But enough talk, let’s have a look at some mission running fits for the Paladin. These are all fits that I used/use on Sparhawk’s Wrath, not just EFT theoretical fits. I based all of these on missions versus Sansha (EM and Thermal damage), of course you will have to swap hardeners depending on the NPC faction you face in your mission.

The poor man’s fit:

Apart from the essential modules worth investing in, this fit uses generic modules. I used this when I switched from the Abaddon, and could not afford any fancy modules beyond what I already had. It is optimized for tank, but already works like a charm in all level 4 missions.

[Paladin, Missioning Tank]
Imperial Navy Large Armor Repairer
Damage Control II
Imperial Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Armor EM Hardener II
Armor EM Hardener II

Infiltrator II x5

Stats:
- Cap stable (except with Conflagration)
- 447 DPS with Scorch (559 with drones), 45 Km optimal
- 487 DPS with Multifrequency (599 with drones), 15 Km optimal
- 625 DPS with Conflagration (737 with drones), 15 Km optimal
- 1156 DPS tank
- 337 m/s with AB

Brick artillery style

This is a fit I used with Loreena along in the logistics for the more dangerous missions (overkill, but on the satellite connection better safe than sorry). It is made to warp in, and more or less sit there like a giant brick and deal some damage. Without AB the speed is ridiculous, but even with all the heat sinks it stays cap stable. To compensate the lack of AB, it has two optimal range scripts.

[Paladin, Brick Artillery]
Corpus X-Type Large Armor Repairer
Armor EM Hardener II
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Imperial Navy Heat Sink
Imperial Navy Heat Sink
Imperial Navy Heat Sink
Damage Control II

Infiltrator II x5

Stats:
- Cap stable without the Salvager and Tractor
- 781 DPS with Scorch (892 with drones), 58 Km optimal
- 852 DPS with Multifrequency (963 with drones), 19 Km optimal
- 1093 DPS with Conflagration (1205 with drones), 19 Km optimal
- 709 DPS tank
- 131 m/s

My favorite fit

This one is a good mix between tank and gank, so I do not have to worry about defense too much while dealing enough damage to get things done quickly. It’s an expensive ship for sure, but if you can afford it it’s amazing. It works well with less expensive mods as well, but your Marauder deserves it

[Paladin, Missioning Tank n Gank]
Corpus X-Type Large Armor Repairer
Armor EM Hardener II
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Imperial Navy Heat Sink
Imperial Navy Heat Sink
Damage Control II
Corpum B-Type Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane

Infiltrator II x5

Stats:
- Cap stable without the Salvager
- 665 DPS with Scorch (777 with drones), 52 Km optimal
- 726 DPS with Multifrequency (837 with drones), 17 Km optimal
- 931 DPS with Conflagration (1043 with drones), 17 Km optimal
- 1055 DPS tank
- 350 m/s with AB

For DPS-heavy missions, you can go all-out tank and add a hardener for each damage type instead of the two heat sinks:

[Paladin, Missioning Full Tank]
Corpus X-Type Large Armor Repairer
Armor EM Hardener II
Armor EM Hardener II
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Damage Control II
Corpum B-Type Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane

Infiltrator II x5

Stats:
- Cap stable
- 434 DPS with Scorch (545 with drones), 52 Km optimal
- 473 DPS with Multifrequency (585 with drones), 17 Km optimal
- 607 DPS with Conflagration (719 with drones), 17 Km optimal
- 1776 DPS tank (!)
- 350 m/s with AB
- Empty high slot because of CPU, fit what you can

I know that I tend to fit my ships always the same way, so if you have a fit that works well for you please share it – I am always open for experiments. Also, there are no Beam laser fits here because I do not use beam turrets anymore. In missions with sniper rats the AB is usually good enough to get them. Either that, or tag along with a buddy/an alt… when I mission, Loreena comes along in the Kronos fitted with rails – problem solved with a fitting dose of overkill

Can you sleep with that in your hangar?

Long story short, Serotta offered to buy me the ship in exchange for some help in creating a poster for his thesis. Now that was an offer I could not refuse He gave me his concept for the poster, and I prepared a preview version. The same day, I went to pick up the ship (in Jita if I recall correctly). The first hurdle was the fact that I had not fit a shield tank on a ship in several years. Since the Maelstrom in my first year of EVE, actually. Serotta was nice enough to sponsor a faction shield booster, and soon I had a working fit.

Dubbed the “HMS Serotta”, the ship proved to be everything I expected it to be: a beast. It pretty much rivals the Paladin in both tank and DPS. It cannot beat the Paladin, but that’s not the point – flying into a mission with it just feels awesome. If you are into role playing your characters occasionally, you cannot pass up on the scene of that behemoth warping into a bunch of NPCs and leaving a trail of smoking wrecks in its wake. If looks could kill, this thing would surely leave a few enemy pod pilots dead from shock on the battlefield.

