EVE New Citizens Q&A

I'm getting to the point where my SP is pretty good in cruisers, and I'm thinking about starting my foray into battleships, but as I'm playing around with Pyfa to see what types of things are available and what they can do, it feels like there's no real point to them. Even when using the All V's option, it seems like I'm either doing better damage with a cruiser, or getting better tank simply because they can move faster.

The only exceptions seem to be the drone and missile ships, which I'm actually trying to avoid because they're so boring (it all feels like "sit here and orbit while you wait for something else to do the work"). Waiting on drones and missiles feels like waiting for things to build in some "free but with expensive speed upgrade options" mobile game.

I want to do something more active, that takes a bit more micromanaging of speed, or transversal, or range, or stuff like that, but all the turret ships seem like they're either all gank or all tank, and trying to balance that ends up with the stats of a slow cruiser.

Is there something that I'm missing with this? Or are there any guides that talk about fitting battleships so they don't feel anemic? I want to try opening a new size and class of ships, but it just feels like it would be a waste of Sp and ISK.

I know that being cap-stable isn't so useful in PVP, but in a PVE situation, when the missions and sites take 15 minutes or more to clear, isn't being cap-stable important since you would otherwise have to warp out and dock up a bunch of times otherwise?

The thing is with a cap stable tank, unless you tailor your tank to one specific circumstance you're either overtanking or not tanking enough.

So you get the situation where you're perma running your repper and your hp never decreases which means you've got wasted stats into tank which could be used for gank for even more efficiency OR you're perma running your tank and it's still failing which means you need more tank anyway.

Many mission running battleships using an active tank don't have more than a few minutes of cap while running repairs. They explode the high threat targets first and are only pressured until those are removed off field.

Other examples are sniper fits, they only have to tank that little period where they are spooling their mjd and then repair the odd missile or grazing shot when far out of range.

Cap stability in pve is only relevant when there's neuting pressure imo and that only really happens in wormhole space and some blood raider missions (though most missions are easily done even under neut pressure).

I am going to start off by disagreeing with this. Cap stability is neither good or bad it is simply another of the many choices we each make when fitting our ships. I have a very unstable internet connection and often find myself being disconnected while scrambled or with bastion active in a mission. Because of this my ship sits in the mission pocket locked in place for the 5 minutes or so it can take for the internet to clear and log back on. So for me cap stability is not an option or a luxury it is a simple required part of my fits based on real life things I cannot change. A friend of mine prefers to be cap stable simply because he prefers to turn on his tank as he warps into the mission and then forget about it. Both of these are valid reasons to have a cap stable fit.

With those out of the way I agree with the basic premise that chasing cap stability is not something you should worry about. All you need to have for successful mission running is to be functionally stable. To do this turn on any and all mods that consume cap except your armor rep or your shield booster, if you are cap stable in that configuration the you are functionally stable for missions because you pulse your rep / booster to heal damage then turn it off to allow the cap recharge a bit. With this process you can run missions easily with as little as two minutes of cap as listed in a fitting tool or fit window in game.

You do have a fit tool, if not choose one of these it will help you and save a lot of frustration and ISK.
EvE HQ
PYFA - Python Fitting Assistant
EFT - EvE Fitting Tool

Now to the original question for balancing tank versus gank for missions. A caution and a reminder the rest of what follows are my personal thoughts on this, they are based on many years of helping new players in the first ever level 3 to level 4 transition. In all ways these ideas error on the side of safety and reducing the risk of ship loss and if you follow them I guarantee that you will not be killing as fast as you might using other peoples ideas. But that gets back to the basic thought that getting the player though these early level 4 missions with ship intact is the most important part, it is easier and less expensive to refit for more gank than it is to replace a ship lost because to little tank, cap or both. And yes to achieve what I suggest below will require the use of some T2 mods so be aware of that as well. With the cautions out of the way here we go.

Tank plus gank equal to or above 1200 dps with at least 2 minutes cap with everything on your ship running, and cap stable with everything but your armor rep or shield booster running, minimum of 500 dps gank. If you cannot reach these because character skills I suggest you continue to run level 3's and train your character skills a little higher.

Character skills is an important part of this as well. Even in level 3's you can get by without a well balanced set of primary and support skills but that is not true in level 4's. When you look at your fit pay attention to all of the skills that can affect the mods and rigs you are using and make sure that all of those skills are all trained to level 3 minimum and level 4 is even better. A note since I have had others confused by this in the past, I do not mean the useless mastery thingy in game, if you use that you will be wasting a lot of training time on things you may never use. EvE HQ and PYFA both provide you with a listing of the skills that affect each module or rig, EFT may do this as well but I have not used EFT in years and I do not remember.

Final thoughts.
All of this is based on you trying level 4's solo if you have friends or corp mates that will be going with you then fit for more gank and less tank.

Yes you can run level 4 mission successfully with less than 1200 dps combined tank and gank, especially at first doing so just increases your risk of ship loss. And yes that extra 200 dps can make the difference between coming home in your ship versus coming home in your pd.

Again the warning these are my thoughts on this and based on my experiences and they are no more or no less valid than any other persons ideas.

Are you trolling? I never mentioned anything about an Internet connection, and I never mentioned anything about losing. The only thing I've said is that I can't seem to find a point where the balance between gank and tank feels "right," while with cruisers, it's really easy to find that balancing point.

He posted directly after Donnachadh who complained about being disconnected and needing his ship to survive the 5 minute or so it takes to log back in.

Learn from a master. Now retired from blogging but still active in the game. This information is a few years old and predates MJD but the advice is still valid. The rule of thumb that you need gank+tank >= 1000 to run level 4 missions quickly and comfortably is based on EFT Defense + EFT Firepower.

http://jestertrek.blogspot.ca/2011/03/guide-solo-l4-missioning-part-1.html
http://jestertrek.blogspot.ca/2011/04/guide-solo-l4-missioning-part-2.html

You reminded me, about time to double check that Fey'd guide hasen't gotten archived.

You aren't trying to use the medium-sized weapons on your battleship, are you? For hybrids, it would be Dual 250mm Railguns, Energy weapons would be Dual Heavy Beam Laser, Autocannons would be Dual 425mm and Dual 650mm.

The damage for the Dual weapons isn't as good as the normal large-sized weapons (still better than regular cruiser weapons, though). As well, there are stacking penalties for mods that affect the same elements of a ship. If you load yourself up with a lot of damage mods, you aren't going to see a huge increase in all of them (3 is normal, 4 is generally considered the upper limited except in very specific cases, and even then, having a fourth damage mod may only add 10-15 DPS with lower skills).

Damage mod rigs are also affected by the stacking penalties, so if you're trying to fit several damage mods along with damage rigs, you'll run into issues pretty quick.

Another thing to note is that, if a part of your issue is running short on fitting resources, ranged weapons tend to require much higher resources than short-range weapons. If the fits you're trying to do require Co-Processors or Reactor Control Units, you may run into issues balancing tank and gank, as well.

Of course, you could always run a gank tank, and work to essentially turn yourself into a glass cannon. If you can kill the rats before they can do much damage to you, though, then what does it matter? Just a thought.

Thank you for the advice, everyone! I'll keep poking around with it and see what I can or can't come up with. As soon as SISI mirrors again, I'll probably play around on there a bit, as well, so I can actually see if what I'm coming up with works, or if it's only good on paper.