Ships & Modules

I know this must have been covered a thousand times before but a search turned up nothing.

Anyway, I already tried a couple different battleships to do level 4s, but got a wild hair and decided to try a Rattlesnake, so bought one. After testing it, I'm happy with the tank, and the drones seem to perform well. But I had trouble deciding whether to go with cruise or arbalest rapid heavies. The fitting tool in Eve said there wasn't much difference in DPS between the two (surprised me - I thought cruise should have higher DPS), and since I reasoned that heavies would apply damage better (not to mention the fact that they leave me more power grid and cpu) I went with the arbalest rapid heavies.

I can't say that I've been particularly pleased with the results so far (the range is fine as I'm running range rigs). Frigs take a long time to kill, and battleships take a long time to kill. So I just wanted to know the 'conventional wisdom,' and wanted to make sure whether I should be relying on the estimates given by the in-game fitting tool.

What say you? Rapid heavies or cruise? Or something else?

Note that I sort of built this thing to be more of a brawler rather than a sniper. I already have snipers BS's, and if I wanted a sniper I wouldn't need this kind of tank.

Also, tried torps but the range was crazy short - spent more time trying to chase targets than I spent fighting.

Some thoughts, according to your statements.

If you don't want a sniper/type platform, then why waste rig slots with range rigs?
Damage rigs will serve much better.

Do you use implants? They might help, but they are pretty specific to Cruise or Heavies.

If DPS is about the same, I'd use Cruise, and get the range as a free bonus.


The best bonus on a Snake, is the drone bonus, so I would fit for drones and take what you get from the missiles. Secondary damage.

From here: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=6807943#post6807943

That!



She gets it

And she is right. Your fitting screen may tell you a different story but hammering 5000hp kinetic or thermal damage on an NPC battleship will make you lightheaded.

Don't forget, long range missiles are artilleries with less range but a little better tracking. The only difference is that they cannot do 3x 5000 hp damage like a wrecking shot artillery alpha, so it will always be less than 5000hp.

They can be if you use them right. When frigate or destroyer NPC ships are around 80km -ish away, you can use sentry drones to snipe them of the field and if they are closer use heavy drones with one omnidirectional tracking link.

i think CW says cruise rattler.

i love the hell outta running dual rhml/gecko rattlers thru missions tho.

do what YOU like.

Personal thoughts here.
Never use resist rigs on a mission ship, to restrictive when trying to adapt to different damage profiles of the various NPC, and no matter what you have in at least one of the slots will essentially be wasted because the NPC are not shooting that type of damage at you. Use your rigs for something that will help you on every missions and your mids to handle the resists. Personally on a cruise fit I am a fan of using a pair of rigor cats to boost damage application and a single rig to boost raw DPS. Others prefer to go all damage application while others go all raw damage and to be honest either would be preferable to resist rigs.

Last thought. If you intend to try to use long ranges to your advantage a low skills pilot in a Raven only have about 72k range so using one or more rig slots to help with range may be another option.

Not specifically true. T2 launchers, T2 Precision ammo, a pair of TP or MGC a rigor cat equipped ship can can single volley many of the destroyers, virtually all of the cruisers and most of the BC. Doing this weakens them against the remained of the BC and the BS class ships in the pocket so like everything else in Eve there are choices to be made.