Against all odds in security 0.0 or below

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First of all, Hi! I had been seeing topics of ships ratting in Wormhole Space or low sec areas and about what ships do we have to use for these type of places but I am seeing the topics for alpha clone since I am one of them. Let’s get to the point!

Whenever I see a topic for “Best ships for an alpha for ratting”, I usually see the name of the only ship ‘Vexor Navy Issue’. No doubt I also admire about the ship but that is for Gallentine or we have to get some Gallentine ship skills if we are of other faction but I find it difficult to choose the second option since I don’t earn much of ISK and my income is generally low because I am an alpha but somehow I saved and collected money for at least a good battlecruiser or a battleship. I also heard about the ship ‘Drake’ but I am still confused to choose a good ship without the loss of much ISK and much difficulty. So as a Caldarian, I am giving some names of good ships which can lead to more ISK making for me but you please find how what should I buy. You can also list some other names but the names which every faction can afford.

Please find out which ship is the best among Drake, Raven, Scorpion or Rokh. You can also list some other names but which every faction can afford without much loss and you can also tell about the fittings.

Thank you!

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The gallente and guristas are the most efficient ships for ratting (because of the drone bonuses).
You can feel free to use any other ship you like. Depending on what you are ratting you have to decide the ship and the fitting. For example you ratt in amarr region. The pirates are blood raiders or some drones. A good alpha ship would be the Omen. Since lasers do EM and thermal (blood raider weakness). You can consider a few small drones for the fast frigs. In other words use your fantasy and skills you have. Once you find your ship train to it. No one said it has to be a vexor. But its cheap and good at it.

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Oï mate, and welcome to our beautiful game !

I see you have chosen Caldari designs for your ratting activites. Their ships are good for PVE opportunities, as they use Missiles as main armament on a lot of their ships.

Pros of missiles :

  • They come in all four damage variants, so look for the name of your missile to know what damage it deal (Scortch for KIN, Inferno for THERM, Mjolnir for EM and Nova for EXPLO).
    *Possibility to chose between short range, high damage launchers (“unguided”) or long range, lower damage (“guided”).
    You can find more infos on that weapon system here : EVE University - Missiles.

The main con I can think of is that unlike other weapon systems, missiles have to travel to the target to deal damage, when turrets deal damage immediately.

Concerning the ships you asked for :

  • Drake : Caldari Battlecruiser that use missiles as main weapons, and get bonus for the use of KINETIC MISSILE ONLY ! The bonus are : 25% velocity bonus (missile travel faster, and thus further) as a Role bonus (always the same and not affected by skills), and 10% damage bonus to Heavy and Heavy Assault Missile per level of Caldari Battlecruiser you have trained. You also get a 4% resist bonus to all damage (only on your shields !).
    If you wish to stay with Caldari design, I think Drake would be your best option, as the hull is cheaper than a VNI or a battleship, it’s quite easy to train into and it can tank a lot of damage for its size.

  • Raven : Bigger, meaner version of Drake, but way more expensive. Having enough ISK to justify the use of a battleship as an Alpha clone is really hard to achieve, unless you like grinding like me ^^. The skill requirements is a bit high, and without some training into light drones, dealing with small NPC ships will be a pain in the arse.

  • Scorpion : It’s going to be a bit rude, but don’t even think about using Scorpion for PVE. It’s a squishy BS and it gets no bonus to any missile type, only E-WAR modules. Not a good pick.

  • Rokh : This battleship use the secondary armament of Caldari ships (and the main one on Gallente designs), Hybrids turrets. The bonus to optimal range make it really good at sniping with railguns, but it’s a completely different training from Missiles boat.

Here, I hope I didn’t make it too complicated :confused:
If you have any question, ask me or the community.

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If I understand you correctly, you want to do PvE in Wormhole Space or Low Sec.

To keep it short: flying a BC or BS into these areas will sooner rather than later mean your ship explodes. If you are happy with that, go for any of the other suggestions.

If you couldn’t replace a loss, you might want to start with smaller ships.

The heron is a great PvE ship for doing Data and Relic Sites in all areas of space. It’s cheap and can bring you a lot of income. For your first couple of Billion ISK, it will be your best choice with Alpha Skills.

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You can get a bit more damage out of a raven but it requires you to pay attention, as you have to fire on each target, also you probably have to watch your tank or your cap or something. 100mn VNI can just orbit and clear the anom while you watch netflix, and look over every few mins to make sure your drones are on something.

If you really want a BS you probably want a rattlesnake which is pretty much a VNI strapped to a Raven.

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Raven.

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A billion isk plus or subbin’ cost ya 20 bucks, mate.

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back in the old days there was no “rat in a VNI” ■■■■■■■■ (as far as i remember when i started dipping into 14 day trials and all). people had to actually commit to use a Battlecruiser or the like to rat (sometimes in asteroid belts instead of anomalies).

the thing that makes the VNI the workhorse of ratting out there is because of the combination of signature tanking while letting the heavy drones do the working as they can track even the smallest NPC frigate.

you cant replicate that in the typical missile or gun based ship. you would have to actually commit to the fight because the drones you have are for support, not a main source of damage. and this goes against the AFK farming mindset of modern ratting technique.

the Drake would be the best bet for farming in that case, you dont need a raven for that, but it will mean having prettty good skills to ensure the ship can move, apply and tank the damage dished by NPC battleships in the case that you will be running Forsaken Hubs and the like.

BTW. the plural terms for those races are “Gallentean” and “Caldari”.

UPDATE:

it doesnt matter what you use in Wormhole Space as the rats are omni damage and omni resistant. they also have a much more smart AI so it means you have to keep an eye on the fight.

another thing is that you can rat with a Destroyer in Lowsec. so if you dont wnat to go null you can always find a good spot in low and use a Cormorant/Corax to farm pirates at the belts.

