Ships & Modules

There is no suggestion offered to be considered a Features & Ideas thread. Moved to Ships & Modules.

This is always baffled me. A rocket Flycatcher can sport a similar tank (more EHP, higher sig) to a Sabre, is almost as mobile as a Sabe, is easy to fit like a Sabre, and has better damage application than a Sabre. All I can guess is that the Sabre was the #1 choice for so long (Flycatcher only got this good recently) that it's got a lot of momentum behind it.

i like whelp eris, one diction launcher and the rest dps, just buzz around blasting out that 600+ dps until someone sniffs in your direction. sabre is too 1337, hipsters fly eris.

Reddit seems to have better banter - it's been discussed recently on there.

The Sabre isn't the best interdictor for killing ceptors or dropping bubbles and escaping again. It's a legacy thing that people keep assuming the sabre is best.

The Flycatcher can achieve over 30k EHP with overheated resist modules so it's a better fleet tackler, and the heretic has beetter damage application and range for killing ceptors.

The eris... well the eris is a thing...

Yeah, fitting is at the core of imbalance between the dictors.

As what comes to the popularity of the Sabre, it didn't vane with the bubble launcher changes. It is the top ranked ship, not just the dictor, by a fair margin. No other dictors even in the top 10 on zkill.

The Sabre is probably still the best overall Interdictor, though the rebalance did create more room for the others to compete with it and the Heretic and Flycatcher can both outperform it in certain situations.

For fleet work where your job is to bubble and get out, the Sabre and Flycatcher are the best choices. The Sabre can get off grid faster (and the best way not to get your dictor killed in a fleet fight is to not be on grid), while the Flycatcher has a thicker buffer and holds up better under reps if you're in a fleet where your logi will be close enough to catch you. The Heretic only has three low slots, so it actually ends up with the same raw buffer as a fleet-fit Sabre while being significantly slower. I wouldn't recommend using them unless you were flying with an armor fleet and expected to have reps in range. The Eris is garbage for this, managing to be worst-in-class in almost every relevant category.

The Flycatcher and Heretic can both to good work in small gang situations, and their ability to apply damage outside of scram range (either 60km out with LML fits or just sitting at 20km with javelin rockets) means they can contribute damage in fights where a Sabre getting close enough to use its autocannons would be suicidal. The Sabre does have the potential to put out higher raw damage against defenseless targets and its high agility makes it better-suited for decloaks.


What really makes the Sabre stand out, though, is its excellent slot layout and fitting options. 2-4 is near perfect for the kind of agile shield tanking fits you want to use for small engagements. The Sabre gets to pick some combination of nanos, a briefcase, and a damage mod while still doing practically anything it likes with its midslots, while the Flycatcher can only pick one of the two the Heretic's armor bonus means anything it does in its lowslots is going to compromise something else important.

Lastly, of course, is the ludicrously small fitting on small ACs. A full rack of 125s on a Sabre has lower fitting costs than a single light missile launcher, which means that where Heretics and Flycatchers are often stressed for fitting room the Sabre can basically pick whatever it wants and still poop out 250+ baseline DPS



The Eris is a piece of garbage that somehow has less CPU than the ship with the easiest CPU requirements imaginable and it's a huge burden just to come up with sane fit that doesn't involve a fitting module.


EDIT: the fact that the Sabre was THE Interdictor for years is definitely also a huge factor, because while there are now reasons to fly the other hulls they aren't always compelling enough to overcome years of inertia.

the 1% agility penalty is sooooooo terrible