I propose changing the useless bonuses for armor repairer and shield boosters for Deep space transport ships
Mostly they are killed in high security status systems as a result of the actions of suicidal pirates. It makes no sense to repair the ship when 1-5 pirate ships are shot at you and kill with an alpha shot.
Remove 7.5% repair bonus and give agility or warp speed and warp acceleration bonuses
The idea with the current set of DST bonuses is to grant incredible short-term tank while they slowboat back to a gate under hostile fire in losec. Whether this is effective or not is questionable.
They’re not meant to be suicide-gank-proof, because nothing is meant to be suicide-gank-proof.
I could see maybe reworking DST bonuses, but the role of fast-aligning and fast-warping hauler is already taken by Blockade Runners, so duplicating that wouldn’t be an especially bright idea.
Bad idea for reasons stated.
-1
My Mastodon can tank over 2.5K dps with heat and a large ancillary shield booster. It can also warp off a gate in 8 seconds unless pinned by 3 points. It’s not invulnerable but, in highsec, odds are it will survive until Concord shows up!
[Mastodon, Mastodon fit]
Inertial Stabilizers II
Expanded Cargohold II
Damage Control II
Expanded Cargohold II
10MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Large Ancillary Shield Booster, Navy Cap Booster 150
[Empty High slot]
[Empty High slot]
Medium Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II
Medium Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II
If you don’t mind me asking…why cargo expanders on a DST fit? Unless they’ve been changed to affect fleet hangars they won’t be all that much use on a DST, plus their drawbacks seem rather hefty for such a small benefit.
Overheat your mods and you can survive 5 gankers.
As mentioned DST’s aren’t designed for speed.
I guess you don’t know the cloak + mwd trick. It has gotten me away from Kusion a few times when he has been hunting DST’s.
What is game breaking imo, is the fact you can get an Impel to 1.1 mil ehp with implants (slaves?) and the Bustard and Occ to around 700k ehp.
That takes away a lot of risk for those pilots that know what they are doing and can think under fire. More risk and more explosions are good for the game and insane ehp for DST’s do not seem to fit with that philosophy.
Having ridden out a ganking attack in hi-sec in an Impel, the DST is in a good place. Overheated the tank is massive - lots of resist and a good repair rate. Add in the MWD/Cloak trick you are a reasonably slippery customer. You really are only going to be caught if you foul up or do something silly - and that’s easy enough to do.
Yes, you can carry a reasonable amount of cargo, but 60,000m3 isn’t that much compared to a freighter. The trade off is you are faster than a freighter and harder to kill. If you want more agility and speed go for a Blockade Runner - and that’s a trade off for capacity.
I can understand why @Do_Little puts Expanded Cargoholds in - he can push up the capacity of the cargohold (not the Hangar) to the point where he can carry another packaged ship in it. Personally I’d fit differently, but as always personal preferences apply, so this isn’t a criticism - I’d fit for the MWD/Cloak trick and shield rigs, but that’s my preference. I’d still look at Expanded Cargoholds in the low slots though. Maybe a probe launcher if I was going where I needed it.
If a suicide ganker is willing to throw the ISK at killing you then you are dead. But you can make that a very expensive transaction.
I use a DST to haul production materials - most of which are quite small and not particularly valuable but I frequently need to travel a considerable distance to get a good price so I fit my ship for speed and capacity. One Inertial Stabilizer will let the ship warp with a single pulse of the afterburner. 2 cargo expanders let me carry 2 giant secure containers which increase the capacity of the hold to about 9K m3 - which is more useful than anything else I can think of to put in those slots!
I find these to be VERY useful in a lot of cases.
It actually does, because it assumes you are fitting your ships correctly. Having your modules pre-overheated and ready to activate when you enter dangerous situations is part of what a DST does best.
Heres an old video of an Occator getting ganked, having his ship fit properly, and survive thanks to the massive local repair bonuses.
Can go above 1m if you use bling.
So do I.
I was transporting some fighters and capital modules for a buddy in highsec and there was this guy with 3x ham Caracals and if I didn’t had my shield booster on, I would have lost 12 billion in cargo - yikes.
If you use bling you can tank a lot of punishment until CONCORD disposes of the threat.
