Missions & Complexes

I've recently come to appreciate the Kronos Marauder, and I believe it may be the best Marauder of the group. Despite losing the stasis web bonus in the rebalance, it's still a formidable platform. Here are my reasons why:

• Being armor-based it has the best tank, bar-none (which also looks uber cool now). With 7 low slots it can operate with as few as 2 or as many as 5 allocated to tank - something none of the other Marauders can touch. It's also possible to run most missions completely buffer fit without the use of an armor repairer (just an observation, not necessarily something I'd recommend). When in Bastion it has a native 68.5% kinetic resistance (71.9% with damage control), which means you can shield tank a good chunk of missile damage from Guristas and Angels. Deadspace armor repairers are cheap in comparison with Deadspace shield boosters, and the slow cycle time ensures you can always run it overheated indefinitely.

• While it's quite easy to fit the Kronos for cap stability, this is not recommended - as you will almost always be more than halfway through your mission by the time either your armor or capacitor dips down to the 50% threshold. When in Bastion you almost never need to run your armor repair continuously, so even when firing, operating electronic modules or salvaging you have capacitor to spare. While Hybrids do consume energy to operate, this is minimized with only 4 large hybrid weapons. This also means you don't need a Heavy Capacitor Boster II or cap charges.

• Only one ammo type, which makes life incredibly simple (Faction Antimatter). Hybrid weapon damage is ideally-suited against the majority of Pirate Factions (EOM, Guristas, Mercenaries, Mordus and Serpentis) and secondary against everything else. The Paladin only offers EM/thermal damage, so it's weak outside Amarr space. The Vargur offers better damage tailoring, but at the cost of carrying three or more types of ammunition. The Golem has the best damage application but requires up to eight different types of ammunition to achieve this! Hybrids have a 5-second reload vs. the 10-second projectile/missile or 35-second rapid missile.

• The Kronos has possibly the most unique weapon set which has been almost overlooked entirely. This is the 350mm Railgun (and variants), which offer better tracking, a higher rate of fire and twice the ammunition capacity of the larger 450mm Railguns. The damage difference is negligible for the most part, and while the range is slightly less the damage application is actually higher (and the ability to rapidly volley smaller targets is underappreciated). In addition, Faction variants of the 350mm Railgun can be found for an absolute pittance (3-9m ISK each), which are a nice cost-effective substitute until you can run the T2s. In a stationary position the 350mm Railguns are effective from about 25km out to 100km against all targets. Once orbiting it's generally impossible to hit frigates, but you can generally snipe the vast majority so your light drones can take out the stragglers. I've even found that with a target painter you can hit battleships at full MWD speed - even with adverse transversal and angular velocity. The 350mm Railgun also requires almost half the amount of energy to operate, making it very capacitor conscious.

• It has the largest drone capacity (125m3) - all other Marauders have between 50-75m3. You can thus run a full flight of lights, mediums and a pair of sentries. This gives you an extra 92 DPS when sniping, 102 DPS against frigates or a whopping 163 DPS against cruisers or larger (assuming full drone skills and 'Augmented' drones). Only the Vargur can match the drone DPS, but it has to either choose mediums or sentries (not both).

• The Kronos probably has the coolest SKIN.

Here's the fit and setup I'm running. Comments, discussion and suggestions welcome (note that I don't have perfect gunnery skills, which is why I'm using the Faction 350mm Railguns).

4x Shadow Serpentis 350mm Railgun (Faction Antimatter)
1x Bastion Module I
2x Small Tractor Beam II
1x Drone Link Augmentor II

1x Shadow Serpentis 500MN Microwarpdrive
2x Tracking Computer II (optimal range-scripted)
1x Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron

2x Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
1x Core X-Type Large Armor Repairer
4x Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

1x Large Hybrid Burst Aerator II
1x Large Hybrid Metastasis Adjuster I

For implants I have a full Genolution set with a mid-grade Ascendancy Epsilon, 'Rogue' WS-615 warp speed, Ogdin's Eye Coordination, Zor's Hyper-Link, 'Lancer' Gunnery RF-905 and 'Deadeye' hybrid LH-1005. The Genolutions give me a +5% shield/armor buffer, +10% capacitor and +5% speed and inertia. Warp speed is a decent 2.74 AU/s with an align time of just over 9.5s.

