Ships & Modules

I'm fairly new still, and have been flying and training Gallente initially. Drones are fun, and I've flown a Vexor, Myrmidon, and Dominix now, but keep wondering the same thing:

Should I fit my highs with only one or two rails (for aggro at distance) and the rest blasters, or all rails?

I commonly find myself in the situation where ships will close in and orbit much closer than my rails can hit. I could abandon some low slots to improve tracking, but not sure that's going to help enough to be worth losing some of the armor tanking / cap recharge.

Instead, I could switch to blasters and continue damaging ships that close that fast (IE: Damsel In Distress Lvl 4, the battleships close and orbit closer than 6km).

Also, I hear the "way to go" is autocannons ... I'm planning on training those once I'm a little more solid on more of the core stuff, so this will eventually be moot, I suppose.

Don't mix guns.

Thanks all for the replies!

Much like Derath suggests, it's best to let your drones deal with stuff that's up close. If it's a battleship that's come in close then rails will hit it just as well, with admittedly less damage though, this is offset by the number of ships which will keep out of a decent range for blasters. Personally I feel large blasters are more hassle than they're worth tbh, to be effective you really need to fit a prop mod, which may or may not be viable, on top of that you need to spend time travelling to get in range, whereas with rails you can just sit there. You can, of course, play however you like though :D

i used to use 350's with orge II on a domi... was not too bad at all... though tbh blasters for pve is kinda a hassle... having to burn from one target to the other...

350's i say if you are lazy...

Could have sworn Damsel was one that let you select range.

Maybe I'm missing it, but I don't recall seeing /any/ mission that's let me select the range I want to warp in to ... especially in a pocket.

I'll keep my eyes open, though.

It's /so/ annoying when you use slashes in place of italics or bold

There's no need to initiate warp and then cancel anymore. However, you do need to use bookmarks other than the one in the mission briefing.

If you right click in space when you're in the system where the mission takes place, you'll be able to drop down to a bookmark. If you can warp in at distance, you'll be able to select that option directly. If you can't, you'll only be given the warp to 0 option.

And yes, this is one way to work with Damsel. But given that it's one of the few missions you can get right in close and just destroy everything with indiscriminate rage, it's fun to take advantage and go that way instead.

Ship and drones will determine the guns.

Myrm does well with auto cannons as it has no gun bonus.

Vexor size works well with blasters as they are fast enough to use them.

Dominix will vary based on your drones. (( If you don't switch fits based on mission ))

If you don't have two different fits for different range missions you will want to have the guns do the opposite of your drones.
If you have T2 sentries go with blasters and if you have T2 heavies go with rail.
If you have good/great drone skills you can even keep salvagers/beams as your highs with one gun just for aggro. (( You can do this if you are going to end up in a Rattlesnake and will be training missles and don't want to waste time training guns))

If you don't want to cross train for the rattlesnake get a Navy Domi fit all ready and train toward your final goal.