Revisiting The Tengu

Way back in August I thought about going the uncommon path for Tengu strategic cruisers and building a blaster Tengu. However it was roundly panned for good reason and I ended up building my Covert Ops / Probing / Interdictor Bubble Nullifying Tengu which served me well for getting into deep Wicked Creek (and out again) during our short stay with Tactical Narcotics Team alliance. But in Providence I find I have little need for such a ship when so many other ships do the same things more easily and cheaply. In other words, the jack of all trades is master of none; especially after I saw how easily an enemy Tengu in the same design philosphy was quickly dispatched.

So I took my Tengu back to empire and it sat in my hanger while I mulled over ideas. The super tanking missile boat was tempting but do I really need another Nighthawk for PvE? No, I want a PvP ship.

Then I was inspired. There are certain fleets in Providence that are centered around Pulse Zealots with awesome locking time and high damage. Eagles are not as ideal for this type of role as their rails are not damaging enough and blasters are too short ranged (beyond the shield tank versus armour tank issues that is). But I decided to see how well a sniper Tengu compared to an Eagle.





As you can see, the Tengu has better align time, speed, range, DPS, effective hitpoints, and capacitor than the Eagle. When we reconfigure for short range, the Tengu looks like this:



Still decent range and the DPS is not too shabby, estimated over 73 DPS more than the Eagle at short range ammo.

While I'm sure someone will come along and tell me why the Proteus is better for this role I'm already ignoring them as I don't want to train up two sets of Strategic Cruiser skills. The Tengu is my ship and rails are my weapon of choice.