Hello capsuleers. o/
Is there any (good) reason for skilling into Battleships / Large weapons when you already fly a Tech3 Cruiser for PVE purposes?
Not really. For PVE, I’d say battleships are the tier 1 (cheap) alternative to T2 HACs or T3 Cruisers, so if you’re already at T3C, then you already have the DPS and tank required for PVE. Some people like to use Navy Issue battleships, but IMO, given the mission payouts and how easy the missions are, that’s just bling.
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- Price difference.
- Ability of Battleships to fit microjumpdrives for PVE.
- For PVE Marauders, Battleship skills are a requirement if one wanted to head down that path.
- Drone focus ability. T3 are great, but if a player really likes drones, T3 are kind of light in that regard…
- Price again.
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Battleships have a little more raw firepower and can fit microjumpdrives (MJD). MJD don’t help you at all when there’s an acceleration gate 50km away, so bring another prop mod. They take a lot longer to lock a target (20 seconds for a frigate rat with perfect skills!).
Most of them have problems hitting frigate rats, especially with low skills, but that problem depends on the ship’s weapon of choice. In general, small drones >>>> large guns (can be made to work by flying manually) > large missiles (just really bad) against frigates.
They also take forever to warp to that mission 3 jumps out because 2 AU/sec warp speed. If someone decides they’re going to chase it down in lowsec, you’re probably in trouble.
T3C have less raw firepower, but they can fly a lot faster at combat and warp speed and hit small things a lot better once they’re in range.
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For missions, a well-fit battleship is going to outperform a well-fit T3C eight or nine times out of ten. If you’re willing to consider pirate battleships that comes closer to nineteen in twenty.
Not all battleships are the same, of course. If you were, for instance, a dedicated Amarr pilot, I might consider taking a Legion over the somewhat lackluster T1 BS options. Paladins are pretty hot ■■■■ though if you’re willing to go T2. Nightmares are perfectly competitive as well.
However, I’d take any Gallente BS over a Proteus and as much as a ■■■■■■■ hate flying a Raven I’d have to at least consider it over a Tengu for a starting L4 setup simply due to its insane range tank.
Minmatar are in an odd place. They don’t have a stellar T1 BS lineup, but despite huge buffs the Loki still isn’t a great missions gunship. With missiles it isn’t bad, but then neither is the Typhoon. Honestly if you’re looking to use projectiles, training up Gallente BS 1 and shelling out the extra cash for a Machariel still constitutes the best option.
So… it depends?
Valid, but the point is, if she’s doing the missions with a T3C just fine, should she spend months training Gallente BS + large hybrids (T2) + large and sentry drones (T2), just to do the same missions she’s doing now, maybe 30% easier?
I mean, there are other reasons to train battleships, but in this particular case she already has a ship that works, and she’s focused on PVE missions specifically, nothing else.
MJD is fine for 50km, since you can just do 2 x angled jumps to cover distances less than the standard jump range. Not that people don’t often fit an extra prop for this, but at the cost of a mid it may not be worth it.
Incursions? Those are usually run by battleship fleets, are PvE and are better isk/hour than missions.
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In higher level PvE the supposed speed advantage to the T3C does not make all that much difference. You may get there and get back from it faster but it will take you significantly longer to kill what you need to kill because lower damage output and significantly less weapons range. The use of a MJD also negates a large percentage of the speed advantage the T3C supposedly have.
For full clear, loot / salvage there is no doubt that the Marauders are the best ships in the game that alone is justification for training BS skills.4
For level 4 blitz style the T3C have trouble competing with the Machariel because of lower damage output and the Machariel is fast enough that it negates much of that advantage.
However the rest of us can answer questions, state opinions as I have here and debate the this for all time but in the end the only person who can answer the question about BS skills is the OP and that is the real problem. In order to determine if BS are better for them to use in PvE the OP will have to train the skills so they can actually fly the BS and find out.