Missions & Complexes

I would like people who have flown these ships to chime in on what you think would be able to blitz L4 missions fastest in Minny space as I need to grind up standings on a char to sell after they can anchor pos in .7 space

I fly a Vargur, seems quick, but another fella I run with seems just a bit faster to clear a pocket in his Mach and certainly gets better bounties.

I have heard many good things about Tengu, but never read of any direct comparisons with the other pve love child, the Mach.

So please list pro's and con's for both as my pve main is just about L5 in all skills for both ships and I would like your valued input in this decision.

Thanks

tengu is tank with some gank attached ... pretty idiot-proof for mission running.

machariel is gank with some tank attached ... much quicker for most but sometimes need to be careful in the high DPS output missions. Also need to be awake when flying machariel and the little guys get inside your projectile wall-of-death ... at least awake enough to pit the drones onto them.

Tengu is pretty ugly, along with most T3s, and mach is awesomely beautiful.

Tengu is much easier to spell than machariel.

Tengu takes less training time to get the most out of than machariel.

Tengu is for little boys, while Machariel is for us real women.

'Bout it I think.

Er, what? I'm reading so much wrong stuff here.

If you're blitzing, Mach hands down. It is also SHORTER to train for (don't need cruiser V, thanks).

You don't need the tank if you're blitzing (I get by with 2 omni invulns and 1 x-l shield booster easily). The DPS of the Mach is higher than that of the tengu. You don't need to change ammo each time you switch to killing frigs or wait for target painter cycles, you simply alpha frigs from 70km away.

This really is rather dependent upon what people think of as "acceptable" skills to use these ships and opinions vary on the topic. So let's see what it takes to train this stuff up.

Note: This is based upon +5 implants, with mapping to perc + will -- ships & weapons spec. Being as sub-systems use 2 different orders on these - the SC "takes a hit" for training but this won't change the fact that the Tengu is faster and easier to get into at "decent levels" - as you'll see.

Mach takes Gallente + Minmatar at battleship level. (doubled the training - 1 set of training for each race so 2x)

Frigates 4 = 2d 19h 2m 46s
Cruisers 4 = 6d 23h 36m 34s
Battleships 4 = 11d 4h 10m 32s
Total: 20d 22h 49m 52s

Compared to level 4's with a SC:
Frigates 4 = 1d 9h 31m 18s
Cruisers 5 = 19d 18h 4m 24s
SC's 4 = 3d 11h 48m 17s
Prop + Offense Sub-systems 4 = 1d 9h 31m 18s (yes, BOTH subsystems to 4 in a bit over 1 day)
the other 3 at 4 = 2d 20h 34m (yes, 3 subsystems all at 4)
Total: 28d 21h 29m 17s

Difference: 7d 22h 39m 25s - mach wins!
So - ship wise, you seem correct but let's get to where the painful part is - weapons.

The Machariel needs large projectile guns.
Tengu needs "medium" (HML, HAM) missiles.

T2 is generally agreed upon to be what you want to fit on these classes of ships and getting T2 weapons is radically different between missiles and guns.

Support skills wise - missiles and guns... meh - no big diff. T2 fitting? Big difference in training as follows - we'll "expedite" by only training up for Auto-cannons.

Small Projectiles 5 = 3d 22h 48m 52s
Small AC Spec 4 = 2d 2h 16m 58s
Medium Projectiles 5 = 11d 20h 26m 38s
Medium AC Spec 4 = 3d 11h 48m 17s
Large Projectiles 5 = 19d 18h 4m 24s
Large AC Spec 4 = 5d 14h 5m 16s
Total: 46d 17h 30m 25s
Welcome to T2 large AC's - without training T2 Artillery.

Standard Missiles 3 = 5h 55m 32s
Heavy Missiles 5 = 11d 20h 26m 38s
Heavy Assault Missiles 5 = 11d 20h 26m 38s
Heavy Missile Spec 4 = 3d 11h 48m 17s
Heavy Assault Spec 4 = 3d 11h 48m 17s
Total: 35d 22h 25m 22s
Welcome to T2 medium missiles - BOTH at spec'd.

The Difference: 10d 19h 5m 3s - tengu wins by a huge margin - double the specialization.

All told, even with that double spec - you're still looking at over 3 days "tengu wins" with their respective skills at 4. Taking out over 15 days for "halving" the missile spec's and it's no contest on which one is easier to get into and use.

Missile skills do NOT need the lower level specialization to train the next step's spec. Guns do. That adds a hell of a lot of time onto guns over training missiles. Especially when comparing medium weapons to large.

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Yes the mach is an excellent mission runner but getting gunnery skills up - it is a lot more work and if you pushed ship skills to 5... The mach, with 2 battleships to 5 - takes one hell of a lot longer to train for.

Is the mach "better?" - many agree yes with the caveat that the tengu is one hell of a lot more flexible for uses -AND- right up there with the mach for performance.

You don't need t2 guns for a mach, whereas tengu you need them for scourge fury.

