Missions & Complexes

Guess it's gonna be a less good ship for missioning as the Machariel. Just from what I read in other posts on these forums, no experience..... sorry.
But just try it out and come tell here urself?

From flying the mach, the vindicator is no improvement. It might be from running a tengu... not sure, I never really liked them for missions, but I was also always more of a battleship pilot.

Heres the thing. A mach can put out around 1100ish dps (give or take some depending upon fit, implants, skills, pimping, etc) with an optimal of 5km and 70ish km of falloff. This means that its still doing just short of 900dps at 40km (80% dps at optimal + 1/2 falloff). Tank is enough for missions as long as you pay attention and don't fall asleep. Switching to vindicator though, you have 2 options:

Option 1 - blasters:
Blasters can dump out up to 1800 gun dps from the vindicator. The problem? 10km range. You can probably still get out to around 1000dps at 20km, but it falls off excessively fast after that. Or you can switch to null and get about 1000ish dps (don't have EFT/PYFA available atm, so just guessing off remembered numbers for that) which gives you a range of about 15km optimal (depending upon fit) and around 20km of falloff. So you can do about 800dps at 25km, and about 500 at 35km, with it steadily dropping after that. The vindi is also slower and less agile than the mach, so getting into range is slower. Alltogether, I would say that it is less effective than a mach, mostly due to range issues.

Option 2 - rails:
Railguns you max out at less than 900dps with CN antimatter. I think it may be actually less than 800, but I forgot... that might have been before the rail buff. But it is still significantly less than the mach out to 40km. After 40km it might get better, but the optimal on 450's is 36km before tracking computers (with antimatter loaded). Then you run into the next problem... the absurdly low locking range. IIRC, the locking range on a vindi is less than 60km, I just can't remember if that is before or after skills. Lastly, even with the changes to railgun fittings, the fitting on the vindi is still excessively tight with a 450mm fit, making fitting the tank tough. This leads to a problem of deciding upon dps, range, or tank, with only 1 of the 3 really being possible at any one time. Once again, I would rate it worse than a mach.

So in conclusion, I recommend sticking to the mach. The only place for a vindi in PvE is in incursions... and even there the mach is probably better anyways.

-Arazel

Running forsaken hubs myself, I would say that too many battleships try to run away from you to make it still effective. Or it would have tank issues. That being said, may have to switch my tengu's to HAM's... still can manage about 30km range on them without any rigs needed.

-Arazel

I was making 22mil ticks pre-buff. Dunno what the range distribution is on the new buffed Serp Forsaken Hubs. That's the real sticking point for HAMs. I also did a range rig + a T2 damage (either ROF or damage, don't remember). As for the vindi being to slow to do the same, that is certainly possible, but they have awesomewinsauce webs.

Just fly a Kronos, hits 1k dps from turrets(rails) and 135 dps from drones(3 wardens, serp gurista) curators/bouncers do abit more, 5% hardwirings,

it's got better targeting range and it's alot cheaper on ammo

Depends what you're doing.

The Rattlesnake is PvE easymode. Get aggro, deploy drones, take nap.

Nightmare requires a teeny bit of work to remember to pop frigs first.

Mach requires a bit more work since you're now fast enough to pilot around to do more damage.

In exchange, the Mach and Nightmare do a TON more dps than the Rattler, so they run the missions faster > More Isk.

It is pronouced awesomesauce.

A bit OT, but mind posting your fit? Been debating on HMs or HAMs for my Tengu.

Rest of fittings are more or less in line with Vindi. But X-type LAR and A hardeners make the entire thing silly. Just buy a T2 BPO; it will be cheaper. :P