Cruiser newbie; help vs. frigates

[Mr_PeaCH]

So I got my new cruiser outfitted and I slapped a couple of Medium Projectile turrets on it along with 3 'assault-class' missle launchers (better than standard but fire standard missles, not heavies because I haven't got to the Heavy Missle skill yet DOH!) along with a NOS.  I also have a named target painter on a medium slot.

What am I doing wrong?  I've taken it out on missions and just for standard ratting where the fare is mostly frigate class NPCs and my medium turrent guns (one's a long range sort and the other an in-close gun) don't hit for shit and it doesn't seem to me like the target painter is making a bit of difference.  I have it in mind to re-fit the Cruiser with Small Projectile guns.  But if it weren't for the 3 launcher hardpoints this would be ridiculous.

[WayAbvPar]

First of all- you should decide on which style of combat you like (long range or short range) and equip all the same guns to that effect. Mixing them plays havoc with your DPS. 2nd- you have a target painter; next step is to get a webber. Painted and webbed frigates go pop in a big fat hurry.

[Polysorbate80]

it doesn't seem to me like the target painter is making a bit of difference.

Bingo!  It's not.  Standard missiles are anti-frigate weapons anyway; the only thing the painter would do any good on would maybe be interceptors.  You won't need it until you step up to heavy missiles (cruiser-size weapons), and maybe not even then.

Ditto the range thing; you generally want to be able to use all your firepower at once so don't mix ranges if you can help it (unless for very specific things like smartbombing interceptor swarms)

[Yegolev]

The guides on the official site are worth reading.  More info than can be put into text here.  You'll particularly want to check out the ones that detail gun/missile size vs target signature and the one that describes transversal velocity.

[Silus Fromme]

Which cruiser?

As said above, definitely go with all the same gun.  Mixed gun ships are pretty much non-starters in EVE.

Do you have slots you could free up for tracking enhancers?  Also how are your support gunnery skills, motion prediction and sharpshooter and what have you?

[Mr_PeaCH]

I cant think of the name off-hand but it's the 'best' Minm. cruiser.  6 high, 3 med, 5 low.

I'll take to heart the advice about deciding to fight from long range or close.  Up till now I'd honestly sort of been blending both with a rocket launcher or two as the ships allowed.

Target Painting & the Assault Missle Launchers.  I get what you're saying.  And the missles are the only part of my deal that is working as intended at this point as far as I'm concerned.  I get that they are firing the 'standard' type missles which do normal damage against small ships as opposed to larger missles which have their damage output reduced against small ships when a TP is not employed.  I was thinking though that my 650mm long range gun -or- my 450 shortie would have worked better against frigate class opponents when I had them painted; but what I was seeing was that neither seemed to work well.  The long gun almost never hits and the short one seems to strike mostly 'glancing blows' for gimp dps.

Webber, tracking enhancers...  Will give them a shot.  And I have those support skills at 1 or 2 currently; looking to take them up to 3 or 4 down the road soon.


But just to clarify... I should expect to be able to pulverize rat frigs with my medium guns when they're painted provided I get my ducks in a row skill-wise and config-wise (all long, all small)?  And fwiw, what are the thoughts about going long vs. short range?  I'd been a short range guy up to this point with my Rifters and my Thrashers (Destroyer class).  Seems to me I'll be better off staying short because the enemy frigs are always going to want to close in to me and I'm not fast enough to try and keep them at range?

[WayAbvPar]

I have had MUCH better luck with my Rupture v frigs with short guns (Autocannons) and a webber. Frigs get inside the arty guns too fast and then become a giant pain in the ass to kill.

[Silus Fromme]

I cant think of the name off-hand but it's the 'best' Minm. cruiser.  6 high, 3 med, 5 low.

I'll take to heart the advice about deciding to fight from long range or close.  Up till now I'd honestly sort of been blending both with a rocket launcher or two as the ships allowed.

Target Painting & the Assault Missle Launchers.  I get what you're saying.  And the missles are the only part of my deal that is working as intended at this point as far as I'm concerned.  I get that they are firing the 'standard' type missles which do normal damage against small ships as opposed to larger missles which have their damage output reduced against small ships when a TP is not employed.  I was thinking though that my 650mm long range gun -or- my 450 shortie would have worked better against frigate class opponents when I had them painted; but what I was seeing was that neither seemed to work well.  The long gun almost never hits and the short one seems to strike mostly 'glancing blows' for gimp dps.

Webber, tracking enhancers...  Will give them a shot.  And I have those support skills at 1 or 2 currently; looking to take them up to 3 or 4 down the road soon.


