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Fitting Arbitrator
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Rudolf Wagner
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#1 - 2012-06-18 19:14:40 UTC  |  Edited by: Rudolf Wagner
Hi, I previously had a post regarding the Coercer and Arbitrator, though all but one post was regarding the Coercer.
I have no idea what to fit the Arbitrator with. The suggestion I got was:

[Arbitrator, Level 2]
Drone Damage Amplifier II
[empty low slot]
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Medium Armor Repairer II

Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II
10MN Afterburner II

Small Tractor Beam I
Small Tractor Beam I
Salvager I
Civilian Gatling Pulse Laser, Civilian Pulse Crystal

Medium Drone Speed Augmentor I
Medium Anti-Kinetic Pump I
Medium Anti-Explosive Pump I


Hammerhead II x5
Hobgoblin II x5


I don't really know what to fit, but how about 2x turrets, 1 launcher and drone link augmentor in the high slots instead? If so, what kind of turrets and what kind of launcher should I get? Don't really know about low and medium slots, except for a propulsion module and at least one cap recharger.

Edit: Turrets are kind of confusing. The biggest small laser turret is Medium Beam Laser, and the biggest medium is Heavy Beam Laser...
Bill Serkoff2
Tachyon Technology
#2 - 2012-06-18 21:13:18 UTC
For the Arbitrator, turrets aren't going to give you any substantial amount of DPS; you'll almost surely bring your ISK/hour higher with some salvaging.

Turret names are indeed quite confusing. Beam lasers go like this, from lowest to highest power;

Small turrets:
Dual Light
Medium

Medium turrets:
Quad Light
Focused Medium
Heavy

Large turrets:
Dual Heavy
Mega
Tachyon

Pulses are very similar; you won't really have to worry too much about turrets, though, since you're sticking with a drone boat.

"The Cyclone and the Drake are two ships which will basically never be good for shield tanking, primarily because they have almost no lowslots in addition to shield tanking bonuses. " -Iam Widdershins
Ryelek d'Entari
Horizon Glare
#3 - 2012-06-18 21:17:26 UTC
With decent drone skills (read: scout drone operation V and ewar drone operation III+) you don't need a drone link augmentor on an arbitrator because your drone range is already plenty long enough to kite appropriate mission rats. You can add one if you want, but it's not going to buy you much in terms of actual utility.

Similarly, you can fit guns on an arbitrator but they're going to be a very small percentage of your dps (like 15% or less), and they force you to get much closer than your drones would otherwise allow.

Not really a good idea to mix turrets and missiles for a low-skilled pilot. Focus your skill points in one area or the other to start with and stick to your guns (haha).

The idea with a 2x tractor + salvager + 1 gun is as follows:

(1) shoot each rat (once) and then sic your drones on them. Done properly, the rats shoot at you rather than your drones, which is good.
(2) tractor in wrecks so you don't have to fly around as much, and salvage as you go

Using a civilian gun seems a little silly unless you're really tight on powergrid. Just use a long-range laser with long-range ammo for similar effect.

However, the suggested fit you list is not really mission-oriented because it's using a passive omni-resist module (adaptive membrane). Instead, use one or two active armor hardeners, appropriate to the type of rats in the mission. For amarr/blood raiders space, that's an EM hardener and a thermal hardener.

CCP agrees that lasers have wacky names, I think they're looking at the naming convention in the next patch.

If you want to fire lasers for pew pew and don't really care about salvaging as you go, here's a simple arbitrator fit. For best results, skill for Drone Interfacing IV, Scout Drone Operation V, and use tech II drones:



[Arbitrator, bare bones]

Drone Damage Amplifier I
Medium Armor Repairer I
Armor Thermic Hardener I
Armor EM Hardener I

Experimental 10MN Afterburner I
Cap Recharger I
Cap Recharger I
Cap Recharger I

Focused Medium Beam Laser I, Microwave M
Focused Medium Beam Laser I, Microwave M
Salvager I
Drone Link Augmentor I (or a tractor beam)

[Empty Rig slot]
[Empty Rig slot]
[Empty Rig slot]


5x Hobgoblin I
5x Hammerhead I


Start with this and embellish to taste. You can upgrade all the tech 1 bits to meta variants or tech II as able, for better performance/fitting/price. Or upgrade to bigger lasers (medium beam lasers), though it starts to get tight on powergrid. Add rigs to taste. But remember your guns are there to poke the rats and get their attention, the drones do all the work.

