Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Choices

Since I'm going to war all by myself, I've been considering ships to use. In groups your choice of ship is dictated by the needs of the group and the style of PvP you are looking for. But solo is much more refined as you need to accomplish all tasks by yourself.

Introducing the Holy Triangle of Eve ships:

Gank: DPS, tackle, EWAR, all the offensive weapons to keep your enemy in combat and hurt him.

Tank: Shields, armour, speed, EWAR, all the ways you keep yourself alive.

Cost: more accurately, cost efficiency. Ideally you want to minimize the cost to replace the ship.

All ship setups measure differently on the triangle. In gangs you might focus on one vertex or even one part of a vertex as a part of the group. For example, a Falcon provides scouting and EWAR while a Tech 1 Rifter maximizes cost efficiency as a disposable tackler. In solo flying you typically want to attempt to maximize all three points on the triangle as much as possible.

Tech 1 frigates maximizes the Cost point at the expense of the other two. Tech 2 frigates decrease the Cost efficiency but are slightly better in the other two.

Tech 1 cruisers with tech 1 gear are very cost efficient and some damage and defense, but with Tech 2 gear that cost efficiency decreases while gank and tank increases. Tech 2 cruisers increase the gank and tank even more but seriously reduce cost efficiency.

However the best bang for your buck is the Battlecruisers and Battleships. With lots of slots for both tank and DPS while still having insurance that covers the cost of the hull, they are the ship of choice most often for solo combat pilots. Since battlecruisers use cruiser sized weapons and defenses, they tend to be slightly more cost effective than battleships at the trade off of less overall damage and tank.

So I'll probably faced with these choices, I'll probably get some cruisers setup in various regions ready to go. Maybe a battlecruiser or two here and there for more "Omph" when I need it.

DISCLAIMER: These diagrams are in no way scientific or support by facts or figures. It is my "back of the napkin" opinion.

8 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:16 am

    Thank you. One question. Are the Battlecruisers fitted with T1 or T2 fittings?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ah yes, I forgot to write that in.

    My personal preference is to always fit the Tech II ships with Tech II gear, and Tech 1 battlecruisers and battleships with Tech II gear as well. The increase in damage and tank is worth it on the big ships whereas the cheaper T1 gear on these hulls is pathetic really.

    For cruisers, the difference between Tech 1 and Tech 2 gear is not so much as to completely obliterate the question of the cost. In other words, a Tech 1 outfitted cruiser does have some effectiveness in combat even though a Tech 2 outfitted cruiser is superior.

    For Tech 1 frigs, I just don't fly them solo so I can't really say. Perhaps a Rifter with T2 gear would do well.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous9:52 am

    There is also, of course, the ability to change the fit of ships for gank or tank so even within battlecruisers you have super-tanking Drakes and mega-gank Hurricanes. I reckon that for what you're looking at you should veer towards gankier fittings. The odds are they're going to get some support onto you pretty quickly when you fight so you're better off trying to take as many of them down with you as possible rather than dying a slow, painful, and ultimately futile death. Not that I know anything about empire wars, mind :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous9:53 am

    PS - I love my tech II fitted Rifters and I'm staying out of Stabbers and Ruptures until I can give them nice T2 guns. Mind you, that's mostly for the lovely stuff that is Barrage.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Good point about preferring Gank over Tank in some scenarios. I didn't want to get into too much detail about what my fittings are but you speak the truth.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Love the diagrams...napkin art they may be, but visuals are always useful as they stick better in this pile of Swiss cheese I call a brain.

    I tend to go for some balanced tank/gank setup but often wonder if that's akin to trying to both shield and armor tank, LOL! In my MHK experiment, I may see what happens with a full on gank Rupture and another full on tank Rupture just for the fun of it.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous1:31 pm

    From my experience being the only person in strife to get a kill the entire fineg war i would reccomend tank against most of their fittings a stalemate is much better than losing a ship and from what i saw they used numbers instead of effective fittings when they fought prefering to be 3 to 1 rather than spending isk on a decent fitting.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous7:12 am

    well it certainly is a serious thought, "do I fit for survivability" or "do I fit for beating the snot our of them." Kind of a shame to go it alone bro, as even one more person helps...most ships (regardless of class have a weakness and it is nice to have a friend along to cover that weakness. I think you will have to be creative in your fittings, none the less things can be done. FWIW I would go pure gank as even if you are going up against three you know you will die, pick their weakest link and annihilate him. BS and a BC are great for that some nice alpha to scare the shit outta them and beat em with no thought of survival. FYI some of the Amarr BC kick ass for their firepower, imo. The other option is to only tank fit and survive everything, and make the war cost them money.

    ReplyDelete