But just to clarify... I should expect to be able to pulverize rat frigs with my medium guns when they're painted provided I get my ducks in a row skill-wise and config-wise (all long, all small)?  And fwiw, what are the thoughts about going long vs. short range?  I'd been a short range guy up to this point with my Rifters and my Thrashers (Destroyer class).  Seems to me I'll be better off staying short because the enemy frigs are always going to want to close in to me and I'm not fast enough to try and keep them at range?

Rupture.  Good ship.  In PvP lots of people go for the upclose autocannon rupture.  The DPS is supposed to be pretty nasty for a cruiser.

If you're ratting, especially frig ratting, I'd go for long-range though.  720s can pop a frig in very few volleys, provided you can track them in the first place.  And you can always carry an assortment of long and short range ammo to lower your optimal if things get in too close.

The big plus to going for a sniper setup for frig ratting is you can scrimp on your tank setup, swapping slots out for damage and tracking mods.  Maintain appropriate range, and the frigs won't be hitting you at all.  Focus on a smaller amount of more energy intensive active tanking modules, and only use those when you're absolutely certain you can take the last few things that got in close or to give you time to pound on that warp button.

You may have seen it already, but here's a post-RMR rupture setup thread on the main boards:

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=285137

Replace t2 with t1 as appropriate for your skill level.  And definitely get motion prediction and sharpshooter up to at least 3.  Also expect to need to devote some time to weapon upgrades, sniper guns tend to eat up grid faster than close range stuff.

EDIT:  WayAvPar has a point, especially if your mission running.  You don't get much opportunity to dictate range in deadspace missions.  But if you're belt ratting and willing to run-and-gun I'd still recommend long range.

[Furiously]

One nice thing about up close and personal. You are a lot closer to picking up the loot.

[Strazos]

I second that. Fighting in a Caracal could be painful when it came to looting - half the cans would be 50km+ away at the end of the fight.

Damn kiting.

[Krakrok]

I always mix my guns. 1 or 2 long range, a few mediums, and a few shorts/smalls. And a webber lets you take long range guns and blow anything away up close once it's webbed. I'm all hybrid turrets. I have drones though. I mix my drones too.. 1 heavy, 2 medium, two small, or whatever against frigates. Against larger ships I launch all heavies.

[hal]

Well there isn't a right vs wrong here but Ive got to chime in with ca"ad on this, you lose dps if all your weapons aren't the same range. If your letting your target dictate the range you allready lost. The ideal is your guns are in range and his aren't. Ya, theres a school of thought that i want to hurt him where ever he is, but your giving up dps. Thats comming from a cal that flys missile boats. PVP in eve wants to be close range. 1. your in webbing, scrambling range. 2. close range does more damage (all else being equal). Again it isn't wrong if you understand the tradeoffs but having all your weapons work at a given range is a simpler way to think. Know that in PVP evethink says your target is going to try to get close. Also understand this is comming fron a newb who's trying to learn to be effective in eve pvp. We now return you to your oblivion saved game.

[Kail]

Well there isn't a right vs wrong here but Ive got to chime in with ca"ad on this, you lose dps if all your weapons aren't the same range. If your letting your target dictate the range you allready lost. The ideal is your guns are in range and his aren't.

Noob question: do you take any kind of penalty for fighting at close range?  Aside from the fact that you're guaranteed to be within the enemy optimal range, I can't see much which would discourage that.  Looking at the turret guide over at the official site, it claims that the penalty would be that the target's radial velocity would be a lot higher, but as long as you've got the target webbed, wouldn't that be a non-issue?

[gimpyone]

Well there isn't a right vs wrong here but Ive got to chime in with ca"ad on this, you lose dps if all your weapons aren't the same range. If your letting your target dictate the range you allready lost. The ideal is your guns are in range and his aren't.

Noob question: do you take any kind of penalty for fighting at close range?  Aside from the fact that you're guaranteed to be within the enemy optimal range, I can't see much which would discourage that.  Looking at the turret guide over at the official site, it claims that the penalty would be that the target's radial velocity would be a lot higher, but as long as you've got the target webbed, wouldn't that be a non-issue?

The penalty is the time it takes to close the gap.

[Mr_PeaCH]

Update -

Went and found a couple 220mm autocannons to go with the 425mm cannon (all short range, no arty) and then two 'heavy missle launchers' and a med. NOS on the high power fittings.  Swapped out a scrammer for a webber on the mediums to go with the painter and non-MWD propulsion booster (missions in deadspace = no MWD).  Left my lows alone but they include the armor rep, 400mm armor fitting, an overall systems booster, tracking booster and a warp stabilizer.