Stated DPS is 1035 (871 DPS hybrid, 92.4-163 DPS drone). This gets bumped up to 920 DPS with T2 hybrids, but energy consumption is also higher (and I think I prefer the Faction 350's). With the 500MN MWD it speeds along at a breezy 1120 m/s, which is easily the fastest of the Marauders. The 350mm's deal almost full DPS at 60km and about 3/4 stated DPS at 80km - which are going to be your primary engagement ranges. Other than the negligible amount of DPS lost to falloff, damage application is going to be near 100% (especially a target painter).

Drones are somewhat a personal preference, but I'm running a flight of 'Augmented' Hornets, 'Augmented' Vespas and a pair of Warden IIs for sniping. I've found the addition of the target painter to be quite effective in applying damage to smaller targets that close within 20km and assisting drones against frigates (not only do they apply damage more effectively, but simply painting the target auto-engages drones).

I'm gonna be that guy.

It depends...

also TL; DR

Srsly though it's a fine boat for pvp, but pve... i dare say it's the worst of em all ( YEP i said it )

Tank marauders provide is absolutely excessive anyway.
The only marauder that could have troubles with capacitor in general is Paladin... if it used 8 turrets, not 4 with 100% bonus
Paladin locked in EM/Thermal, yeah, but your shots on paladin is "penetrating" at least 99.9% of time.
Drone dps is nice to have, but why care about it that much if anything melts with speed of acquiring locks already? Also, I don't see many reasons to carry many variations. The only real trouble is spider drones, running at 3km/s to you, then maintaining good speed on the orbit. Lights are best drones for the task of taking these down (Although you shouldn't let them get to you in the first place) while sentries is the only sensible assist for long range action.
Oh, coolest SKIN? Great, but Paladin looks cool even without skin. And you may slap edgy Blood Raider one.

Change the 'Lancer' Gunnery RF-905 with a Eifyr and Co. 'Gunslinger' Surgical Strike SS-905. Sure it lowers the paper DPS, but the volley damage increase a lot more so you can swat the cruisers with less volleys.

Also try T2 Neutron Blasters with Null ammo.

Fit I have used in the past, that is cap stable with my skills.

[Kronos, Kronos fit]

Federation Navy Magnetic Field Stabilizer
Federation Navy Magnetic Field Stabilizer
Federation Navy Magnetic Field Stabilizer
Damage Control II
Centum B-Type Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Centum B-Type Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Core X-Type Large Armor Repairer

Large Micro Jump Drive
Shadow Serpentis Tracking Computer, Optimal Range Script
Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II

Bastion Module I
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Null L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Null L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Null L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Null L
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]

Large Hybrid Burst Aerator I
Large Capacitor Control Circuit II


Hammerhead II x5


Genolution Core Augmentation CA-1
Genolution Core Augmentation CA-4
Genolution Core Augmentation CA-3
Genolution Core Augmentation CA-2
Eifyr and Co. 'Gunslinger' Surgical Strike SS-905
Zainou 'Deadeye' Large Hybrid Turret LH-1005

What's the optimal range on those blasters, with bastion mode?

18+42 slaps Loyd

Blasterkronos rocks the boat and blasts through Damsel, but honestly that is the only mission in which I would use it over a paladin vs anything other really than Angels, for which I have my trusty Mach. Kronos sure is a good ship, but vs guristas/serpentis/eom I prefer the tachyonpaladin because 62km optimal with MF is pretty good for me...

I used a shield paladin over the Kronos, you don't need many slots for tank on a marauder, but I would probably go Vargur if I didn't live in low sec these days.

It is very hard to see where any of the marauders are "bad" when used properly, they all work pretty damn well.

This Kronos fit looks gorgeous!
+1


Edit: Unless you're doing Lev 5s in this Kronos, 2xTrue Sansha Energized Adaptive Nano Membranes and a Centus C-Type Large Armor Repairer would be efficient enough for Lev 4s and make you less of a gank magnet.

Never even trained them. The damage application is awesome with pulse. With only 4 turrets energy is easy to manage. Its a slowboat is the only drawback. You can MJD into range easy enough most of the time though.



Yeah all I have on the Pally is 1 x type and 2 adaptive II's and it tanks every l4 I've had with ease.