I Need A New Ship

Last night while working on some spreadsheets trying to figure out the next product to produce a thought hit me.  I need a new ship.  I don't want a new ship.  I need a new ship.  As in one I currently don't have.  Why?  Mordu's Legion is snooping around and capsuleers will want to hunt them down.  CCP Rise explained in his latest dev blog:

"One of the things about Mordu’s Legion that we are most excited about is the method by which the ships can be acquired.  As usual, Mordu’s Legion LP stores will have them on offer, but we are also going to be adding some new Legion patrols to asteroid belts across all of low security space.  Like other pirate faction commanders, these spawns will be fairly rare. Unlike other factions, Mordu’s Legion belt patrols will have 100% chance of dropping a blueprint for one of the new ships. This should make searching for Mordu’s Legion patrols an exciting and rewarding activity, and because it happens in low sec, we expect that it will also lead to an increase in player combat--which is always fantastic.  A small note: there will be other Mordu’s Legion NPCs associated with some other new content in Kronos, but only the ones spawning in asteroid belts will drop BPCs for the Garmur, Orthrus and Barghest."

This is both a threat and an opportunity.  The threat is increased visits from other pilots while I'm mining in belts.  I hope that translates into less visits from others while I'm ice mining, but I'll have to wait and see.  Sometimes people don't get the message, which is too bad, because I did.  The message is: if I want to seize the opportunity, Rosewalker will need to upgrade from his stealth bomber.


I expect a tough fight from an outfit like Mordu's Legion.  More importantly, I expect the mercs to tackle Wandering Rose's Procurer fairly quickly if she sticks around.  But will the Procurer drawing aggro allow Rosewalker's Hound to pound away from a distance?  I'm afraid that the Legion ships' powerful missile launchers will not only outrange the Hound's torpedo launchers, but make short work of its paper-thin defenses.  The electronic warfare tactics I worked out to handle the Tags4Sec rats probably won't work on the Legion.  Here's how CCP Rise described the player versions of the ships:

"So these ships look good enough to win Miss Hawaii 2014 and they have a solid backstory, but what do they actually do? As said above, we wanted missiles to be at the heart of the faction so you will find a substantial missile damage bonus on all three ships.  We also decided that we wanted them to be very fast skirmishers (partly emerging from the original idea of them having Minmatar influence, but also as a nice contrast to traditional Caldari ships which tend to be fairly slow) so they will be the second fastest pirate faction, losing drag races only to the Angel Cartel.  When looking for a bonus from their Gallente side we quickly zero’d in on warp scrambler and disruptor range because of the perfect synergy with speed and long range damage application.  Finally, we wanted something special, one more bit of unique flavor to really set Mordu’s Legion apart.  After some tinkering we settled on an unprecedented missile velocity bonus that increases missile speed by 200% while lowering the flight time by half.  All said and done you get missiles that get to their targets extremely quickly and give a significant range bonus as well.  These things are nasty, so get a tackle on them early or get out."

One good thing about Kronos is that the offensive firepower of the Procurer is increasing, which should help handle the Legion patrols.  Also, as long as I don't care about mining output, I should still have a respectable enough tank to take on the small ships.  That leaves Rosewalker to handle the heavy stuff.

Heavy Stuff

I figure I have two choices given my current level of skill training, the Stratios or the Loki.  The Stratios is probably the weaker of the two choices for me.  I don't have any laser skills trained, meaning I could not take advantage of the ship's optimal range bonus.  However, I do have very good drone skills, so perhaps using projectile weapons instead is a possibility.  While my defenses are hampered by only having both Gallente and Amarr Cruiser only trained to 4, I do have my armor skills maxed out, meaning I should have a substantial tank.  Good enough to survive until drones with Procurer and Stratios bonuses can finish off a Legion patrol?  I don't know.

The more expensive option is to finally fulfill a long-time goal of mine and purchase a Loki.  I know that a Tengu is probably a better option, but I'm not changing Rosewalker's skill queue, which means I'm not flying a Tengu until September at the earliest.  With my luck, CCP will announce a rebalance pass for strategic cruisers anyway, so holding off on a Tengu is probably a good thing.  Besides, the Loki is a Minmatar ship.  I'm still trying to hold off on flying non-Minmatar and non-ORE ships on my main characters as long as possible.

Admittedly, I don't know much about tech 3 ships.  I imagine in order to counter the Legion NPCs missile advantage I'd need to fit artillery instead of autocannons.  I'd also need to use the Covert Reconfiguration subsystem in order to remain in cloaky overwatch and allow fleet bonuses to take effect.  I'm not sure about the other subsystems.  Perhaps the Amplification Node subsystem to help with signature tanking the incoming missile fire.  I'll have to play around with a Loki subsystem configuration tool.

I should add that, as I always aim to do, in getting a new ship I'm trying to accomplish more than one thing at a time.  So in addition to protecting my mining operations and possibly getting some nice blueprints, I'm looking to get a ship I can use for exploration.  Currently I use a Cheetah, but that limits me to only running data and relic sites.  By upgrading to either a Stratios or a Loki I can then run the combat sites I scan down as well.  So Rosewalker can bring the firepower and Wandering Rose can follow along in the newly revamped Prowler to not only provide fleet bonuses but to carry around loot and a crated Procurer to exploit any mining opportunities as well.

Which one will I choose?  Well, business is good right now and I do have a lot of SOE loyalty points.  But considering that some of the people who try to turn my Procurer into a wreck read the blog, perhaps I should just get both.  Options are always good.  So's keeping people off-balance.