Got given the 'silence the informant' mission so I got lots of practice against little drones and frigates (and damn their missles).  I would charge in with boosted speed, lock and paint the target as soon as I could, start flinging missles, then web and NOS inside of 10k, back off the speed boost, go into close orbit and start opening up with the cannons.  Rinse and repeat from all the available targets from the cloud.  Worked pretty damn well and I think that the webber was definately the key.  My guns are hitting more than they are missing now and hitting for good damage and I think that w/o the webber the painter was mostly useless because you cant hurt what you can't hit.  I am chewing up more M ammo than I would have thought but I can live with that and the targets are going down very fast.  Plus of course I'm constantly taking fire but with the Cruiser's inherent better shields and armor, my armor plating, my repairer and nearly limitless capacity it isn't an issue for this mission like before in my Rifter or even my Thrasher having to warp back out and in constantly to avoid death (or not avoid death as the case might be).

Dunno what I was thinking having a scrammer on instead of a webber in the first place.  I think at one point I was trying to make it functional for both PvE and PvP and put both on but had to sacrifice one for the painter and so took off the web.  /shrug 

Next up I need to get into some low sec space and see how it is going up against a rat cruiser.  Taking cruisers out with a frigate was pretty simple, just time consuming.  Looking forward to slugging it out since now I'm pretty satisfied i can take care of the frigates who try to come inside with me.

[bhodikhan]

I trained up Gallente. Drones make life easier for killing NPCs. I fit for distance and let the drones and possibly a rocket launcher take care of the ones that get too close. Also. You really want to train up your gunnery skills. I'm at 3 mil in gunnery and haven't even trained for a single BS grade gun.

[Kail]

Noob question: do you take any kind of penalty for fighting at close range?

The penalty is the time it takes to close the gap.

Just to be clear, I meant (but forgot to mention that I meant) fighting at close range with long range weapons.  Like, if I've got turrets with an optimal range of 10km, as long as I can keep my enemy from orbiting faster than they can track (with the webber), I can fight just fine at 500m, correct?

Noob question numero 2:  I just lost my Omen, and need to replace it.  In another thread, someone reccomended I move to a Malller.  Around Neesher, from what I was seeing, a Maller costs something like twice as much as an Omen, but I can't figure out why it's supposed to be better.  As far as I can tell, switching to a Maller, you gain one turret slot and one empty high-slot (for a nos or something), but you loose your only launcher slot and your entire drone bay.  Also, a slight boost in armor, but a smaller cargo hold.  Exact same resistances and bonuses.  But it costs twice as much.  Is there something I'm not seeing?

[Hoax]

Check the cpu/pg of both ships.

One turret slot is huge, the launcher is useless for most amarr pilots as training missiles isn't worth doing during the early game.

Also the Maller gets a decent amount more armor, and a cruiserlevel/resistbonus which means they can put together a very mean tank.

[5150]

Noob question: do you take any kind of penalty for fighting at close range?

The penalty is the time it takes to close the gap.

Just to be clear, I meant (but forgot to mention that I meant) fighting at close range with long range weapons.  Like, if I've got turrets with an optimal range of 10km, as long as I can keep my enemy from orbiting faster than they can track (with the webber), I can fight just fine at 500m, correct?

Noob question numero 2:  I just lost my Omen, and need to replace it.  In another thread, someone reccomended I move to a Malller.  Around Neesher, from what I was seeing, a Maller costs something like twice as much as an Omen, but I can't figure out why it's supposed to be better.  As far as I can tell, switching to a Maller, you gain one turret slot and one empty high-slot (for a nos or something), but you loose your only launcher slot and your entire drone bay.  Also, a slight boost in armor, but a smaller cargo hold.  Exact same resistances and bonuses.  But it costs twice as much.  Is there something I'm not seeing?

The only penalty AFAIK you get for fighting within your optimal range is that, because the target is closer turret tracking _might_ be more of an issue (depending on whats attacking you that is) - since you've got that covered with the webber you shouldnt have any problems

What are the ship bonuses? I'd expect the Mallers bonuses to be more 'kick ass' than the Omen. Does the Maller have more shield? Does the Maller have a [bigger] drone bay? Have you checked the price in Jita? (the further out you get the more expensive things/ships tend to get because people will pay a premium rather than fly all the way back to Jita)

I hate Jita btw

[TheDreamr]

Omen spec
Maller spec

Maller has an extra hi-slot, an extra low-slot, more CPU / PG, and instead of a RoF bonus it has a +5% per-level armor resistance bonus.  It can't mount a missile launcher or use drones but it looks like it would handle damage far better.

If cost is the major issue have you considered asking around to see how much it would cost to have someone build you one from a BPC?

[Hoax]

There is almost 0 market for Maller BPC's I'll buy one at some point I'm just trying to figure out what a decent price is since the supply is so limited.