Ships & Modules

I am looking for a Lvl 4 mission ship and complex runner.

Can you experienced pilots please rate each of these in terms of

Best DPS
Best Passive Tank
Tengu, is passive or active tank better? Cap stable? Any good fits?

Considering comments, maybe I should also consider the CNR and Golem.



Thanks

tengu will win hands down. its tank isnt passive but its cap stable and gets really really high Heavy Missile dps out to 100km

Level 4 Mission Golem
Complexes Tengu

Yup, don't believe the "lol tengu is best at everything LULZ" nonsense hype, it's an easy ship to use though as long as you do missions that are kin/therm based, it's fast and generally uses stable fits. The NH is kinda on par dps wise (counting its drones) but it's more difficult to train for and slower but it has more tank going for it (again kin/therm mostly). The Rattler is a droneboat (no use if you don't have T2 sentries) and ppl rave about it although most don't really know why it's supposed to be good (it isn't, for lvl 4s). Droneboats are slow dps due to drone handling, thing is though that unlike the other 2 it can work outside kin/therm missions without issues.

So if you do kin/therm missions then tengu will be fastest, NH will be second and Rattler will be third, don't let EFT dps fool you, as stated a droneboat loses so much time handling drone aggro (apart from that it can't move when using sentries so it'll have to slowboat to gates) that the applied dps is fairly low, it's also boring as ****. Outside kin/therm missions the Rattler will be better due to easier tanking and damage type selection. If you look outside the options you gave I'd check out the CNR, applied dps is certainly on par with a tengu while it can switch damage type for tanking as dps without problems, making it more allround.

For complexes it depends on which and where you do them, generally a Tengu is very nice there (again, assuming kin/therm) the really difficult ones a rattler will be quite good.

You can disregard Rattler and Nighthawk because they are subpar in their roles for missionrunning (Rattler vs Golem) and Nighthawk vs Tengu (plexing).

Go Tengu for exploration and Golem for missioning. You will have the Tengu skilled up earlier so start with that, it will also do a good job in missions until you skilled up for Golem.

CNR would do the job as well, the problem is that it uses cruise missiles and it is basically the only ship and the only activity you will use them for, I wouldn't spend the training time on them tbh. Torpedoes can be used on stealth bombers as well as for PvP and are more useful overall.

The Rattlesnake is a good ship, but dont expect to have fast mission times on it. It is in essence a pure out and out afk drone boat, yes it has missiles but they are a secondary weapons system to drones, be they T2 Sentry's or Heavies. Although the slot lay out means that it can configured to have a high amount of dps, but if u want dps better off using a Golem, or Navy Raven.

CNR is the best all rounder, it out damages a tengu before you factor in drones and has fully selectable damage type.

Golem is poor TBH, only good for a few missions which are battleship heavy, close range and the NPCs are slow, Aggel battleships for instance will speed tank most of a golems DPS on approach.

If you could have only 1, CNR would be the first choice, tengu would be second.

as a solo lvl4 runner i use the tengu, i used to fly nighthawk which i loved maxed out on skills to fly these as passive or active tanked and cap stable i can take on 99% of lvl4s without worr

couple of things to conside

cost o fittings
time to trai
tank vs dp
gang/fleet vs sol

nighthawk great tank even better if in fleet w/booster active or passive depending on how much dps you want to dish out a lot of this is in the fittings, i used to use an auto targeter in the extra high slot extra target plus targets for you if you want to be lazy, another up side is drones nice for taking down frigs so you can put your missiles to good use, on that topic heavy missiles are great for cruiser and bs rats, if you active tank and use an ab you can move around nicely grabbing the loot and making yourself harder to hit, if not trained up yet for the nighthawk the drake is a great tank for the omw to a nighthawk pilo

tengu much like the nighthawk, my favorite thing is the adaptability of it, if you want to swap for passive or active tanking maybe switch to rails instead of missiles want to be sneaky? the modular ships is awesome and gives an almost endless possibility of fittings, i currently run mine with navy faction setup (this is very expensive and probably not practical and very over excessive

on the other hand there are the larger bulkier battle ships, BS need target painters if you want to optimize on damage which means less of a tank, now if you want pure dps then these big ships are what you want, assuming you are already tanking with the domi and are not having problems with it i would recommend using just a raven as it is more cost effective raven set up with torps use navy ammunition if you want a boost to dps launch drones on smaller rats max out the lows with bcu II's arbalest torp launchers in the highs target painters and AB in the mids and if you want put a 2 rail guns in the last2 high slots for pure damage output 3 bay thruster rigs wil get you to around 39km range (you dont need to use the damage or rate of fire rigs because the 5 bcu II will optimize on your bonuses from ship modules

also dont foget about your implants they make a huge difference in the long run, the extra 5% rate of fire and the 5% damage bonus is nice or 3% if you dont want to spend a lot of is




all and all on a final note it comes down to fittings, skills, and the amount of isk you want to spend/ sav


feel free to eve mail me for fittings and opinion

And yet the Golem was still brought into this post......
sometimes the wrong ship is put there on purpose, in this case it takes almost as long to get to a nighthawk as a golem

hmmmm must of gotten my post readings mixed up my bad thought he was looking for a dps support ship..... got to be sober next time i go and post

anyhow..... go tengu for its vast options

raven run on a 2nd account if you want to go the caldari route for missions