Missions & Complexes

Alright, so after a close call or two in the SOE arc, I've finally reached Our Man Dagan.

Currently, I know I don't have enough DPS to take him down (sitting right at 100.8 DPS Coercer, when every place I've looked has said he tanks 100), but wanted to ask a few questions about him so that I could nail down how much further to get to the point where I can solo him (such as do I need to jump to the Omen, or will switching to pulse be enough, or will it be IN crystals that do enough, etc.). Beyond that, eve-survival has his EM/Thermal resists at 85/81.3. Slightly problematic for an Amarr clone.

I do want to solo this, if at all possible, just to prove to myself that I can.

My questions now are:
1) Is the common quote of 100+ DPS before or after the resists? If after the resists, how would I go about factoring the resists into my DPS?

2) How far of a range does he have? I've seen multiple posts telling me to orbit at 500m to prevent him from being able to track, which I can do. But if I was going to stay out of range, how much distance do I need?

3) I've seen one place say that, if you can wait it out, you can drain his capacitor and make the tank more manageable. Obviously, since it's only one place, I'd like a confirmation on that.

I might have more questions later as I hear answers, but for now, this is it. Thanks!

Excellent. I just need to switch from Beams to Pulses, and I should have the damage needed.

Thanks for your help and for the more complete stats of Dagan's ship. Yet another website to bookmark.

His stats no longer change, and he now consistently uses a target painter. Still, with high EM/Thermal resists does mean that an Amarr has to be prepared beforehand.

A Coercer with a full bank of Small Focused Modulated Pulse Energy Turret I's (you do have to boost the powergrid size), Extruded Heat Sink, and a cap-stable 1MN Afterburner (the Coercer needs a touch of extra speed to push it over 300 m/s to pull off the orbit at 500 meters method. He seemingly can track you if you're slower than that) can bring down Dagan pretty easily. Which I did yesterday night.

I'd calculate drones at a 4x level. Training Drones V is a 9 day thing for Alphas, and it's unlikely that they have that at the end of SOE. Still respectable, though.

Problem was that I hadn't trained my Drones just yet as I hadn't needed them. Capacitor management skills was where I was training. Energy turrets and Armor reppers are such hogs.

Perhaps. But nobody has ever presented a well tested explanation of NPC cap use. The only thing we know with certainty is that cap warfare is not an effective tactic against NPCs (except for nos maybe). Everything else is pure speculation based on age old rumors.



As noted by the OP, if this was ever true, it's no longer the case. He seems to use a fairly uniform resist profile and target painter against everybody now. If you have specific evidence of these "mutating stats", please present, because this also appears to be another age old rumor.




That's a fair point, but there isn't anything about the Dagan mission that I'm aware of that runs counter to the stats from the Chruker website (with the possible exception of the shield booster skip chance, which I noted). If that's not a perfect representation of his ship then it's an incredibly close approximation, to include the turret tracking rate and the use of the target painter. I'd be very curious if you can identify any specific discrepancies based on objective evidence vs rumors.



While I acknowledge that there's no one "right" tactic for anything in the game, why would you fight him at range when you can speed tank him in close and get the added benefit of being in optimal range for your weapons? Not to mention, most people running the SoE Arc don't have the drones skills yet to rely on those.

A lot (most?) people running the SoE Arc for the first time have been playing the game for less than a week. I think I did it within the first few days (as Gallente) and my drone skills were still abysmal simply because I hadn't had time to train them up yet. The kind of player who can sit at range and beat Dagan with nothing but drones has probably been playing long enough that he doesn't need help.

Even if you're Gallente with good drone skills, it's still much faster to get in close and speed tank him while hitting him with hybrid blasters. If you can also throw some drones at him, all the better.

If that were true, it wouldn't be solo'able by players with less than a week in the game. It seems more like it was meant to be a moderate challenge to new players - which is what it is. If they were trying to encourage teaming up, it would be much harder.

Yes, but well said regardless. You already have a better grasp of this game than a lot of people who have played for years.

That wasn't intended as an insult toward you. Frankly I wasn't even thinking about your comment when I wrote it. That said, I wouldn't have disagreed if you'd said, "Many new players approach Dagan by teaming up. Teamwork is a highly effective solution and one which is equally applicable to most aspects of EVE." But definitive statements (which are rarely applicable) without any caveats (which are almost always applicable) about what the game designers intended (which is unknowable in this instance since they've never stated their intentions for the SOE Arc as anything other than a good introduction following the career missions), is simply irresponsible.

What I was actually thinking about is how people who have been here for a while (like yourself) have a really bad habit of rolling into these threads and spreading unverified rumors as definitive fact - even when they've been objectively debunked ages ago. There are multiple instances in this thread alone. It's one thing when noobs (like myself) pass objectively wrong information. That doesn't make it excusable, but at least I can plead youth and ignorance. But older players don't have that excuse. At the very least they should at least know what they don't know and shut up.

Sometimes what your corp mate heard from some dude's brother 4 years ago is correct - but most of the time it's rubbish. Yet rather than research the answer or actually (God forbid) empirically verify some random rumor, a lot of old timers just give the rubbish answer, thereby perpetuating a falsehood. It pisses me off because they have a responsibility as older players to pass factually correct information if they're going to frequent this board. I can't tell you how many times I've fact checked some dude with 10,000 posts whose been playing since 2005 and found his answer to be 100% wrong. And then seen the exact same thing in the very next thread.

So when you give a definitive answer to something on these boards that you don't know with a high degree of objective certainty is correct, you're either being lazy or stupid. You old timers need to tighten it the hell up or move along. You should be ashamed that it takes a noob like me to tell you that.

The OP made an effort to research thoroughly, try to separate the wheat from he chaff, ask relevant questions and then report back objective results with the proper caveats. The best I can say about your particular comment is that at least it wasn't objectively false. Congratulations for that.

Different rats are sometimes different, but my last experiment with nossing rats ended up with 0 GJ returned per nos no matter whether I was attempting to nos a frig, cruiser, or BS rat (from my BS, admittedly) and no matter what my own cap level was at.

You used to be able to nos beacons and structures, too... no longer.