Ships & Modules

Apex fleet (at least in 0.0) in around 2006 was composed, almost entirely, of 249km battleships.

Then BoB deployed something like 50 dreads into a single engagement (we thought we had a lot of dreads at the time and BoB deployed more than ten times what we had). So many dreads in a single operation did not immediately change the "doctrine" because there were very few Alliances who could have brought such weight of capitals to bear, if you weren't fighting BoB you didn't really need to worry about it.

Even after RMR and the race to Steve BS were still the mainstay - though by the time we were taking on Lotka Volterra the ideal range had dropped somewhat, 150km was deemed sufficient (which resulted in reasonable DPS while still being able to fit EHP should Orange Species (or any of a number of other watchlisted pilots) be online (Doomsday's being AoE and cynoable at the time)).

RMR - Red Moon Rising was the expansion which first expanded the Capital Ship line, prior to RMR only Dreads were available. It added Carriers at least, and I'm pretty sure it added Motherships (Supercarriers) and Titans too (though it was a little while ago).

Steve - Steve was the first player owned Titan in game, an Avatar class built by ASCN which narrowly beat BoB's first to completion. It was also the first Titan to be killed and is therefore commemorated in game in a number of ways.

Cynoable Doomsday - One of the first Doomsday Device nerfs was the removal of a Titan's ability to fire the weapon through a proxy. Rather than risking the Titan itself it was possible to warp a cyno ship (a ship equipped with a Cynosural Field Generator) to the target location, light the beacon and pump the full effect of the AoE Doomsday to that ship.


I am not the best person to tell you what everyone else had, I was an industrial character without access to manufacturing lines or BPs and unable to mine effectively most of the time. My ratting income was not terrible and noone else in the Alliance could believe I was ratting in a Thorax for much of my time out there. I did have (I think) three Armageddon class Battleships, one Dominix class and one Megathron class out there by the time we were fighting Lotka Volterra, the Dominix was my ratter at the time, the Megathron my "fun" ship and the Armageddons my fleet BS. The Armageddons cost me approximately 55 mil each (hulls only), as did the Dominix, and I got the 'thron for 90 or so. I fitted the Armageddons primarily from loot which had little value in our space (1600mm Cryst Carb plates for example) as it wasn't until later that I had T2 guns... or money...
I know other pilots who ratted in Navy Ravens and had many ships ready to replace their fleet BS but with myself at one end of the spectrum and them at the other I would guess that the average was somewhere in the middle.