Here is my current fit:

[Nightmare, Missioning]
Imperial Navy Heat Sink
Imperial Navy Heat Sink
Capacitor Flux Coil II
Capacitor Flux Coil II
Capacitor Flux Coil II

Warrior II x5
Hammerhead II x5

Not much to say here – with my skills it is cap stable without the AB/Salvager/Tractor. Could use some better modules – a ship like this deserves investing, especially tank wise and cap support wise (think T2 CCC rigs).

Some theoretical stats (vs Sansha):

- 946 DPS / 3646 volley with Hammerhead drones (791 without)
- 461 sustained tank. 86k EHP
- 321 m/s with AB (118 without)
- Resists: 76,5% / 81,2% / 40% / 50%

What I did not anticipate however, was that flying this ship announced the end of a great chapter in my EVE life. Indeed, Serotta had been unsatisfied with CCP’s vision for EVE for a while now, and a few days later along with a new client patch, he decided to quit EVE. You can read his related blog post, I understand his reasons completely. It had been a long time in coming, I know he was trying to revive his interest in the game – but in retrospect, attempting this in the middle of Incarna and a series of controversial updates was not an ideal time. As usual your mileage varies, so far I have not had many client crashes, and my play style does not touch much on the big issues being discussed.

Details aside, I currently live in a strange duality. It is both a happy time for rediscovering the game, but also a sad time for losing a longtime friend (fortunately only ingame!) – hence the plural in the post title. My secret hope is that he will come back, but somehow I feel that his decision is final – and I respect that.

THANKS FOR EVERYTHING AND GOOD LUCK!

For some months now, Loreena has been training to do some punching herself, upgrading first from her Myrmidon to a Dominix and now to the renowned Kronos. It can be argued that the Kronos is one of the weaker Marauder-class ships, but that has never been a deterrent in my case. I always liked the hull of the Megathron, so the Kronos was a good target to go for to improve her fighting skills.

She still needs to improve on some key skills, but she can already use the T2 railguns now. A few level 4 missions as testing ground have proven the ship to be everything I expected. The Paladin still trumps it, but the combination of Aeon’s Pulse Lasers setup for close range combat with Loreena’s sniping setup is very effective. Sure, two marauders for running a level 4 mission is overkill, but I appreciate being able to kill rats that are far away without slow-boating into range with 120 m/s.

This is Loreena’s current fit (tank optimized for Sansha):

[Kronos, Missions]
Imperial Navy Large Armor Repairer
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Armor EM Hardener II
Armor EM Hardener II
Federation Navy Magnetic Field Stabilizer
Federation Navy Magnetic Field Stabilizer

Heavy Armor Maintenance Bot II x3
Vespa II x5


With the drone space the ship offers, you can carry a good selection of drones – in my case I went for the armor maintenance drones to get Aeon out of a tight spot as he usually takes aggro. The sensor booster increases the targeting range so you can target as far as your turret’s maximal optimal range. It is intentionally without script, as the base bonus is enough to target out to 140km, that way I get the second bonus of the module as well.

Some stats:

Cap stable
830 DPS Tank (vs. Sansha)
410 DPS, 1745 Volley
Targeting range: 141 Km
Optimal range: 130 Km

Those are with Loreena’s current skillset:

Marauders III
Controlled Bursts IV
Motion Prediction V
Rapid Firing IV
Sharpshooter V
Trajectory Analysis V
Surgical Strike -untrained-

On a sidenote, now that learning skills have been removed I was able to top off some leftover skills, as well as get started on the next plan: a Proteus. Loreena had trained all learning skills to level 5, so she had 5.3 million skillpoints to distribute. A real treat just in time for christmas

A note on ratings: I reviewed each fitting thoroughly, and rated each in the following areas:

- Global rating, 10 points (how well thought out it is)
- PvP rating, 10 points (how well it would behave in PvP)
- PvE rating, 10 points (how well it behaves in PvE)
- My liking, 10 points (how much it appeals to me)

The final rating is a rating on 10 points based on the total of these areas. Seeing that each fit is either PvP or PvE, a 10/10 score is not possible, that’s why some of the ratings here may seem low.

