Ships & Modules

Don't listen to this one. He obviously doesn't know the Rattlesnake can kick any other missile BS in the teeth DPS wise and still tank the Death Star.

The Golem, CNR, Raven, and SNI all do the same raw missile dps. The difference is application and drones. So it comes down to what you prefer, the utility of the Golem, the price of the Raven, the alpha of the CNR, or the passive tank of the SNI/RS.

Protip, RS can Dominix its way through L4s if you wanted to.

I have flown all of these ships except for the Golem for L4's.
The Rattlesnake is a beast with sentries or a Gecko, and IMO it does L4's faster than the Raven, CNR, and the SNI.
Of course, it all depends on how you fit it, but you won't be disappointed with either of these ships as they can all do the job quite well.

The only real difference between Raven, CNR, and Golem is tank. CNR has better alpha than a raven, but has the same DPS.

Right now I'm using two characters with t2 fit cruise ravens to run Hordes/Sanctums in about 19 to 21 mins. I've also used them in tandem to run epic arcs. They're cheaper and I never worry about getting ganked (they paid for themselves years ago). They're not juicy targets in the first place. Plus, as t1 ships, the insurance is good. The tank is more than sufficient with good range control. I rarely get taken past half shields, and every time I do, its because I screwed up range control.

Golems, IMO, have no real use if you don't need the massive tanking abilities. With 2 rigors, 1 painter, and precision cruise missiles, I take out most frigs in one volley, occasionally two for the tankier kind. More painters/better painters is nice, but in practice, they're an unnecessary benefit. Perhaps with a different rig setup they make more sense. Tractors are pointless in the age of mobile tractors. They're just too damned expensive.

CNRs have better volley and I'm thinking about using them to speed up completion of sites. They're not hugely more expensive, but they are a tastier target. Better tank, but I don't need more tank, so not a benefit for me personally.

Flying solo, the extra tank would come in handy, but without extra gank, it's going to take so much longer. In terms of ISK over time, two pilots is better than one, even with PLEX costs figured in.

ewww passive tanking

that is one of the most pants on head ******** things I have ever heard.

drone dps is normally very well applied and with two t2 application rigs and two tps even the missile dps will be applied really well. best thing is you can focus missiles on bs and drone/s on cruisers/frigs.

You could have flown a ice cream truck into battle, yet know nothing if you tried to shoot stuff with your freezer instead of bribing the stuff with ice cream. :)

You dont have to allow rats to orbit you.
You dont have to fit tps.

In the end if 1300dps on a 320 sig 275m/s target @ 100km before resists is not your cup of tea and you prefer waiting till rats arrive at 25km while chasing around frigates with lights, then its fine.

I fly a passive tanked rs and a golem for caldari space l4's. I get a fair amount of gurista/serp missions. Golem allows me to ignore jamming/damping by using bastion mod. Rs drone damage, the larger part of rs damage, is unaffected by jamming/damping.
Do you get missions like this? Reason to use these ships.
All your suggested choices do a nice amount of damage re: mission completion times.

I have flown all three extensively in 4s. These are my opinions and a general guide to HOW I FLY THEM, there are other ways, this is not meant as a "This is the right way to do this", but if any of these ideas sound better to you it might help you decide what to do.

If you are already in a Raven the easiest thing for you to do is move into the Navy version. It will also be the most boring since you are already used to the play style. You will basically just be doing the same thing, but with less of a challenge. I won't talk about how I fly it since you already know how to use that boat.

If your "good drone skills" allow you to use T2 sentries(all four types have uses) and T2 Ogres then you should really give the Rattlesnake a go. I moved from the Navy Raven to the Rattle before either of them was rebalanced, and the Rattle was more fun for me. After the Rattle rebalanced I have tried them both again. I still like the Rattle more, but that is because I like always having something to click. If you don't mind micro managing things, and you don't mind splitting your DPS when appropriate, the Rattle is the way to go. I mostly use Cruise and Sentries-Sentries assign one to incoming frigate, assign the second to s different frigate, shoot cruises at a BC, repeat until all that are left are cruisers and battleships. Put everything on the battleships that are left. Drop out your Ogre II or Gecko to finish off cruisers as you move to the gate.

Between flying the old Rattle/Raven Navy and new Rattle/Raven Navy I flew the Golem. I use cruise missiles on it because fury missiles can one-shot anything but elite cruisers and BS. Angle BS take three volleys for the standard and four for the 1mil+s. Other ships take about 4. But since I like multi-tasking, this is the ship for me(in 4s) . Enter room, start to lock things, Drop mobile depot, drop salvage drones, kill any cruiser/BC, on the next(still living ship) tell your drones to salvage so that they will auto salvage everything, kill whatever you want because nothing can EW you or break your tank, use tractors(I fit 4) to pull in close things so that the MTU pulls the things out of your 48k tractor range, kill everything in the room. I use two republic painters and a federation web, this let's you one shot frigs(one is twenty or so frigates will orbit out of web range, but you can overheat to get them in one cycle) When there are two things left to kill, turn bastion off and lock up any remaining wrecks, assign salvage drones one per wreck manually so they mop up quickly, scoop the MTU, loot the container that is left, scoop your drones. If there is a gate you will want to do this twice with your jump in the middle. Remember that the bastion timer batches up with the MJD pretty nicely.


Edit: typos

Flying a rattlesnake myself I can tell you the problem with the rattlesnake and probably any other missile boat aside from the golem.
Effectiveness isn't measured in just dps or even applied dps. There is warpspeed, time refitting, basically many things.
And the rattlesnake requires an extreme amount of refitting.
Imho, if you want effectiveness don't listen to the dps is everything crowd. The golem is probably what you want.
It always relies primarily on its launchers, and should be able to tank anything without always refitting.

After flying a rattlesnake for a longer time I've become very displeased by both its weapon-systems. But I think a golem wouldn't have these issues as strongly. Juggling 2 tracking scripts, a painter or two, drones, missiles and making sure the interaction between them all doesn't create overkill or underkill with the 1 second response time making sentries lose lots of dps.
That said the one strong point for the rattler is that for its considerable dps it applies it very well at a far range compared to your average gunship.
But the golem would probably outdo it because ease of use=dps/mission speed.

Wow a huge amount of info. Thanks everyone for posting it's been a really good read. I think I'll go for the Rattlesnake (after some skill training) I like how its different from the Drake/Raven missile boats I've been using. It'll be a month and a half to train Sentry and Heavy drones to 5 but I can still run lvl 4s perfectly fine.