o7
my buddy and I love to fly Recon ships. I am flying an Arazu and my buddy a Rapier. We are talking about to get a third person into our „squad“ or skill a new account.
The Arazu and Rapier is a nice hunting combo, but we are lacking DPS. What ship could we use for some DPS? It should be clocky tho. No Stradios.
I was thinking about to skill a tengu pilot, for hunting. I can fly an blops too, but I don’t have a hunter. A clocky, nullified tengu for tackeling (+light covert cyno if a blops is on fleet) doesn’t make much damage. Also a T3C need some skillpoints. Okey, a tackle T3C not so much but with all the weapon skills, puh.
Any ideas? Maybe a second Arazu, for extra drone damage/Rail Gun?
Pilgrim with drones? Stratios with drones? If you want to go non-cloak: Combat Recons (Rook has nice DPS), Orthrus for long range tackle DPS and ridiculous speed.
For cloaky dps, either a strategic cruiser (coughlokicough), or a stealth bomber.
Amarrian recons have reasonable dps, but their main utility is cap warfare.
Not sure why you don’t want a stratios in your gang; they have pretty good damage output and are extremely flexible in how they can be fit out, and it is quicker to get two racial cruisers to V than it is to train recon IV -> V. If you don’t have heavy drones V, faction drones are great.
If you just need the third hull for dps, the strat is pretty nasty fit with blasters. With an arazu and rapier in your gang your dps boat doesn’t need to be fast.
I’m not sure you have the right ships for hunting as a gang. Have you considered Combat Recons instead?
The Force Recons big “thing” is the Covert Cyno they can light to bring in BLOPS, like a Sin or Panther.
The Comabt Recon has the same EWAR bonus combo, but better DPS and tank. Further, they dont show up on dscan, so they are arguably better attack ships than cloaked Force Recons. A Combat Recon fit for fast lock (Sensor Boost mid + rig) is a thing of great awesomeness.
You don’t show up on dscan, which allows you to set pings within dscan range of known enemy target locations. Sit there, unseen, and know exactly what is in your killing zone. When a high value target in your dps profile arrives (any dessie or lower), warp in, get ultra fast lock with no decloak penalties, liquidate the target, and warp out. Rinse and repeat.
Huggin + Lachsis can terrorize small ships. Rook has very good deeps. Curse also great ship if fighting t3 cruisers.
Combat Recons ftw, if small gang hunting is your thing.
Leave the cloaky stuff for the BLOPS. Too thin and low deeps for a small gang.
Beware the recent changes to T3 hulls. The days of the infini-tank pwn mobile are long gone. T3s are surprisingly thin. Active tanks with no buffer are dying likes flies for 15, 16k total deeps. Check zkillboards.
I would say that I have have seen an extraordinary variation in the player skills, situational awareness and module management in the game. Some pilots play for years and still forget to overheat (hi!), and some guys are death on a stick after two months. We have one guy in Hek Fight Club who kills everything, flying a T1 frigate. I can fight him in a superior ship, knowing his exact fit, and he still kills me 9 times out of ten. He posts kills of navy frigates from FW zone like a cat bringing in dead mice.
I’ve seen other pilots like him, too, so my point is that how well you hunt kind of depends on who you hunt.
If your thing is ganking miners who avoid pvp and panic when locked, a cloaky loki or other t3 will do fine, but then so will a well fit stealth bomber. Or a tristan.
I would use combat recons to kill dessies and frigates at gate camps, because I have a score to settle with campers and so it wouldn’t be entirely pathological.
So, we finally switched from a Rarpier to an Neuting Loki. The Loki tanks so much more and we can do more with it then with a simple Rapier.
We got a basic Falcon also, but we are missing still some DPS. Maybe I could swap the Arazu to a Proteus. I have decent gunner skills. But it was very fun to fly an Arazu with the option to refit to damps against kity ships.
I don’t see a lot of Proteus anymore and I can not fly a Loki. We are all using ECM drones most of the time, because we are lacking DPS. It really helps.
I could train into a Loki and the Loki pilot can train more gunner skills.
If I am simulate some Loki fittings, I don’t get much DPS out of a Loki compared to a Proteus. I can easily get 600-700 dps out of a Proteus. Even my VNI makes 600 DPS.
I get with Covert Fitting around 200-280 dps. That’s not a lot. Maybe because I am missing Loki skills?
I fitted the Loki with only 2 low and more mid slots for tank and web/warp disruptor. It can really tank a lot.
I should try to fit it with 4 lows, so I can put 3 Gyro in tha lows. Maybe this will make a difference. Something like that here https://zkillboard.com/kill/67324945/ but maybe I switch one web or warp disruptor to a shield extender and the Nullification to something else.
As I mentioned, I can get easily 600-700 dps out of my Proteus. I don’t think it’s the gunner skills, maybe more the Loki skills. I need to train into one.
Pffft. Obviously the best answer here is to have your buddy fly an All in Hecate, Sit in a medium plex and wait for people to be baited not seeing the recon ships on dscan.
Rule #1 always play dirty. Never fight with honor!
Falcons with recon v and other near maxed out ecm skills is cancer. Your enemies will get so mad that you may see them posting on reddit demanding falcon nerf.
Yea you’re definitely better off with an actual DPS boat. Whether a T3C, a stratios, or just cyno in a blops BB when you’ve got it tackled. A bomber would work, as a rapier painting and webbing all but assures the target is royally ■■■■■■ vs torpedos. But they’re squishy so they’re liable to go “pop”.
Barring that, the suggestion of switching to combat recons has merit, but if you’re getting chased you’re ■■■■■■. Even just a dictor will be able to beat you to the gate and bubble the other side while cepters stay on the outgate waiting to push you through.
Covops you just warp to random celestials and cloak. If they’re determined, log off.
Depends on the level of risk you want to take. A T3C can still be very effective, especially with solid ewar support. A blops BB getting cynoed in by the rapier would certainly give you the pew you need.
The loki is a great ship for applying dps at range, a buffer shield fit with arties gets almost 5k volley damage and 80k ehp pretty easily.
since you’ve got long points and long webs/TP covered
a full shield tank Arty loki with no point or webs would give you guys some oomph
You could also fit HML’s (which are really good on a loki and thats about it) or RLML’s if you’d like to go that route.