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Friday, August 30, 2013

An Unexpected Turn

I still have quite a ways to go on my Minmatar skill training plan even though I don't intend on training for capital ships.  But I've given some consideration in the past on whether the next race I train for is Gallente or Caldari.  I'm partial to Caldari because I like flying shield-tanked ships and I already have the missile skills.  So I surprised myself last night when I found myself looking to purchase an Amarr ship.

This started, as a lot of things for me in EVE lately, with my quest to get the 2-run Tempest Fleet Issue blueprint copy.  My standings with the Minmatar Republic are now over 9.6 (9.55 unmodified) but I now face the prospect of fighting the rest of the way to the required standings of 9.9.  In addition to the epic arcs I need to do, the storyline missions that give the best standings gain are the combat ones.

If I plan on doing the combat missions, I can try to have fun.  That means mixing things up.  I've pulled out EFT and begun making fits.  I came up with a Vagabond fit that I'm going to run through the Sisters of EVE epic arc.  And I don't care that a Vagabond is way overpowered.  I hate Dagan and he's going to die.  That's right, I'm one of those players.  When I played World of Warcraft, once I hit level 60 (the level cap at the time) on my paladin I went back and stomped Hogger too.

But last night I was playing around with fitting a Typhoon.  The 7/5/7 layout indicates an armor tank.  I had some fun and came up with a cruise missile fit that gives me an EFT generated 693 DPS along with over 78,000 effective hit points.  As always, that's in perfect conditions and conditions in New Eden are never perfect.  But when I went to add in the fleet bonuses I realized I had a slight problem.  No bonused gang links.  I purchased a Claymore in anticipation of the command ship changes so I could have a nice missile boat, but the Claymore will only have bonuses to siege and skirmish warfare links.  Great for use with my Maelstrom, but not my Typhoon.  Time to look for another ship.

Because of the changes in skill training for battlecruisers, I have the battlecruiser skill trained to 5 in all races and my industrial/boosting pilot has Command Ships trained to 4.  I can fly all of the command ships, I just can't fly all of them well.  When the choice comes down to command ships that have bonuses to armor links, I really can only fly two, the Gallente Eos and the Amarran Damnation.  And my missile skills, at least for cruiser sized turrets, are a lot better than my drone skills.

For my purposes, the Damnation looks pretty good.  I'm usually hunting the Angel Cartel so the base 80% explosive and 62.5% kinetic resists look pretty good.  I just need to plug that thermal resist hole, but that's easily taken care of.  I usually use my boosting ship as an anti-frig/anti-cruiser platform and decoy that draws fire away from the battleship in the gang, and from what I see the Damnation is a brick that can launch missiles.  Along with the Damnation's 5 light drones the ship should fill the role in my doctrine nicely.

So now I just need to buy a Damnation.  I'll probably have to have an alt purchase the ship and then haul it to Minmatar space.  Looking at my standings, the Amarr already damn me ever day.

4 comments:

  1. For your standings quest, have you thought about doing FW missions for Minmatar? A lot of jumping around, but if you chain 5 together, you can usually bang them out in 1-2 hours. Every promotion you earn with the militia gives you a 10% plus boost to the faction, and here's the kicker with missions. Lvl 1 gives you standings boost with the FW corp equal to running 10 plexes. Lvl 2 equal to 20 plexes, 3 is 30 and 4 is 40. So running lvl 4s in a cloaky Loki you might hit your 9.9 in a couple nights.... Plus I think the Minnie's are tier 3 right now, so that'll also leave you with a bucket of FW lp which will probably be enough for an extra fleet tempest BP or 2.

    Its a good time to do this since the minmatar have captured most of the zone, and should have plenty of TLF stations under control.

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  2. I use a shield/cruise typhoon to great effect in missions and the epic arcs. You have to change your thinking a bit though, as it is buffer fit. With a MWD and signal amps, it's incredibly easy to pull range and waste the NPCs. I've got a shield booster version as well, but cpu requirements demand a different fit for the lows, so i lose some range with one of the sig amps. I have only once been taken past half shields and I've been running epic arcs (farming them, really) for the past two months.

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  3. Even though I got a bit bored running all the epic mission arcs I still found them interesting to do.

    The Minmatar arc does not offer a low-sec path making it feel less fleshed out as the other arcs. You only get to choose between two different rewards at the end.

    http://razielwalker.blogspot.nl/2013/07/wildfire-part-1.html
    http://razielwalker.blogspot.nl/2013/07/wildfire-part-2.html

    Planning to complete the low sec part of the Amarr arc in the next week or so.

    I am not going to get faction blueprints any time soon.
    My minmatar alt has -1.41 standing with the Minmatar Republic.

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  4. Don't underestimate the power of the skirm side. Especially when used in conjunction with the Minnie ships... they already have a fair bit lower signature and higher base speed than most others right up to the battleship classes. Typhoon's is 330.

    Lower sig = less damage. Less damage means you don't need to be quite as worried about resists, especially if you're faster than they are.

    5 mids won't give you the greatest shield tank esp if one is used for a prop mod, but a harmonizing link helps quite a bit if you can squeeze one in there.

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