Ships & Modules

Is there a battleship that can armor tank better than a VNI without losing much DPS from drones?

What is your definition of "better"?

If you want an armour tanked BS with bonuses for drone DPS, you have four obvious choices. T1 Dominix, Dominix Navy Issue, Armageddon and the SOE Nestor.

T1 Dominix has bonuses for drone HP, DPS, tracking speed and optimal range. 6 high slots, 5 mids, 7 lows.

Domi NI keeps the drone HP and DPS bonuses but has hybrid turret bonuses instead of drone tracking and optimal range bonuses. Same slot arrangement as the T1 Domi.

Armageddon has the same drone HP and DPS bonuses as the T1 Domi and Domi NI. 7 high slots with two utility slots, 4 mids, 7 lows. The Geddon can fit two drone link augs in the utility highs without sacrificing any weapon slots, and it can fit pretty much any type of turret or missile launcher in the remaining high slots. The catch is that the Geddon does not get any bonuses to weapons in the high slots. The Geddon is an Amarr ship so if you haven't trained into Amarr, it will take longer to train for it than to keep training up the Gallente ships tree into the T1 Domi/Domi NI.

There is a navy version of the Armageddon but it does not have any bonuses for drones.

The Nestor will be the most expensive because it's an SOE ship. Since it's SOE, you need to train up both Amarr and Gallente battleship skills to get the most from it. Bonus to drone HP and DPS is the same as the other ships and is based on your skill level for Gallente BS. The Nestor also has an armour resistance bonus based on your skill level for Amarr BS.
7 high slots with 2 utility slots, 6 mids, 6 lows. Missiles cannot be fitted to the Nestor, but like the Geddon you can fit 2 drone link augs without losing a weapon slot. There is a bonus to optimal range for large lasers. The Nestor also has bonuses for scanning, hacking and remote armour repping.

I don't have the skills to fly a T3 cruiser so I can't comment on what the options for a drone fit T3 are.

I fly a T1 Domi on the live server and have no serious problems. I've been tinkering with various laser and missile fits for the Armageddon on the test server. It can work but the Geddon has problems with T2 cruise launchers and T2 RHML's due to CPU limitations on the ship. I can get T2 cruise launchers to fit using a rig to boost the ship's CPU. Fitting a set of five T2 RHML's is a bigger challenge.

I started looking at the Geddon because of a thought I had about an "ammunitionless" PVE ship. Something that could rat and mission without needing to keep supplying ammunition for it. The obvious options were drones and lasers. I looked at the missile options for the Geddon since they are there and from running various missions and combat sites on the test server, a missile fit Geddon will normally complete the content faster than a laser fit Geddon, but that defeats the idea of a weapon fit that doesn't need a constant resupply of ammo. If I decide to do this on the live server I'll probably compromise a little and choose faction crystals for the lasers, which will wear out, but I can make my own T1 crystals and convert them to faction crystals with LP's and a moderate amount of isk

I have never tried a shield tanked ship for ratting. I am open to any and all suggestions. I was training for a rattlesnake (I can fly it) but was told that VNI was still better.

I don't AFK rat for a few different reasons but I could not even if I wanted to. I prefer to play anyways so I am not worried about afk ratting. Carriers are a long way off but I will look at the rattlesnake. I can use T1 or meta cruise missile launchers and drones while I finish those 2 skills. I am just looking at options at this point and looking to try something besides VNI just to do it.

You do not lose any DPS, if you use range as your tank and your sentry drones are firing at the optimal. Unique bonus of Dominix allows you to use wardens II with 160 km optimal, over 100 optimal for curators and bouncers. Garde will have 50 km optimal and 50 km falloff. And you will still have 150 drone control range and 160 targeting range. If you fit no guns at all, your drone control range can exceed 170 km. But I like to keep 3 large guns fitted so I can keep drones focues on large targets, while guns fryes small targets, that burns those 100 + km toward you with 0 transversal speed.