How many missions spawn at 110km? Only one I can think off in minnie space which has a spawn that far away is Massive Attack. And no, tengus do not align much faster than a mach. And put an MWD on your mach please.

Care to share your fit, goose99? Let's do a few EFT comparisons. Not being offensive, I just would like to back up my information with a few numbers/graphs and I'd like to compare them with yours.

edit: Anyone else is free to share their tengu fits as well.

Rack of 6 hml, 4 cn bcs, t2 rigors. Pretty standard stuff. Focus less on EFT, more in game.

there was a guy who quoted some very short mission completion times with a tengu , basically the tengu has 110 km range and can kill triggers only.
OTOH if you need to kill everything(or everything up to a certain point) I'd say go for mach.

So here we go.

Here's a screenshot of the stats for the Tengu.
http://i.imgur.com/P1owP.jpg

And the Mach:
http://imgur.com/6MGQW

Now for a graph of them shooting a BC (I used a simple Cyclone as placeholder) with resists turned off and all ships stationary, so explosion velocity does not play a factor in this comparison.

http://imgur.com/JVRuC

Notes:
- Drones are all disabled in these screenshots, although I should mention that the Mach has the capability of fielding up to 4 sentry drones, or up to 5 regular small/medium/heavy drones.
- All examples are with all V's, no implants.

So now for some comparison.

DPS
- Mach does 1083 dps at optimal, range is 4.4km + 75km falloff.
- Tengu does 715 dps up to ~120km, its max range.
- According to the graph when all ships are completely stationary, the Mach outdpses a stationary target at ranges up to 54km, at which point the Tengu starts outdpsing the Mach. At an average range of 30km, the Mach does 970dps over the Tengu's normal 715dps, a full 33% increase in dps.
- When shooting a frigate moving at 400m/s, the Mach completely outdpses the Tengu at all ranges if the Tengu sticks to Scourge Fury. If the Tengu chooses to switch to CN Scourge (better than precision) then the Tengu does better dps at 100km, though the Mach cannot lock this far anyway.
- Assuming worst case scenario for shooting a BC, the Mach still outdpses the Tengu between 12km and 60km.

Speed and aligning
- If both ships are mwding (I believe most Tengus use an AB, but we shall use an MWD for this comparison's sake), the Tengu moves at 1250m/s while the Mach moves at 1505m/s.
- With MWD's off, the Tengu aligns in 5.4 seconds while the Mach aligns in 7.8 seconds.

Tank
- This is slightly irrelevant as as long as you can tank the mission, you have a good enough tank. But for comparison's sake, the Tengu has a tank of 238/359 while the Mach has a tank of 220/391. MWD's off, obviously. Both ships have an option of switching to AB's to help speed tank a little better, although this helps the Tengu more than the Mach for obvious reasons.

Misc
- With MWD's off and permarunning the shield boosters, the Mach has a cap life of 4m 33s while the Tengu has 4m 5s.


Notes
- Missiles have a travel time and take a while before actually applying their damage. This can result in wasted weapon cycles for inexperienced missioners who do not realise that the previous salvo will kill the target in due time.
- The Mach obviously cannot hit targets that have managed to get under its guns (usually frigs). For this he has drones which aren't included in the above graphs and screenshots anyway.
- Using Scourge Fury on frigs achieves much lower dps. This may be irrelevant as it may still be enough to alpha them, but I am not sure about this. If not, the Tengu is even slower as it will have to change ammo every time it engages frigates.




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Tl;dr comparison
- Mach has better dps than the Tengu up to 54km. I would argue that in almost all missions, targets spend most of their time within this range. If you are at >50km, you spend most of your time alphaing frigs while burning in, so all extra dps that the Tengu has is wasted. The only exception to this rule that I can think of is the l4 mission Massive Attack, which has one spawn at about 100km away that the Tengu can engage from the get-go while the Mach will have to burn about 40km before engaging.
- Mach applies instant damage which means you don't have to wait for missile time before doing mission objectives/taking gates/etc. This factor is small but adds up.
- Speed wise the Mach is 255m/s faster than the Tengu allowing it to burn around faster, pick up objectives faster etc.
- Align wise the Tengu is 2.4s faster to enter warp. Also a small factor but adds up.
- Training time wise, the Tengu NEEDS t2 missile launchers to use t2 missiles and obviously requires Caldari Cruiser V, a rather long train. The Mach does not need t2 AC's (although they account for up to 8% [10% in rare cases] dps) or any Battleship V to still be the beast it is.


Final personal impression
If you are looking for the best ship for pure isk/time spent missioning, the Mach is the winner. However, the Tengu certainly does come close.
I should also remark that missioning in a Mach is mindblowingly simple and efficient - you warp in, approach the next gate and F1 everything. If however you are looking for something that is good but is also fun, I will admit that the Tengu is much more enjoyable to fly.


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If anyone has any criticisms please feel free to add them.

The only thing I don't like about my Tengu is that it takes longer to pop BS rats than it did flying a BS. That's about it. Without that, I love the Tengu, hands down.