It's not going to be cap stable while running the armor repairer, unless you fill the rig slots with 3xCCC. But by paying a little attention and only running the repairer when needed, you'll find you're able to manage.
Bill Serkoff2
Tachyon Technology
#4 - 2012-06-18 22:12:23 UTC
Ryelek d'Entari wrote:
snippity

Listen to this man. I usually fit an EANM, but with low skills you're definitely better off with two hards.

"The Cyclone and the Drake are two ships which will basically never be good for shield tanking, primarily because they have almost no lowslots in addition to shield tanking bonuses. " -Iam Widdershins
Rudolf Wagner
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#5 - 2012-06-19 09:45:04 UTC  |  Edited by: Rudolf Wagner
Thanks for the replies.

Won't two active hardeners (EM and thermal) as well as an armor repairer be too constraining on the capacitor?
Could replacing the armor hardeners with Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane + Damage Control be a viable option?

Edit: What's the difference between Armor Em Damage Resistance and EM dmg resistance bonus?
Edit2: What types of missile launchers are used by cruisers?
Voith
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#6 - 2012-06-19 12:28:23 UTC
Use a large cap battery, not Cap Res.
Lunkwill Khashour
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#7 - 2012-06-19 13:59:10 UTC
Rudolf Wagner wrote:
Thanks for the replies.

Won't two active hardeners (EM and thermal) as well as an armor repairer be too constraining on the capacitor?
Could replacing the armor hardeners with Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane + Damage Control be a viable option?

Edit: What's the difference between Armor Em Damage Resistance and EM dmg resistance bonus?
Edit2: What types of missile launchers are used by cruisers?


npc cruisers fire heavy missiles. An afterburner will help to reduce incoming damage.

In an Arbitrator, your damage comes from drones. Scout drone V (for T2 drones) is a necessity as is Drone Interfacing IV (just read what it does) . I wouldn't fit resistance rigs since you'll want different resistances depending on what NPC's you'll be facing.


[Arbitrator, PVE]

Medium Armor Repairer II
Armor EM Hardener I
Armor Thermic Hardener I
Drone Damage Amplifier I

Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II
Experimental 10MN Afterburner I
Large Peroxide Capacitor Power Cell

Small Tractor Beam I
Small Tractor Beam I
Salvager I
[Empty High slot]

Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump I
[Empty Rig slot]


Hammerhead II x5

This is stable and has room for a weapon (choose whatever you want) and a third rig.
Ryelek d'Entari
Horizon Glare
#8 - 2012-06-19 17:18:49 UTC
Rudolf Wagner wrote:
Thanks for the replies.

Won't two active hardeners (EM and thermal) as well as an armor repairer be too constraining on the capacitor?
Could replacing the armor hardeners with Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane + Damage Control be a viable option?

Edit: What's the difference between Armor Em Damage Resistance and EM dmg resistance bonus?
Edit2: What types of missile launchers are used by cruisers?


Active hardeners don't use much capacitor - about as much as a damage control, slightly more. The armor repairer uses the bulk of your cap and is the only thing that you should have to actively manage. A cruiser-sized ship should definitely be able to manage running two active hardeners and a damage control, which is certainly an option.

Because of the way that resistance multiplies with itself, low-value resistance modules (e.g. armor plating) are not nearly as effective as high-value resistance modules. You'll find that with 2x active hardeners, you won't have to run your repairer as often as if you have passive hardeners. So, although the active hardeners do use cap, they actually save cap since, provided you use your armor repairer intelligently and don't just perma-run it, you'll use it less.

For example, just to toss out some phony numbers:

(1) your ship's base armor resist to EM is, say, 50%
(2) you equip a tech I EM hardener, which is also 50% resistance

Your total damage taken is (1 - 0.5)*(1-0.5) = 25% of the raw damage. So if a rat hits you for 400 damage, you only take 100.

Let's say for argument's sake, that your repairer costs 50 GJ per cycle and repairs 100 damage per cycle. One cycle of repairer will fix up that damage. If you get hit 10 times and have to run your repairer 10 times to compensate, it cost you 500 GJ. In the meantime, you ran your EM armor hardener for a few cycles, consuming a minimal amount of cap in the process. *

Now let's say you're using a passive EM Plating I with a resistance value of only 20%. That same 400 raw damage from the rat becomes 400 * (1-0.5)*(1-0.20) = 160 damage. Now if you get hit 10 times your repairer will have to run 16 times to repair you up - costing 800 GJ, taking longer, and potentially not being able to keep up.




