Ships & Modules

Moving into a Cerberus then onto command ships. ISO help and Advice.

So for background information I fly mostly in Caldari space and I run L4’s for fun and profit. My shield, engineering, and missile skills are all 4 or 5. I will be able to fly command ships in around 50 days and that is what I thinking strongly of doing. In the short term I want to try out the Cerberus for a little taste of speed. So now my dilemma. …
I have been flying a Tengu for several months now, fantastic ship loved her to death until she died in a fiery gank. (Good fight lads) Now I have been thinking of flying a cheaper or more durable ship. I am casting covetous eyes on the Cerberus the Nighthawk and the Claymore.

I can fly the Cerberus nicely right now but most of the fits I have found on her are for PVP does anyone have any good PVE fits for a Cerberus?

On that note what shredded my Tengu in missions was being cap neutralized or webbed, I have read the Nighthawk can be passive tanked to good effect and I find that very attractive as I frequently must go AFK for those pesky real life interruptions. Does anyone still use them for running L4’s or is that passé and a waste of time? Additionally is the Claymore better for tanking and running L4’s. I love the Claymore’s active tank bonus, its hefty drone bay, and its non reliance on kinetic damage. My corp. mates will also be thankful for the command ship bonus.

So the TL-DR question does anyone have any good L4 fits for the Cerberus and then which ship is better for L4’s the Nighthawk or the Claymore?

(Also with the semi recent buff to medium rail guns is the vulture any good in PVE? I love its hull)

the cerb pretty good for lvl4s, thanks to its range bonus HAMs work really nice on it but it will take too long. i have used it with a regular t2 fit, MWD, one nano on the lows, two polycarbons on the rigslots. and for tank two passive mission specific resists + small shield booster + boost amp.

the small shield booster seems like pushing it, but it works fine thanks to your speed and resistances. i originally had a small gistii A-Type booster, but after the buff to active tanks this last few patches, t2 is fine. (so long as you have the skills to back it up)
you can also use a medium booster, but it will take some cap management, or changing the MWD to an AB.

if its all you can fly, then yeah its better than a poorly trained battleship.

mission time will be long, so i would recommend you to do lvl3s instead, change the polycarbons for two Warpspeed rigs and ungroup the launchers. the cerberus using Heavy missiles can do lvl3s at an amazing speed and will net you more money than any lvl4, even with pimp battleships. (tho it can get kinda dull, even more than lvl4s lol)

as far as command ships go, the nighthawk and the Claymore are pretty terrible at pve now, they have no range bonus and are too slow when compared to a cerberus/tengu and are extremely overtanked. unlike with turret ships, once you fill the lows with damage mods, even if you could tank with only two midslots, there's still nothing to fit on the empty slots that would make things go faster.

command ships are pretty amazing at pve, but no missile CS is, sadly. Sleipnirs, Astartes, EOS, Absolutions, they are great. specially astartes and Sleipnirs, they can destroy lvl4s.

the Vulture has a fantastic Rail Optimal range, but flying solo its damage is pretty anemic and cycle time too long. an astarte will deal about twice the DPS at similar ranges (you will have swap tracking scripts for optimal), and brings a strong active tank bonus instead of wasted extra resistances.
also the astarte has 50mb of bandwith and a 75m3 drone bay, paired with arguably the strongest ganglink bonuses, tank and signature/prop speed.

you are looking at easily 1k dps out of 125 signature guns. perfect for lvl4s with their walls of cruisers. be warned though, the darn thing will cycle those railguns as if they were machineguns. with 250mm rails you are looking at 1.8 seconds per shoot :o

still, given infinite SP and ISK, battleships will eventually get better. on paper. not like they can apply their damage properly.

this statement is hilariously wrong.

Thanks for all the input. With your comments it seems I might be better of just pulling the trigger and buying a Navy Raven (for its damage application) or Flying the nice shiny new Rattlesnake.

1. Can I fit a Navy Raven to be cap stable will a good tank without massacring my Damage Application and DPS? If so anyone have any fits?

2. Can someone share a good passive shield tank'd Rattlesnake, with the new changes is the Rattlesnake finally at lest partially a missile ship, or is it still Mostly Drone with missiles as a bonus. Meaning do I need to micro the heavy drones for max effectiveness or can I just let them play and pop targets with my missiles? My hevey drone skill bairly let me use Heavy II's so this would take more time to be a real option.

3. Which of the two is less gank bait?

Thanks for the Cerberus Fit Ill try it.

If you want to passive tank use an SNI.

Passive tanking a RS just completely defeats the purpose of it, it is obscene dps with obscene micro management. Neither of those gel with passive tank.

The passive tank SNI isn't comparable to any active tank Raven/SNI/RNI/RS/Golem of course, but it's much less gank bait and much less expensive than a passive RS.

Edit: Well blow me down that'll teach me to spout about prices when I haven't logged in in ages. The SNI is about 60-70m more than the RS, and the RNI a touch above that. Kerr- razy. I bought my SNI for about 400m iirc a while back. Guess the changes to the RS didn't make it more attractive...

My RS passive tanks so good, I actually removed some of it to add fun things.

it probably involves maximizing lp/h for soe by blitzing lv3s.

Wow this has been a very edifying thread for me, thank you for all your responses. Pricing it out I think the Rattlesnake might be the way to go for me especially as I need to AFK for S.H.M.B.O. aggro. Does anyone have a good passive Rattlesnake fit with decent performance? I cant use T2 sentries yet but I will train up to them if the consensus is they are handily better than heavy's and geckos.

Its too bad that the Caldari Command ships are rather anemic right now I would love to fly one.

AFK L4's is not a good idea anymore.
Those days are long past.

If you must do it just get a MJD on a RS.
Stack the lows with damage mods.
Put F.O.F. missiles in your cruise launchers.

Add a drone range augmentor and a drone range rig.
2 omni's for the drones with range scripts.
Use wardens.
Large faction shield booster. ((XL if you were not afk))

The rest of the fit just resist.

If you still end up shy cap just switch out a mod or 2.

Enter mission jump out 100k and walk away if you dare.
Just make sure you handled any trigger issues before you do.

Even without a Sebo you should be able to land full damage at 90k with ease.


I do not recommend this style of play at all but if you must do it that is how it's done.
You would do better with a tp and riggor rigs and normal missiles if you can get rid of your AFK aspect.

If you go AFK for long periods the SNI is the better choice as stated by previous poster. Good luck!

HAM or HML Cerb with a small deadspace shield booster.
Anything else missiles is as boring as watching paint dry.

If you need to go AFK just warp out, it's the only way to be safe.

Next step after that, considering what you're asking for and that you're into missiles, should be a Golem with Bastion module and a Medium deadspace shield booster like Daniel suggested.

However, I wouldn't advice AFK:ing that for longer than it takes a gang of destroyers to warp into your deadspace pocket.