1st Place:
Roosterton’s “Kickass buffer solo Devoter”
Category: PvP
Scored 7,00 points

2nd Place:
Hacra’s “Gankalicious”
Category: PvP
Scored 6,50 points

3rd Place:
Jackie Fisher’s “Devoter LOL Solo”
Category: PvP
Scored 5,50 points

4th Place:
Superted’s “Solo PvE”
Category: PvE
Scored 5,25 points

5th Place:
Ashram Starkiller’s “Devoter for Aeon II”
Category: PvE
Scored 5,00 points

The biggest penalties I gave were for the use of capacitor boosters. As a lone wolf, you are often venturing out far from anything. I know it is common in PvP fittings, but boosters should not be required for the normal operation of the ship’s modules. You have a ship that does not need to carry ammo, and you add a worse kind of ammo

Some statistics:

Biggest buffer: 93.488 HP, Roosterton’s “Kickass buffer solo”
Fastest MWD ship: 1798 m/s, Rasael Wolf’s “Solo”
Fastest AB ship: 465 m/s, Xe na’s “Solo Piracy”
Most agile: 2,1 secs, Roosterton’s “Kickass buffer solo”
Highest damage: 307 DPS / 793 Volley, Roosterton’s “Kickass buffer solo”
Highest defence: 702 HP, Xe na’s “Solo piracy”
Highest resists: 87,8% omni, Roosterton’s “Kickass buffer solo”

Naturally I was excluded from the contest, but I thought I would share my personal fitting anyway for those interested. It is a PvE fit optimized for exploration and wormholes. Previously I used a Zealot for this, but the Devoter has a slot layout that allows you to do more. Especially tankwise, it is perfect for making a good omni defence:

Devoter fit for wormholes and exploration:

[Devoter, Wormholes and Exploration]
Imperial Navy Medium Armor Repairer
Imperial Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Imperial Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Capacitor Power Relay II
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Armor EM Hardener II
Imperial Navy Heat Sink

Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I


Full specs:

Defence: 88.8% omni resists, 333 HP/sec
Damage: 252 DPS / 715 Volley
Speed: 254 base / 1384 m/s with MWD
Cap stable with MWD and Analyzer off
2 Minutes cap with MWD on and Analyzer off

This is ideal for running highsec complexes and class 1/2 wormholes, although in wormholes I would replace the heat sink with a third energized nano membrane to be on the safe side. You can scan, salvage, hack/analyze, tackle, tank and kill in one neat package.

I will venture out and say you cannot find better for this task short of upgrading to a command ship (provided you only use lasers, when able to fit missiles this may be different).

Zealot fit for wormholes and exploration:

[Zealot, Wormholes and Complexes]
Imperial Navy Medium Armor Repairer
Imperial Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Imperial Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Armor EM Hardener II
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Imperial Navy Heat Sink
Damage Control II

Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I


Full specs:

Defence: 86.4% omni resists, 294 HP/sec
Damage: 217 DPS / 447 Volley
Speed: 261 base / 622 m/s with AB
Cap stable with AB off
7 Minutes cap with AB on

As you can see, even if the Devoter is not overly superior to the Zealot in pure tank and gank numbers, it allows you to fit one additional midslot module and a microwarpdrive instead of an afterburner. The additional turret is nice of course, but the Zealot’s bonuses make up for that.

Now I have to decide whether to fit the ship for PvP with Roosterton’s fit, or for Wormholes

Before we get to the heart of the matter, a little background. About two years back, I bought a Devoter via trade because it was a good deal and I knew it was not a scam. It was fully fitted and I was thinking of reselling it for a small premium. The ship was damaged however, so I could not create a contract for it. To make matters worse, the station did not have repair facilities and I was a few months off actually flying the thing. In short, the ship was not going anywhere because I did not want to repackage it and lose the rigs.

Two years later, Aeon finally has the skills to fly one and the ship is nowhere to be found anymore. I do not know/recall what happened to it, but the fact is it disappeared without a trace. I was not going to let that stop me, so I bought a brand new one. This is where you come in: I need a good fitting for the ship, Battleclinic only has fleet fittings and the official forums are infested by trolls. I thought why not try a contest instead… Let’s see

The contest

What’s the challenge? Well, I want a lone wolf fitting. I know the ship is designed for fleet ops, but I am a hardcore solo player and I want to use it on my own, without any wingmen at all.

These are the rules:

• You may use any T1, T2 and Faction module
• You may use any rig
• You may not use any implants
• You may not use any deadspace or officer gear
• NO fleet-related fittings! Solo only
• Create a fit with EFT, paste your fit in comments (use EFT’s copy to clipboard functionality)
• For easier comparison between fits, use the All Level 5 template
• Write a short description of how the fitting is meant to be used
• Any additional details like optimal skills is apreciated but not mandatory
• Contest closes noon on monday, 17th may 2010. I will post the results in the afternoon the same day.

Note: any comments about using the Devoter for anything else than fleet ops being idiotic I will just delete, so don’t even bother.

