Cruisers and the people that desire them

[Reg]

On the main options  screen in the bottom left corner you can set a number of ships that you auto target when they target you. Even with no skill in Targeting you can set that to 1 which helps a bit. I've got mine at 6 now.

Don't be in too much of a hurry to move up to level 2 missions until you're in a cruiser. Most can be done in a destroyer but there are a couple that will blow you right out of the water. Silence the Informant is one to watch out for. Even in a cruiser you may well need to warp out and do repairs. Once you're in a battlecruiser the level 2s become boring.  Unfortunately, the battlecruiser isn't quite up to level 3s.

If I had to do it over again I'd have just skipped past battlecruisers right into battleships.

[Der Helm]

On the main options  screen in the bottom left corner you can set a number of ships that you auto target when they target you. Even with no skill in Targeting you can set that to 1 which helps a bit. I've got mine at 6 now.

As far as I noticed. this only works the first time they start targeting you, no ? Anyway, I will pick up targeting and some sensor and just toast them bitches ...

[Reg]

Yeah that's a pain. If they target you and you don't have the skill to acquire more targets then you have to do it manually.

[Jamiko]

The agent will email you every once in a while saying that research has halted (so you stop getting R&D points) andl you need to do a mission for him to resume

I believe that is not correct. The little missions the research agents give you are not required to be done, research never stops. The little missions give you a bonus to the research points. I very frequently do not do the missions for my research agent as they ask for something that I cannot even find on the market. The research has never stopped.

[5150]

The agent will email you every once in a while saying that research has halted (so you stop getting R&D points) andl you need to do a mission for him to resume

I believe that is not correct. The little missions the research agents give you are not required to be done, research never stops. The little missions give you a bonus to the research points. I very frequently do not do the missions for my research agent as they ask for something that I cannot even find on the market. The research has never stopped.

Wouldn't surprise me to find it had changed since I last played (which was over a year ago) which was when I got my R&D agent - thanks for clearing that up

[Merusk]

My max lock distance in it is 35k (not sure how much of this is boosted/crippled by my [lack of] combat skills though) so I tend to avoid groups of kestrels over 10k bounty each as they just kick the crap out of my before I'm in range. The fact that my antimatter ammo cuts my range in half obviously doesnt help here (I tend to start shooting at 12k and keep closing).

I'll post about my BC and stuff during lunch, but anything short-range NEEDS a MWD or ABs on it.  Missile Boats will kick your ass, and it's worse in L2s because you'll start to see interceptors which are fast little MFs.   I prefer ABs because MWDs don't function in deadspace, which is where most missions take place these days.

[WayAbvPar]

I didn't have any trouble with multiple 12-20k Angel rats last night in my frigate (Tristan- 2 125mm rails and a rocket launcher for close range). I had to boogie when a 50k rat jumped me as I was finishing off his buddies, but I am pretty sure I could have taken him 1v1 if I wasn't beat up first. Are destroyers really having that much trouble with stuff I am handling in a frigate? If so, I am definitely skipping them and heading straight to cruisers.

[Reg]

I think the problem with destroyers is that they're easier to target and hit than frigates because of their greater size. They're fun to fly and nice damage dealers and you can clean up a level 1 mission faster in a destroyer than in a frig but they're notoriously fragile.

[Jamiko]

I went into destroyers too fast, and went back to my frigate. It really pays to skill up before you move up. I was a much better fighter in a frigate than I was in a destroyer. Don't rush into more ship than you are capable of handling. Just being able to fly one, is usually not enough.

I still keep going back to my Rifter on occasion (I'm in cruisers now), love that ship.

[Merusk]

Ok, the battlecruiser stuff.

They are directly in-between Cruisers and Battleships, and a good price increase but not overwhelmingly so.  (My BC cost 30mil, my cruiser 7mil, battleships will cost me 90-120mil)

The smallest Minmatar battleship (Typhoon) has a Sig Rad of 320m and a scan of 115mm the largest (Tempest) a sig of 340m and scan of 100mm.  My battlecruiser (Cyclone) sits at 240 sig and 220mm scan and my cruiser (Rupture) is 130m sig and 245mm scan.   This means I've got just slightly worse scan/ lock capability than a cruiser but far better than a battleship.  In trade, but my sig is a lot bigger, but not quite as big as a battleship.

