Missions & Complexes

What might one consider a good "benchmark" DPS output, for a missile ship intended for level 4 missions. Say Raven, Navy Raven, Navy Scorpion, Cerberus, Nighthawk or Tengu? And veteran player who trained everything to 5 a year or two ago?

500? 600? 700?

Approx 700 dps is considered pretty good "gank" setup for cruise raven. Especially if you have managed to put a painter or two on it.

But TBH, I would use just Tengu instead atm. At least for Serpentis / Angels / Gurista and perhaps even Drones. Sansha/Blood have a bit too high kin resist to make it comfortable but if you dont get em on regular basis Tengu is pretty ok still.

Note that Tengu is lined up for the nerf sometime in the future but who knows when that happens. When it happens the CCP propably overdoes it tho and you have pleasure of owing a T3 paperweight for good number of years till it gets revisited.

CNR, T2 Fury cruises, 4x CN BCUs

Caldari BS V, Cruise Spec IV, all missile support skills V, all drone support skills V.

Without drones: 849 @ <189.8 km
With 3x Garde II: 1029

Edit: rewrote post because I forgot to update my skills in EFT. Also removed drone DPS as per Carniflex' suggestion below. Added Garde II DPS for sh*ts n giggles.

the missile ship numbers are largely accurate. also notice that a slightly pimped macharial can go up to 1100 without heat.

Well - I would not count drone DPS when the question is about good gank missile ship. With drones Rattlesnake gets pretty interesting as sentries can be pretty good dps, however, regardless of it having missile slots I would not consider it exactly a missile ship as thats not where majority of its damage comes from.

Also note that a gank missile boat is usually filled with a carebearing clone which can have few bil in hardwires n stuff in it or at very least should contain 5% RoF and damage hardwires. Often also missile speed / precision, etc ones depending on the particular ship.

Reason why I suggested Tengu is that it can get quite impressive dps in a form that is the most "universal" in the sense that you lose smallest portion of it against frigs / cruisers / BC's while when going for cruise missiles even with 3x rigors and guided missile precision hardwire the sig of these remains a little bit too big for comfortable use on cruisers and below without at least one painter.

I'm myself using mostly Tengus atm with mix of Hydraulic Bay Thrusters and Rigors (have more than one account). I have also Golems, CNR's, almost all the guys are capable of Nighthawks - to name the main missile platforms used in missionrunning.

Nightahwks are btw also pretty good if you for some reason dont want to use Tengu. A bit less agile, a bit shorter range, a bit more skill intensive to get into one, but the dps gets close to Tengu if you count drones also (but with the new drone AI using light drones takes some micromanagement). Speaking of drones - in my nighthawks I carry a flight of throwaway T1 lights, when I bite more than I can comfortably chew these can be used like lizards tail, kick em out to distract the scramblers and bail while scramblers are busy munching on your drones. Altho ofc Nighthawks is pretty good at getting scramblers off its tail also with missiles and has usually a bit larger buffer than Tengu.

Depends on what you're doing.

Blitz take a Tengu

Kill everything CNR or SNI They're not as far appart as some and or EFT wants to let you believe.

In my SNI I take out quite some frigates in one volley, (Precision ammo and TP's) and with Rage I get 685 DPS.

You want to do at least 500 DPS to be able to run lvl 4 missions effectively. Most common mission fits for lvl 4 are around 700 DPS.

But yo need to consider more than just DPS. Range and damage application are equally important. For example I run my raven with 2 x rigor rigs and 1 x flare rig. It makes no difference to the rated DPS, but a huge difference in damage application. With those rigs and precision cruise missiles I can one volley most frigates, all destroyers, and many cruisers. Many of which I barely scratch without the rigs.

Also consider the difference between a cruise missile fit and a torp fit. the torp fit has way more paper DPS, but can't hit well on anything smaller than a battleship, so you are only applying half of that DPS. But if the mission has 10 or more BS's a torp fit can work very well. but for most missions it will take longer to complete using a torp fit than a cruise missile fit.

For example I had a shield Fit for my typhoon that was 1400 DPS. but I could not handle the frigates, or most of the cruisers. torps, 800mm AC's, and heavy drones, with the lows full of damage mods. looked great on paper, certainly good DPS, but when actually running missions I was better off with cruise missile/ sentry fit. I do really like flying a shield typhoon though. Hope they do not wreck the ship when they teiricide it.

I fly a HAM Tengu.

Vs kinetic, It gets ~1k dps, out to 42km; ~650'ish dps, using Javelins, out to 75 ro so km

Vs everything else, lower dps.

Eats ammo like a pig though...

What I like is to fly a ship that has a reasonable combination of DPS, survivability, and ability to quickly dispatch scary rats such as warp scrambling frigates.

As for NH vs Tengu, the main problem is that I've got uber NH skillz, and I know how to fit one (for active tank), while I haven't perfected the Tengu skillz yet, and have never flown one.

Also, in the long run, the NH is likely to get a small boost, while the Tengu is likely to get a small nerf. But probably not until next winter.

900 missile dps with fury cruise, target painter and 3x rigor rigs. Swap to precision when you need to eliminate elite frigs.