Thursday, November 27, 2008

To Dread or Not To Dread

AS I was talking capital ship talk with the corpmates the other day I started to wonder if I should train up to be able to use a Dreadnought.

For the unlearned, a Dreadnought is a capital ship much like a Carrier but has a more focused purpose. Instead of having the ability to launcher Fighter drones and do logistics chores, Dreadnoughts are all about shooting large stationary targets with the biggest weapons in game. When your ammo is the size of a bus, you're talking Dreadnought.

Dreadnoughts are very limited in use though as they have trouble hitting battleships just like battleships have trouble hitting frigates. So dreads typically are only used for shooting at Player Owned Stations and other capital ships.

I wouldn't go out of my way to get a dreadnought for myself, but its not unfeasible for sufficiently large corporations / alliances to provide corp assets like a dreadnought for use in operations. In order to be a team player, that's why I'm thinking about skilling up for one as the amount of time we are talking is on the order of less than two months.

But what dreadnought to skill for?

You might think the Caldari Phoenix is the obvious choice but you would be wrong. The Phoenix uses Citadel Torpedoes and my missile skills are average at best. I would need to spend 21 days for Torpedoes IV and V skill training, and for the rest of the skills (not including Seige Module) would be 46 days total.

The Gallente Moros uses capital hybrid weapons (rails and blasters) so that appeals to the railgun user in me more. I would need Gallente Battleship V which is a 47 day odessy in of itself, and then more time for the captial hybrids and dreadnought skill. On the other hand, along the way I open up not only the three Gallente battleships (Dominix, Megathron, and Hyperion) but also the Black Ops Battleship Sin (Tech II Dominix) and king of hybrids Maurader classed Kronos (Tech II Megathron)... and but me within striking distance of Thanatos carrier.

In the end, if I decide to skill up for a corporate dreadnought I'll keep it simple and stick Caldari. Since Eve is flexible, I can always come back for the Moros some other time.

5 comments:

  1. If it takes you 46 days to train any Battleship V it sounds like they are a TON of learning skills you have never bothered to level up.

    Considering how long you have played EVE and how much longer I know you intend to play it, learning skills would be an excellent investment.

    Only takes 4 months to get them all from zero to max. 2 months to get V in the rank 1s and IV in the advanced learning skills. That with +3/4 implants can get you >20 in most attributes.

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  2. Anonymous9:57 am

    As a member of the NC, and just having been in a large war, Dread fleets determine the winner right now in large cap fleet battles. They're more important than Titans.

    Right now, 0.0 warfare is all about 2 things:

    1. Can you assemble a big enough BS/support fleet to take down a cyno-jammer?

    2. Can you assemble a big enough Dread/support fleet to quickly take down enemy POS/cap fleets?

    Titans and MOM's are important for defending, especially cyno-jammers, but Dreads are important for both offense and defense.

    Train for dread. :)

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  3. Alex Alex Alex, you should know me better than that by now!

    I trained all my learning skills years ago to Level V for rank 1 and level IV for rank 2. And I have +4 implants.

    The 47 days is not only for Gallente BS V, but also for Gallente Cruiser IV (~4 days) and Gallente Battleship I - IV (another 7 days).

    Gal BS V itself is 36 days.

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  4. @Kirith

    Haha, I suppose I should have known better. The idea of you not leveling those skills was surprising.

    And to support the comment that the anonymous poster made: more and more people refer to dreads as the "new" battleship, at least when it comes to large scale warfare. Would be good to know how to fly at least 1 of them.

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  5. Carriers, and now talking dreads, good stuff man!

    That seems to be like a pretty good and quick training for the Poenix, only 2 months!

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