First Attempt At Fitting A Nestor

I am procrastinating just a little in mining the last of the minerals needed to build my Nestor. Instead of running out to low and null sec this weekend, I opened up Pyfa and theorycrafted a couple of PvE fits. To add to the degree of difficulty of my Nestor quest, I might try to build all of the modules for the Sisters battleship as well. That's not an absolute goal, though. Just something floating around in the back of my mind.

My first attempt

The stats above are for Rosewalker and not a mythical perfect pilot. One of Rosewalker's big deficiencies is that he only has both Amarr Battleship and Gallente Battleship trained to 4. I'll have the battleship skills trained sometime in February as I'm finishing up the racial drone specialization skills and Advanced Drone Avionics V first.

The Nestor is a versatile ship and my fit does not take advantage of all of the bonuses. The three bonuses I do use are:

• Gallente Battleship bonus (per skill level): 10% bonus to drone hit points and damage.
• Amarr Battleship bonus (per skill level): 4% bonus to all armor resists.
• Role bonus: 50% bonus to Large Energy Turret optimal range.

So how bad is my fit? Let's check out the high slots first. I don't know much about laser weapons other than they use capacitor and that tech 1 crystals are forever. I selected the Mega Pulse Laser II because pulse lasers use less power grid and my fit is very tight without trying to shoehorn in heavy beam lasers. I do want to shoot at range, so I selected Scorch L, which gives a theoretical maximum of 217 DPS. I fill out the two utility high slots with a pair of Drone Link Augmentor IIs. The modules give the ship, with my skills, a drone control range of 105 kilometers, going up to 108 km once I finish my training plan.

My low slot choices hopefully give me enough tank. I chose to go with a Large Armor Repairer II along with a Damage Control II and Reactive Armor Hardener. I like the Reactive Armor Hardener because I don't need to swap out modules to adapt my tank to the damage type of a particular NPC. The module, after a short time, adapts to the incoming fire for me. The DCII is almost an automatic choice, not only giving a 12.5% bonus to shield and 15% bonus to armor resists, but increasing the hull resists up to 59.8% across the board. The other three low slots contain Drone Damage Amplifier IIs in order to maximize the drone damage.

If the fit has a weakness, I think it lies in the mid slots. I chose an Omnidirectional Tracking Link II in order to improve the optimal range and tracking of any sentry drones I deploy. The Tracking Computer II aids the tracking speed and range of the turrets. I don't know if I want to use a script to increase the tracking speed further at the cost of range. The Target Painter II is present to help both my drones and lasers target and hit NPCs.

Fine so far, I think. The next two modules might raise some eyebrows. I chose a Large Cap Battery II in order to stretch out my capacitor as much as possible. The fit is not cap stable, but I can run all my active modules, except for the repair module, for 27 minutes. In a mission, that is forever. While running the armor repairer, the max capacitor life is only 3 minutes, 45 seconds, which requires pulsing the unit. 

I included the Large Micro Jump Drive for two reasons. The first is as a get out of trouble card. Just jumping 100 kilometers instead of totally off-grid can save my drones. Even better, with my drone control range, hopefully the drones can keep fighting while I shut down the lasers and slowly repair the ship while slowboating back toward the fight. The second reason is just as a quick way to dart to the next gate in a multi-dungeon mission, especially if I kited the NPCs.

The final module is the 100mn Monopropellant Enduring Afterburner. I chose the meta module in order to use less capacitor. I figure the lower cap usage makes up for the slightly slower speed with the afterburner turned on.

The final area is the rigs. I use two Large Ancillary Current Router Is in order to have the power grid to fit everything. Finally, I reserved the third rig slot for a Large Anti-Explosive Pump I. The rig plugs the explosive hole in the armor. I know that PvE ships are not supposed to omnitank, but when I finish training the racial battleship skills, I'll exceed over 60% resists across the board. With the presence of the Reactive Armor Hardener, I'll probably see resists exceeding 75% against some NPCs.

What about drone damage? With sentries, the Pyfa damage lists somewhere between 504-604 DPS with my current skills. Ogre IIs give the biggest numbers at 703 DPS. I have confidence that my light and medium drone damage will suffice to take care of frigates and cruisers.

I should add the above stats are for solo PvE. When I mission, I really like dual-boxing with a Claymore. Since the Nestor is an armor tanking ship, I plan to switch to the Damnation. Both the Claymore and Damnation are bonused for heavy missile and heavy assault missiles, so they should feel similar to fly. The Damnation does get bonuses to armor and information links, which I plan to take full advantage of. Having a Nestor that not only can control drones out to 105 km, but target out that far as well? I'll take that any day.