Ships & Modules

I take a one year break from the game and someone has told me now that Caldari ships are ACTUALLY being used in PVP?!

Have all of you lost your freaking mind? I spec'd Caldari because unlike my commy/liberal-pinko RL attitudes, in internet spaceships I wanted to be a vicious fascist/anarcho-capitalist pig. Then I found out that Caldari ships were complete crap, everyone armor tanked, and none of them could do anything worthwhile in pvp.

There were rare exceptions, you anal-retentive bastards. I know, blah blah blah, Ham Drake. TORPS R GOOD. I saw the video, and, yeah, I can' spend a billion on pirate-faction crap to make it work too. (no I can't, I'm broke, please send ISK)

But besides for soloboating pirate scum, every time you wanted to fleet up you couldn't meet DPS needs because your lowslots were now a massive plate, DC, and some other such crap.

So is it true? Some rumor was that goonswarm was running shield pvp fleets. Another was that Hybrids were actually comparable weapons to other guns. Space stations are filled with fairies and love and CCP is going to give us all a month free to make up for extended downtimes. (figure out which one's I'm serious about)

After a year of playing, DETERMINED to fly the Rokh because it looks like a giant Engine of space-doom, are you actually telling me it could be viable fleet ship?! Because I'm about to plan Gallente and inquiring minds want to know.

/incredulity

PS: Need a solid solo-boat, pirate-scum pvp fit for a caldari cruiser.

PPS: ECM so powerful we should all be using it until fixed (according to Liang)

Can't tell if you're trolling or just naturally sound like a mouthbreathing raging tard. Oh well, I'll give you a real response:

Yes, Caldari is good for PvP. Shield tanks are great for PvP. Missiles are great for PvP. Yes, rockets too. Railguns are good too, if you use them right. Blasters are very good now, too.

The most popular Caldari solo-boats are the Merlin, Kestrel, Hookbill, and Drake -- none a cruiser. Put Heavy Electron Blasters on a Moa and it's pretty good, too, but for some reason people don't use it much. So far as T2, the Harpy is excellent, especially if you fly it with rails and not blasters. The Caracal is decent, but has a "tank vs gank" tradeoff that is really bad for it. For gangs, bring a Blackbird or Griffin and jam everything in sight.

The Rokh is also apparently now present in some fleet fits as well.

The only ships suffering right now are the Hawk (active tank wtf), Crow (horrible for a combat interceptor), and the Eagle, Ferox, and the very-long-range Rokh, which can't engage at 150+ km for fear of everything suddenly warping in on them.

If you hear anyone tell you Caldari sucks at PvP, please smack them.

Caldari was always good at PVP. And unsurprisingly, they still are good at PVP.

-Liang

One year ago they were still good, who the hell were you flying with who made you armor-fit Caldari ships?!

For a long time the only "accepted" RRBS Caldari battleships were armor ravens and armor scorps. In AB/HAC gangs it was commonplace to see armor Falcons as I understand it (at least, when I actually saw falcons with one). Doesn't mean it was the best way to fly them... just that it was what was demanded for the kinds of fleets (blobs, really) they were being put in.

The reality of the situation, however, is that shield tanking has actually been quite powerful for a number of years. The extra mobility that came with shield tanking was just too valuable. The trend for "nano" shield tanking everthing sub-BC started maybe late 2008 - maybe even earlier? Even then early adopters were commonly scoffed at.

-Liang

The caldari ships haven't changed a bit as far as I know (ignoring the blaster buff) since I started playing in late 07. What has changed are player tactics. It used to all be about RRBS fleets, even abaddons would drop a gun or two in favor of RR. The "fleet domi" was also in it's prime and it wasn't uncommon to see entire gangs of nothing but those nasty guardian like domi's with their hordes of heavy drones. In that environment, caldari weren't crap, but since 3 out of 4 races favor armor tanking, they were mismatched with everyone else. You could certainly do an RR raven fleet with a normal shield setup. The trouble was never with the ship, it was with finding people able to fly it.

Then suddenly the epic SC buff hit, and anything and everything armor tanked that wasn't an SC was suddenly obsolete. Thus subcap fleets returned to nano. And since armor doesn't nano very well, everyone went to shields. Some people figured out that having a scimitar or two gave a decisive advantage when two such fleets collided. Thus logi soon became a regular site in fleets of 10+ where as before it had not been. Ganglinks, specifically skirmish, also became widespread. This also evolved fits to use more range. Previous nano fits were still fitted for point blank (AC's, blasters, HAM's) but with the ability to point people at 50km+, it seemed silly to get so close. Thus fits changed to involve more range.

Currently we have a new situation, SC's are no longer the solopwnmobiles against everything else in eve and so we're starting to see a return to the less mobile armor setups. The knowledge of the advantages of true logi over RRBS hasn't been lost though, so now we see guardians in pretty much all armor fleets and any BS's in them being fit for dps + neuting. I don't know of anyone who still uses the old RRBS setups. Hard to say where this will lead to next, nano has a range advantage currently while armor has an EW advantage.

100mn AB Tengu is the best ship in the game currently. these have been known to take down Machariels. it needs a fuckin nerf. hard.

Why no EWAR mentions? I thought they were the best at that? Hope so that looks to be my route in to it.

ECM sucks, you shouldn't ever use it. Nobody should us it, and ECM drones suck too.

Here's an example of how ******* terrible ECM is:
Last night I was in a Harpy at belt one in Amamake. I just finished killing a Rifter and was chatting it up with the Rifter pilot when an Arazu warps into the belt on me. I put out the call on vent and immediately get right up on top of him and start laying into him with Void. His shields go fast but his armor is kinda slow going.

About the time my gang lands (making it a Harpy, Taranis, Hyena, Daredevil, Hurricane) they land with a Tornado and Abaddon at range. Unfortunately for them we dropped the Arazu fairly quickly ( http://kb.heretic-army.biz/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=62077 ) and move on to tackle the Abaddon and Tornado. The Tornado is in deep armor and going down fast when the Falcon uncloaks and jams all of us.

The Tornado gets out in hull, the Abaddon goes free, and the Falcon warps away.

This is a lesson in why ECM sucks.

-Liang

As someone who's usually on the giving end of that sort of encounter, I agree wholeheartedly Falcons scale VERY poorly when you shrink gang sizes (from a balance POV, not saying that they're underpowered) In larger gangs and in fleets ECM is fine as is, but holy bad game design batman do they ever need a kick in the teeth for small gangs.