Missions & Complexes

If you want to stick with drones, training up some gunnery and going for a Navy Dominix is a fairly obvious choice. Those things are just mean right now.

But then if you're going to train up gunnery, you are probably better off taking your Gallente training and applying it towards a Machariel.

It would. Especially if you have decent shield tanking skills.

Edit: it most likely would. Whether drones are still as awesome after aggression changes remains to be seen. The damage increase on DDAs will be nice either way.

I have my Navy Dominix armor tanked. This frees my mid slots for three omnidirectional tracking links and I still have room for three damage amps in the lows.

I am worried about the new AI as well. If it's just where they make mission rats randomly aggro drones it will make heavy drones not usable but sentry drones should still work. I can only hope for the best.


I wouldn't worry about the T2 guns at first because most of your damage is with the drones. There are a few fits out there with a thin tank that have high gun DPS but I wouldn't use them solo mission running. Of course you will have to decide what you want to do... I can only recommend from my personal experience.

You should have good drone skills but I'm guessing with you flying the Ishtar you already have that. Gallente BS 5 is good to have because of the 10% bonus to drone DPS and HP.



Here is my Domi fit

[Dominix Navy Issue, Level 4 Missions]
Ammatar Navy Large Armor Repairer
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Armor Kinetic Hardener II
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

Omnidirectional Tracking Link II
Omnidirectional Tracking Link II
Omnidirectional Tracking Link II
Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II

Drone Link Augmentor II
Drone Link Augmentor II
425mm Railgun II, Lead Charge L
425mm Railgun II, Lead Charge L
425mm Railgun II, Lead Charge L
425mm Railgun II, Lead Charge L

Large Capacitor Control Circuit I
Large Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Large Auxiliary Nano Pump I


Hobgoblin II x10
Hammerhead II x5
Garde II x5
Bouncer II x5


Edit

I found this post that looks like a pretty decent fit that has good DPS with guns (277 Lead, 416 EFT AM).

Vilnius Zar Navy Domi

The upside of this fit is that it does have extra DPS over my armor fitting (133 vs 277 with Lead and 416 vs 200 AM)

The downside it only has one DLA so you might have to motor to some rats to get within range. Also it only has one tracking link in the mids and requires cap booster charges.

I haven't tried the fit so I don't know how much of an effect two less tracking links will have. I don't like using cap booster charges but some people don't mind so that would be a personal preference.

I fit mine on how I like to play. I fly my Dominix when I want to relax a bit during missions. It has more tank and not quite as much DPS as it could have. When I want to run though missions faster I fly my Machariel. It has more DPS and completes missions faster but requires much more pilot input.

Don't get me wrong my Dominix fit isn't an AFK setup but I can just sit in one spot next to my drones and monitor them. If they start taking damage I pull them in till aggro changes to me. With my Machariel I have to orbit and move around because much of the tank is from speed and killing things quickly.

I don't fly the Nightmare yet but I do know it's best with rats that are weak to EM or thermal. You don't get to chose your damage type with lasers. Even so I'm training for it at the moment just because it looks like an awesome ship. I can't wait to try it out!

As for the Machariel I have flown that quite a bit. It's is a nice ship and you have a choice of damage types with projectile ammo. The Machariel is one of the best for completing missions fast since it puts out so much DPS and can also hit targets far away. Mine puts out almost 1k gun DPS with non faction ammo and has a 72 km falloff.

I recommend waiting till your core and shield skills are max or very close to it before flying either but that is just my opinion. When you say "better" are you looking for fast mission complete times or an easier to manage ship?

When I was talking about needed high Core AND Shield skills I was referring to mostly the Machariel since I know that ship. I'm sure much of that also applies to the Nightmare but I don't have personal experience with that ship.

When I was talking about core skills I mean the ones on the "Core Competency" certificate. Off hand I couldn't say exactly what ones are critical or not but I would say skills that affect capacitor and navigation would be critical to a Machariel. Capacitor skills are so important because with max capacitor skill a properly fitted Machariel will only have about three minutes of cap for the shield booster. Navigation skills because part of the Machariel's tank is it's speed and agility. Also skills that affect afterburners such as "Fuel Conservation" and "Acceleration Control" would be important.

The shield skills would be the ones on the active shield tanking certificate with the exception of "Shield Upgrades" and the four compensation skills like "Kinetic Shield Compensation". Shield upgrades is for extenders and rechargers and these aren't used on the mach. The four shield compensation skills only affect when active hardeners are off. Just to be clear I'm not talking about the skill called "Shield Compensation" that effects shield booster cap use.


Missions bring in fairly decent ISK per hour but also remember you have to have fun or you'll never want to play. I would first try and figure out exactly what ship you want to fly. Any properly fitted faction battleship will chew through missions fairly quickly with the right skills.

The difference between ships is how you have to fly them. Do you want to actively fly around in the mission while killing rats when at the same time you're watching your shields and pulsing the shield booster?.... Or would you rather something cap stable where you can sit in one place fire missiles/ guns or use drones and tank all the damage? Think about this because you would regret training for a ship that you later found out that it wasn't fun to fly.


TLDR : The Machariel and Nightmare will do missions slightly faster but research the ship and make sure it's what you want to fly before spending months of training. As a minimum you need most of the skills in the "Improved certificate" for "Active Shield Tanking", "Core Competency" and "High Velocity Helmsman". Ideally have "Elite" certificates when flying these ships.

Yea I wasn't paying attention when I was writing here and a mission griefer came into my mission. Oh well he can wait there and waste his time because I didn't bite. I've been thinking about moving to either Amarr or Minmatar space where it's less crowded.

I too like the looks of lasers so that's why I'm training for the Nightmare. I've been told that most missions in Amarr have you going up against rats that are weak to EM.... Just something I've been told but it makes sense in the game. In Caldari space many of the rats are Serpentis or Guristas but occasionally we I'll get missions against Blood Raiders.


From what I've read about the Nightmare it has cap issues. I think many Amarr ships do because of the lasers. The navy domi fit I posted is almost cap stable and if you want to change to a T2 CCC it is.


PVP in a Machariel... I know it happens a lot but in a billion ISK hull I couldn't do it. Now the Hurricane... I love it!

Machariel makes l4 missions too easy - like doing l1 mission in a destroyer. it's just a joke at 700m/s (1k o/h) and you only need faction gyros and a gist b ab. 80% of missions I don't even need to cycle the booster due to speed. Don't say things like "I like to perma tank" though, that's NOT what you do in a machariel.

You'll get bored quickly because missions will just be too easy. Minmatar are no longer THE race for pvp so bear that in mind too.

Gal/min is a nice choice of crosstrain.

Cu