A PvE Rupture For Alphas And Omegas

One of the interesting parts of playing an Alpha clone in EVE is ship fitting. I can find a lot of existing fits using skills all trained to level 5, but Alphas can never have those skills without paying a subscription. I'm not the greatest, but the chance to play around and then immediately test on a low skill character is fun.

Over the past few days I played around with cruisers looking for a fit to run level 2 security missions. I settled on an artillery-fit, passively shield-tanked Rupture that could perma-run all modules.

[Rupture, *Rupture-PvE Permatank T2]
Type-D Restrained Shield Flux Coil
Type-D Restrained Shield Power Relay
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Tracking Enhancer II

10MN Monopropellant Enduring Afterburner
Large Shield Extender II
Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field I
Upgraded Thermal Dissipation Amplifier I

650mm Medium Carbine Howitzer I
650mm Medium Carbine Howitzer I
650mm Medium Carbine Howitzer I
650mm Medium Carbine Howitzer I
'Arbalest' Heavy Missile Launcher

Medium Core Defense Field Purger I
Medium Core Defense Field Purger I
Medium Core Defense Field Purger I


Hobgoblin I x4

In order to make the fit work, I had to use a 10MN Monopropellant Enduring Afterburner. I also had to use a meta shield flux coil and a meta shield power relay instead of the two Shield Power Relay IIs I could fit. I also needed to use an amplifier instead of a damage-specific shield hardener. Swap out the amplifier with the proper damage type for the mission. Still, I managed a shield recharge rate of 33 hp/second. I'm not sure I'd like to brawl several NPCs with that tank, but that's not the purpose of the fit.

With 4 650mm howitzers and a heavy missile launcher, the aim is to kite out of range of short-ranged weapons and to tank the lower damage long-ranged NPC weapons. The ship is cap stable at 32.9% with my current skills, which means I should have the ability to dictate range. For those faster frigates that will try to web and scram the ship, I have four Hobgoblin Is for close-in protection. With my current skills, I can only launch four. That nine-day train for Drones V doesn't seem worth the time at this point considering my control range is limited to 25km.

To give an idea how much skills can matter, I hopped on Rosewalker's account. Rosewalker is a Minmatar pilot who specializes in Minmatar ships, although he's branched out to learn the ships of the other factions. One of these days he'll fly something besides Minmatar. Honest. But since he has Mastery V with the Rupture, he serves as a good example of what the same fit looks like with maximum skills.

Yes, the damage is much greater, with the drone control range exceeding the range of the guns and missiles. The shield recharge rate is 24% greater, with the ability to repair 2460 hit points per minute. That means the shields can fully replace themselves every two minutes.

With the ship as fit cap stable at 72%, I had plenty of room to play around to make the fit even stronger. What follows is my effort at making an adequate PvE ship for Omega clones.

[Rupture, **Rupture-PvE Permatank T2]
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Tracking Enhancer II

10MN Afterburner II
Large Shield Extender II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Thermal Dissipation Amplifier II

650mm Artillery Cannon II
650mm Artillery Cannon II
650mm Artillery Cannon II
650mm Artillery Cannon II
Heavy Missile Launcher II

Medium Core Defense Field Purger I
Medium Core Defense Field Purger I
Medium Core Defense Field Purger I


Hobgoblin II x6

After all was said and done, all I really did was upgrade all meta modules to tech 2 and use 2 shield power relays instead of 1 shield power relay and 1 shield flux coil. Oh, and upgrade to 5 Hobgoblin IIs. I didn't upgrade the ammunition to either faction or tech 2, so room for improvement still exists.

The fit does allow for flexibility. For more damage, replace one of the Shield Power Relay IIs with a Gyrostabilizer II. For an omni-tank, replace the amplifier with a second Adaptive Invulnerability Field II, downgrade the afterburner to the enduring meta type, and swap out a Shield Power Relay II with a Shield Flux Coil II. The heavy missile launcher doesn't feel right. Perhaps a Rapid Light Missile Launcher II?

UPDATE 22 December 16: I ran the level 2 mission The Blockade. I ran the mission with no problem.

I know that the concept of the passive tank is possibly not the greatest. But one advantage is a minimum of micro management. Just turn on the two modules in the mids, watch the incoming damage, and keep the weapons firing. A high-skilled Omega may have the luxury of just bulling through any damage, but an Alpha clone will need to focus on flying to keep the proper distance from the NPCs. I found 20-25km worked well, but your milage may vary.

I have to give the fit more testing, but so far I like the results. The technical term is "I didn't lose my ship." Go ahead and leave comments on what I missed and if I do well enough on my Alpha clone, I'll try the suggestions out. Remember I am trying to keep the costs down for an Alpha, so please, no faction modules.