Category — Ship Reviews

4 light missiles that keep firing can rack up quite the bit of damage! Especially with the high bonuses from the ship itself.

In a small fleet, once aggro has been established, a few kestrels can help kill the smaller ships quickly and then move onto the large battleships.

I personally love flying this frigate because if you fly it fast enough and close enough to the enemy, they can’t hit you with very much damage. While your light missiles are still doing the maximum damage.

If engaging a bigger ship that is shooting big guns or big missiles at you, don’t worry too much. If you don’t know what I am talking about, check out this guide.

Quick gang PvP raids can include circling the target at 1000m/s with a microwarpdrive, web, and scramble. Try not to use rockets on the kestrel as it does not have a bonus for it.

Anyways, the missiles will launch at very fast speeds with the necessary skills trained up. When you are on the defensive, be sure to equip a booster or some hardeners to keep the shields up.

Overall, I think the Kestrel is a very good frigate to start out with. Or if you just want to fool around in low sec, it is a cheap and effective ship.

Either way, I’m sure you will have a blast with it!

[expand title=Technical Specs:]

• 10% bonus to kinetic missile damage
• 5% bonus to EM, explosive, and thermal missile damage
• Default targeting range is 40 km with 3 locked targets
• Velocity is 260 m/sec with 0 m3 of drone capacity
• Shield hit points is 391 and recharges in 625 seconds
• Power grid is at 30MW, 150ft of CPU, and 400 calibration points
• There are 4 high slots, 3 medium slots, 2 low slots, and 3 rig slots
• 4 slots for launchers and none for turrets[/expand]

[expand title=Speed Tank Setup:]

• 4 Standard Missile Launcher

• 1 1mn Afterburner
• 2 Cap Recharger

• 2 Reactor Control Unit[/expand]

[ratings]

As time passes, I will be writing more reviews for these ships. They include the:

• Ferox; hybrid eh? [In progress]
• Caracal; the Drake’s little brother. [In progress]
• Merlin; it’ll provide the pew pew.
• Kestrel; free missiles for everyone! [In progress]

Sorry if they are all Caldari ships, but those are the ones that I have piloted.

But if you are able to provide reviews, send me an email at tonglil@hotmail.com!

Stay tuned for moar!

The Cormorant is the ship bridging the gap between frigates and cruisers. Even though its purpose is to shoot down small and speedy ships, there are several odd jobs that I believe it can do better.

A lot of experienced Caldari pilots buy one simply for the sole role of salvaging wrecks after a battle or mission. Its relatively large cargo plus an extender will hold more than 500 m3 of any of the crap that you collect. And its 8 high slots means you can stick quite a bit of salvagers and tractor beams on. Well, 8 to be exact. Add a MWD and you got a speedy little temporary hauler.

For those lazy people who feel lazy, take the Cormorant out for a spin in the asteroids and mine your brains out. Watch excitingly as 7 miner I’s drill into the precious Veldspar into nothingness. And put that missile launcher on to fend off any NPC foes.

See, the destroyer class ships don’t really have a big role in the big battlefield except as a janitor. Unless it’s a small raid operation…

Then when its time for a battle, it sure is fun to see those turrets blast blue or green beams at those helpless ants. And if someone is shooting at you, launch a defender to lower the overall incoming DPS.

All in all, the Cormorant is just a bigger form of a frigate; nothing you absolutely need in the beginning. When you get rich, be sure to get one though to help you loot those wrecks and salvage some tritanium bars!

[expand title=Technical Information:]

• 10% bonus to small hybrid turret tracking speed
• 10% bonus to small hybrid turret optimal range
• Penalty of 25% reduction in rate of fire for turrets
• Bonus of 50% bonus optimal range for small hybrid turrets
• Default targeting range is 36 km with 7 locked targets
• Velocity is 210 m/sec with 0 m3 of drone capacity
• Shield hit points is 782 and recharges in 625 seconds
• Power grid is at 55MW, 215ft of CPU, and 400 calibration points
• There are 8 high slots, 4 medium slots, 1 low slots, and 3 rig slots
• 1 slot for launchers and 7 for turrets[/expand]

[expand title=Salvaging Setup:]

• 5 Salvager
• 3 Small Tractor Beam

• 1 1mn MicroWarpdrive
• 2 Small Capacitor Injector
• 1 Small Capacitor Battery

• 1 Expanded Cargohold[/expand]

[ratings]

The Drake, what could I say? It’s simply a marvel in engineering by the Caldari mega-corps.

The battlecruiser is designed for level 3 missions and it could blow them out of the water no problem. After mastering those, I took it to do level 4 missions and simply, it was amazing. My first thoughts were, oh crap, what have I gotten myself into? Amazingly, I lasted and had won the battle; I was so proud!

This ship is designed for maximum killing and damage absorption. Throw on a few purgers and shield extenders, the effective hit points on this ship skyrockets into the 20k range or more. If for some reason, your capacitor gets sucked dry, it’s not that big of a problem. This baby can be setup to use cap with efficiency or, just don’t use cap at all.

Passive tanking is a skill you must master though. Even though the ship has the potential of being great, you the pilot, must still train for shield skills.

Active setups are different, and usually aren’t preferred as much as a passive build. They include the shield booster and cap boosters along with capacitor relays or flux coils. I won’t go into much details on it, since I don’t run active setups. But you can look around on the net and find some right?

Still, there are still some, just some, disadvantages to the Drake.

The tanking power sometimes will fail you. Since the shield works the strongest at about 33 to 35%, most people don’t worry until it gets to about 25%. Now the problem is, if something appears and shoots your shield down to 30%, then it starts failing. That’s the time to haul ass.

The Drake just doesn’t carry a shield booster because that’s just cap inefficient.

Since that is the only concern anyone has about the passive Drake, you don’t need to worry. I’m sure you’ll be just fine.

[expand title=Technical Specs:]

• 5% shield resistance
• 5% bonus kinetic damage of heavy missiles and heavy assault missiles
• 99% reduction in the CPU need of warfare link modules
• Default targeting range is 60 km with 9 locked targets
• Velocity is 140 m/sec with 25 m3 of drone capacity
• Shield hit points is 5469 and recharges in 1400 seconds
• Power grid is at 850MW, 525ft of CPU, and 400 calibration points
• There are 8 high slots, 6 medium slots, 4 low slots, and 3 rig slots
• 7 slots for launchers and none for turrets[/expand]

[expand title=Passive Setup:]

• 7 Heavy Missile Launcher
• 1 Small Nosferatu -or- Drone Link Augmentor

• 2 Shield Hardener
• 1 Shield Recharger
• 3 Large Shield Extender II

• 1 Ballistic Control System
• 3 Shield Power Relay

• 3 Core Defence Field Purger

• 5 Hobgoblin[/expand]

[ratings]