Ships & Modules

G'day mate,

I'm only new at this game, not even a fortnight old as a clone yet, but I am very good with numbers and I have been trying out some fits that would work well and comparing them to others fits on Battle Clinic and various forums, and it depends greatly on what will give you the best milage, statically the Manticore (Caldari Stealth Bomber) and the Tangu come out on top for PVP in terms that they can adapt easily,

The Manticore is a very hard hitter once your skills are up in the lvl 4 - 5's especially if you are found of nuking things with the bomb, though due to the face that it's a bomber its only good against Crusiers and up (some Frigates to with high Target Painting skills and a tech 2 version, and due to the bomb you can deal with multiple enemies in the first few seconds and turn most small battles to your side, and in longer battles you will have one hell of a speed tank to protect you with a tech 2 MWD.

The Tangu is what everyone thinks is one of the better Cruiser's around, statistically that depends on what your using it for, when properly outfitting it can rival the DPS of a Battleship, and it has enough speed to tank bigger guns, and can be configured to have some impressive shields, still an extremely expensive ship to loose when that lucky shot does hit.

If your only fighting frigates and that though try a Caracal with a full compliment of Rapid Light Missile Launchers, you can pulp most people who are not suspecting that kinda DPS from a Cruiser.

Now I'm only new and just know the numbers so take this with grain of salt, that being said though Missiles are what I prefer to, and they do more damage up front as well, who cares about the 6 second travel time to do a 10000 volley hit in a normal sized ship, haha! Best of luck, let me know what you try, I am currently using a Caracal with RLM's as a PVP deterrer for when i undock from Jita and get the 4000 request to duel, funny when they run off once you open fire with that many shots, haha!

Id argue the Claymore command ship over the Nighthawk. It looks way cooler =P

Also, HAM legions are sexy.

Hey Dato,

I didn't know you were a low sec AU TZ Based corp. I probably would have been in touch earlier. I'll hit you up next time I'm online

Cheers for the info guys. Pretty much along the lines I was already thinking of although CS training takes a fair while but the Tengu/Legion are definitely on the list \o/

Caldari is a missile focused race, and that only race that have progression for missile user between Frigate to Titan plus T2 counterpart.

however there are few missile boat outside Caldari
Amarr T2 frigate/cruiser/BC (Assault frigate and Heavy Assault Cruiser)
Minimatar have few ships that is missile-focused as Typhoon, Bellicose and so (most T1, I think)

Then there are 2 pirate faction ships that are either missile focused, or have a bonus for missile.
Mordu Legion - brand new faction ships that will come out on summer expansion
Gurista - hybrid between Drone and Missile weapon system.


NOTE: thing you need to keep in mind, you need to have skill in Armour if you want to use Amarr T2, or Shield for other choice.

Missiles are in a horrible place right now. Here are the list of viable missile ships:

LML Heretic
Cruise Nano Phoon
And, Come June 3rd
Garmur
LML Orthrus
LML Crow is meh
Rocket Malediction has anemia DPS. Not really that great

All HML, and HAM platforms are complete ****- due to the fact that both of those missiles struggle to apply damage to anything. HML's in particular are worthless, because of the horrible application and anemic damage.

RLMs used to be a great weapon system for FW space. However after their nerf, they completely useless for solo / small gang. Their super long reload times make them completely unplayable- unless you are flying in a blob / have the numerical superiority to the enemy gang

The only ship a RLM caracal can kill with an entire clip, is a T1 frig. Any Inty / Af / Dictor / Tanked Dessi is going to tank the vast majority of your damage. Basically the RLM system allows the caracal to kill one T1 frig (that is lightly tanked) or a Dessi. After that have fun with your reload.

If you can describe for me a situation in which a T1 frig or destroyer is giong to try and 1v1 a cruiser, let me know. Normally what you see are frig / dessi blobs in FW space. The Reload time on RLM's make them a horrible weapon choice to use when fighting out numbered- as I had already stated. You need to have a blob.

Except you can kill jack with only half of your launchers going on a target. You are also still going to be locked into a damage type. Let me know how your CN scourge work against an Enyo / Ishkur / Hawk / Harpy.

Apparently I need to slap you across the face harder with this simple math.

1. Current RLM's require a reload time of 40 seconds. Please enlighten me, how that is somehow 'damage selection' when you are forced to spend 40 seconds of a fight reloading. In a situation when you are the small gang / solo pilot, 40 seconds is an eternity, and small ships will run you down, or flat out kill you by the time you reload into their resit hole. IE. If you have kin loaded, but need EM- that 40 seconds of 0 DPS is going to kill you.

2. No. The new RLM's do not do more damage than old rlms. Infact, they do less- as you are spending your time reloading for 40 seconds between shots. They have burst damage, but over an extended fight IE. more than 1 reload do far, far less DPS.

3. No. Grouping your launchers into 2 seperate groups fixes nothing. Again you have a 40 second reload time, and are doing less DPS compared to the old RLM ships.


4. RLM's are just too inflexible currently with a 40 sec reload. You can't change targets, change missiles or do anything quickly. RLM's are only useful in a blob, or when you have the numerical advantage.

35 or 40 seconds, of 0 DPS. In both situations as a solo / small gang ship- you are dead.

RHML's are quite possibly the only weapon system that is worse than RLMs. RHML"s get ZERO ship bonuses applied to them. HML's are horrible weapons, they literally have nothing going for them. At least Light missiles can apply damage to ships. On a BS especially, you are always better off using Cruise missiles

If you are going to be a dedicated missile user then the very first thing you should do is become familiar with the missile formula. The short version for dummies is:

Target's Signature * Missile Explosion Velocity/ Missile Explosion Radius = the speed a target must exceed to reduce the damage you see on EFT.

A LML ship with full skills would have a 255m/s Explosion Velocity and a 30m Explosion Radius on it's missiles. An Atron with MWD going would have a sig radius of 210m. Plug that in and you see that once the Atron exceeds 1785 m/s, damage will start to fall off.

Now look at Heavies to see why so many people feel they are bad. 144m/s Explosion Velocity and 116m Explosion Radius. Let's just use 125m as the 'standard' for a cruiser, and plug it in with a MWD. Once the Cruiser is going faster then 931m/s, it too will reduce the impact of the incoming salvos.

Once you understand the basic formula you can start to fit your ships to tweak it. I like ships that give a velocity explosion or velocity radius reduction as part of their bonus. Other things that can impact what you do:

Flare Rigs - speed up the explosion velocity
Rigor Rigs - Reduce the explosion radius
Target Painters - Increase the target's signature
Webs - Slow down the target.
Skirmish Links - A booster ship can lower the target's signature by as much as 35%. It can also speed up the target ship by the same.
Snake Implants - It gives the target ship a red paint job so it goes faster.
Halo Implants - It reduces the target ship's signature radius.
Crash Boosters - They reduce your missile's explosion radius at the risk of some side effects.
Missile Implants - Reduce explosion radius, increase explosion velocity, make missiles faster, increase ROF, etc.