  I get a ton more power in my battlecruiser, though (1210mw vs 860mw) and 2 more med slots and one more high slot than a cruiser, so I've got 8 weapons I can load-up and more shield tank/ toys than  I can fit in my cruiser.  The BC isn't too much slower (165 vs 200 m/s) but fitting a MWD or AB means I don't have as much room for other toys or tanks.

Right now I'm fitted with Heavy Missiles (2) Autocannons (3) Arty (2) and a light missile launcher.  One shield booster, an invuln shield, armor rep and a lot of cap recharge/ shield recharge modules in the mids, a webber and a target painter and some damage mods and cap rechargers in the lows.  I'd love to have one of the energy drains to keep my cap up and suck theirs dry, but I'm working on other stuff at the moment.  Maybe after I get into my assult frig.

   It's not the best weapons set-up for the level 3 missions I've started taking on, but it blew-through all of the Level 2 missions without any trouble at all.  I really wanted to see how ACs would do for me in L3, because Arty didn't work well in L2.  Too many frigs/ intys would close-in past my tracking & optimal range and I'd be chewing on them forever, even with a webber and the painter and my light/ medium drones.   Level 3 I'm finding a lot more cruiser spawns and missile ships.

 Without a MWD or AB I'm way too slow, and missile ships chew me up before I can get into good autocannon range (about 5km). Last night I had a group of 4 80k missile ships in a mission that I had to warp-out on about 5 times to finish off.  They'd keep me at range, so I could only rely on my own missiles and arty cannons to take them out.  Since I only have 2 arty this meant they'd take out my shield and part of my armor before I'd pop one, then I'd have to warp-out recharge/ repair and warp back to take on the next.  (And the one time I *DID* get in close - whoops aggroed another group, emergency warp!)

In short I love it because it doesn't cost the small fortune a battleship does, and I can use my medium gunnery skills and modules on it to complete level 3 missions.  It takes me a while and a number of warp-outs to do them because it's not as hearty as a BS, but I CAN do them.  If I had the skills and cash, though, I'd much rather be inside of a battleship and use drones/ pulse weapons to take care of the nuisance ships like interceptors.

I went into destroyers too fast, and went back to my frigate. It really pays to skill up before you move up. I was a much better fighter in a frigate than I was in a destroyer. Don't rush into more ship than you are capable of handling. Just being able to fly one, is usually not enough.

Agreed. I worked hard to get my battlecruiser, but without a few key skills being at level 3-4 I was having a rougher time than in my cruiser.  Problem is, as a noob (and I still am largely a noob) you don't know what it needs until you actually try it.  Even reading the official forums doesn't always help, because of the PVP aspect. Too many people that will keep their lips shut or be unhelpful because it means they might have to face you some day.

I still keep going back to my Rifter on occasion (I'm in cruisers now), love that ship.

I still do some level 2 missions in my Rifter because I love it so much.  (Though after RMR I'm notcing it's a lot harder to do that than it was.. I should find a new setup for it.)  My love for the look and the ship is part of the reason I'm going for assult frigs rather than interceptors or battleships.

[Reg]

I use medium guns in my battleship on level 3s. Since those are all cruisers and frigates large guns would just miss way too much.

I agree with you about jumping to a better ship before your support skills are up to snuff. I think that may be why I had so much trouble doing level 3s in my battlecruiser. Making the jump to battleship to do them allowed me to solo the level 3s even with my sucky skills because I was using an overpowered ship for it.

Maybe I'll take the old Brutix out of mothballs and see if it works better for me now. A little more challenge would make the missions more fun.

[WayAbvPar]

So it sounds like most people keep their older ships when they upgrade to a new class? That sounds more prudent instead of selling off the old one and being royally fucked when the new one goes poof and insurance only covers the hull.

