The first Gallente ship I review, bet it’s critical to lure you Caldari pilots over…

Hey just kidding, but seriously, this ship can be really well fitted for tank, gank, or an in between of both. I used a fairly old setup suggested by BattleClinic, plating, blasters, drones, etc; it is the standard Gallente setup. But this ship is very versatile, having 100m3 of drone space, you can throw anything from ECM to sentries to light scout drones in if you so wish. Your opponent is in for a surprise because they don’t know what to expect. You may launch ECM’s out, and when you get close enough, send out those Ogres!

I have seen suggested builds with spider tanking gangs, where the members fit a RAR (remote armor repairer) and have everyone watch listed. Whoever is receiving a lot of damage or is hurting will be remote repaired by 6 or 7 other ships. It is called spider tanking because like a spider web, it is hard to break when they are linked together. I personally prefer smaller gangs or going solo. In this case if you fit a RAR, it’s useless, so a medium armor repairer is a must!

The high slots range from a mixture of nosferatus and neutralizers to medium blasters or railguns. Medium guns get bonuses, but at times if you want more tank and fit a 1600mm plate, light guns are the only way to go. If using a nos or neut setup, a few mediums will fit with some adjustment to the rest of the ship.

Medium fittings often include a 10mn afterburner because this ship is quite slow. A fellow corp mate described this ship as a snail, but I don’t remember as to the speed or model. Back on topic, PvP modules, a web and scrambler, uses the last two slots. I have been quite resourceful in the past and invested in those webbing drones, they certainly are coming into handy now! Save a mid slot for a cap recharger, ECM, drone navigation, or whatever you want. The webbing drone also has a much better range than webbifiers too!

Lows will fit you a medium armor repairer, a pair of EANM (energized adaptive nano membrane), and either an 800mm or 1600mm plating depending on if you choose big guns or smaller guns or medium or light nos and neut. That little buffer should keep you alive for an additional 1 to 5 minutes depending on who you are fighting, and that’s sometimes enough to last a little bit longer against that other guy.

Now on to the most important part of the ship, the drones! A lot of pilots will call this ship the baby whale, or the Mini-Domi in comparison to the Gallente battleship Dominix. Both are drone carriers (don’t get confused with carriers and motherships) and both have similar characteristics, in the bonuses that they give out and their looks. Sporting a 100m3 drone bay means carrying 4 large hulled drones, 10 medium hull size drones, or 20 small hull sized drones. Ya I know you won’t want to carry 20 Hobgoblins, but this simply means you have room to hold extra drones in case the first ones go pop, or an assortment of them to deal specific damage (though I ultimately believe Gallente drones out damage all others due to their damage multiplier) or to do a specific job.

Who needs a tank when you ECM the opponent? If you are in a fleet, blow the signature radius of these ships to the size of a moon so the battleships can one volley it. Neutralize it’s capacitor, web them and keep them in place. What you want to do is up to you, just be creative and use your resources wisely.

There is another way to tank while still gank for quite a bit. Use 3 heavy, 2 medium, and 1 light armor repair drones while you fit medium sized guns, magnetic field stabilizers, EANMs, and the rest of the tackling stuff. Your opponent will be mystified on how your tanking as they usually have drones turned off in their overview…

I recently battled another corp mates passive Caracal and just dominated. He had a well built tank and good missiles, but my drones and guns he couldn’t stand up to. While his shields sunk, at times it looked like my tank was failing, but is immediately repaired every few seconds but the trusty medium armor repairer. Yay a test battle is won!

Use your shield as a buffer while you approach the target, unleash your drones, and seize victory!

[expand title=Technical Specs:]

• 5% bonus to medium hybrid turret damage
• 10% bonus to drone hitpoints, damage and mining yield
• Default targeting range is 52 km with 5 locked targets
• Velocity is 170 m/sec with 100 m3 of drone capacity
• Armor hitpoints is 1485
• Capacitor amount is 1250 and recharges in 446.25 seconds
• Power grid is at 675MW, 270ft of CPU, and 400 calibration points
• There are 5 high slots, 3 medium slots, 4 low slots, and 3 rig slots
• 0 slots for launchers and 4 for turrets[/expand]

Suggested Role: Solo PvP fights

[ratings]