Missions & Complexes

My nightmare character's looking to train into either CNR or Golem or Rattlesnake.

She missions in Gallente space and get considerable amount of Angel missions, so this will be to use against Angels while I fall back to Nightmare for Serpentis missions.

She already has Caldari BS V and good shield skills+missile supports, but need to train cruise/torps.

Given the circumstance, which ship would be best for missions against Angels? My original plan was to train for Golem, but recent whines about Golem made me reconsider. 

Any tips from those with experience in flying these ships would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

The Rattlesnake relies on heavy drones or sentry drones for its DPS. Drone ships are always underpowered compared to their equivalents: Sentry Drone DPS tops out at about 475dps, regardless of how shiny and expensive your modules are.

The CNR and Golem have the option of picking exactly the right damage type to deal to the target. The CNR has a stupidly long range (250-odd km), while the Golem has a not-quite-stupidly short range of about 60km maximum. Personally, I'd take the Golem for missions against Angel Cartel since they tend to be close-orbiting ships anyway: the 60km range will not be a major issue for you. Pack a flight of webifier drones and you'll be able to catch anything that does orbit a bit further out.

The catch is that flying the Golem will require extremely high missile skills: you will want Missile Projection 5, Missile Bombardment 5, Torpedo Specialisation (ideally 5 for more DPS, but you need Torp Spec to use Javelin torpedoes, which is where your range comes from). Then to get the Golem working well you'll need to invest in T2 rigs and faction/officer/deadspace fittings. The mission-running Golem is an awesome gank target.

Flying the CNR is possible with mediocre missile skills: you'll always be better off in a CNR than a Raven since it has better shields, better capacitor, and will always have 1/6th more DPS.

One option you might want to consider is a Scorpion Navy Issue.

When it comes to missile-based mission running ships, my opinion is that you really can't go past the CNR.

Golem works, might have to wait for some of the to get in range as the torp range is like 42... or so, it will do most missions faster then anything. people who whine is people who dont have one.

Since you're only flying it against Angels, I would go with the CNR due to the Golem's needing a lot of skill Vs to be effective, the Golems' cost (as per Mana Rinn,) and the Golem's general "Meh" factor. The CNR also has the benefit of being able to field three sentry drones which can provide additional DPS or kill jamming NPCs.

Speaking from experience, if you really want to fly a marauder against Angels, then train for a Vargur. While you're training up Minni BS5 and T2 Guns, you can probably fly a Meta4 AC800 Maelstrom since the Angels come to you.

A non-marauder alternative is the Mach which can be flown successfully without having train AWU or BS skills to V.

OP already flies a Nightmare, thus implying turret skills. If the OP is simply looking to take advantage of Caldari BS5, then, IMHO, the OP's training time would be better spent on cross training into Winmatar instead of spending a couple of months on missile and target painting support skills, (never mind that the TP skills have different primary attributes.) If the OP already has T2 lasers, then the OP is less than a month away from T2 AC800s.


It requires max skills ((Missile Bombardment V, Missile Projection V,) two expensive T2 missile rigs, and a 5% implant.

tl;dr Having Caldari BS 5 isn't a good enough reason to train CNR/Golem, IMHO.

CNR is the way to go with this IMO.

Cruise launchers need less work and less perfect skills to PvE with.

torp Golems days are long behind it for many reasons.


Currently when it comes to marauders. Vagur > Kronos > Pally >>> Golem.
On another scale Mach > vindi >>> Nightmare >>> Rattler

I rate the kronos higher then pally cause its good against more variants of rats. On my second Scale Mach and Vidi are just beasts as ships. While the nightmare has limited range of targets the rattler being a drone boat with launcher slots is just slow.

What i consider in my opinion the best missions ships.

Vagur, mach, fleet tempest, all have selectable damage can sport great tanks and are fast. Tempest will have less range but it still can put out similar DPS or more depending on the fit.

CNR, Rohk, Both have the same DPS one has selectable damage the other has the turret advantages. CNR is suited for a mixed bag of targets but needs more attention to run efficiently. But you are never stuck skipping a mission with rats you suck against.

Tengu i give it its own spot as you will specially train to fly it. Great tanks and good DPS with selectable damage. Less DPS then what Most BS ships can do without lots of tweaking but its tank is just amazing.

Domi, Vindi, Kronos, Mega all versions, Hype, Since hybrid changes combined with their drones they just tear up missions when rail fit. And drones let you deal with EM weak rats easily enough.

Nightmare and Pally are kings of EM weak rats. If you know you are fighting a ton of EM weak rats they are the go to guy.

Navy scorp, Rattler for tanking Easy modo. They will not have lots of DPS compared to others but if you AFK mission they are what you prob want to fly.

Keep in mind this is just my opinions from personal experience.

Thanks for all the inputs that gave me a lot to consider. I probably should have mentioned that I have another character that flies Mach, Kronos and Tengu, so I'm not sure if another Mach is something I want to do although I know that it's a beast against Angels, hence me considering missile options in the first place. I run two missions separately with each character on his own, so I am looking for a ship that can complete on its own fast-ish.

Having considered what you've all mentioned, I think I will start with CNR first and see how I like them missiles on a Raven hull. If I like them I will set my traing path to Golem (but not sure if I can handle TP juggling and volley counting while dual boxing...). After the trial, if I don't see the potential in this path I will go for a Mach on this account as well.

Again, thank you all. :D

Really? So in the OP's circumstances, a Paladin would be a better option to his Nightmare and better than a Golem in the non-Sansha missions such as Angel missions? Or maybe a rail Kronos is ideal for Angel missions, eh? Because that's what he was asking about - an alternative to a Nightmare in certain circumstances. I never said that Minmatar ships aren't great versus Angels - OFC they are. I simply said the OP didn't ask about projectiles. If he said I want a single ship to run generic missions in, yes, the Golem probably isn't the #1 pick. But he didn't ask that and telling him to train FOTM is of limited use IMO.

Anyways, Pookoko, I think you made the right choice for getting a taste of missiles, as it won't take long at all to train up cruise 4. You may decide you hate it, but hey, give it a shot. Also, since you're dual boxing, the CNR may be the best choice regardless if you want to stick with missiles because it is certainly less to micro. If the micro becomes an issue, you could consider doubling up on the missions, which would make things a bit easier on you, but you may lose out a bit on increased travel time. There's also the very practical reason that it's only 1 location you have to worry about getting scanned out, which may/may not be a big deal for where you mission. ;) Best of luck.

Relax everyone. It's a discussion, not an argument that needs to have a winner. Forums suffer from communication lag, which impedes the ability to get timely background information thus leading to assumptions being thrown around casually. In this case, the OP didn't reveal that he already had a Mach pilot until late in the thread, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered bringing up the Vargur/Maelstrom/Mach path on the off-chance that the OP was simply trying to leverage Caldari BS V to the point of tunnel vision.

The OP got a good mix opinions and information, enough to make a informed decision. Let's give each other a slap on the back for a job well done and for proving that internet forums can and do work.

/hugs_for_everyone

I have T2 lasers and I'm remapped with implants so that I'd be training all of the prerequisite skills for the T2 AC800s at the max rate of 2700 SP/hour. Still, training for the T2 AC800s would take me just over 41 days.

So no, not really less than a month.