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]

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

[ratings]

Ah, weeks of training do pay off in the end.

As I wake up to another morning in New Eden, I felt ready for what was to come today. This morning I quickly finished all my necessary tasks, filling out contracts and orders so I can have more time to spend with my new beauty.

Once lunch was taken in, I strolled down to my new station hanger. It took a week for me and the crew to move everything into it. I pause at the control panel and select ship storage 8. The floor in front opens and cycles through my other ships; the Rokh, Caracal, Raven, an empty slot where I used to put my Drake, 2 shuttles, and a Cormorant destroyer; until finally the gleaming black frigate rose into view.

Only four or five members of the crew was around at the time since this ship was meant to be piloted by a single person. They looked with interest and when the door hissed open, I stepped in to get to know the cockpit better. Sitting back with the manuals in my hands, I thought to myself that anyone who doesn’t read up the instructions on these things must be real idiots.

This time since the ship was so small, I personally fitted the ship up myself in about an hour and when all of that wad done, then ignited the propulsion systems. Wow this thing has power. Crisp voices flowed through to the tower controls as I asked for undock permission.

Once out in space, everything seemed much bigger to me than before. I sent out into Corp com a message about the Crow and took her on a test flight. The nearest Gurista filled asteroid belt is in Umokka; just 2 jumps away. Plugging that coordinate into autopilot I noticed the ship had an overpowered warp drive that slung you into warp at 3x the speed of most other ships.

It took no time to find a small gang of Gurista frigates and I initiated the test you the ship’s systems and capabilities. Optimal orbit range is 25km; 19.5km for warp scramble. As Bloodclaw missiles fired off in succession, it did not take long for those frigates to become scrap metal. I noticed my shields remain at 99% and checked the log. Amazing! The gang of 3 had only hit me for a total of 13.7 damage.

As I got a bit restless from a day of playing with my new toy, a fellow Corp mate hits me up for some friendly PvP in a nearby system. I’m always one for those and next thing I know, we were at a isolated planet with a few ships. They were in wonder when my T2 frigate glided into their visuals.

In that gang of ships, there was a Ferox, Kestrel, and a Caracal. As soon as we took out of each others’ cans, we engaged in some 1 versus 1 battles. It was obvious I could take the Caracal and Ferox’s shields down, but I did not want to use a lot of missiles, so I stopped after a full load was unleashed. They, however, did not scratch my shields more than 3%.

Through that little combat training exercise in the new ship, I think I may have convinced some people to train up for an interceptor now!

It was getting late, so I payed a station owner in that system a small fee and docked up for a night, and slept in my Crow.

Make sure to submit to the screenshot contest! It ends soon!

The ship isn’t the toughest ship either, but still a rigorous tank for those level 3 missions and can provide an adequate amount of firepower when those missile skills are developed and refined.

The ship’s bonus to kinetic damage is often overlooked. If the bonus is 5% per level, then at level 4 it has a 20% extra damage boost. When it’s that situation, don’t use explosive or em missiles. Comparing when both of them hit, the damage from the kinetic will out do the other by it’s bonus, even if the target ship is weaker to that damage.

This ship is like the Drake, and I guess it could be called it’s little brother. A step between the Kestrel and the Drake. A lot of these are flying around and if you just started to play the game, I would suggest you skip buying a destroyer and save up for this ship.

The punch power alone makes it the better cruiser and later on when you have done enough missions for the Navy, you can trade in all those hours you have spent as a slave to get your Caracal upgraded.

And this is a pretty speedy ship too when you are picking up the loot!

Now in a fleet, you will almost always see a few of these ships as they are good assets to the team. Dishing out large amounts of damage while remaining relatively cheap. And to pilot this ship, not a lot of skills are demanded either. Just some missile skills and shield skills; that’s about it.

The bonuses fit the intended purpose and the ship is cheap and effective. Simple as that and that’s how I like it.

[expand title=Technical Information:]

• 5% bonus kinetic missile damage per skill level
• 10% bonus to missile velocity per level
• Default targeting range is 57 km with 6 locked targets
• Velocity is 187 m/sec with 10 m3 of drone capacity
• Shield hit points is 1563 and recharges in 1250 seconds
• Power grid is at 530MW, 2350ft of CPU, and 400 calibration points
• There are 5 high slots, 5 medium slots, 2 low slots, and 3 rig slots
• 5 slots for launchers and 0 for turrets[/expand]

[expand title=Heavy Missile Setup:]

• 5 Heavy Missile Launcher

• I Medium Shield Booster
• 1 Shield Hardener
• 1 Cap Recharger
• 2 Shield Boost Amplifier

• 1 Power Diagnostic System
• 1 Capacitor Flux Coil

• 2 Hobgoblin[/expand]

[ratings]

This is what the fleet started out like, about 90 people.

Our plan was to go around back door from the Caldari high security space into Tama. There was hostiles in the only Tama station and we wanted to trap them inside and snipe/kill them off. 10 minutes later and we arrive. Things didn’t go so well because there was a neutral spy following us and another spy in our fleet. Most of the people inside that station escaped. We started to chased them down and was able to pick off one or two.

Later, we reach Heydieles and our recon says a fleet is parked on the Old Man Star to Villore. We decide to go after these guys and got the fleet ready. By that time when we got to the destination, we only had a little above half of the people remaining.

The battle was not the best I have ever had. It lagged like hell! I did not appreciate it because you would always target the wrong thing or shoot at something that wasn’t there anymore. Everyone zoomed out to try to reduce the lag, but more reinforcement ships just keep jumping in from the Gallente side. Now we were just trying to get those that we could.

Our fleet commander was still calling the primary targets, and we were able to successfully take some ships down. In the end, I helped to kill these guys:

• Victim: Kadean
• Location: Old Man Star
• Corp: Elite Underworld Special Forces
• Alliance: None
• Ship: Dominix [Fitting]

• Victim:Parmenides Elea
• Location: Old Man Star
• Corp: Wrath of Fenris
• Alliance: None
• Ship: Dominix [Fitting]

• Victim:Lucas Avignon
• Location: Old Man Star
• Corp: Avignon Associates Inc.
• Alliance: None
• Ship: Dominix [Fitting]

If you want to see my full kill board, please visit here.

Here is to the cool people that stuck it to the end, I salute you!

Corewin, CRUSH BOSS, Cuthbert Drake, Ecky Ptang, Kazabet, Lord Erebos, Marcuz Griffin, Ray Rosny, sakura okami, Splunk jamma, Tzu Wu, and Xanath Fireheart

Gallery, enjoy!

• 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!