Rewards

1st place:
An Abaddon Battleship, worth about 120 Mil

2nd place:
A Harbinger Battlecruiser with 3x CCC rigs fitted, worth about 30 Mil

3rd place:
A Jaguar OR Wolf Assault Frigate , worth about 20 Mil

4th place:
An Ocular Filter Standard implant (+4 perception), worth about 20 Mil

5th place:
An Eifyr and Co. ‘Gunslinger’ AX-1 hardwiring (+3% turret tracking) OR an Inherent Implants ‘Lancer’ G1-Epsilon hardwiring (+3% large energy turret damage), worth about 20 Mil

The jury will be myself and I will rate entries on their originality but also the potential of actually using the fit and doing something with it.

Let’s see those fittings

After losing a Zealot to a particularly deadly sleeper site, I tried to come up with a better ship for the task. I let no stone unturned, from destroyers to battleships. All but the strategic cruisers. The conclusion was that the Zealot is definitely in a class of its own: none of the Amarr battlecruisers can match its tank (neither can the Brutix), the Omen Navy Issue cruiser packs a good punch but is too frail, and battleships are too clumsy. Command ships I deemed too expensive to lose in a wormhole, although the Absolution is nearly perfect for the task. So a new Zealot it was, with the same fit as before. It has proven itself over and over, so I went back to exploring.

What ensued was a chain of frustrating experiences. From acceleration gates that did not allow HACs to class 3 wormholes in which most sites are too dangerous for a mere Zealot, it seemed that I was doomed to switching ships for nearly every site I encountered. My local station was beginning to fill with different sized ships again, and the logistics of the whole operation was beginning to get on my nerves. Of course Loreena could have tagged along in the Orca, but she did not seem very enthusiastic – she was busy in the Kador and Amarr regions collecting COSMOS components. Aeon could have used his charm, but I preferred to keep that Joker card for another time. There had to be a solution.

For the time being, I stuck to what I could do with the Zealot while I built up some ISK to buy an Absolution fitted for wormholes. The solution came in the form of a graphical layout and website I built for N.A.G.A. Corporation (www.nagacorporation.net), and which replenished Aeon’s wallet in one strike. I made another EFT session, and as I had dabbled with strategic cruiser fittings before I thought what the heck and made a new one.

The result left me speechless and grinning like a madman. The Legion fitting I had had just whipped together had slightly less DPS than the Zealot, but about 3x the tank. Enough to take just about anything the usual complexes and sleeper sites could throw at the ship. It was even cap stable without a single Capacitor Control Circuit rig, which was the topping of an already juicy pie. As you can imagine, my mind was made up in a few nanoseconds and Aeon was already on his way to Amarr to buy the ship.

My only worry was that I did not know how much these things cost and that I may not be able to get one despite the ISK I had earned. Contracts showed some hulls at about 240 mil which did not seem too bad, but that was without the subsystems. When Aeon arrived in the Amarr Oris station, the hulls were actually selling at a round 200 mil, so I bought one right away. The subsystems cost an average of about 60 mil per unit. I bought everything I needed for the fit on the spot, and after the subsystems, rigs and co had been properly installed and configured I took the time to contemplate the beast.

Damn, that ship is sexy. As many Amarr ships, the base hull has a resemblance to a bug with those mandibles. This particular subsystem configuration makes for a rather compact and bulky shape – fitting for that beast of a tank I think. I christened it “Alea’s Nemesis”, in reference to the main character of my EVE-related short story. Aeon was just as eager as I was to give her a spin, so he undocked, and made the trek back to Derelik.

He took a short detour through gallente space to meet up with another Sytek member who is a Tengu pilot, and was busy dispatching EOM ships. I found out that the tank was more than enough for this mission, but the DPS was severely lacking. Then again, it was a complex-oriented fit with only three turrets so that was to be expected. All in all it was a good test, and the two ships side by side did look extremely good.

Back in Derelik, I took out the Anathema and went lowsec scouting to explore for wormholes and complexes. It was a quiet night, but I found no wormholes. I did find a 3/10 sansha complex however, and that turned out to be exactly what I needed as final test. The last room was one big fleet with about 40 ships all classes combined (frigates to battlecruisers). When they all got into range the tank started to break slowly, but Aeon was killing them fast enough to handle it all effortlessly. Without moving an inch, which is quite decadent compared to the Zealot with which I have learned how to navigate with afterburner to mitigate the incoming DPS.

The one big realization that came to me that night was that these ships are more or less made for complexing, as they fit into almost any acceleration gate where command ships or even HACs are not allowed. I used to use a regular cruiser (Omen Navy Issue or Pilgrim) for those, but this is infinitely more useful. No need for an army of different sized ships anymore, yay!!

Strategic Cruisers come with one big drawback: if you do get caught and your ship is destroyed, you lose one level in one of the ship’s race subsystem skills. So if you trained them all to V, you will have to re-train the one chosen randomly to V. It is not that bad, as they are all 1x skills that do not take too long to train up.

