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Orca tanking - Hull or Shields?
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Sharil
Doomheim
#1 - 2012-07-15 19:02:30 UTC
Hey guys,

So, a friend of mine recently finished the considerable feat of training and purchasing an Orca. He's browsing battleclinic and looking for a good fit for his shiny new ship. As we spoke about it on vent, it became clear that the orca has a HUGE hull, but for some reason, most of the fits on battleclinic were showing a shield tank.

It seems to me that a hull tank would be more effective. Let me explain my theory.

Fit a DCU II in one of the lows (other low could be a cargo extender) and a couple of large hull reppers in the mids, along with a cap recharger and a survey scanner. The high slots are obviously spoken for, with mining foreman links and a tractor beam.

With the Damage Control Unit, the 46k+ hull hp gain 60% resistances across the board. With two hull reppers on staggered cycles, it seems to me that, if the Orca was in trouble and being attacked, this setup would provide it with the best chances of survival.

This makes more sense to me than having a shield-tanked Orca with two adaptive invulnerability fields and a shield booster, giving the shields around 55% resistances and 12k+ hp at best.


So my question is this...

Do any of you guys have experience tanking an Orca in a live combat situation?
Did you use shield or hull tanking on the ship?
Did the ship survive?
Would you have done anything differently?

This is an important issue as my friend has invested a great amount of time and ISK in this ship, and would like to prolong it's life as long as possible.

Any help and/or advice you guys can give would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

S.
Zhilia Mann
Tide Way Out Productions
#2 - 2012-07-15 20:12:11 UTC
Short answer: fit a damage control and do whatever you want with the rest of the fit.

Long answer: hull reppers are a bad idea. Even the best active tank has a pretty marginal chance of pulling you out of a dedicated gank situation and hull reppers are way too slow to have any effect on the outcome. If you need more ehp, throwing on shield mods isn't a terrible idea; you have the mids for it. But more than anything else you should keep an eye on dscan and be aware of local; once a gank is in progress there's not a whole lot you can do to stop it.
Dave Stark
#3 - 2012-07-15 22:10:01 UTC
i mostly use my orca as a high sec transport due to the unscannable corp hanger. i generally fit mine with a damage control and bulkheads, ~200k ehp with mediocre skills.
Lin-Young Borovskova
Doomheim
#4 - 2012-07-15 22:15:05 UTC
Dave stark wrote:
i mostly use my orca as a high sec transport due to the unscannable corp hanger. i generally fit mine with a damage control and bulkheads, ~200k ehp with mediocre skills.


Same but I just added shield resist/extender rigs+invuln shield ext, good luck killing that fast enough before Konkorden in high sec for an empty cargohold or with cans full of crap loot for lols and giggles about ship scanners

brb
Linda Shadowborn
Dark Steel Industries
#5 - 2012-07-15 22:15:11 UTC
DCII, bulkhead, shield extenders and hardeners in the mids. shield extender rigs. links in highs. ecm and warriors in dronebay.
Shereza
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#6 - 2012-07-15 23:06:23 UTC
If you really want to "super-tank" your orca you might look at something like this:
[Orca, McGankin]
Reinforced Bulkheads II
Damage Control II

X-Large Ancillary Shield Booster, Cap Booster 400
Large Shield Extender II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
Siege Warfare Link - Shield Harmonizing II

Large Core Defense Field Extender I
Large Core Defense Field Extender I
Large Core Defense Field Extender I

If I'm reading the numbers right you get 40 seconds of tanking with a full load of boosters at approximately 987 DPS which, theoretically, gives anyone trying to gank you close to 40k more HP to chew through. Realistically speaking it'll probably be closer to 30-35k since some of it is based off of shield regen tanking, but eh, it's a bit extra. It might even be about another 15-20k more than what you'd get out of a second LSEII.

