Ships & Modules

Hello all,

I've been using a rocket kestrel since it has a nice PG that allows me to fit all the modules I need nicely without needing any micro aux power cores or ancillary current router rigs due to awful fitting skills. Currently I'm using Meta 4 launchers+faction amm on it and can only reach around 100 DPS OH'd. Now my corpmates gave me a fit with t2 rocket launchers+t2 ammo. He claims it reaches 200 DPS which nearly twice my DPS on my current kestrel build.

Are t2 equipment really that good compared to meta4 that they'll double your DPS especially rockets? Also as a side note as of now I can only use missiles and rockets as of now and I'd like to try out other racial frigs that use missiles/rockets because using the kestrel and condor gets dull after the nth time of shipping out.

A key factor to bear in mind in DPS quotes is that they are often based on maxed out skills and fittings, in the case of your Kestrel the improvement might include Warhead Upgrades, Rapid Launch, Rocket Specialisation, Rockets itself, Caldari Frigate and so forth. The multiplicative nature of the skills, particularly if coupled with the right fittings, means that a very significant portion of the paper and real DPS is entirely due to skills.

I would not expect to see a vast change in you damage output between "Arbalest" launchers loaded with Faction munitions and T2 launchers with Rage, though against appropriate targets I would expect some improvement.

Ship skills like Caldari Frigate perhaps?

The answer is a qualified yes.

The "double" damage comes from mainly two sources. One, the accumulation of the multiple marginal bonuses of having higher skills. Ship skill level 5, high level missile support skills (rapid firing, missile launcher operation, warhead upgrades), as well as high levels in rocket specialization.

The second source is the t2 ammo. Rage rockets do significantly higher damage than t1 or faction ammo, meaning that you'll see the highest raw DPS in EFT or the ship fitting window. However, they come with significant damage application bonuses. But, if your target is webbed, using a mwd, painted, or its a big target, then the true dps does come quite close to the paper DPS, in which case using the t2 ammo makes an enormous difference.

You should really use EFT if you dont already. Then you can try out different fits, see how your skills affect them, and see how improving one skill or another improves your overall performance. Its almost certain that if you just trained the skills required for t2 rockets and fit the rage ammo, you would not quite fully reach the reported DPS, because the differences in the other skills are still significant.

Wow that's really a mouthful haha. I'll try to help.

1. It's not possible to know for certain if you can win a fight, you must know your ships strengths and weaknesses as well as other ships capabilities to know what you can take on. This comes with experience and knowledge, but even then you'll get surprised occasionally.

2. It is possible to slingshot an MWD frig with an AB frig, however 'possible' usually relies on the opponent being really bad. Remember that if you need to slingshot an MWD frig, it means it is kiting you in disruptor range, so their entire fit usually relies on piloting away from scram frigs therefore it's highly unlikely you'll slingshot a kiting ship.

3. It won't take too long too use blasters decently, you can get all your gunnery supports to III and Small Blasters to III in a short time and though it isn't perfect, you can make things happen even with low skills. Don't listen to the people that insist on perfect or near-perfect skills before going to PvP, it simply isn't true. That being said, it's alot easier to focus on one set of weapons and ships first so you have good skills to fall back on before training another weapon system, however gunnery support affects 3 different weapon systems vs missiles which only supports one. So you can either start training gunnery support for blasters and have medicore missiles and guns for awhile, or get some good missile support (all missile skills L4 minimum) before starting gunnery.

4. EFT or Eve Fitting Tool is a third-party program that allows you to plug your skills into it and test ship fittings with your skills before actually buying one, it also gives more information than the in-game fitting does.

5. If you're trying to kite at range simply stay further away from the gate to reduce the chance that someone scrams you. I'm a little confused though because you said brawler but you also said you're trying to pull range but a brawler fights at point blank so you shouldn't want to pull range.