Missions & Complexes

I've been running a blaster fit Kronos for all my clearing and blitzing. It's not as fast as a Machariel, but it can hang in through missions like Damsel, Beserk, Worlds and the Extravaganzas. I think it may be possible to volley Scarlet in the first room with Void, but you'd have to close to within 10km.

The challene is finding the right implant set that lends itself to all fits. Right now I'm on the fence between a set of Genolutions with a WS-618, Ogdin, EM-805 vs. High-grade Ascendancies, Shaqil Speed, EM-706 and Zor. Slots 9 and 10 are the 6% rate of fire for turrets and launchers. Better fitting, capacitor and tracking with the first; better speeds with the second.

Further to my previous post regarding the Serpentis Base mission, I'm amending it with the following revised fit. This setup is safe, this is fast - and most importantly, it's cap stable. You can run this thing for a hundred missions without worrying on having to stock up on missiles, drones or cap boosters. Yes, it is a bit on the pricer side - but considering the hull is half the investment that's not bad.

No overheating - no resupplying - no repairs. It doesn't get any easier than that. The most expensive item (and deal breaker with this fit) is the 'Thurifer' Large Cap Battery. You don't have enough grid with anything else.

With implants and V skills this has a 75.5km range (although you'll get half of that since you're damped) and does 761 DPS with drones, applied 100%. Your active shield tank (sustainable) is 1102.2 HP/s. This is actually about 10-15% more tank than my previous Cerberus fit and also more than the Vagabond fit in the guide. By running a passive damage control it also gives you a bit of 'GTFO' room in the form of a hull and armor buffer in the event you clip one or more of the sentry turrets (please don't).

[Cerberus, Serpentis Base]

Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Light Missile
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Light Missile
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Light Missile
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Light Missile
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Light Missile
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Light Missile

Gistum C-Type 50MN Microwarpdrive
Pithum A-Type Kinetic Deflection Amplifier
Gist X-Type Large Shield Booster
'Thurifer' Large Cap Battery
Shield Boost Amplifier II

Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Damage Control II

Medium Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer II
Medium Warhead Calefaction Catalyst II

Scourge Fury Light Missile x10000
Hobgoblin II x3

The fit also has enough flexibility such that you could slightly decrease damage, increase tank or buff targeting range to offset damps by substituting a Signal Amplifier II in place of the DC and a Medium Ionic Field Projector II in place of the Warhead Calefaction rig. This actually gives you an insane 195km targeting range which is probably enough to compensate for any damps.

There's a couple of problems with that fit but the Cerb is a perfectly capable alternative to the Vaga.

First off the big difference between the Vaga and the Cerb is that the Vaga goes well over 1km/s faster. There is two things this extra speed helps with; traveling from ship to ship (the main time sink in this mission) and speed tanking. So the Cerb will need to both approach at a steeper angle to keep transversal high enough and will take longer to start combat. It can make up for this by having higher resists and by doing way more damage.

So lets have a look at what's wrong with your fit. First off you will rarely need to tank and MWD at the same time so cap stable is a waste. I understand the issue with unstable internet but if you have unstable internet then burners are NOT something you should be doing in the first place. No amount of cap stability will save you in burners since they all point you. The Medium cap booster uses normal cap 800s. These are extremely cheap and easy to get. Heck you can manufacture them yourself if you want. There is 0 reason to not run one. In fact, I've had some missions where I don't even use the cap booster but sometimes you get a little unlucky on wrecking hits so the extra bit of cap on call is nice.

Also, the Cerb has 150m3 more cargo space.

Since burst tanking is actually far superior for this mission in particular because of the somewhat frequent wrecking shots you'll get a Pith Shield booster is better than a Gist. As a bonus it uses less PG. For the rest of the tanking stuff you have fit, the base therm resist is already higher than that of the Vaga so no need for the rig. The Vaga does get a boost bonus though so keeping the Boost Amp is a good idea. So overall the Cerb tank is stronger than that of the Vaga with near identical modules fitted.

With the changes to damage controls and hull resists, not to mention the extremely strong kin/therm base armor resists on the Cerb, a DCU is not a requirement for the Cerb (or the Vaga for that matter but it can afford it slot wise). This means you can at least up the speed a tiny bit by fitting an Overdrive.

The MWD should be switched to a Corelum for cap usage.

Rapid lights are a horrible choice for a weapon system for this mission for a couple of reasons. First off you're shooting at BCs so the application advantage gets wasted. Secondly even taking into account the burst damage (You wont kill one of these BCs in a single reload I'm sure) and the very generous implant bonuses you give it, it's STILL 100 dps less than HAMs and if you take reloads into account it's only barely over HALF of HAMs. Because of the damps there is no reason to not run HAMs. There is the tiny problem of PG when going with hams so you'll need a T1 Ancil rig but the Calefaction rig is still good.

Basically if I were to use a Cerb for this mission this is what I would be running, and even then I think it's slightly over tanked. You'll spend more time flying to each rat but you'll kill them a lot faster than the Vaga.

