Missions & Complexes

After a lengthy set of trials and tribulations, I've arrived at the conclusion that the Rattlesnake is simply bar-none the best all-around missioning ship. There, I've said it. Now if I could only get it in black...

[Rattlesnake, Venom Edittion]

Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher II, Inferno Auto-Targeting Heavy Missile I
Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher II, Inferno Auto-Targeting Heavy Missile I
Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher II, Inferno Auto-Targeting Heavy Missile I
Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher II, Inferno Auto-Targeting Heavy Missile I
Rapid Heavy Missile Launcher II, Inferno Auto-Targeting Heavy Missile I
Drone Link Augmentor II

Gist X-Type 500MN Microwarpdrive
Large Cap Battery II
Omnidirectional Tracking Link II, Tracking Speed Script
Gist X-Type Large Shield Booster
Omnidirectional Tracking Link II, Tracking Speed Script
Large Cap Battery II
Gistum A-Type Kinetic Deflection Amplifier

Damage Control II
Dread Guristas Ballistic Control System
Dread Guristas Ballistic Control System
Sentient Drone Damage Amplifier
Sentient Drone Damage Amplifier
Drone Damage Amplifier II

Large Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II
Large Hydraulic Bay Thrusters II
Large Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II

Warden II x2
Curator II x2
Gecko x1

Scourge Auto-Targeting Heavy Missile I x3750
Inferno Auto-Targeting Heavy Missile I x3750
Scourge Fury Heavy Missile x2500
Inferno Fury Heavy Missile x2500
Mobile Depot
Bouncer II x2
Garde II x2
.....

The total cost and fit will run you about the same as a base Marauder hull, just to put it in perspective. EHP figures don't include the 1-2 cruiser or battlecruiser equivalent drones that also absorb, offset and routinely tank damage. I realize that warp speed isn't given a lot of consideration by many, but inertia, velocity and warp speed all impact mission completion times.

This is my particular fit for venturing out into Caldari space as I most commonly receive kinetic damage (obviously you'll want to tweak this a bit for Amarr, Gallente or Minmatar space). You can usually mitigate the other damage types simply by staying at extreme ranges. I find I most often need to deliver Kinetic or EM damage, which is why Warden IIs and Curator IIs are standard. I have a Gecko that I use against Mercanaries, Angels and Drones when the conditions permit.

Completely EW immune and cap stable, it has the following performance specs:
• 85.8k omni EHP with a cap stable shield recharge of 205.2 HP/s (+47.1 HP/s passive)
• 108k EHP with a cap stable shield recharge of 341.4 HP/s (+78.4 HP/s passive) against Guristas
• 4.07 AU/s warp speed, 11.2s align and 956m/s MWD

From an offensive standpoint, this is the minimum it is capable of with V skills and no implants:
• 495 missile and 578 drone DPS (1172 DPS total) against Guristas, EOM
• 445 missile and 640 drone DPS (1085 DPS total) against Sansha, Drones
• 495 missile and 770 drone DPS (1265 DPS total) against Mercenaries
• 445 missile and 599 drone DPS (1044 DPS total) against Angels

These are realistic (achievable) DPS figures out to a range of 75.5km using auto-targeting missiles and sentry drones. Against stationary or larger targets, Fury ammunition increases missile DPS from +265-353 DPS (but the effective range also drops to 56.5km). All numbers are without any missile implants, so even base missile DPS can still be increased by at least 10-12%. Switching to Faction ammunition will up your DPS by about 20%.

On an interesting side note, we were discussing the range of gunnery/drone hits and frequency of 'wrecking' shots in another thread. Preliminary observations seem to indicate that provided ideal conditions are met, one can realistically expect to achieve an additional 10-12% drone DPS beyond what's typically stated (this includes 'grazing' or 'glancing' shots).

I've toyed with signal amplifiers to boost the number of targets and increase scan resolution, but I find that you can often deploy drones, receive enemy aggro and still be able to engage before even your first target is locked. So I typically keep the available target slots for turrets or objectives. Plus the damage control is great to augment shields and provides a nice armor and hull buffer.

