Ships & Modules

Mach should never be a cap stable mission ship. You nerf way too much dmg and tank out of it in order to get it stable.

Fill the low's with tracking and gyro's

For the booster, if your on a budget, the Pith C-Type is nice for the cost (its what i use)

For the rest of my tank i have 2 faction mission hardners (usually only use it against Angel anyways) and 1 invul.

I also perma keep a 100mn micro on it just because its a Mach, it likes to go fast.

For rigs, if you want omni tank, use shield rigs, personally, i have CCC's so i can jump into slightly larger piles of crap.

A Damage Control 2 is also rather helpful as it does not have the stacking penalty and significantly increases your EHP for those times you get too deep...

People telling you a lvl 4 mission ship should be cap stable are, for lack of a better description, fcking morons. People can ofcourse choose to be cap stable because they're lazy, perhaps new to the game or because they have to AFK at the most weird moments, but stating that mission runners in general ought to be stable is idiocy. Especially ships which don't use cap for their dps (ie not lasers or hybrids) have it silly easy. There's 2 ways of working with unstable fits;


1) learning that cap recharge isn't linear, it peaks at 25-30% while dropping like a brick below 25% and not being very good above 50%. So what you do is rep till you hit 25% cap, stop and let your shield go down while your cap gets back up, once you hit 40-45% cap again you start repping, etc etc. This ensures the best cap recharge and thus the best sustained tank.. Also note that shields follow the same recharge curve so if you really want to you can even ride the recharge wave for both shield and cap, making it more efficient.

2) use a cap booster, that means you only use one slot instead of mids, lows and rigs meaning you free up those slots for more dps and tank focus.


When you start to get used to it and combine both these options you'll stop eating booster 800's like candy and will need less and less of them to a point where you'll only need them in those "oh crap" moments. It's a bit different for ships which use lasers or hybrids but it follows the same logic. In this specific case: Mach pisses so much dps that you'll hardly have to tank anyway.

Fitting wise have a look at this, nothing terribly expensive but it works fine and any more pimping is entirely optional. Many people opt to use sentries as it looks great in EFT but on a fast moving ship that benefits from closing the distance to targets using stationary sentries is a bit counter productive. Apart from that, drone dps is so silly compared to its turret dps that having to wait for your drones to actually nibble their way through targets gets annoying, so you just give it 1-2 volleys and the target is dead... much quicker.


[Machariel, LVL 4 - Angels]
Republic Fleet Gyrostabilizer
Republic Fleet Gyrostabilizer
Republic Fleet Gyrostabilizer
Gyrostabilizer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Tracking Enhancer II

100MN Afterburner II
Caldari Navy X-Large Shield Booster
Invulnerability Field II
Explosion Dampening Field II
Heavy Capacitor Booster II, Cap Booster 800

800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
Small Tractor Beam I

[empty rig slot]
Large Ionic Field Projector I
Large Projectile Burst Aerator II


Berserker II x4
Warrior II x5

It's not that hard to make a mission fit that is cap stable enough to be easy - and without using every slot on the ship. This one has ample DPS and plenty of tank for Level 4. I use sentries because sitting still isn't a problem for this ship, even though one can significantly increase the tanking amount just by moving. If I feel the need to move, the 5x light drones can take care of stuff:


[Machariel, Machariel]
Republic Fleet Gyrostabilizer
Republic Fleet Gyrostabilizer
Republic Fleet Gyrostabilizer
Domination Tracking Enhancer
Domination Tracking Enhancer
Domination Tracking Enhancer
Damage Control II

Republic Fleet 100MN Afterburner
Gist B-Type Large Shield Booster
Shield Boost Amplifier II
Photon Scattering Field II
Invulnerability Field II

800mm Repeating Artillery II, Republic Fleet Fusion L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, Republic Fleet Fusion L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, Republic Fleet Fusion L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, Republic Fleet Fusion L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, Republic Fleet Fusion L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, Republic Fleet Fusion L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, Republic Fleet Fusion L
Heavy Nosferatu II

Large Capacitor Control Circuit II
Large Capacitor Control Circuit I
Large Capacitor Control Circuit I


Bouncer II x4
Warrior II x5

QFT

Nothing against cap boosters. However, disconnects do occur.
Anyone had that happen with a cap booster ship? Will the cap booster and tank stay on?
Will the ship warp out safely? What are the mechanics now?
And if you lose your missioning ship due to disconnect can you petition successfully for it back?
Important things to consider with multibillion ISK ships and fits.

Thx for the great reply's guys. keep those fits comming cuz i'm going to a trade hub to fit the mack.


By the way will a pith B-Type work ??

And on another subject, will a vargur be better for missioning in angel space?

A cap stable pve ship, is a badly fit ship. You have to give up damage mods/tracking mods etc to get there. Or buy expensive mods that make you a prime ganking target.

You don't have to tank the entire DPS of a mission/belt for the entire length of the fight. You just have to tank it till you blow up enough ships to bring the dps down. And damage/tracking will let you do that while your making more isk/hr because your killing stuff faster.

EDIT: looked up what I was using.

Having been one of those 'cap stable f-ing morons' for a long time I finally stopped being completely cheap and bought a couple lower priced -type items for my Machariel (I think I spent 400mil on them combined maybe less).


[Machariel, current]
Tracking Enhancer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II

Photon Scattering Field II
Heat Dissipation Field II
Gist-C-Type 100MN Afterburner
Gist-B-Type Large Shield Booster
Cap Recharger II

800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
800mm Repeating Artillery II, EMP L
Drone Link Augmentor I

Large Capacitor Control Circuit I
Large Capacitor Control Circuit I
Large Capacitor Control Circuit I

With my skills I am not cap stable, but I have 20 minutes of cap to play with (which is enough to know if something is going wrong or not to GTFO or fight yourself out if you screw up and get scrammed). I usually run two mission specific hardeners, but if unsure of what I will run in to I throw in two Invuls and swap our a Gyro for a Flux Coil (which puts me back at Cap Stable)

The more I play though the more I find I turn off the AB to the point I an considering going over to a MWD instead just to deal with range needs. That or drop the Cap Recharger for a Tracking computer.

I could put a lot more money in to this thing and get all the other neat toys, but I just fly it for isk for other projects.

If you're blitzing missions, you really don't need much cap. I was averaging about ~6.5 minutes per mission on average without cherry picking missions. http://eve.battleclinic.com/loadout/58393-Machariel-Level-4-Blitzer-MWD-Web-EW-Drones-Minmatar-Space.html

Vargur is also a good ship. Its drawbacks compared to the Mach are slower speed, slower lock time, it's not really practical to mount an MWD, and slower align times. Its advantages over the Mach are cheap ammo (only 4 guns,) easy to tank, cheaper hull, and cheaper to fit. Also the Mach is huge* so it occasionally gets hung up on acceleration gates.



* The Mach is huge because it is mostly hollow which makes it buoyant in Eve's submarine physics. Things that float really want to float "up" but since there is no "up" in space, the Mach becomes the equivalent of an ADD/ADHD child strung out on meth stuffed into a straight jacket and forced to lie still on a bed of nails. This "is buoyant but not allowed to be buoyant" pensive energy is what gives the Mach its great agility and speed.

just driving the point home. the only justification for flying cap stable in l4s is when you want to be able to just get up and go away for 10 minutes mid mission.