Here is the full fitting for the ship as I use it right now. As you probably guessed, it is made for wormholes and complexes. It uses just a few faction mods and works with all T2 as well:

[Wormholes & Complexes]
Imperial Navy Medium Armor Repairer
Imperial Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Imperial Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Armor EM Hardener II
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Armor Kinetic Hardener II
Heat Sink II
Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II
10MN Afterburner II
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I
Heavy Pulse Laser II,Conflagration M
Heavy Pulse Laser II,Conflagration M
Heavy Pulse Laser II,Conflagration M
Salvager II
Core Probe Launcher I,Core Scanner Probe I
Medium Energy Burst Aerator I
Medium Energy Locus Coordinator I
Medium Nanobot Accelerator I
Legion Defensive - Nanobot Injector
Legion Electronics - Dissolution Sequencer
Legion Engineering - Capacitor Regeneration Matrix
Legion Offensive - Liquid Crystal Magnifiers
Legion Propulsion - Chassis Optimization

With this setup, using a better armor repairer will have drastic effects with the nanobot injector subsystem + nanobot accelerator rig combo. With my crappy skills (Strategic Cruiser at 3 and all subsystems at 3), this setup gives me an EFT omni defence rating of 450, 213 DPS and 85.7% EM / 81.4 % TH / 89.3 KIN / 89.1% EX resists. At level V, the defence rating climbs up to 520 with 255 DPS. As an example, fitting an A-Type armor hardener puts the tank at 675 defence rating.

…not bad for a cruiser!

I will have to testdrive the ship in wormholes next, but so far they have proven to be surprisingly elusive over here. Will post an update when I have found one and ground some sleepers to dust.

On a sidenote, if you have COSMOS BPCs you cannot build from, evemail me which ones you have and I’ll make you an offer for them. Alternatively I also offer a manufacturing service for them, Loreena has all the specialty skills at V (Sleeper Tech, Talocan Tech, Takmahl Tech and Yan Jung Tech). Just contact me ingame for details.

In those cases, if your cargo does not require a cargohold bigger than about 130 m3 you should think about building yourself a ship specifically for those trips. You will be amazed at how much easier your life can get!

But first off, let’s look at what makes the difference when jumping around (ordered by importance, assuming you’re on autopilot):

1) Warp speed
2) Turn rate
3) Base speed

The warp speed is the most important part, as you spend most of your time flying through systems on your way to the next stargate. Many systems are pretty big, meaning you will have to warp 100+ AU. If you want to speed things up, warp speed is key. Turn rate makes you initiate warp faster after jumping through a gate, and the base speed will reduce the time your ship spends on the 15 kms the autopilot uses as a safe warp zone.

There are a few ship classes in EVE that have increased warp speed, I have compiled a short overview:

As you can see, the fastest warping ships are frigate-sized specialty ships with 13.5 AU per second. Every race has them, so you will not have to cross-train to get the fastest one out there. But let’s take a better look at the selection of ships that gives us:

Covert Ops:

Anathema: 282 m/s
Buzzard: 306 m/s
Helios: 320 m/s
Cheetah: 381 m/s

Interceptors:

Malediction: 435 m/s
Raptor: 415 m/s
Ares: 450 m/s
Stiletto: 435 m/s

Covert ops have the big advantage of being able to fit cloaking devices so you can move around undetected with your valuable cargo, but personally I prefer the comfort of the interceptors – but the choice is yours, both work pretty well even if interceptors are quite a bit faster base speed wise. Let’s have a look at how to fit one of these beauties to make the most of it. I will take the Malediction as example, as that’s the one I use.

High Slots:
Whatever you like / can fit

Med Slots:
Any Microwarpdrive you can fit
Anything else you like / can fit

Low Slots:
Inertia Stabilizers II
Overdrive Injector System II
Overdrive Injector System II

Rigs
Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer I
Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer I

This fit gives you 19.4 warp speed, about 680 m/s base speed and around 4.500 m/s with the Microwarpdrive (depending on skills). There are a lot of variations to this fitting, the key being the two rigs. If you need more cargo space, replace or remove the overdrives as they greatly reduce your cargo space.

You might ask what the Microwarpdrive is for, well there’s a little trick I use Put the module on one of the F1-F12 keys, and then once the autopilot is engaged, press the microwarpdrive key and block it with something so it stays pressed. That way, when the module can be activated (when approaching a stargate), it will automatically be activated and one burst usually gets you to the stargate in a jiffy. Another use is if you autopilot semi-afk and occasionally engage the microwarpdrive to speed things up.

With a ship like that, hopping between regions becomes almost bearable

I started Loreena to train all the prerequisites, which incidentally means she can now also fly mining barges, which is a plus. By the time she had all the required skills a few Orcas were available on market, but as usual with new items at prices beyond reason – some even above 1 billion (the BPO price). From then on, it meant waiting. A friend of mine active in capital ships production told me they would eventually settle around 450 mil depending on mineral prices, so I gave it my best shot at patience. I had been mining for quite a while before that, and liquidating some unused assets catapulted Aeon’s wallet up to an all-time record of 1.1 billion, which did not exactly help the patience bit. It was only about finding my breaking point from there.

