Missions & Complexes

Since we have a couple of heated threads touting or disparaging the Golem, I thought I would list the reasons why the Golem is the "meh" of Marauders when it comes to running level 4 missions.

Back in The Day, the Golem was mind-boggling awesome. Then, one day, some heathens people starting saying that the Vargur with its guns was better. After flying the Vargur with 800ACs, I found that they were right. Then people said that the Mach was better-er (and the MWD Mach was better-er-est.) Again those people were right. Moral of the Story: if I've finally figured it out, and you haven't, then you're really behind the times.

Summary
The primary reason for the Golem's Meh-ness is its over-abundance of DPS sapping issues, which severely drag on the Golem's strength (i.e. the ability to hit with torpedos with monstrous efficiency.) The secondary reason for the Golem's Meh-ness is the Vargur, which out-performs the Golem and does so without the Golem's headaches.

Details
Here are the issues, drawbacks, and annoyances that serve to Meh-nify the Golem into a subpar Marauder:

1) Limited Range - 40km for Faction/T1 torps and 60km for Javelin torps. 60km just isn't enough for a mission runner.

2) Ammo Switching - Having to switch back and forth between Javelin torps is a DPS killer, especially on missions with long range spawns. Not only do Javelins do less damage, you also lose DPS from the 10 second reload time. 10 seconds is 1.4 volleys. Switching from CN to Javelin torpedos is a 22% DPS loss.

3) Requires Reloading - With only 20 rounds in the launcher and the ammo switching problem mentioned previously, you'll spend a lot of time reloading. By comparison, the 800mm ACs on the Vargur hold 120 rounds and it's rare when you have to reload in the middle of a pocket. (So this is less of a Golem flaw and more of a Vargur makes the Golem look bad.)

4) Volley Counting - You can lose a lot of DPS by miscounting volleys. Volley counting difficulty is also compounded when using Javelins because TPs are in their falloff and might miss. You also need to learn (or create a spreadsheet[1] detailing) how many volleys is enough.

5) Target Painter Juggling - The ten second cycle of a TP is really annoying to work around. You often need to fire torpedoes before your TPs have finished cycling off of the previous target and then apply them to the next target before the torpedoes arrive. You often need to stagger your TPs between target types, e.g. a 3-TP Golem will put one TP on a battleship and save two TPs for a cruiser, in order to avoid waiting on TP cycles (and the resultant loss of DPS.) You really need to know how many or how few TPs are needed to kill a particular ship class (see Volleys To Kill metric in spreadsheet in item 4 above.)

6) Interface Lag - Missiles and TPs seem exceptionally susceptible to lag. You know the little green bar that cycles around a button's border indicating how far along a TP cycle is or when a launcher will be ready to fire again? Then you know how often the damn indicator frequently goes several seconds past its starting point, thus delaying your next volley or TP cycle.

7) Needs Drones to Kill Frigates - Drones are sloooooooooooow to kill frigates. By comparison, the Vargur often pops drones at range and rarely needs to use light drones. (Again, this is less of a Golem weakness and more of a Vargur is better problem.) (However, if you run a 5 TP Golem[2], nuke those frigates.)

8) Overkill - There's a lot of DPS loss due to overkill with a Golem. For every 7 second Golem salvo, the Vargur can fire ~2 salvos, each savlo having ~50% of the damage of the Golem's one salvo. Thus the 800ACs can often finish killing faster due to have smaller, more frequent volleys.

9) Micro Manage Drones - since you need to use lights to kill frigates, you want to keep a couple of frigates locked so that you can issue attack orders to you drones. If you rely on your drones auto-attacking frigates, you risk having them splitting up over multiple targets, potentially delaying your mission.

10) Micro-Management Hell - You need to juggle TPs, count volleys, lock wrecks, tractor wrecks, salvage wrecks, manage drones, aggress new spawns (using a spare TP) to get them to move to you to avoid switching to Javelin torps, pulse your shield booster, etc..

Other Issues
11) Expensive - A properly fit Golem is expensive due to needing two T2 missile speed rigs @ ~150M isk each. That's 300M isk to make sure that your torpedoes can reach out to 40km and 60km reliably. It also helps to put in a 3% or 5% missile velocity implant. By comparison, a Vargur does just fine without such secondary implants and with cheap rigs.