I abhor cruise missiles for several reasons, the least of which is that you'll never achieve stated DPS. Best-case scenario is 95-100% against battleships (with rigors, flares and painters) all the way down to 20-40% against frigates and cruisers. With auto-targeting heavy missiles youcan achieve near-100% application against everything except frigates. Yes, you do lose DPS during the extra 25 seconds for reloads - but a lot of missions or rooms can be completed in a single clip anyway.

I also bring along a mobile depot so I can swap out modules or Bouncer II sentries as needed (Pirate Invasion and Angel Extravaganza are the only two examples where I've needed to remotely do this thus far). Optimal range scripts for Curators, Bouncers and Gardes; tracking speed scripts for the Gecko and Warden.

If you're trying to offer some constructive criticism, by all means - dive in. But if you're just looking to nitpick, I'll refer you to the standard disclaimer for all of my fits... EFT or Pyfa is merely one aspect in ultimately gauging performance - not unlike the EVE Survival guides. Neither can tell you how well anything is ultimately going to perform, since a lot can be influence by tactics and experience running missions. I will say that for better or worse I do try all my fits out, and a lot of times they do not work anywhere near as well as they should on paper.

The DPS and EHP numbers are a starting point and represent realistic (attainable) values. In truth I'm probably understating the actual DPS by 15-20% and the tank is certainly more because drones are often absorbing the bulk of incoming damage. I've definitely got way too much capacitor, but I wanted a reserve while testing out the fit. I could probably get away with a single cap battery - but I also like just putting the shield booster on to run continually as well.

With a Gecko I can certainly shoot while moving, or I can clear the smaller targets first with sentries, recall, deploy a Gecko against the larger targets and move towards the gate. The Gecko is going to be 3x as fast anyway, so the limiting factor here is going to be the Rattlesnake. But I've also boosted the speed and inertia with implants, so it's less sluggish as a whole. It's not a Machariel by any means, but it's now crawling along at a glacial pace like a Marauder, either.

Drones will auto attack when you're aggressed. You can also activate auto-targeting missiles under similar conditions. So while you do lose the ability to choose specific targets, you can at least still apply damage.

I'm trying to think offhand which missions entail gate travel prior to gating:
• Dread Scarlet (but you're waiting for NPC ships to appear anyway, and you can skip the first two rooms)
• Assault (but you can skip the first room)
• Angels Extravaganza (you're usually 10-20km from gates, and have to kill a few waves anyway)
• Wildcat Strike (against drones, so you can use a Gecko)
• Infiltrated Outposts (again, drones - so missiles and Gecko clean up while you're traveling to the gate)
• Rogue Drone Harassment (snipe the mother drone, deploy Gecko and move to the gate)

About the only 2 missions that are annoying with respect to gate travel are Unauthorized Military Presence and Smuggler Interception. I can't remember which of these has the massive spread of targets out to 145km, but a MJD would probably not be a bad investment just for this mission.

If you're going to run cruise missiles, yeah - you need a target painter (along with rigors and flares). Damage application with heavy missiles is good-excellent against the vast majority of targets, and I haven't found a missile guidance computer (or equivalent) really makes that much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. Sentries can snipe frigates at long range and auto-targeting missiles crucify them at close range, so it's win-win. I'm also running a pair of tracking-scripted omnidirectional links as this has proven to be more effective at increasing the quality (and subsequently, damage) of drone hits.

The Barghest fit I'm referring to is for use when multi-boxing.

Seriously? A Machariel is doing maybe 600 DPS @60km... I'm doing that with auto-targeting missiles alone. As for sentries, I'm doing in excess of 650 DPS well past 75km (the pair of omnis make a huge difference). As for the tank, how much do I need exactly when this gets me through every single mission I need to run? (I did point out that it was optimized for Caldari missions) And it's not 35 seconds for reload - it's 25 seconds since I'd be waiting 10 seconds anyway.

The Machariel is a great ship for blitzing, but since I'm not really blitzing most missions I'm not sure how any kind of comparison can really be drawn.

I have (max skills and implants). Aside from chewing through ammunition like it was a bottomless pit, I didn't really see how the Machariel offered an advantage over the Rattlesnake - particularly when clearing missions. Yes, noticeably faster - but it couldn't tank anywhere near as well as the Rattlesnake for some of the long, drawn-out missions (Assault, Worlds Collide, etc.)

