Friday, May 21, 2010

Warbearing, or: The worst tengu fit ever

EDIT 2010-9-6: This fit has been superceded by one which is better at tanking but less good at scouting.

So let me tell you about this hilarious tengu fit. It has 22k EHP, afterburner and microwarpdrive and each rig is a different type. Oh, and I'm flying it.

What? Well, maybe we should start at the beginning.

At this point I've been at war for more than six months. If you read back through my posts you'll find two in which I talked about carebearing; since Atlas attacked geminate in December I've spent a total of 8 days earning isk.

A couple months ago I realized that there wasn't really an end in sight, so I decided to do some cross-training in order to have one character able to do both capital and subcapital combat.That way I could keep one on the front while carebearing at home. This has finally come to fruition (or it will in 3 days... funny story, my 45 million skill point capital pilot can't fit an RCU2). With the war at what appears to be a lull - sometimes going whole hours between fleets forming - I've had the opportunity to try plexing with two characters.

What I found was that the ishtar sort of sucks for killing things. It would be a lot better with perfect skills - and especially T2 drones - but the slow drones and anemic DPS just didn't cut it. Ships that do actual damage can't tank, and with two characters the only option was to have the scanning and scout ship also tank. This is where the T3 comes in.


This is a multi-role plexing utility ship. It does three things very well:

1. Scouting. It's immune to bubbles and warps in 3.6 seconds; almost no matter what you jump into, the only way you're going to be targeted by something is if you screw up.

2. Scanning. It can scan all signatures including ladar hacking sites, which are the hardest I've encountered. The sisters probe launcher and scan strength rig are necessary for this; with nearly perfect scanning skills the ladar hacking sites can be tricky.

3. Tanking guristas. It's cap stable (the CCC is necessary for this) and tanks nearly as well as an ishtar. Supplemented by a DPS ship it can tank pretty much anything as long as an effort is made to reduce incoming damage. It also has a significantly larger hit point buffer, and can tank the smartbomb in guristas military complex without going into armor.

Someday this is going to look horrible on my killboard, but you know what? I'm not really concerned about that. This setup does what I need and does it extremely well, in addition to being a joy to fly. It's worth every isk to me, and the fact that it's already paid for itself five times over is just icing on the cake.


Utility tengu (right) doing its' thing

8 comments:

  1. hey, what kind of ship do you use for your DPS? also, are alliances allowed to explore in other alliances space?

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  2. I use a maelstrom, which possibly isn't the best ship for the role but seems to work best out of the ships I'm skilled for.

    Generally there are restrictions on doing exploration in allies' space; for example, other NC entities are not allowed to do exploration in razor space. NPC and non-allied space are free-for-all of course....

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  3. how much DPS does your maelsstrom put out?

    hmm...ok...i am a member of Space Monkey's Alliance, we have 5 systems, th KDV pocket down in pure blind, but its nearly impossible to make ANY money down there, cuz its a good sized alliance in exactly 5 systems, so, like, its more populated than most highsec systems...lol

    Any suggestions? just head to tenal?

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  4. 575 plus drones. Tracking sucks on 1400s so elite cruisers are a pain, but there are a couple things you can do to get the angular velocity down. I considered switching to a machariel but the difference in damage just didn't justify the price tag

    Yeah, plexing in 5 systems isn't really going to make you a lot of money. The number of systems you have access to makes a huge difference in plexing income; being able to use an entire region with no NPC stations has made a huge difference in my income level, so if you're looking to make moar isk you could try looking for an alliance that has one.

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  5. smart
    i was considering a proteus, which can fit a better tank than a tengu, and outfit it with like vodebreaker, analyzer, salvager, etc, it can out out around 200 DPS w/drones, w emergent locus analyzer, covops and interdiction immunity. then maybe a blasterthron or thorax... 1000 and 550 DPS respectively, but sucky range, needs an MWD, which u cant use in plexes.


    only issue is, im a farily low-skilled character. (under 5 mill) so i dont meet many entrance reqs...

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  6. Proteus would be nice if you can get a good tank out of it. A few extra drones go a long way.

    The nice thing about long range weapons is that you can just have the tank orbit your dps ship and blast away until you run out of targets, rather than approach each new target. A real damage dealer like a torp raven or blasterthron would tear things up once it got in range.

    As for propulsion, I'd actually recommend an afterburner due to the capacitor issues. MWD do work in plex... or at least I've never found one where it didn't.

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  7. proteus can get almost a 3000 DPS tank vs. Guristas, it benefits from the sam high resists of the ishtar, plus it can speed and sig tank.

    Yeah, ill keep on thinking about that, i'd really like it to be something small so it can get away if i get jumped or something, but i'll prolly be making SO much i can replace a BS or two. :P maybe a loki fit for damage? or tengu? *sighs* nother 3 months of training? CHECK! :P

    yeah, the only ship i'd use MWD on is the blasterthron, and that would be all damage lows, all cap mids, all blasters highs and all CCC rigs, so i'd be cap stable w/ it on.

    Really? hmm...

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  8. correction, i decided to test a faction-fit Proteus, and it achieved a 4400 DPS tank vs. Guristas.

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