Just be sure to have a friend in a shuttle nearby so you get those gang bonuses and you'll have a smidge over 291k EHP with a smidge under 1k DPS tank (EFT-wise atl east) to give CONCORD plenty of time to swill down the last of their coffee, put the box of donuts under the seat, get the hooker out of their lap, and warp out to you.

Personally though, I think you'd have to be extremely paranoid or hauling tens of billions of isk worth of crap other people just don't want to see get to its destination (which sort of induces the aforementioned paranoia) to fly something like that.
Illest Insurrectionist
Sparta.
#7 - 2012-07-16 00:15:04 UTC
You might want to define what a "live combat situation? " is. A frigate (player) given enough time will probably be able to solo an orca.


The natural regen of a shield tank will out pace 4 large hull reps. If you are worried about a gank then a shield tank with a buffer fit would give the best survival hope.

I'd suggest something much more practical:

[Orca, New Setup 1]
Damage Control II
Reactor Control Unit II

Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
EM Ward Amplifier II
Prototype 100MN MicroWarpdrive I

High/rigs what ever you need.

The mwd is for the warp trick. If you don't know it already this is how. Be at 0 m/s either from having just landing in a system or having sat for a while. Hit warp to/dock/jump what ever. Then turn the mwd on for just 1 cycle.
Saile Litestrider
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#8 - 2012-07-16 00:28:51 UTC
The long and short of it is: you can buffer tank hull in some ships, but hull reppers are so inefficient that active hull tanking is a thing of myth. If you need DPS tank, you need to rely on shields or armor, and the orca can't really armor tank.

The only time I can see justification for using a hull repper or remote hull repper is if you're either extremely cheap and need a repair at a station, or are limited to a POS.
Hawelt
Warpspeed Shipping Inc.
#9 - 2012-07-16 05:35:04 UTC  |  Edited by: Hawelt
Hull tanking an Orca should provide the best EHP/Buffer.
For high sec space it should be enough to be safe if you don't give any financial incentive to gank your ship by afk hauling expensive crap inside the cargohold past the usual camps.

In less secure environments you still want to avoid getting caught at all costs.
Sticking some ECM Modules into the Mids might pay off in some situations. Provided you're able to align to some safe location, are not bubbled and get lucky to disable all the tacklers at the same time.

As personal combat experiencies in an Orca go: I found myself on the business end of an ishtar and a helios in some w-space grav site once. (Which in itself was the result of a pretty poorly planned idea anyway).
The orca's drones were enough to deal with the helios but it took two successful jamming cycles to align and gtfo through the higsec exit. The orca survived with lots of flames and pretty big holes in it.

Surviving that was pure luck. With orcas, you're better of flying it save and to avoid combat situations.
So that would mean:
Yes, I got my self into a fight while sitting in a hull tanked orca.
Yes, I survived.
What would I now do differently ? : Getting caught in the first place.


Btw: Cargohold Optimization rigs are somewhat interesting for Orcas because the draw backs affect Armor HP instead of Structure HP (as low slow Cargo Expanders do).
advii
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#10 - 2012-07-16 07:21:49 UTC
The best tank you can have in your orca is 2 warp core stabs. No amount of EHP is going to save you if someone who can shoot you legally catches you. Since your corp hangar can't be cargo scanned and (afaik) doesn't drop anything when killed you're not a target for suicide gankers either, which would be the only scenario where EHP would help you.
Dave Stark
#11 - 2012-07-16 07:36:31 UTC
advii wrote:
The best tank you can have in your orca is 2 warp core stabs. No amount of EHP is going to save you if someone who can shoot you legally catches you. Since your corp hangar can't be cargo scanned and (afaik) doesn't drop anything when killed you're not a target for suicide gankers either, which would be the only scenario where EHP would help you.


if they're legally allowed to kill you and concord isn't going to get involved, then they're going to pack a faction scram which has -3 warp strength and even with your 2 warp stabs you're still going to be toast.

in short; keep your orca pilot in an npc corp if you insist on using it during times of wardecs etc. however if you insist on being silly, cloak and mwd will probably serve you better than warpcore stabs would.