I observed the price evolution, and the decision was quickly made when I saw one for 630 million ISK. I made a few inter-regional pricechecks and eventually bought the ship right in Lustrevik, next door to Syrkos Technologies‘ headquarters. A trip to Jita would only have saved a few million, so I decided those 20+ jumps were not worth the trouble. Still quite a ways off the 450 mil mark, but it was good enough for me. Besides, having all that ISK in the wallet made me nervous, with all the other shiny stuff I could buy. Incidentally, it made me realize that Heimatar is quite a competitive market compared to Jita. Rens is often cheaper for tech 2 modules than Jita, if not on par with going prices there. Not enough to make a lot of profit, but enough to make it feel good to live in the area and know Jita is not the holy grail.

There was something thrilling about buying something that big after the Abaddon almost a year ago. I logged in Loreena, and checked the price three times to make sure there was the right number of zeroes in it (not that a missing zero would have been an issue). Then the market deliveries window refreshed and there it was, together with some Frozen Food, Frozen Plant Seeds, a bit of Wheat and 70 Tourists that were probably amazed by the huge packaged ship. I did not check if any of the frozen seeds disappeared, but I for one would surely have made myself some popcorn to watch the ship being assembled. For the first time in quite a while, christening the ship felt meaningful, and reminded me of the joy from my first acquisitions. After an albeit impatient solemn moment, Loreena was in space in the “Tatonka” (from the root Native American, meaning “large bull”) and en route to Sytek’s Lustrevik headquarters for a short fitting session. After whipping on a hasty fitting, Loreena warped out to an empty moon and together with a few corp members, we tested the ship’s functions.

Impressive, dr Watson

First off, the ship is huge. As usual in EVE you won’t realize this to its full extent until you see some other ships next to it – even battleships are relatively small compared to the Orca. As a mostly highsec pilot, it is refreshing to have a “heavyweight” ship other than the existing freighters allowed to fly around there. Especially since the Rorqual and all the battle-oriented capital ships are restricted to low- and nullsec. Beyond the mere aesthetic points, what seduced me is primarily the solid mining gang support. A lot of players thinking of buying an Orca crunch numbers like how long they will have to mine to get back the cost of the ship, but I have a much more pragmatic approach: I take decisions by gut. Otherwise I would probably not have bought it, and missed a lot of fun. Friends of the pew-pew will doubtlessly wonder behind which asteroid the fun in this might be hiding, but sitting in a belt with that ship is just awesome. Loreena keeps it within 1.500 metres of Aeon’s Hulk, that way Aeon can move his mined ore directly into the Orca’s corporation hangar without even having to drop a jetcan. Try stealing that ore

Here is a quick overview of the Orca:

• 250% tractor beam range bonus (~71 km), 1000 m/s speed
• 500% survey scanner range bonus
• 5% cargo bonus per level
• 3% gang modules bonus per level
• Transportation: 81.588 m3 with 2 x Expanded Cargohold II and 3x Cargohold Optimization I rigs at my current ICS II
• Transportation: 40.000 fixed corporation hangar space on top of raw cargo space
• Transportation: 400.000 m3 for assembled ships with rigs (so up to BC size)
• Full-fledged command ship, can fit all gang modules
• Can fit three gang modules out of the box
• Corporate hangars that can be accessed by up to 10 members simultaneously
• Fitting and storing / undocking ships in space with the ship maintenance bay
• Docking/undocking ships in space
• Not easy to gank (10.750 Shield / 6.900 Armor / 46.000 Structure without skills)
• Limitation: Ships in ship maintenance bay can only carry charges in their cargohold, no regular cargo
• Limitation: Maintenance bay can only carry assembled ships

The gang modules make Aeon’s often short mining sessions a lot more profitable (with a theoretical maximum yield bonus of 45 to 50% depending on skills and implants). There are three Mining Foreman modules:

• Harvester Capacitor Efficiency, -2% capacitor need of mining turrets
• Laser Optimization, -2% mining cycle duration
• Mining Laser Field Enhancement, +2% minig laser range

Of course these bonuses are subject to the related Leadership skills and ship bonuses. Loreena currently gets 10.6% from all three with Mining Director V. On Tatonka I use 2 x Laser Optimization and 1 x Field Enhancement as I have no need for the capacitor bonus. I could go for all-out cycle duration, but being able to mine up to 18 kms away without moving around is worth it. What I also like about the ship is that it is not an easily gankable ship. You need a lot of firepower to take one down even without any defensive modules installed. I am not keen on losing the ship though, so following some recommendations I always have a Damage Control II fitted and active. On top of that, as I do not use any survey modules or midslots at all I fitted a permarun Large Shield Booster II. Handy to tank rats… and more.

