Rokh, the shiny expensive hybrid toy.

Amazing, yet you don’t see it in service as much as some of the other battleships, like the Raven. Why? Well, there are several reasons:

1. It’s shear expensiveness. The ship itself sells for about 110 million on market, about 20-30 million more than the Raven. Plus insurance and buying good fittings for it, that will in all put a 180-200 million ISK hole in your wallet. And since some people don’t know how to save ships from death, they don’t want to risk loosing their money.

2. It’s a very skill intensive ship. To pilot this beast it effectively, a lot of skills are needed. They include many gunnery skills trained up to at least level 4, along with some shielding skills, engineering skills, and electronic skills up to at the lowest 3.

3. It’s rails turn a lot of people away since most Caldarians like the traditional style of combat, which is hurling missiles. A majority of players trained up for heavy missiles, then cruise launchers because all we fly are Drakes, Ravens, Caracals, and the Kestrel frigate. These would be considered to be some of the more powerful ships to fly and easier to use. Velocity times flight time equals distance. With guns there are tracking speed, radial velocity, transversal velocity, radial velocity, velocity, signature radius, and finally you can figure out the gun’s optimal range.

But through this all, why do some people still purchase this ship? Let me tell you. The ship itself is very strong once the battleship skill reaches 4 or 5. Then the built-in tank works very well at 20-25 plus percent; its like a free invulnerability field built in! The range bonus help the massive guns reach ranges of 150 to 200 kilometers where you can pick ships off.

With this in mind, it takes the enemy a while before they can actually come close enough and hit you. A good word of warning though, when some ships get very close (less than 10km), it is nearly impossible to hit them. That’s when drones are essential, especially tech 2 drones because they do a lot more damage. Maybe fitting a nos on one of the high slots will dry off that pesky interceptor or frigate.

The tactic that I suggest with this ship is to first pick of and thin out the frigate fleet before they come too close and are orbiting too fast for your turrets to track or their transversal are too high to hit them for full damage with your guns. If you don’t take them out fast enough and they scrambled then that’s when things will go to hell. Make sure you focus fire on ships because each ship with 1 hitpoint does the same amount of damage and can still be as dangerous as a ship with 1000 hitpoints. Not only this but then it’s easier to kill them as they are recieving more DPS and can not tank, boost, or repair as if you split the damage two or three ways.

Then after the frigates are taken out and come too close, throw your drones on them and start hitting the battleships with the target painters on them to do full damage. By the time that the battleships are taken down, your tank should be able to hold much better and then the drones are taken out too! Remember that whenever you can warp at 100km, do it, because put some iron charges in and this way you don’t have to worry about getting hit, at least for a little while.

This ship definitely gives awe simply by its presence, especially in the some of the beginner systems, since it’s rarely spotted. It you are the pilot of this ship, join a fleet with some corp members and just go blasting the enemy away. One thing, I wouldn’t take this exotic ship through unfamiliar territories though, it’s far too expensive for most people to throw away. Well, unless you are a multi-billionaire.

[expand title=Technical Information:]

• 10% large hybrid optimal range per level
• 5% shield resistance per level
• Default targeting range is 90 km with 7 locked targets
• Velocity is 110 m/sec with 50 m3 of drone capacity
• Shield hit points is 8500 and recharges in 2500 seconds
• Power grid is at 15000MW, 780ft of CPU, and 400 calibration points
• There are 8 high slots, 6 medium slots, 5 low slots, and 3 rig slots
• 4 slots for launchers and 8 for turrets[/expand]

Suggested Role: Level 4 missions, solo or in a fleet

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