Carrier Testing and Learning

The radical changes to carriers means it feels like starting from scratch in how to use them and what all the skills enable/boost. This weekend during a quiet moment with the wife napping I launched onto SISI server and did some testings.

Setup

My skills were not up to speed with my Tranquility training but I quickly got them up to Fighters III which allowed me to install three squadrons of Firbolg Is in the launch tubes of my Thanatos carrier. The modules installed on the carrier that affect drone/fighter performance are:

2 x Fighter Support Unit Is - Bonus to Shield, Shield Recharge, Velocity, and Rate of Fire (stacking penalties apply)
Omnidirectional Tracking Link I - Improves fighter firing stats
2 x Drone Navigation Computer Is - Improves fighter speeds (stacking penalties)
Drone Damage Amplifier II - Fighter Damage Increase

In order to test the damage application of my three squadrons I fit up a shield buffer tanked Rokh battleships with the following:

3 x Large Shield Extender IIs
2 x Adaptive Invulnerability Field IIs
Damage Control II
3 x Large Core Field Extender II rigs

Movement

My first tests were about how fast the Firbolgs would move around the grid, both at normal velocity and MWD velocity. I found that the normal speed was about 1792 m/s and MWD speed was ~9700 m/s but the MWD only lasted about 20 seconds and had a 40 sec cooldown between activations. The end result was that my fighters were travelling about 250km/minute.

Damage

Once I engaged the target Rokh it was destroyed within 52 seconds and required 4 salvos of the Rockets to complete the job, leaving 4 more on the fighter squadrons.

My next test will be with better skills and Firbolg II fighters, and hopefully can involve some logi ships to see how the burst is.

Test Flight: Navy Brutix Part 1

So I downloaded SIS and got on to try out the new Navy Brutix for a little bit and thought I'd post my thoughts here.

First thing I noticed while fitting it out was that it was comfortable in terms of power grid and CPU. I went with a very basic fit of blasters and drones and self rep to see what it could do.

Highs
6 x Heavy Neutron Blaster IIs
Empty Slot

Mids
10MN Experimental MWD
Warp Scrambler II
2 x Stasis Webifier II

Lows
Medium Ancillary Armour Repairer, Nanite Paste
Medium Armour Repairer II
Damage Control II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
3 x Magnetic Field Stabilizer IIs

Rigs
Medium Anti-Explosive Armour Pump I
2 x Medium Nanobot Accelerator I

There was enough power grid and CPU for a small neutralizer in the empty high slot. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to try the fit out very much as both times I warped to a beacon I got ganked pretty hard. The first time I had engaged a Rokh and was chewing through him pretty good but a tracking Moros nailed me, and the second time I engaged a duo (or was it trio?) of Vexor Navy Issues who demonstrated the power of those ships with neutralizers in the highs and five heavy drones. Fear the new VNI.

The vulnerability of this fit to neutralizers is not unexpected and I might try to squeeze a cap booster in there to alleviate this issue. Definitely not a solo vessel.

I plan to have a couple more goes this week and try some various things out and see if I can get some even fights out of it. I'll try and keep stuff posted here.

Gnosis Test Flight

About five minutes after I read Ripard Teg's post on the new Gnosis battlecruiser on Singularity test server, I was up and downloading the latest client. This concept this ship represents appeals to me from way back, like April 2009 (emphasis added):

4. Tech II versions of the tier 2 battlecruisers (Drake, etc) and tier 3 battleships (Rokh, etc) as well as tech II carriers and dreadnoughts. I'd like to see some more non-combat-focused ships like a scientific explorer or a ship dedicated to managing the battlefield of multiple fleets or a ship specialized for salvaging.

Well, the Gnosis vessel appears to satisfy this role at first glance nicely: damage bonus? Check. Scanning bonus? Check. Sufficient tank to survive rats? Well we are going to find out.

Click for full size.

First off, I'm a big fan of the model, very sci-fi and menacing, looking like a combination between sleek and strong. The slot layout and bonuses are setup so as to allow for any type of weapon system and defense, a jack of all trades if you will (and expert of none but we'll talk a bit more about that later).

I decided to try a blaster fit with shield buffer thank and see how it compares to a Drake / Tengu.

Note: I did not spend hours on fitting.

First thing I found out is that you will have lots of fitting room on this ship unless you try to go for an Expanded Probe Launcher, then things get tough. With the Core Probe Launcher though I found I had no problems with power grid or CPU when going for Heavy Neutron Blaster IIs, two Large Shield Extender IIs, and two Adaptive Invulnerability Field IIs along with a meta MWD and webber.

So yeah, fitting is a dream. With five mids and five lows and even resistances to start, there are no holes to plug and it does not favour armour tanking over shield tanking or vice versa. I went for shield tanking only because I wanted the mag stabs and tracking enhancer to improve turret effectiveness. I found I could get a fair amount of raw shield hits points with average resists (17K with ~68%) which is comparable to a Drake; you could probably squeeze more tank about of that with some tuning.

I wasn't sure what to do with all the lows and could have easily fit a third magetic field stabilizer on there with the remaining CPU. The two nanofibers and MWD gave me a top speed of 1557 m/s which is very nice but I'm not sure if I had my low grade snake implants in at the time so your mileage may vary.

The drone bay is 75m3 with a bandwidth of 50mb, so I went with Hammerhead IIs for DPS (expecially nice considering drone bonus ofthe hull) and a backup flight of Warrior IIs for interception. The damage with the hammerheads and Void ammo comes out in the 770 DPS range according to Eve client which feels a little low for a battlecruiser setup for damage; its not embarrassingly low but it is also not worth writing home to mother about.  After looking at some other Battlecruiser stats I have come to the realization that the DPS of this ship actually is not half bad outside of the Attack versions (i.e. Tier 3s) especially considering the ease of fitting.

Overall this is a very flexible ship. It won't out DPS some ships and won't out tank others, but it finds a nice spot in the middle road and the scanning bonus makes it as good as the Tech 1 scanning frigs for finding PvE content.

I think I'd go with missiles and an active armour tank for a real serious PvE exploration boat. I might play with that one next as it would give more cap and range to play with while freeing up the mid slots for some code breakers / analyzers. Stay tuned.