Ships & Modules

Ok, so let me spell it out for you since checking the info on the vargur hull and the bastion module is a little too much for you.

Vargur hull has 7.5% shield boost amount per lv. Realistically we'd be looking at lv4 marauders 90% of the time. That's a 30%-37.5% bonus to shield boost. Now lets look at the bastion module. 100% shield boost.

Awesome so according to EFT a pith c-type XL goes from doing 726 boost on a machariel at all V to 1996.5 boost on the vargur at all V.

That means the Machariel with just the shield booster fitted gets a omni tank of 272 (huge EM hole doesnt help) vs the Vargur having a omni tank of 514. With an invul on the mach and a single amp on the vargur it goes to 388 and 671 respectively. You get even better results running ASBs (one large and one XL on the vargur with no amps gives 822 dps omni tank)

You getting the picture yet?

Math, how does it even.

And YES those tank numbers are with 0 resists on the vargur and normal resists on the Mach.

Ignorance always finds a way.

Pffft of course theres "the best" ship(or class of ship) for lv4, just need to quantify what it needs to be the best at. Best at full clear? Best at full clear and loot/salvage? Best at afk? Best at semi-afk? Best at isk/h?

Each one of those have a very real answer.

Saying there is no point is quite off base. Golem has better potential damage application than a NRaven, Paladin makes a better MJD ship than either the NM or NApoc/Geddon, and even without an MJD allows for greater damage at range with the optimal bonus than the NM with the same gun damage potential.

Mach is the blitz king and the RS the DPS king, though again it comes down to the reason for choosing the ship. As a full clear pilot I'm willing to give up some speed/DPS to not have to deal with TDs/SDs/ECM on top of having greater MJD feasibility and range.

Unless there is some unstated qualifier to the words "no real point," no, you are not. There are situations where, yes, there is a point.

Edit: Reading fail on my part, read "nad" as "not" rather than "and" as probably intended. Feel free to disregard.

Edit 2: Unless declaring polarized weapons a must. They can use them well, but do fine without them.

NM/NApoc/NGeddon aren't really better for the task than a paladin. NRaven isn't better for the task than a Golem. Most of the ships you listed don't support your point.

Until you actually try it, you are speaking from a point of willful ignorance and thus the only thing you display is close-mindedness. I mean if you're ok with that then hay, more power to you

Why would you use a Marauder for blitzing? Completely pointless use of the hull; there are far better choices.

Ok, let me answer the concerns with solutions as I see it, though the caveat stays as always: We are already accepting that marauders are the wrong ships to use if your aim is blitzing in the first place. Even then a tank of around 200-300 rat specific tank is enough for any of the blitzing missions. Regardless since we're starting with Marauder hulls I'll assume the aim is to at the least full clear, possibly loot, definitely salvage each mission/pocket. This I am quite familiar with, having done this for many months in the Vargur after Rubicon.

First off, gains: 25% RoF gain. This is great for quite a few reasons and hardly qualifies as 'small' gains, especially since the aim is full clear. In blitzing it would mean very little, hence why I am against using polarized on say, a machariel. It also synergises well with the very few guns on a marauder that already benefit from a huge damage bonus on each gun rather than just RoF. This means less overkill than if it was a damage bonus and all the advantages that goes with increased RoF.

The Golem: While I've looked at Polarized on the Golem, I agree it's not the best of the 4 options for this. Though it isn't inherently worse than a 'normal' torp Golem. Pretty much the same issues regardless if you're using polarized or not.

EHP: There's only two instances of ganking you have to watch out for, ganking for profit and ganking for tears. In the case of the first, because you are running a marauder you don't need bling *at all* to tank or do damage or project damage so you're running all T2. This means no profit. In the case of the second the number of nados they need won't make much of a difference at all. If they want is your tears then the only thing that would really deter someone is something like a buffer passive fit rattlesnake with 110k EHP. Depends on who you pissed off and how much they hate your guts.

Cap charges, cargo space: A couple of counter arguments here. Loot is worth a sad amount these days and salvage takes up no space to begin with. Additionally with the increased dps the tank you need is naturally reduced. I haven't used my Cap booster on my Mach in ages and that's with only 1k gun dps and a 200-300 dps tank. This means you don't need much, if any cap modules to begin with as you'll still have a decent sized cap reservoir that again wont be particularly stressed because of the dps. Additionally because you're not fitting the resist module(s) you would normally, you fit an amp so you get more bang for your cap buck so to speak. Regardless, cherrypick what you loot. No biggy.

Bastion: The main draw of bastion on a normal fit is much more the range increase on guns, the tank bonus being secondary, though it certainly helps to free up module slots for other things. So for the majority of the time you're shooting at stuff you're in bastion anyways. I really don't see the argument with bastion, as if you're not using bastion normally then... why are you in a marauder and not a Mach?

Cap modules: The whole point of running a cap recharger (and bastion and an amp or two) is that you don't need other cap modules or rigs for that matter, doubly so on a Vargur or Golem. This I feel is just fishing for a reason. Meh.

Blitzing: Use a Mach

Precisely this.

The gains don't outweigh the loss, and that goes double for Marauders because Polarize weapons handicaps their greatest strength which is their tanks. If Polarize weapons gave an additional 100% damage bonus in addition to another 50% optimal or falloff then maybe there would be some justification in using them. Even still the only ships I would even consider using Polarize weapons on are ships that are fairly inexpensive with good optimals like the Rokh or Apoc.