Missions & Complexes

Yeah they can die.

However the new RS Gecko will have 3.75 times the HP plus you will likely drop the MJD for a MWD or AB on the ship and be able to meet it half way.

Packing 2 x bouncers 2 x Gecko and 5 x Warrior/Hob II gives a spare gecko and some lights for emergencies.

If i want to use the Geckos, my preferred ship right now is an Ishtar or VNI. With either ship I can get 850 dps with just drones using a combination of 2 Geckos, 2 Hammerheads, and 1 Hob. My Ishtar can easily tank L4s, and I find it more enjoyable to know I 'm killing all that **** with a T2 cruiser.
One other thing to think about, Machariel can already do arounf 1400 turret dps, 2 Geckos compliment it perfectly.

Depends on your goals. If you're new to missions, then your focus won't be on warp speed rigs. If your eyes bleed from missions and you believe that gank is tank, then you can probably find a few setups/battleships that will work. At a minimum, a Mach should do well. Remember, you can decline multiple missions per 4 hour block if your faction standings are high enough (and as long as your standings toward the agent and/or the agent's corp don't go below -0.2,) so there's no reason to do missions that are too "dangerous" because you swapped tank/gank rigs for warp speed rigs.


True, but they do get a 10% warp speed bonus over regular battleships. Woot.

To answer the tile: No

There are better missile platforms than caldary for running PvE content. Granted, some of the "edge" over caldary comes from split weapon system, like, for example fleet typhoons ability to field 5 sentry drones in addition to doing slightly more damage with missiles (7.5% damage bonus per level against 5% RoF bonus translates into 8.25 effective launchers for navy typhoon against raven's 8 effective launchers)

The new Mordus BS has slightly more base missile damage but it is still badly outperformed by properly set up navy typhoon.

Hm - seems like the difference can be indeed noticeable. Looking at the linked devblog and taking a situation in one of the popular mission hubs.
Distance to gate - 11 AU
In system typical warp distance ~20 AU
Adjacent system typical warp distance ~110 AU

Increasing the warp speed from 2 to 2.2 saves you 10 seconds in system, 24 seconds in that huge adjacent system and 28 seconds if mission is 2j out (further system a bit smaller)
Increasing the warp speed from 2 to 2.8 saves you 28 seconds in system, 76 seconds! in the adjacent system and 82 seconds if mission is 2j out. Although ofc a single T2 rig would increase the warp speed only to 2.5, but still, the difference is substantial. And a T1 navy BS can actually run 2x T2 rigor 1x T2 warp speed rigs. Although such a setup can require some quite shiny compromises in the tanking section as it hits CPU pretty hard for majority of mission setups.

The difference between 2.8 AU/s and 2.2 AU/s (latter being marauders) is still noticeable but not quite as dramatic. 18 seconds in system, 52 seconds in adjacent system and 54 seconds 2 jumps out. Golem has somewhat harder time dropping the rigor, though, as it has only 2 rig slots to start with so the options are 2x T2 rigor against 1x T2 rigor + 1x T2 warp speed. Painter bonus can allow one to compensate by fitting more painters (which are a bit better now that their cycle time is 5 sec).

Losing one T2 rigor for a Golem would mean missile sig going from ~160m up to ~200m - which, even with painters would probably cost you more or less about 1 extra minute per mission for all the frigates you did not kill in one volley. More of an issue if you are up against spider drones or elite frigs ofc. And if you are using missiles against these instead of putting your drones on them.

For a missile ship I believe the averageish blitzing rate is approx 5-6 missions per hour I believe, but I have not done the numbers after the warp speed changes for missions so that might have changed things quite a bit (although after the changes BS should be somewhat slower than before). Not counting the missions for which you use some other ship like interceptor or T3.

About using more warp speed vs gank\tank on mission ships, my instinct says its more like a tie rather than actually making a noticeable difference (unless you travel to multiple agents in a 3-5 jump radius).

All battleships no matter the weapon type can use dps\damage rigs. Quick\generic examble without getting into many details :

If i remove the T2 flare\rigor rigs from the TFI & use warp rigs instead, granted I will reduce travel time from source to destination and back. If that time is say 40 secs then that equals aproximmately with 5 cruise missile volleys. If said mission has minimum 5 npc battleships it will most likely take me 1 volley more for each one to take down since I now have reduced damage per volley.

I'm not sure, though more warp speed is a no-brainer, depending what you sacrifice. I don't feel comfortable sacrificing dmg,dps rigs for it, the ascendancy set looks like a logical step but its too expensive in relation to what I personally use right now (halo).

Problem with that thinking is that the Gecko as used by a rattlesnake can tank almost as much as the rattlesnake itself. Speed/sig tanking battleship class weapons while backing that with huge EHP for the times the transversal falls too close to 0 against the rats. No the problem with the Gecko on a rattlesnake is it can one shot mission triggers smaller than battleships. Not that it can't take a beating.