[Cerberus, Serpentis Base copy 1]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Overdrive Injector System II

Corelum B-Type 50MN Microwarpdrive
Kinetic Deflection Amplifier II
Pith C-Type Large Shield Booster
Medium Electrochemical Capacitor Booster I, Cap Booster 800
Shield Boost Amplifier II

Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Rage Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Rage Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Rage Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Rage Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Rage Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Rage Heavy Assault Missile

Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Warhead Calefaction Catalyst II

Hobgoblin II x3

-Speed
It's not that theCerb isn't capable of speed tanking, it does fine speed tanking. The problem is it is 50% slower than the Vaga. That's a LOT. Remember you will need to fly over to the wrecks anyways to collect loot, and you need to be within 54km for drones as well. It's all nice and well being able to shoot at it from the start but you need to get to where the rat is no matter how you look at it and it goes a lot slower.

-Cap boosters
Not much here to say regarding something as irrelevant as the problem you have

- Shield booster
No, the pith is superior because you're not facing constant damage. Gist will work fine yes but it's more expensive both in isk and PG for no advantage.

Signal Amp
- Again, reducing your already slow speed means you're taking longer to get to where you need to go anyways.

Post your run time from clicking activate gate to warping out (after looting the last wreck) and I'll have a look at how it compares, both to the Vaga and the Cerb.

As an addendum to the Cerberus fit for the Serpentis Base Burner, I can confirm that with full missile skills you can in fact destroy each Talon with a single clip (and several volleys to spare) of Fury light missiles. I've also found that the Hobgoblin II drones die too quickly and that Hornet IIs are far superior. I've also revised my fit to replace the Signal Amplifier II with a Nanofiber Internal Structure II and the Medium Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer II rig with a Medium Polycarbonate Engine Housing I rig. These boost overall velocity by about 15% and greatly improve acceleration rates.

This portion in the guide should really be revised, as it's somewhat misleading...

With V skills and no implants, this fit tops out at 1017 DPS. This is to a range of about 20km; at 60km it drops to 600 DPS and 500 DPS at 70km. It should be further noted that none of the ammunition is damage-specific, so approximately 25% of DPS will be hitting the wrong resistances (which translates into an additional 10-25% DPS loss). While sentry drones add 168 DPS with V skills, this is limited to a range of about 57km (Curator, Wardens and Bouncers only). You can gain 5-10% from smashing or wrecking shots, but you can also lose a corresponding amount to poorer quality shots or misses.

In a perfect world, if you're shooting at stationary targets out to 20km you'll get well over 1k DPS. In reality, since engagements will typically be in the 40-60km range, targets are going to be moving and will have different damage resistance profiles - a more realistic number is probably in the 600-800 DPS range. This is inclusive of drones, which you can't necessarily deploy and leave to their own devices - as they have a tendency to get picked off.

I'm merely pointing this out because the Machariel has received this "mythic" reputation when in reality, aside from warp speed, it doesn't necessarily perform any better than other Pirate ships or Marauders in terms of dealing and applying DPS. While this makes the Machariel typically well-suited for SoE agents and missions, the speed might be a bit of an overkill for regular Empire mission blitzing.

I may very well take you up on that... Do you have a set list of "blitzable" missions? There are possibly one or two that could be added to the list ("Massive Attack") as they have blitzable qualities and can be completed within a similar (though not identical) timeframe.

I've also been looking at Fuzzworks over the past week and there are a few standard (non-SoE) corporations getting very, very close to SoE ISK/LP conversion ratios on some items. It also reveals that players are for the most part not getting these obscene 2000+ ISK/LP conversion rates - but more in the 1400-1600 range.

I may have a few that are on the fence, if only because they typically spawn in the same system. I have to run them a few more times to see if there's any efficiency to be gained.

Main Faction missions are very lucrative outside of SoE agents, and are the only missions that rival Burners for ISK/hour.

Faction drops are almost non-existent on Burners now, and the drops that do happen are of the token 1m ISK variety (usually ammunition or worthless modules). It would not surprise me if these got a stealth nerf without any fanfare, but I quit running them beacuse I found I wasn't generally making much more from the Burners as regular missions by the time transit was factored in. And wouldn't you know it, now that I've quit running them all I get are Burner missions...

I'm having a trial run with a Rattlesnake fit that looks like it might make the cut. DPS is comparable (and potentially a bit higher) than the Machariel, faster align and substantially more tank. Slower in warp speed and maximum velocity, but it does seem to blitz nicely (ran Dread Scarlet in under 4min).

Yes, that first room in Dread Scarlet is indeed a special case. You do realize that it will probably take around 130 runs to pay for that investment, right? There's no other battleship that can come even remotely close in terms of overall DPS, speed and maneuverability. Even the Barghest falls short (and due to the huge freakin size it clips into so many things that it's more of a hinderance than anything else). There are also only a handful of missions that you can complete in a full clip with the Barghest, and Assault and Pirate Invasion aren't one of them. Torpedo Machariel would be a riot...

I'm going to keep running some trials, but it's not looking at all encouraging... Did anyone ever come up with a Polarized fit for blitzing, or is it just impractical at this point?