*for reference, a small armor repper actually costs 40GJ every 6 seconds. An EM hardener costs 30 GJ, but only every 20 seconds.
You can see how that works out.
Bill Serkoff2
Tachyon Technology
#9 - 2012-06-19 18:42:14 UTC
Rapid Light Missile launchers, Heavy Missile launchers, and Heavy Assault Missile launchers are used on cruisers. However, if you're going to stick with Amarr, you won't need to train missiles at all until Tech 2.

"The Cyclone and the Drake are two ships which will basically never be good for shield tanking, primarily because they have almost no lowslots in addition to shield tanking bonuses. " -Iam Widdershins
Lady Darkmoon
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#10 - 2012-06-20 00:01:12 UTC
Unless you plan to fly Pilgrim/Curse later, why would you choose to mission with an Amarr droneboat?

Amarr doesn't have any battlecruisers or battleships that are good with drones (other than basic support, mostly for gunning down frigate rats that you CBA shooting with your main guns).

And Pilgrim/Curse are NOT good mission runners. They are pretty much straight-up PvP boats.

To be honest, if missions is your goal, you'd be alot better of training your laser skills, focusing on getting to tech 2 lasers so you can use mega pulse II's when you get to your Apoc.

Personally I use Punisher -> Omen -> Harbinger -> Apoc -> Napoc.

Sure, the Omen has pretty crap tank, but you can fit it with beam lasers and an afterburner and just kite the rats while blasting them from outside their range, i.e. you don't really need a tank since you don't take damage.

If you focus on the drone skills now with the Arbitrator then your gunnery skills will be severely lacking when you upgrade to a Harbinger.

I found the Arbitrator to only do three things... mine, bait can flippers and cheap, expendable ship if you want to go ratting in lowsec for fun. Using Tracking Disruptors and drones you can make alot of potential low-sec gankers regret attacking (as long as they are using turrets anyways). Most people regard the Arbitrator as junk, but it's good for a few things and it's cheap.

However, mission running is not exactly advisable with the Arbitrator if you are new and still skilling your way through the first weaponsystem as well as upgrading to new ships.
Lunkwill Khashour
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#11 - 2012-06-20 18:48:50 UTC
Lady Darkmoon wrote:
Unless you plan to fly Pilgrim/Curse later, why would you choose to mission with an Amarr droneboat?

Amarr doesn't have any battlecruisers or battleships that are good with drones (other than basic support, mostly for gunning down frigate rats that you CBA shooting with your main guns).

And Pilgrim/Curse are NOT good mission runners. They are pretty much straight-up PvP boats.

To be honest, if missions is your goal, you'd be alot better of training your laser skills, focusing on getting to tech 2 lasers so you can use mega pulse II's when you get to your Apoc.

Personally I use Punisher -> Omen -> Harbinger -> Apoc -> Napoc.

Sure, the Omen has pretty crap tank, but you can fit it with beam lasers and an afterburner and just kite the rats while blasting them from outside their range, i.e. you don't really need a tank since you don't take damage.

If you focus on the drone skills now with the Arbitrator then your gunnery skills will be severely lacking when you upgrade to a Harbinger.

I found the Arbitrator to only do three things... mine, bait can flippers and cheap, expendable ship if you want to go ratting in lowsec for fun. Using Tracking Disruptors and drones you can make alot of potential low-sec gankers regret attacking (as long as they are using turrets anyways). Most people regard the Arbitrator as junk, but it's good for a few things and it's cheap.

However, mission running is not exactly advisable with the Arbitrator if you are new and still skilling your way through the first weaponsystem as well as upgrading to new ships.


If you stick with missions and Amarr ships, lasers are better than drones. However, should you learn to love exploration, the Pilgrim is a very good ship. Moreover, Amarr ships tend to have reasonable drone bays. With good drone skills a Navy Geddon will outdps and other Amarr BS. I do recommend against training up lasers and drones at the same time so you'll have to choose one to focus first. If you choose drones and want to mission, you'll have to upgade your Arbitrator to a Myrmidon or Dominix.