Of course it all depends on how you use the ship. My case is pobably not very widespread, with only one Hulk in the mining gang With a ship like that, I prefer to be safe than sorry. You should not fly around with all your assets in the hold anyway, that is a gank waiting to happen. When I need to transport things I try to keep the total value not too high, and NEVER do it on autopilot. I have been ganked once before that way, it was a lesson well learned – but I digress, back to the topic at hand. Battleclinic has no way to post a fitting for ORE ships, so here it is the old way:

[lowslots]
1 x Damage Control II
1 x Power Diagnostic Unit II

[medslots]
3 x Cap Recharger II
1 x Large Shield Booster II

[highslots]
2 x Mining Foreman Link – Laser Optimization
1 x Mining Foreman Link – Mining Laser Field Enhancement

[rigs]
3 x Cargohold Optimization I

Beyond mining

Trust people to use it for everything it is NOT made for, but as a command ship the Orca is not limited to mining tasks alone. You can fit any of the available gang modules, and some players successfully use the ship as missioning support. It has a 75 m3 drone bay, which means it can actively participate in fights if need be, and it’s a great salvager with that 70 km tractor range and increased speed. It can carry all the ammo you will ever need and you can even store ships for different tasks in it to swap around in space. Want to change hardeners for the next room? You do not even have to dock. It is not exactly what I would do with it, but it is always good to think outside of the box… Which is exactly what some pirates did when the Orca was released. As far as I know they used a small glitch that allowed the ship to transport -10 security status characters into highsec, and would warp into belts, undock with ships from the maintenance hangar and gank some unsuspecting miners. That glitch has been fixed since, but it further demonstrates that as boring and repetitive that mining can get, you should always keep your guard up.

Well I think this about wraps the subject for now, I wrote a lot more than I started out for. As always, feel free to comment. I would love to hear how you use your Orca, or what you are planning to do when you eventually get one.

On a sidenote, Aeon really has to train Veldspar Processing sometime soon… 2 years into the game and he still cannot mine Veldspar properly, and that with the current market prices! Chribba, if you hear me, I know – I’m not worthy Seeing how fast I can strip a belt on my own now, it is kind of depressing to have to leave all the veldspar asteroids behind. The ship and gunnery skills have gotten a lot of love lately, so I think it is only fair to focus back on mining for a month or two.

I have posted few screenshots of late, so here is a catchup collection!

Quick heads-up
After my level 4 preparation post, I made a trip to nullsec (I have a log entry in the works for that). My good friend Serotta Ortot let me fly his Armageddon there for ratting, and he was using active armor hardeners on it. I was baffled by how effective the setup was, and when I went back to empire I refitted Pax Nemesis III to use an active armor tanking setup. On top of that, Loreena was already within reach of an Exequror, the small brother of the Oneiros. I bought her one, and so it happened that I tried running a level 4 mission again. Aeon was using 4 active mission-specific hardeners, a Damage Control II and a large armor repairer in a permarun setup with eight large beam laser turrets (not the tachyons anymore, they use way too much capacitor). While the DPS was obviously not the same with less powerful turrets, the tank itself seemed impenetrable. At one point, the ship was tanking six battleships and they could not even dent the armor.

Since then, I have run quite a few level 4 missions without any forseeable trouble at all. I ended up tackling them without Loreena, as the tank was good enough to handle anything the missions threw at me.

Pax Nemesis III’s last battle
Probably over-confident in the new tanking setup, I warped Aeon into “Intercept the Saboteurs“. Everything went as planned, and I did not take Loreena along as I had already done the mission alone before. As I mentioned, I use two active hardeners for each of the main mission damage types: Kinetic and Thermal in this case. I must have misread that, because I put in the kinetic hardeners, but left the explosive hardeners on. Once in the mission, the tank was holding nonetheless by pure brute force. Had the Serpentis Megathron not gotten within range, Aeon would have made it. That ship’s blasters started tearing the armor apart slowly, but I was not especially concerned as I was still busy taking out the cruisers to bring down the overall DPS. My drones were dispatching the frigates on their own, so the situation was completely under control.

After a short while, I started to realize that was not entirely the case. Only two cruisers were left, and their DPS was not likely to change much. I switched fire to one of the nearest battleships, a Core Admiral or some such, and even set the drones on him. He died pretty fast, but to my dismay it did not make any difference. I must have been extra sluggish, because only then did I realize it was the Megathron that was the big damage dealer here. HE was the one that was profiting from the thermal weakness in my armor tank. I think by the time I switched targets to take him out, Pax Nemesis III’s armor hitpoints were already down to thirty-five percent. Logically, I aligned the ship for warp, made the drones dock and warped. Warped….? No. “What the HELL?”