12) Can't Use Faction Weapons - Would you like to fly a Golem with faction launchers while you take 3-4 weeks training up T2 Siege Launchers? Well, you can't, since the Golem *needs* T2 launchers in order to use Javelins to reach 60km.

13) Very Skill Intensive - Reaching out to 60km (or even 40km) reliably requires having Missile Bombardment and Missile Projection at V. Plus you need the various TP skills need to be at 4 or better to increase their potency and optimal/falloff.

14) T2 Ammo - The Golem *needs* T2 Javelin ammo. Rage torpedoes are useless except against a small handful of Gurista battleships or against structures. Using Rage instead of CN ammo requires slapping an extra TP or two on most targets to achieve the same VTK (Volleys to Kill) as the CN ammo.


tl;dr - You lose DPS from having limited range, juggling TPs, volley counting, etc., to the point that a Vargur can complete missions faster than a Golem. The extra training and expensive rigs are just insult to injury.


[1] http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1151130
[2] http://eve.battleclinic.com/loadout/42705-Golem-Angel-Screams.html

edit: grammar

You dont understand weapons.Each weapon type has its pros and cons.Torps are ment as short range high dps if you want to use a short range weapon use a micro warp drive.Also you need a better understanding of the weapon systems.Turrets are based on tracking speed if you can track your target and hit you do damage based on how well you tracked the target and some other factors.However launchers dont need a target lock and always hit the target if you always hit every target for max damage thay would be game breaking.Drones are ment to help bigger ships vs smaller ones if you dont want to use them thats your problem. Launchers are ment to do high damage to same size targets not smaller or bigger ones.

Excellent analysis ! I hope it will be useful for anyone who hesitate training for the Golem

I'll just add another issue: when you fire at a moving target at the limit of your range (ex 40km), you often lose your volley because the target moved like 1km in the opposite direction… That's VERY frustrating

1) Get a dictionary.
2) Go on a writing course.
3) Get out

You do realise that one of the reasons Torps outperform Cruise Missiles on a golem is exactly because defender missiles are not able to kill torps due to their high hp. So defenders are actually one of the few problems the golem does not have. It's been a long time since i flew the golem and while i agree that it has some disadvantages (painter cycling) quite a few can be attributed to the general characteristics missiles have (not being able to instavolley frigs, having to count salvoes -which is way more bearable on a golem than on a rapid firing tengu btw). Some of the issues you can however circumvent by just aggressively triggering stuff (exceptions being a couple of missions where stuff leashes). I normally did one load of javelins (if at all) and then switched to t1/faction once i had to reload anyway (aka before salvo 20 left the launcher, otherwise you reload twice).
Also i think its a bit hilarious complaining that a ship needing Adv Wep Upgrades V AND BS V needs T2 weapons to work which are way easier to get on a missile ship than on a turret based ship where you have to get small and medium guns up first.

So to summarize. i agree on a couple of points, especially those that touch issues like painter cycling, fall off. Ship really needs maxed out skills on missiles, signature amplifying and ofc marauder to shine. Otherwise you just have a CNR with slightly more lenient fitting options.

Not really.

I remember having those arguments about vargur vs mach with you.

Glad to see you've seen the light <3

I get 72.8 km on a Golem, so about 70 km effective. Still limited, but that's why a dedicated mission runner uses appropriate ship for the mission, and will typically have a Golem, Raven Navy Issue, and a Tengu.

Examples: Golem chews-up Angels, but like all Marauders is useless vs. Guristas. Tengu is great for missions with lots of small or medium ships. Both Golem and RNI are used for EM-weak NPC. RNI for the missions requiring more range than a Tengu.

I can also pilot a Mimatar ships up to the Maelstrom, and personally find turrets quite frustrating (misses, highly variable amount of damage, and shorter range) and missiles much more effective. About the only advantage I've noticed is that I can insta-pop frigates if I can get far enough away from them. Still, I'm on the road to try a Mach for myself simply to see if all the hype is true.

No, OP is saying that torps need a good, hard looking at. 99% of his problems with the golem, are actually problems with torpedoes. Seriously, they have the exact same range as HAM's, ridiculous explosion radius, poor explosion velocity, excessively limited ammo amounts, and they are slow as hell. The other 1% of the OP's complaint is that target painters suck, and they really should have their cap usage and cycle time halved... and possibly their optimal range increased as well.

-Arazel

You people take missions way too seriously...