f13.net

I'm pretty much a noob, so forgive what might be dumb questions: I left skills training for a while so I have plenty but I think I'm missing something obvious.  I'm doing Level 3's in my Ferox right now and I've been given Angel Extravaganza.  Lengthy, but I'm not that worried about that aspect.

But how do I deal with Angel Vipers? And probably other small, fast craft with good regen.  If I don't blow them up on their run in to me then they take forever to kill.  I've tried using two medium Nos's on them, with no effect on their shield regen.  I've fitted a webber to slow them down but I still can't hit them with anything except missiles, which do so little damage that it takes forever to grind through their regen.

I have tons of skills in improving tracking rates and so on, so I must just be trying to hit them with dumb things.  I've used grismar to make sure that I'm doing and tanking the right damage types, and they don't hurt me.  Given that I can't keep them at range (they're way faster) what should I be doing?

I don't have my setup here at work, but basically 5 heavy launchers, 2 med nosferatus; passive shield tank with extenders and 2xdamage-type resistance in med; power cores and nanos in low.  7 million SPs in mainly combat stuff, missiles and lots of agility. I've got 1.3 million in EW stuff that I never use if that opens up any options: seemed like a good idea at some point.

Endie

Does the Ferox have a drone bay? Those rotten little Vipers are exactly the type of frigate that I let my small drones handle.

Oh, that sounds good.  I haven't had a drone bay in anything so far, everything having been little Caldari stuff, but I notice someone saying they use five hornets from their Ferox.

Nice one: I'll at least have fun trying someting new.  Mo' skill books, mo' money...

Fit drones (rank your drone skills, esp Drone Interfacing) and Guided Missile Precision, which reduces the relative difference between your missile blast and their size.  Lets you hit smaller stuff.  They shouldn't be going faster than your missile explosion velocity so webbing won't do anything.  Painting would, although I find usually not enough to care about.  You may also want to think about stepping up to a Raven, mainly for the bigger drone bay and extra missile slot.

Also, though it's notsomething I ever did myself, you may want to consider using an Assault launcher or two, so you can flinger smaller missiles are smaller targets.

As I understand it, NPCs don't really use cap themselves (even though they have a certain amount available you can drain from them) so you can't shut down their systems with a Nos anyhoo.

Ah, thanks!  This is something I was beginning to suspect, given that two medium Nos's on a fighter drone for a couple of minutes were having no effect.  Given that I passive-tank, that means I can find something useful to fit to those two slots, I guess.  Just what that is, I suppose, is the question now...

Just a couple of quick things to keep in mind for your mission running:

* Yes, drones are great for the small ships.  With high drones skills you will be amazed at how quickly they rip through them while your missiles focus on the cruisers and above.

* Make sure to allow the NPC's to agro you before you launch the drones.  If you launch them to quickly the NPC's love to target and kill your drones instead of your nicely tanked ship.  On missions where the NPC's are spread out and you can take out groups one at a time you will want them return to the drone bay and then relaunch them after the next group agro's you.

* When sending them to attack you are required to shout "Kill them my pretties!"  Well, you don't really have to do that, but drones are fun.  A lot of fun.

Thanks for the advice.  Do NPCs build hate tables, effectively, requiring me to occasionally take the heat off my drones by rotating some damage?

And can I shout "despatch war--rocket Ajax, to brrring back their bodies" instead?

Hate in Eve is relatively simple. Enemies pick something when the fight starts (individually) and stick to it until either it's gone (warps/explodes) or they die.

No hate lists, etc.

<-- Lazy Caldari missile flyer, so I'm probably going to say something really obvious that you already knew ...


Vipers are essentially NPC interceptors setup to tackle and rely on their relatively high speed, small signature and/or high resists to avoid getting slaughtered on the approach.

For mission running the best strategy is to spot them (high bounty frigates) at the start of the mission, then lock them prior to engaging their group if you think they're going to be a problem.  Because of their small signature radius and how that affects locking times if you don't have a lock before they aggro, they'll be on top of you.

Only time it's worth firing on them with non-frigate weapons is when their MWDs are active (ie speeds of 1,000 m/s) because an active MWD increases their signature radius by a factor of something like 500, causing them to take significant damage from anti-cruiser weapons.


Ideal scenario;

Keeping them at maximum firing range, don't get aggro from them.  When you've got target locks focus your opening fire on them.  This ensures that you have the maximum possible amount of time to focus fire on them while MWDs are active, which is where you'll do most of your damage.

Anything that survives can then be finished off by your drones while you switch targets to bigger fish.

When my subscription  expired a few days ago I started training medium AC specialization to level 4, I plan on doing some level 3 missions in my cyclone in a few days.

Since I can't hit small rats at all, I am thinking about using the few missile slots of the cyclone for assault launcher and fling light missiles at those pests. Will 3 launchers be enough to blow up the frigates while my guns/drones shred the bigger  npc's to pieces ?

Thanks again for this: you managed to cover not just drone details but also what effect Guided Missile Precision has - which is something that has eluded me - and an aspect of webbing beyond just keeping them in range.

What with that and the discovery that Nos's don't do jack to drain rat cap, that the reason I hammer vipers on their run is MWDs increasing sig, and how aggro works, I've learned more in this thread than in a week on eve-griefer...

You should be using your drones to clean up the small stuff, not the big stuff unless there's a cruiser / BC that's jamming or otherwise being a special headache.  Train targeting until you can keep a lock on at least 4-5 guys at once, and always have 2-3 of them be frigs/destroyers, with the other 1-2 being Cruiser+.  With drones + 3 assaults on light stuff they should go down quickly, so you'll want to keep several locked to make it easy to focus on the next target.  Actively manage your drones, to ensure that they are going after the same thing your assaults are targeting. 

Also, you may want to consider heavy missiles over assaults as long as there are no issues in fitting them.  With 3 in Guided Missile Precision, your explosion radius for heavies are 106m (irrelevant for lights, as they are so small).  Damage on heavies is 2x what it is on a light, but the ROF is 20% better on assault launchers (and if your target is destroyer sized, you'll about break even).  The size of frigs will about cancel out the increase in damage, so you're left with a slightly better ROF on assaults.  However, you will notice a big performance difference if you want to use missiles against larger ships: an extra 100% damage.  Heavies are relatively more expensive, but still so cheap as to be unimportant.  Nice thing is that you can focus on the heavy skill, and ignore standard.  For anyone who is a pure missile boat, the further advantage is of course in not mixing ammo types, which is mostly just convenience.

I normally find that when I'm actually under threat in a lv3 mission it's because there are midsize ships (C/BC) out there.  Any mission that includes a couple dozen frigs/destroyers, such as drone missions, are almost never a threat.  Consequently I'd rather carry bigger missiles to chase off the stuff that could concern me.  Note I'm only talking about lv3s here - on lv2s you'll want almost all small guns, with only 1-2 big ones at most for the very rare cruiser.  Lv2 missions will "warn" you about destroyers, so there's no reason for anything large.

There is an exception to this (at least for belt rats, not sure about mission rats)

If you kite a rat far enough off its spawn/warp in point it will disengage and warp back to its original point (and then select a new, almost certainly different, target) - this can be rather upsetting for your mining guys if your tanker is stupid/inexperienced enough to try this.