Coming out of the comfort of months of level 3 missioning, I still had that last resort escape possibility of warping out in mind. Level four mission bring new dangers with them, including warp scrambling ships. Probably needless to say, but when the ship would not warp, I knew I was done for. I logged Loreena in on the second PC, but she was parked in Rens BTT of all places, four jumps out. There was not way she could be there on time, and my desperate attempts to take out the warp scrambling ships failed at recognizing which ones were scrambling me at all. Panic transformed into dismay, strengthened by my dismissal of thermodynamics as useless a while back. I do not know if overheating could have given me the edge I needed, but it was another drop in the bowl of dismay.

In the end I think the ship put up more than an honorable performance, going down all guns blazing to the last second. The armor repairer managed to put in several cycles, delaying the structural hits long enough for the drones to cut down a few more frigates – but still not the right ones. After that I sat there in my pod, eyeing the surrounding ships with a vengeful look. Had my eyes been fitted with laser turrets, I think I could have destroyed a small planetoid. Except I was more mad at my own sorry self for being so utterly careless, bordering on the plain stupid.

Pax Nemesis “X”
So I sat there in my pod, pondering what to do next. The corp wallet was at sixty million, not enough to buy a new battleship. I noticed the flashy mail icon, and checked the insurance message. The ship was not insured of course, and I was expecting a condescending, mocking note telling me I should have had the ship insured, gna gna gna. To my surprise, the default insurance payout was 79 million. Now that was more like it! 130 million should get me a new battleship, if not an Abaddon. The fittings were another matter… I decided I had to start liquidating some of the assets I had stashed so far.

Loreena cancelled most of the running buy orders to free up another twenty million, and shipped all the salvage and sellable modules to Rens. In the meantime, Aeon was already on his way to the Amarr trade hub, Oris EFA, as buying the ship and turrets was going to be cheaper there. The salvage sales had the effect of finding a fabled hidden treasure – when I had finished selling everything, the corporation wallet was at a new record of 450 million… nearly half a billion! Not only was I going to be able to replace the lost ship, even fittings and rigs were possible

I spent a good hour with EFT (Eve Fitting Tool) to come up with an improved setup for the ship, laid out for better survivability (I included the complete fitting in the extended part of this log entry if you want to see the details). Once I knew what I wanted, Aeon bought a new Abaddon and promptly christened it “Pax Nemesis X”. Already having gone through three versions of the name, I chose something a little more final. If I ever lose this ship, I will have to change the name. Fitting it was pretty quick, as everything I needed was available on-station, and quite a bit cheaper than Rens too: 202 million for the ship, modules and rigs as compared to about 220 had I bought all that in Rens.

Righteous revenge
Now was the time to finish what I had started, and at the same time test the slightly modified ship setup. Aeon made the twenty jump trip back to the mission system, Isendeldik, and this time Loreena was there too just in case. At warp-in, the cloud of enemy ships was all around at about 4 kilometres. This meant that the Megathron was going to be able to lay down its max DPS instantly, but I had the right hardeners fitted this time. The DPS was still pretty high, but the new tank held on its own. With three Auxiliary Nano Pump I rigs I expected no less. I was able to finish the mission easily, and even though I regretted losing the ship in the first place it could have been worse. As the saying goes, everything that does not kill you makes you stronger…

Anyhow, it was an interesting evening to say the least. Loreena will be Aeon’s wingman from now on when I run level 4 missions, regardless of how well I am prepared. I am NOT going to lose another ship to a mission – not if I can help it, anyway

Pax Nemesis X fitting

High Slots
8 x Dual Modulated Heavy Energy Beam I

Med Slots
4 x Cap Recharger II

Low Slots
1 x Damage Control II
1 x Capacitor Power Relay II
2 x Armor XX Hardener II, for primary mission damage (XX = Kinetic/EM/Thermal/Explosive)
2 x Armor XX Hardener II, for secondary mission damage
1 x Large ‘Accomodation’ Vestment Reconstructer I

Rigs
3 x Auxiliary Nano Pump I

High slots:

4 x Heavy Beam Laser II
1 x Salvager I

Medium Slots:

1 x X5 Prototype I Engine Enervator (Webifier, best named one)
1 x Tracking Computer II
1 x Peripheral Weapon Navigation Diameter (Target painter, best named one)

Low Slots:

3 x Capacitor Power Relay II
1 x Damage Control II
1 x Heat Sink II
1 x Medium Armor Repairer II
1 x Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

Rigs:

1 x Capacitor Control Circuit I

With my current skills, that gives these specs:

I can run all modules indefinitely with this setup, so I never have to worry about capacitor problems. That makes it a very nice alternative for level 3 missions for example.