHAC). They may be better or worse, more or less focused or general or more suitable in a certain setting - but even when you only use an MWD they still rely on the same core ideals.

Regardless, whatever way you look at being either experimental or unique - it's mostly positive, something that enrich the game and is usually (should always be-) rewarded in the game.

Betcha whoever invented the nano Drake did not subscribe to Battleclinic.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret:
The people who invented all those ship fittings? They already had PVP experience. It should be self evident that experimental fits work in eve, because a fit can't EXIST without having been experimental at some point. The problem is that if you have no idea what you're doing, you're much better off learning to PVP FIRST, with tried and tested setups, before going off and trying crazy fits. There's nothing inherently wrong with trying new things (or indeed shoehorning), but it's like fitting capitals and supercaps: If you have to ask, you're not ready, and need some more experience in game if you want to be anything more than a long list of lossmails with few/no kills.

If OP is interested, I've had a good deal of success with ecm burst rifters. Maybe not so much "wtf" factor, but lots of tears from opposing frigate/af/inty pilots!

This is pretty good.

In order for you to know what will work pro to your strengths and against your opponent's weaknesses, you have to invest time into learning how the game works, how to read EFT further than "oh, i have enough PG and oh I do 2 more DPS this way".

You have to find the spectrum within a ship can excel, and ways to exploit / work around / beat or whatever your want to do.

Then you start working around this "strategy" of yours, narrowing down the possible combinations of modules and hulls that will help you achieve it.

This knowledge base you will use, usually gets enriched and informed by 1000s of engagements, and most likely an impressive amount of bitter losses = most valuable lessons. It's doesn't just happen, and it doesn't mean you just fail in it, nor does it mean that you will eventually succeed. The gamer cannot be bigger than the game, and in this game, everything goes down one way or the other.

By sheer weight of numbers, pretty much every possible fitting combination has been tried. Only very new ships may hold a completely untried fit. So 'experimental' is only experimental TO YOU.

But experimenting is much more fun than copying fits from some web site. PvE is the place to experiment, and it's easier to replicate a situation in PvE to isolate the effects of whatever you are swapping out.
For example I just got into Interceptors on a serious level, so I found a couple rats in high sec and practiced manual approaches while watching transversal. I kept notice of how long it took me to get into tackle range (as in timing the hotkeys and such), how far I can set the orbit function and maintain my desired orbit distance at full speed.
Once I knew all that- I could look at specifics. I was still getting hit once in awhile- lightly at that. But then I docked up to swap the SeBo for a tracking disruptor. With PvE, you can do something like orbit a rat for 20 minutes at a time if you want. Dock, swap out for that experimental fit, and go back.

So they have value for PvP, but you should do the experimenting in PvE first. Actual PvP combat is no place to be taking a guess on what will happen next............

PvE is never a perfect simulation of actual PvP obviously. But you can't control PvP enough to really be able to isolate the results of an 'experiment'