[Sky]

So...how do I get this Caracal, anyway? 

[Merusk]

So it sounds like most people keep their older ships when they upgrade to a new class? That sounds more prudent instead of selling off the old one and being royally fucked when the new one goes poof and insurance only covers the hull.

Well, yes that and I like owning my own fleet.  Call me Admiral!  I've got about 9 ships total.  The battlecruiser, a cruiser, my space-train hauler (I won't buy another indy even if I train up just because I love the look.) and a slew of frigates. (and then like 6 shuttles stashed around that I should put on the market or recycle..)  I've gotten a few of the frigs as mission rewards, but 2-3 I've picked-up because someone left them lying around.  Sure, I never fly that shitty Reaper anywhere, but damnit, I own it!

 If there were taxes or something I'd dump them as I upgraded, but with no downside to owning them I keep them around.

[Furiously]

So it sounds like most people keep their older ships when they upgrade to a new class? That sounds more prudent instead of selling off the old one and being royally fucked when the new one goes poof and insurance only covers the hull.

The rifter was the fastest ship at one point wasnt it?

[NiX]

What skills should I get up before really putting my Caracal out there? I'd iike to skill up before I get the ship so I can just jump right into it and with all the extra hours at work, I don't mind throwing a couple skills up to train while I'm gone.

[5150]

I own but have never flown a Caracal (have a corp-mate who flew one exclusively for a while) but what I can tell you is this

Missiles

You either want Assault or Heavy launchers on it (depending on what you are hunting) and anything to increase your lock range and keep you out of theres (afterburner/microwarp drive)

[Merusk]

Looking at the stats, you want to train up all the missiles and all the shield abilities you can.  That ship has nothing for armor, so best to enhance what it does have, since they're % based skills.

Being Caldari you were probably already working on your missile skills. Don't forget that each missile type (rocket/ heavy /standard/ cruise/ torp) has a book all its own that adds %5 damage for each level.  Then after level V in one of those, you get the specialization books that let give additional bonuses.  Don't worry about moving on to V until you're in your cruiser and have most other skills up around IV.

The other skills you would want are under navigation and engineering.  The shield skills you definatly want are management, operation, compensation, upgrades, and tactical shield manipulation.  I'd also get Energy Management and Energy Grid Upgrades (upgrades in case you need to pop in some power modules).  Then I'd work on getting the AB or MWD stuff, depending on what you're doing. If it's missions rather than rat-spawn hunting I'd go for Afterburners, since most missions happen in 'Deadspace' and MWDs don't work there.

I'd take all of these up to at least level III before trying out your cruiser.  You should get some decent shield modules as drops, so keep them around in your hangar and then play the min/ max game.

The Carcal also has a drone bay, but can only hold 10m^3 of drones.  I wouldn't worry too much about even training them up unless you were going to mine.

[Yoru]

There's a couple other skills I think bear mentioning. First up is Target Painting, which will let you fit target painters which let those nice heavy missiles hit frigates and destroyers for more damage. The effect stacks, so if you're in a gang of cruisers and you all paint the same target, it's gonna be toast real fast now. It'll continue to come in handy later on as you move up in ship and weapon classes.

When you want to go down to lowsec, you may want to consider learning Energy Emission Systems (energy drainers & energy vampires) and/or Propulsion Jamming. The vampire/drain modules aren't too hot on cruisers, but they become really nice on battleships and they can still turn the tide of battle when a frigate's orbiting your cruiser. Propulsion Jamming lets you use webifiers and warp scramblers; the former is handy against fast-moving frigates, NPC or PC, and the warp scrambler is almost a necessity when you want to be prepared to start shooting at real people.

[Merusk]

I knew I was forgetting something, and it was target painting.  It's still pretty new to me but I like it a lot... it's just such a capacitor hog right now.