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Thank you, everyone, for your replies and all your support and it seems like that your recommendation is ‘Drake’ or ‘Raven’. But from your recommendations, it seems that above a good ship, fitting and drones need to be managed carefully.

It’s really hard to earn ISK for me these days because I usually mine ores but when I think of exploration, I usually hop into wormholes and scan down for data sites. I had been having a great difficulty regarding hacking but mining is easy for me but with such a low income, I rarely think that I can afford not only a single Battlecruiser or a Battleship but somehow with my own blood and sweat I earned approximately 210,000,000 ISK and that’s a great deal of money for me although it’s not enough for surviving in low sec, it really mean it for me.

So, ‘Drake or Raven’. Ok, I will see that but can you tell how can I hack relics or data sites without going into something wrong because I find that hacking is the only way to earn the highest ISK and it’s also difficult for me to hack because of sleepers and without a cloak.

One day I have a dream of owning a ‘Titan’.

Pss! By the way which type of damage is good for sleepers in WS?

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Do these event sites then, in Stratios, in high sec. I made more than a billion in few days. Even when it ends tomorrow, you can get an accelerator drop or booster that is worth multiple millions of ISK.

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Sincerely, doing Mining as an Alpha Clone is a good beginning, but it’s pretty much all, as you are extremely limited in that activity field.

I explain what I’m saying :
Alpha clone only have access to one dedicated mining ship, the Venture, an excellent ship as it is very noob friendly, with a specialized ore hold, the speed and maneuverability of a frigate and a Role bonus of +2 on your warp drive, which mean if someone want to kill you, he either need two warp prohibition modules, or a really blingy one.

But that’s it. The only way you can improve your yield (the amount of ore you mine with a cycle of a Mining Laser) is by improving your skills and modules, but even there you are limited in the amount and levels you can train. Basically, you start to get an interesting amount of money with the Mining Barges, which are unavailable for you :confused:.

Concerning Exploration, it’s a really good choice, even for you. I started with that, and if you’re lucky you can rack up multiple hundred of millions of ISK in one trip. But be careful, as those amounts of ISK are NOT found in High Sec. Basically, you’re best bet here is wormhole space, from C-1 to C-3 (it’s the difficulty of the wormhole, the higher the number, the harder it is). Why those ? Because there’s a high chance of null sec exploration sites spawning in them (along Sleepers Data & Relic sites, but don’t try to run them, they have defenders and are generally not worth the hassle). Concerning your exploration ship, the SOE Asteroid frigate is your best choice, has it can defend itself against opponents (not against a cruiser, but frigates will think two times before engaging you) and strong bonuses to scanning and hacking. It cost a lot, but in two good sites you have it paid. It’s the only T1 frigate with the capability of using a Covert-Ops cloak (you can warp while cloaked), sadly the Cloaking skill is impossible to train as an Alpha, so you’ll have to use your D-Scan to see nearby threats, and safepoints. By the way, if you’re in a dangerous system, and you see something called “Combat Scanner Probe”, RUN ! Those probes can scan down ships, even in safe spots.

As the biggest ships in the game, Titans of course looks nice, sadly the skill, material, cost and the fact they will be targeted by large alliances mean you’ll have to learn A FUKTON of infos before even thinking about capitals.

Sleepers in wormhole are very special rats. They can deal every type of damage at once, and tank every type of damage as good. So only brute force work against them.

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Thanks for your tip. And if you mean by brute force I can come up with two choices of battleships.

They are:

  1. Rokh- They are the sniper, longe range attack range, fast attack but low Dp, has more armor, shield and structure than Raven but low drone capacity.
  2. Raven- Mostly medium ranged combat ships, less targeting range than Rokh, usually dependent on missiles and drones and it’s a tough guy so it could not be defeated easily.

So, which one of these do you prefer who can hold a pack of punch to the sleepers?

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Ah, I might have said something I didn’t meant : by brute force, I was talking about the weapon system that deal the most damage per cycle, as the resistance will be equal to each type of damage. The system that deal the most damage is the one in which you invested the most skill points, in either direct or support skill.

Concerning ratting in wormhole, doing it in battleships isn’t the best idea. First, the massive signature radius of a BS is so large that it takes full damage on each volley of enemy fire, where smaller ships would take lesser damage, or completely avoid it. The second thing is that in wormhole space, local doesn’t show which people are present in the systems, so you don’t know if there are threats with you. And last, wormhole have a mechanic : the entrance or exit point can allow only a certain size of ship, and battleships are generally too large to fit in low class wormholes, preventing you to try easier sites.

Sincerely, if you’re interested in wormhole ratting, the best would be to join a wormhole alliance that will help you learn the game and W-space live.

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Sleepers deal omni-damage, an equal amount of every damage type. They are also weak to every damage type equally. So shoot at them what suits you best. For the Drake that would be Scourge missiles because it has a hull bonus to kinetic damage. But be prepared to have good overall resistances!

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No it ain’t. A good beginnin’ would be bein’ social and joinin’ people (not sayin’ joinin’ a corp!) who help him learnin’ how to make money without workin’.

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Thanks for all of your suggestions but I think z0rberg is correct. Mining, exploring and salvaging stuff give you a pretty handful of ISK but it takes time to analyze the dangers of it but when you are with a friend or a corp or something. They not only help you to make ISK but also teach you how to do this and that alone. Recently I had joined a crop and my friends helped me to earn I think 10,000,000 ISK in a day and that’s a satisfying for me. Sooner rather than later I think I can upgrade to omega by buying plex in the game using ISK.

I think z0rberg mean by this and by the way I think if I stick around with my corp mates to help me in Wormhole Space than I think I can buy not only Raven but also Drake and other cool stuff.

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Nice.

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