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Nulsec exploration Tanking questions.
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Kim Noel Kardashian
Guardians of the Gate
RAZOR Alliance
#1 - 2012-02-28 15:53:54 UTC
Hi, first time posting here.

I'm looking to move into nulsec exploration in about 5 weeks. I will be running 2 strat cruisers, a proteus and a tengu. The proteus will be set up to scan, scout, and tank. The tengu for dps.

My main concern is, how much damage do these complexes pump out?

According to EFT my proteus is capable of handling around 1770 incoming dps (cap stable at 55%%) if I'm geared to a specific
pirate type. I Will mostly be fighting Serpentis/Guristas with 90% thermal 95% kinetic resists.

2 x core b medium armor reps
1 x core a kin hardener
1 x core a therm hardener
Dmc II
dark blood power diagnostic system
100mn AB 765m/s
cov ops cloak


Is this an optimal set up? 2 medium active reps 2 specific hardeners?

Is the dmc II a wasted slot? Will these plexes ever take me into structure based purely off their dps?

Is the 100mn AB better than a 10kmn MWD? AB should help me speed tank many of the rats. The tengu will be using heavy
missiles, not HAMs, with 90+km range. So I should have near 100% aggro in every plex.

While the MWD could help me avoid gate camps, I will have the interdiction nullifier and cov ops subsystems to keep myself safe. Is the MWD excessive? I'm under the impression I wil be covering 30+ systems a session, safety is a HUGE concern. No sense losing a 1bil+ ship (or 2) and any loot inside.

The tengu will deal a little over 600dps. Based of this are there any sites I will not be able to run?

Any general advice on nulsec exploration is greatly welcome.

Thank you in advance.
Cyniac
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#2 - 2012-02-28 16:09:05 UTC
In my experience the proteus doesn't do very well with a 100MN AB - check it's align time in EFT and compare it to the Tengu to see what I mean. It makes it a bit more risky than needed when moving through camps as your Proteus will be significantly slower than a plated Domi...

Yeah... I fell for that one too.

As to the ability to tank the plexes, it will depend which ones. When you hit neuting towers you'll be in trouble.
Kim Noel Kardashian
Guardians of the Gate
RAZOR Alliance
#3 - 2012-02-28 20:44:27 UTC
Thank you for you input.

If i went down to a 10mn AB I'd be around 400 m/ps. My align time is also 1/6th of having the 100mn. It also frees up enough cap usage to drop another recharger and add a codebreaker and an analyzer. This would allow me to run one fit constantly, no need to dock and change modules.

I thought only Blood Raiders had neut rats/towers in their plexes. If the Serps and Guristas do also, I hope I'd be able to manage it by prioritizing the neuters as my first targets. The tengu should have a long enough range to do this effectively.
Bibosikus
Air
#4 - 2012-02-29 00:40:26 UTC
Pretty much all the high end plexes in null have neuting towers, regardless of race. And a lot of the mid-low-end too.

By the time you've got aggro in the Proteus and the Tengu can get in to apply dps, your Proteus tank will be drained of cap and probably scrammed, and it will die. Nullsec neuting towers are very nasty. Two of them (and there quite often are a couple) will drain you in 20-30 secs. With twin reppers, your fit relies too heavily on active tanking.

You'd probably be served a lot better (and cheaper) with a passive shield-tanked Ishtar. It's a fit that excels against Serps & Guristas, and even just T2-fitted it can tank the fortress combat plexes fairly easily. Plus it can put out reasonable dps from Ogre II's.

Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
Cyniac
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#5 - 2012-02-29 14:25:36 UTC
Kim Noel Kardashian wrote:
I thought only Blood Raiders had neut rats/towers in their plexes. If the Serps and Guristas do also, I hope I'd be able to manage it by prioritizing the neuters as my first targets. The tengu should have a long enough range to do this effectively.


Another nasty side effect - neuts are very often the triggers so trying to prioritize them will just get you overwhelmed in other ways. Nullsec plexes requires you to be able to handle neuting for all races as Bibosikus has pointed out.
Kim Noel Kardashian
Guardians of the Gate
RAZOR Alliance
#6 - 2012-02-29 18:58:11 UTC
My issue with using the ishtar is avoiding gatecamps. Losing
the proteus also means losing immunity to bubbles and losing the
cov ops cloak device.

The tengu could scout, but would lose a fair portion of its dps.
Esp if it became the scanner ship as well. Drone damage from
the Ishtar would obviously help counter balance this.