You have heard of the Fleet Hangar? PDEs are usually a very nice choice to have in those slots instead of cargo expanders which diminish the point of your damage control because you lose hull, which can be important to have if you bleed through your shield reps.
Rest assured the fleet hangar also has a full complement of containers if appropriate for the cargo I’ll be hauling! Maximum capacity using both holds is just under 90K m3 for minerals in a ship that can align/warp off a gate in 8 seconds and travel at 5AU/sec.
It’s about 3 years since I last looked at the fit on these ships. My skills and finances have improved over that time and I can now replace one of the Invulnerability fields with a large extender using faction mods - trade some resistance for buffer. Will give that a try for a while.
I dunno man, I ran up your existing fit in Pyfa, and Zhalyds suggested fit, and the PDSes add just under 10k ehp, at the loss of the cargo space.
But those heated invulns add ~20k ehp (with a base resist profile of almost 90%, which is crazy), this also bumps up the rep amount from ~1k to ~2.5k.
I think you’re best off sticking with your existing fit… unless of course, there’s now a group out there actively hunting you with ~10 tornadoes 
@ which point it comes back down to how much your cargo is worth.
I’d stick a cloak on it (so you can cloak+warp trick when u see 10 nados on grid with you) and call it a day 
Regards,
Cypr3ss.
Thanks. The extender idea was to absorb an alpha shot - I’m not always as attentive as I should be! I have 4 characters who fly Mastodon and only 2 have Shield upgrades 5 (required to fit the extender) so I’ll split the fits 50/50! Unlikely the experiment will provide any results - no one has ever taken a shot at my DSTs. On the other hand the characters who have Shield Upgrades 5 trained it so I could fit a large extender on their Blockade Runners - people do shoot at those!
then go passive completely.
People can neutralize your DST with a bhaalgorn in 1 tick. Then your hardeners won’t activate.
MWD cloak makes you much more slippery. an imple with MWD cloak reaches 120k EHP for <400M. Double the price and you reach 150k ehp. People can’t scan you if they can’t target you.
Otherwise, if you want to tank more active on your fit, use solidifiers instead of hyper rigs. Each one gives a flat + 25% ehp/s (with two, it’s +56 %)
Also replace an invul with a medium ancillary rep. Will give you +30% rep, while the 3rd invul gives you less than +30% ehp/s because of stacking.(+21%)
You can also remove the cargohold and inertial and use another ancil booster if you add a power diag, a reactor and a co-processor (or have fitting implants)
A Bhaalgorn is 260 million ISK for the hull - why would anyone sacrifice one of those to suicide gank a DST unless it had an exceptionally valuable cargo? I accept that someone who doesn’t give a damn about profitability might take a shot and I build an allowance for losses into my business plan. Otherwise it’s basically a question of making myself an unattractive target and finding a risk/reward balance I’m comfortable with.
if you have more than 1B it’s indeed not worth. But then you can go passive and not even care about someone trying to gank you.
otherwise …
Interesting. That Occator died to 4 Tornados - 13,678 damage. I doubt he got any benefit from his active tanking modules. Not sure if they simply weren’t turned on or if he died before they could cycle. Makes me think my decision to add a LSE for buffer was a good one.
For me, the ability to warp with 1 pulse of the AB and travel at reasonable speed (5.02AU/sec) is a core part of the fit - I’d rather lose an occasional ship than lose my mind slow-boating across New Eden!
okay so first. You align, then you start your AB. therefore you actually take 9s to align from gate, because ticks. That’s enough for people to scan you. If you think people won’t be able to kill your DST efficiently after scanning it, you are sooooo wrong. That’s why MWD + cloak allow you , not to be more tanky, but to be much less scanned. Sure you take 11s to align instead of the 9 with AB, but remember that warp takes 40s average(minimum 10s with infinite warp speed on 6 AU warp), a gate takes 10s to pass.
But yes going active is bad, because the time you activate your modules you are dead. Also it won’t allow you to bypass alpha. Your fit has lowest resist for explo/kinetic, so 5 nades fit with fusion will wreck it a new one(11k alpha/nade). And that’s when it’s active. if you forget your hardeners, 3 are enough.
Random nade costs <100M, therefore if you have 1B or more it’s worth it. also 75M only if you get the drop from your nades.
Therefore, the only thing saving you, is if you have less than 1B isk it’s not worth using 5 nades to gank you.