The jamming/ propulsion stuff I left out just because he was a missile setup and webbers have a 10k max range.  (plus so many NPCs are 'immune to all sorts of electronic warfare. So it pisses me off when my painter doesn't work.)  Jammers/ stabbers/ scrabblers I can't speak on cuz I don't PVP yet and haven't messed with them.

[Yoru]

I knew I was forgetting something, and it was target painting.  It's still pretty new to me but I like it a lot... it's just such a capacitor hog right now.

The jamming/ propulsion stuff I left out just because he was a missile setup and webbers have a 10k max range.  (plus so many NPCs are 'immune to all sorts of electronic warfare. So it pisses me off when my painter doesn't work.)  Jammers/ stabbers/ scrabblers I can't speak on cuz I don't PVP yet and haven't messed with them.

Just because you're a missile boat with 50km+ range doesn't mean webbers are useless - on the contrary, NPC frigates with their damned NPC uber-MWDs commonly close to within 10-20km, and a webber can help there, especially if you use guns with low tracking speeds. They're really better against interceptors for missiles, since it's rare for an NPC to be orbiting you at more than 350m/s and a few levels of Target Navigation Prediction will negate that.

Still, it's 2 hours of training, tops, for a skill that will eventually come in handy.

I don't think Stabilizers require Propulsion Jamming since I only recently got that and have been using a stabilizer whenever I go into lowsec for quite a while now. I'd recommend fitting one for at least your first few jaunts into lowsec since they serve as an insurance policy against getting warp-jammed; kinda expensive on the CPU though.

[MahrinSkel]

Guy, the first thing you want to train up is the Learning skills, you want all the first-stage ones at 4 before you take try any rank 4 or higher skills past 3 (cruisers are a rank 5 skill).  Before you try to take anything higher than rank 2 to 5, you'll want to take all the learning skills to the second tier level 4 (starting with Intelligence and Memory at tier 2 level 4 before you take the others to 5).  It takes about 1/3 as long to train other skills that way, although the month+ it takes to get them up can be frustrating.  But you aren't going to be effective in L3 or L4 missions in less than a battleship, and the supporting skills you really need require some pre-requisites at 5.

And don't be afraid of low-sec space, with good supporting skills you can take anything down to 0.2 spawns in a Battlecruiser, you'll be more effective in a BC with the support skills than in a BS with minimal skills, and you'll have less on the line (BC's cost about 1/4 as much as a BS).  0.0 is where things get dangerous (it's also where you can make the most money), as all of it has been claimed by one alliance or another, and they *will* shoot you down for being there without clearance.

If you want to mine, you're better off doing it in a big group, organized with spawn-clearers, miners, and haulers, even in high-sec space you can find systems with decent belts to strip and stations to refine the ore.  Solo mining doesn't pay very well unless you're in low-sec space with the right skills, including the drone skills to clear your own spawns.

BTW, those low-volume drone bays are about to get a lot more useful with the combat-utility drones (like target painters and armor repair) that are becoming available in RMR, basically they'll let you free up mid slots for NPC'ing.

--Dave

[Yoru]

I've found that a caracal with the proper loadout (passive resisters, shield extender, shield booster, painter, 5xheavy missiles, 2 light drones, etc.) can do really well in 0.2 space; Gallente 0.2 space seems the easiest for a caracal, with Amarr space being pretty tough but doable if you have a lot of patience. 0.1 space might get hairy, but should similarly be doable.

Of course, it all becomes quite easy if you bring along a pal, and a pair of caracals may help deter random PC pirates a little bit, as a side bonus.

[gimpyone]

All the minerals are done except for 3 mil isk iin lowsec stuff.  Please feel free to donate to the f13 navy.

[gimpyone]

Who has the actual skills to support their new cruiser?

[Viin]

I do, but my character has been around the block a few times.

[Yoru]

The caracals will be finished very soon; once we get the BPCs, the Ruptures and whatever-the-hell-they're-called Gallente cruiser will be done in short order.

[Raging Turtle]

At this rate I'll be able to play every single race's cruiser within a week! 

Not really.

But I am switching lines again!

[gimpyone]

4 caracals ready.