Monday, August 10, 2009

Tengu - The Glimmer of An Idea - Part II

Last week I posted my initial draft of a Tengu setup. The responses fell into three camps.
1) Looks ok.

2) Get a Ferox.

3) Rick Schippers: "Are you serious about pvp'ing in this? I'd like to encounter you :) A single deimos would rip this apart. You should seriously consider a fitting change."

See? This is why I post ideas before trying them out. I avoid ending up on Winterblink's fail mail section of his podcast.

Basically, I agree with all three points. It looks ok for a cruiser, but a Ferox can get similar DPS (albeit slower hull) for a tiny fraction of the cost, and a single Deimos would by a tough battle that I'd probably lose.

I tried to go back and review the chosen subsystems looking for something to improve the setup and I switched it around to lose the 7th high slot and gain a fourth low slot, exchanged resistances for more base shield points, and got a third Magnetic Field Stabilizer. That all pushed my effective hit points to over 77K and my raw DPS to 513. In other words, marginally better but still inadequate for regular PvP.

As a note: I never said solo in my original post, I was intending for small gang roaming and such. I would never solo-roam in such an expensive ship.

This highlights the problem with the Tengu: there are a lot of subsystems with bonuses to missiles but only one subsystem with bonus to hybrids. Once again Caldari hybrid pilots get the short end of the stick. So in accepting the straightjacket CCP has forced on the Tengu, I'm going to have to acknowlege that for now a blaster Tengu is not viable even for a buck-the-trend pilot like myself.

So back to the drawing board. Instead of going for the plain old missile chucking Tengu I decided to go for more esoteric abilities that a cruiser hull typically does not have. Introducing My Tengu II:

(Click to Embiggen)

Instead of a pure combat vessel, this one has a Warfare Link, probe launcher with bonus to scan probe sensor strength, covert ops cloak, immune to non-targeted warp disrupting, and bonus to overheating damage reduction. Not to mention a bonus to tractor beam range and velocity and a 493 damage absorption rate.

If I really want to spend ISK, I could upgrade the modules to this:

(Click yadda yadda yadda)

This gives a 720 sustained defence rating.

The purpose of this ship is not DPS or surviving a lot of incoming damage, but rather a utility gang ship: it uses the cloak and interdiction nullifier to probe ahead, scan probes to bust safe spots, and gang warfare link to improve fleet resistances when we engage. It could be a fun ship for flitting around 0.0. The only thing that worries me is fast locking ships with warp disruptors so maybe trade some tank for a warp core stab or two. After all, locking time for me is not important in this ship.

Thoughts?

(Best thing about the Tengu: Get all the subsystems and you can switch later on if your mood changes. Except rigs. Damn rigs.)

10 comments:

  1. If your a fan of the hybrids then why not go for the Proteus? Just tinkering w/one now I'm getting around 746 DPS w/121.4K EHP.

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  2. I try to maintain some loyalty to my Caldari roots. There are a lot of ships I like in the Gallente line, the Proteus included. When I did the test flight article in EON#16 the Proteus was very very tempting because, as you said, you can get a lot of DPS with a decent tank.

    Someday. But for now I'm going to make the Tengu work for my idiosyncrasies, one way or another.

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  3. I like this more. Warfare links are awesomes.

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  4. Oh! I forgot to say: T2 MWDS make Raptor Jesus cry.

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  5. dont use t2 mwd use best named their better since nano nerf... and for t3 id reccomend faction/plex mwd for better cap use and sig radius.

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  6. Re MWDS: The capacitor penalty is less for the T2 version over the best named (-17% to -19%).

    The best IMHO is the Domination / Republic fleet version which is what I would probably go with.

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  7. They use more cap than named ones though, and it normally works out that named ones are better for cap.

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  8. @Le Sac:
    WHAT?!

    *runs to item database*

    Well son of beach... learn something new every day. Explains the prices I've seen of the best named version for sure.

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  9. lol im surprised you didnt notice that in your perusals of eft hehe. granted eft does have a couple bad blips as it still shows the cosmos mwd with their old speed bonus(checked in game its wrong in eft). and yeah best named give you better cap stability over t2 i always used best named mwd these days faction shits just too expensive.

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  10. See I told you I would reply :P

    Anyways, sure you can do this, but why not just use a command ship?

    If you encounter a camp, some one will still getcha, especially if you are in a Tengu scouting ahead, scouting ahead. And since they will most likely give chase, its not going anywhere much fast.

    I like the stab idea, fit 3 on and you got like a get out of jail forever free ticket, much safer than the buffer defense which still won't last long enough to get out of the trouble.

    Scanning wise, a specialty ship, CovOps, should fill that role, faster, stronger, that kind of stuff.

    While it looks nice, it just doesn't cover both of those roles better, it just does both, and we have all learned that being Jack-Of-All-Trades doesn't work so great.

    At last, I don't think you would really risk a multi billion ship right?

    Fill one role, let someone else fill another, so if one of you dies, it's only half of the whole. If your ship dies, the gang is going to be out of a scanner, booster, and you're going to be out of a lot of money.

    Just my 0.03 ISK again, thanks for reading.

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