Nobody has identified the dps as an issue yet, I can passive
shield tank a proteus to withstand about 1350 dps, but I lose my
AB and code/analyzer. Obviously this isn't a huge deal, as I'd
much rather not lose my ship. If I'll only be dealing with
<1300 dps, I can still use my "safe flying" proteus subsystems.

With the information you have provided, I'm now wondering if
this is a possibility at all with my current skillset.

Again, thank you guys for the continued feedback.
Svodola Darkfury
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#7 - 2012-02-29 19:07:45 UTC
If you can get a proteus to 1350 passive shield tank (truly passive, no hardeners) you might be looking at something.

With an ishtar I can get a 50-50 kin/therm tank to about 1430 dps incoming with a couple of a-type amplifiers.

I think anything in the 1k-1.5k range will be able to handle singular waves, although I'm not sure about multiple waves, so you'd have to be recloaking the tengu between waves to avoid aggro.

Svo.

Director of Frozen Corpse Industries.
Cyniac
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#8 - 2012-02-29 19:24:01 UTC
Kim Noel Kardashian wrote:
My issue with using the ishtar is avoiding gatecamps. Losing
the proteus also means losing immunity to bubbles and losing the
cov ops cloak device.


Word of warning - neither the proteus nor the tengu are immune to gatecamps - you can and eventually will lose them.

In my experience losing the codebreaker and the analyzer in nullsec is not going to be a biggie.

DPS - the more the merrier of course!

Also depends on which sites you chose and the space you are running in, start with the smaller DED sites and you probably won't have to deal with neuts (outside Blood raider space)

Sooner or later though you are just going to have to make that leap and see for yourself what works for you.
Craterius
Symple Onez
#9 - 2012-03-02 05:41:10 UTC
If your goal is nullsec exploration, then you must fit an analyzer and a codebreaker.

With the buff to archaeology sites, nullsec mag sites are now valuable and should be sought out.

The Active tanked Ishtar, fitted with both AB and MWD, is quite agile, and can beat most gate camps, even bubble camps, if you learn the "MWD/cloak" trick, described elsewhere on these forums.

Yes, eventually you will lose an Ishtar, as you will eventually lose any other ship. But, it will cost you 1/4 the cost of the Tengu, for example.

A reason not to use the Ishtar is the heavy skill requirements, especially in drones. If you do not have those skills up now, including use of T2 Sentry drones, you may be looking at a three-four month skill training program.

BTW, the Tengu alone can be fitted as an all-in-one exploration ship.

The Ishtar can handle up to 8/10 sites. Not sure about the Tengu, but have heard from others it is even better, just a lot more expensive.

Good luck!
Kim Noel Kardashian
Guardians of the Gate
RAZOR Alliance
#10 - 2012-03-02 23:19:21 UTC
Thank for all of your input everyone. Helped me realize what I'm really going to be facing.
Cyniac
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#11 - 2012-03-02 23:54:14 UTC
Craterius wrote:
With the buff to archaeology sites, nullsec mag sites are now valuable and should be sought out.


Potentially yes. But in practice they remain the most variable of nullsec income sources (i've run 20 and counting and found nothing of note) and in spite of this the radar sites remain very poor value in null compared to everything else (they seem to be only marginally better than lowsec radar sites - still gathering data though).

Add to that the fact that fitting both a codebreaker and an analyzer is going to diminish the combat capacity of a ship which is already less-than-astounding in that regard and you need to think about it. Many of the proteus fits will leave you with only 3 midslots so using 2 of those for a codebreaker AND an analyzer is a bit risky.
Seb Seba
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#12 - 2012-03-03 06:52:43 UTC  |  Edited by: Seb Seba
Cyniac wrote:
Craterius wrote:
With the buff to archaeology sites, nullsec mag sites are now valuable and should be sought out.


Potentially yes. But in practice they remain the most variable of nullsec income sources (i've run 20 and counting and found nothing of note) and in spite of this the radar sites remain very poor value in null compared to everything else (they seem to be only marginally better than lowsec radar sites - still gathering data though).

Add to that the fact that fitting both a codebreaker and an analyzer is going to diminish the combat capacity of a ship which is already less-than-astounding in that regard and you need to think about it. Many of the proteus fits will leave you with only 3 midslots so using 2 of those for a codebreaker AND an analyzer is a bit risky.


Not sure if somebody wrote that already but apart from analizer you will also need a salvager quite often within the same scanning site.
Forget those if you ask me. They are not worth it. Focus on 6,7,8/10 and with those two ships you're gold. I solo all of them in my tengu (sansha 8/10 needs extra DPS though so technically you can solo it but it would take a while to take down the bastion on your own).