Ships & Modules

As the title says... This ship really needs a damage bonus buff and it needs it now to coincide with overall gallente buff coming this winter.

Even with the buff to rails it will still do like 100 less dps than other marauders. I do understand that there will always be the worst, and if kronos has to be the worst dps marauder then so be it, but at least bring its dps up a notch. I think this can be best and most easily done by increasing the ship's damage bonus a little.

With hybrid rebalance, Vindicator needs its 37.5% damage buff put back down to 25%. After winter, you will get 1000 dps with 425's and 1600 dps with neutrons. Drones not even factored in there.

Some people are way too obsessed by what EFT tells them
I recently trained and bought myself a kronos , after using a paladin for a long time
my opinion a Kronos does it job (pve) just aswell as the other marauders
Except for the vargur i flown evey marauder now on different characters and in my opinion they all handle differently
the Kronos might be the slowest of all in completing missions but it is still a good pve ship and just like the paladin it excells against its natural enemies
and guess what with the moderate upcoming hybrid buff it will even be better
Learn how to fly it in pve all i can say

no , it needs its weapons to get fixed

There are very few missions where you can get away with MWD + Blasters in a mission....

I'm going to start this post by saying, I don't know anything about the Golem, and know very little about missiles.
So, I will probably not say anything intelligent about-it.
Having said that;

The OP's choise of weapons is actually fairly-legit...

I don't think anyone uses Arty on the Vargur (they don't even fit do they?).

On the Paladin, I think most people would ACTUALLY use T2 Pulses (w/Scorch) over Tachs. W/Scorch DPS is almost the same, but ranger is higher. W/Multi DPS is way higher than Tachs for close-range engagements. Not to mention, Pulses use WAY less PG, and Cap.

For the Kronos, nobody is going to us Blasters, 90% of Gallente pilots use Rails for missions (the other 10% are just trying-out Blasters and will be going-back to Rails once they realize how much faster they are).

Not sure why the T2 ROF rig though, I think most people go with the DMG rig, it doesn't matter too-much, but I think a comparison without the rig is more applicable, as some pilots will opt to use CCCs or ANPs or something-else...

One major consideration the OP forgot to take-into account is range-mods and DMG at-range. A Vargur will most-likely fit TEs in the lows with the Gyros. A smart Railgun pilot knows a Tracking-computer (or 2) are worth thier weight in gold. Some Amarr pilots use TCs too.

If you take-into account range-mods, graph the DPS profiles and compare-them you get a much better idea of how-much DPS each ship is ACTUALLY doing.
The Vargur's DPS looks great, but it only does that-much at optimal.
The Paladin out-DPSs the Varg with Multi and with Scorch, it does more DPS at any-range past 16km.
The Kronos out-DPSs the Varg anywhere past 26km, it doesn't out-DPS the Paladin until 60km though.

Over-all I think the Paladin is a little OP since Scorch is a little OP and you can switch between Multi/Scorch instantly. It could be argued however that this is ballanced by the fact that it only does EM/Therm.
Varg looks-good at-first but, the window where it out-DPSs things is smaller. It does have the plus that it can select dmg-type however.
Kronos def needs a buff as it currently stands, and I think it will still need a small dmg buff after the winter expansion to match-up with the others. It can also not select DMG types.
On missions where Kin/Therm are required, and the rats are typically over 40km, the Kronos is the top choise though.

Really, what it boils-down to is;
Where are you missioning?
What are the Rats' resists?
What range are they spread-out at?

Most serious missioners use a Nightmare/Paladin for EM/Therm, and a Mach/Varg for everything else.
I know lots of people use the Golem, and I'm pretty-sure it's good, but like I said, I don't know *** about it.
Different ships for different situations.
Unfortunately the Kronos has less situations where it accels.

of course it's lacking but you can't just give 7.5% dps to 1 ship and 5% to all the rest... well you can if it's a pirate ship but standardized t2 ships should all have the same bonuses.

Rails really need 10% bonus to rof on top of the dps bonus to be on even grounds with other weapon systems - too bad we're not getting it.

Hurrrr duuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrr.

you are just dumb if you cant compare some pve ships

btw vargur is the best, oh and torp golem sucky , little speed for target and torp dmg just dropped by 30+%
+vasted torps flying into the nothing after you kill that target

A nightmare is more effective in gallente space than the current kronos. After the buff, that might not be the case, but the kronos really is an anemic POS. A mach is even better in gallente space than the nightmare is. To be honest, you only really need to look at ranges between 5km and 50km, as that is where pretty much all of the rats are going to be. In this range, 3 TE's worth of falloff + the better tracking and damage types of autocannons make them superior, even with you fighting in falloff. Do remember, a mach/vargur at optimal + 1/2 falloff is still doing 80% of its dps... and when you have 70km falloff + 5km optimal you have more than enough effective dps in missions.

As for the great damage, anyone who doesn't use tach's on a nightmare or paladin is generally doing it wrong. Which means that they have full multifrequency damage out to about 40km (the only exception is it is generally better to take pulses against angels). You also usually have approx 40km falloff, meaning that optimal+falloff is about 60km. You are doing enough thermal damage to be effective, and even with the EM damage you are still outdpsing railguns. And there is really no excuse for a faction fit marauder to not break 1000dps at range. Heck, get rid of the useless web bonus for another damage bonus if that is what it takes, as it is, there is no reason, at all, to fly a kronos - even the dominix does a better job.

As to experience, I've flown missions in gallente space for several years, on and off, and used the kronos, domi, golem, nightmare, mach, maelstrom, and probably more that I've forgotten about. I honestly believe that gallente should be better in gallente space than anyone else... as it is, they are outdone by every single other race in their own space.

-Arazel