To be sure. Outside of SoE space there is far less of a requirement for warp speed as you're primarily looking at either in-system or 1-system jumps and the AU distances travelled are probably 1/2 to 1/3. I'm not sure if Gone Beserk is off the blitz litz, but I know Attack of the Drones is.

Ah here we go again with yet another of these crazy "best" fit posts.

While your rattle may be on the list of possible "best" fits for NPC like Mercs and Serpentis that are weak to thermal and kinetic, it loses out to other ships / fits like the Paladin or Nightmare when you go against Sansha or Rouge Drones that are weak to EM and against Angels that are weak to explosive so without going any further already have ample evidence that your fit may not be the best.

Others would argue that your fit is less than the best because of mobility issues caused by the sentry drones and the slow moving Gecko. From my own experiences I spent almost a year running missions in a Rattle with a nearly identical fit and in a Golem and I found the Golem to be superior even without a prop mod. Simply land in pocket, click approach on the gate and kill everything while you move. In general and across all those mission I arrived at the gate in less time with the Golem and no prop mod than I did in the Rattle even with the MWD simply because I was always moving towards that gate instead of sitting in place because sentries or moving around the pocket to position the Gecko.

For me in the game as I play it now what makes a best ship / fit is one that kills equally across all of the NPC since I spend time running missions with friends in all 4 factions space. And for that consistency the best ship I have found is the Golem, and it have tried the Paladin, Nightmere, Machariel, Vargur and almost all of the T1 / faction BS and the only ones that come close are the Navy Raven and the Navy Scorpion and even those are not as good.

And we still have not discussed those who will claim that an auto canon fit Vargur are better.

In the end what we need to do around here is stop the foolish claims that this ship or that fit are the best and simply post up what we like and leave it at that. Why? simple because there are far to many variables in this game to every have a best anything.

i recently bought a rattlesnake,
i have no idea how or desire to make a reasonable fit for it ,
i just bought it for the stupid paper dps.

my torp skills are crappy but the 1700 dps without much training is hilarious, cheep(ish) too

well that depends, do you want a tank with that fit?

Interesting that you consider the Golem Pigeon holed into cruise missiles when all of it's bonuses apply to heavy, cruise and torps and that brings the question. Are Rapid heavies still considered a heavy missile for ship bonuses or are they their own special snowflake?

Damage application can be an issue for those to lazy to switch to the Precision missiles for the smaller ships. Once you do that application problem tends to go away.

Can't do much about the cycle time CCP seems to feel that the cruise need to be slow to fire so we have to deal with that.

You have to be kidding me about slow to target compared to rapid heavies or torps. From a Golem fit in EvE HQ with the pilot set to all level 5 skills and no implants to eliminate any skill based differences we get these max velocities. All of the fits were changed to 4 Cal Navy Ballistic controls from what was on them to eliminate any possible differences based on bonuses and there were no other modules fit that could affect a missile / torp velocity.
T2 Rage torps - 1,500 meters per second
T2 Fury rapid heavy - 5,100 meters per second.
T2 Fury cruise - 10,575 meters per second.

You asked about a torp fit, I have one from a corp mate, sitting in mission pockets with him it seems to work well but you will have to look into it and change to suit your needs / wants. The three missing mid slots are changed mission to mission and based on his preferences, normally they are a single prop mod, a cap battery and 1 hardener, although there are missions where he runs all three as faction resistance amps instead. Exported to EFT format since that seems to be the most universal.

[Golem, Golem Torps]

Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System

Republic Fleet Target Painter
Republic Fleet Target Painter
Shield Boost Amplifier II
Gist B-Type X-Large Shield Booster

Torpedo Launcher II, Inferno Rage Torpedo
Torpedo Launcher II, Inferno Rage Torpedo
Torpedo Launcher II, Inferno Rage Torpedo
Torpedo Launcher II, Inferno Rage Torpedo
Bastion Module I
Drone Link Augmentor II

Large Hydraulic Bay Thrusters II
Large Rocket Fuel Cache Partition II

Hobgoblin II x5