Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Wormhole Exploration Ships III

So, with Gallente Battleship IV complete and Tech II Heavy Drones at my disposal along with some actual fighting engagements with small Sleeper spawns, I've come to revise my setup for exploring Wormhole space.

Things to consider:
- You can't depend on drones as they are targeted and destroyed quickly if you are not careful; a non-destructible weapon system has to be the main damage dealer.

- You need big ass tank to hold off the damage, especially when alone and no remote reppers coming in.

- For frigs you need to really web them hard, and I'm thinking a Target Painter would come in handy here.

- I still want to be able to salvage on the go as that is going to be a big part of the lucrative rewards I suspect.

- I want to be relatively free from cap boosters which take a lot of space, so that means cap stable when repairer and MWD are off.

- Shield tanking is currently out due to wanting the web, target painter, MWD. Which really sucks for Caldari only pilots ATM.

- I don't need heavy drones because I only plan to take on cruisers and frigates when alone. In a group, switching in the heavy drones for battleship duty is the idea.

First up on my list of proposed vessels is a revised Dominix. I went with smaller blasters for better tracking, eased up on the cap regen in favour for a lot more base armour hitpoints as a buffer. The idea being I'll need my repairer less often in combat situations and can repair in a safe spot later on between entanglements. I also dropped the sensor booster and ECCM in favour for a second web and target painter to really take on those frigates which are the death of my drones.


Next up the ladder is the Megathron with more DPS due to extra blasters but one less stasis webber. On the other hand, bonus to tracking means it can hit ships orbiting at 7km going up to 568m/s as opposed to 437m/s for the Dominix and Hyperion.


Finally, we have the Hyperion whose bonus to armour repair means a better active tank when the situation calls for it and it has a larger starting capacitor for better natural regeneration, but less base armour due to only 6 low slots.


I'll probably try out the Dominix fit first since I have the ship already. Failing that, I might try the Megathron before laying out cash for the Hyperion.

3 comments:

  1. I have to say I'm really loving how the sleepers are forcing people to start thinking about 'non-standard' fits.

    I know that eventually there will be a suite of cookiecutter builds for tackling the denizens of w-space, but right now we're all in this really exciting 'hmm, I wonder if I can do it if I swap one x for a y?' place. It's like we get to start a whole piece of the game over again!

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  2. Anonymous11:36 am

    Nice fits, but surely if you are going in solo you will need a probe launcher in a high slot?

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  3. Solo in that me-and-my-probing-hauler-alt sort of way. ;)

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