Ships & Modules

1. It's been so long since I assigned Fighters I can't actually remember the exact mechanics, but I do remember it's no more than five.

2. No stargates, no acceleration gates.

3. I've never considered using a Carrier for PvE so fits for that purpose completely elude me, but in the case of PvP you'll find it's extremely dependant on the situation and considering you can refit in combat (if close to another carrier/supercarrier/titan), you'll want to keep a lot of spare modules for different fits in your cargo hold.

Mods that are really important to have:
- full rack of Capacitor Rechargers and full rack of Capacitor Power Relays for traveling: gets you to jump cap in about 30 seconds
- full rack of Warp Core Stabilizers: if ever caught by conventional points and you can refit because there's another carrier, you may just be able to break off and warp away
- cloak: quality doesn't matter, just used to hide when caught somewhere you don't want to be
- some points and webs: kinda hard for something slow to shake off a 3m EHP ship tackling it
- some sebos and ECCM: obvious
- full rack of heavy neutralizers : same as the points/webs, plus you can hopefully neut out something tackling you
- a large smartbomb or two: clearing off hostile drones on you or someone else is a great way to reduce incoming dps (or jams)
- some omnidirectional tracking links: if you're using sentries, a pair of those is never wasted.
- some drone link augmentors: for the same reason, since your extended control range is only applied to Fighters, not conventionals.
- tank mods with spares: obvious too, but spares for active hardeners is useful when the incoming DPS is mostly of one major type. I keep a pair of eanms, two of each hardeners, a layering membrane (the armor% thing), a reactive hardener (the new one) and obviously a damage control.
- a cynogen: SUPERIMPORTANT! Tackled somewhere? Light a cyno so help can actually come faster through a bridge, or capital support can jump to you. Who cares about the 10min cycle when you can actually live through it then leave?

Capital mods are a bit more difficult since you've only got so much room in your CHA.
If you're with other armor Carriers, don't bother with a local rep. Remote repair on a fully hardened tank is much stronger than whatever your local rep could muster. Of course if you're running combat triage that's another matter entirely, but that could be worth a whole thread and I'm no expert on that.
If you're solo, a local rep is actually worth using, of course.

For high slots, I've always regarded the drone control units as a waste; I'd rather have the utility of neuts/smarties/cloak than a meager and unreliable 100 extra dps per slot at most. I'd leave the Triage module at home unless you're certain you'll use it, same with the local rep - if you're alone and it's not fitted, you can't refit, if you're with others the RR is better.. A pair of RR and a pair of energy transfers is a good generic fit in in my opinion, so fit what you need/use and keep the extra in your CHA.

Also always carry some LO for at least one use of a cyno, and some extra fuel on top of what's in your fuel bay. For emergencies and just generally not getting caught with your pants down.

4. Fighters are only really effective against slow and/or big targets: their tracking is about the same as large guns, to give you an idea. A flight of light drones is preferable vs frigates, and heavies do okay against cruisers. ECM drones are great for those moments when you need to escape a tackle and a full flight of heavy neut drones is actually not too bad. Also I hear that for PvE, sentries are sometimes better than Fighters due to the travel time of the latter and their 'meh' performance VS smaller ships.

as a note, the 200% "fighter control range" is actually referring to drones (not fighters, which i've flown 100au away with no effects), so drone link augmentors are basically worthless. my archon can send drones out to like 160km away or something like that with no bonuses.

i didn't think about the ability to refit all the time. i'll have to keep that in mind and carry around extra tank.