Noone has recommended a Drake over other ships. The thread title sais drake, and the OP asks for an inexpensive fit. There have been numerous advices to use other ships. Yet this thread is about drakes, so the discussion should be about how to fit a drake to run lvl4 security missions.
The OP said skills were no issue.
I have mastery 5 through the complete caldari subcap range. And nevertheless I used Drakes and Ferox to rat recently, eventually downgraded to Caracals which I’m now using because they travel alot faster. I have a Golem, too, it’s docked at the same station I usually drop my caracal in…
Since wargear availability and skill points are not the issue, what makes me favor a T1C over a T2BS?
Well, you do realize that the OP has not limited the lvl4 mission running effort to take place in high security space, right?
In a BC I can just chill and continue to rat despite neutrals appearing on local or dscan when I’m missioning in low or null. With a BC/Cruiser, there’s no need to de-siege simply because the neutral might be coming for me, there’s no need to worry the travel fit can’t be applied before I might have to get out, and, in fact, with a T1C/T1BC there’s not even a need to get out of my site at all, actually, unless the mission needs a specific item to be picked up and I worry the other player might steal it.
They come to the mission deadspace for a fight, so just give them a fight. And if they happen not to care for the T1C/BC, I can interrupt the ratting effort and try giving them a fight, even if they didn’t ask for one.
I mess up or get baited, and lose a Caracal? A Ferox? A Drake? Who cares about a BC lossmail? Reship and try again.
A Marauder on the other hand is blissingfully expensive. In highsec it’s among the most expensive thing you could use, i.e. also the most expensive killmail you could be getting, increasing motivation to gankers, and even the logistic effort required to obtain a new marauder and get it back to my home station would be significant. A drake can be assembled locally from resources reprocessed out of the loot dropped by NPCs in less time my toon would take to gate to Jita in a shuttle and return with a new marauder, or the wait for jump fatigue timers implied by jumping a jump freighter towards jita and getting it back with the marauder inside. Many corps members have spare BC, the local markets offer then for an “insignificant” extra over Jita only, so just get one from market or corpmates and be back on grid in 2~10 minutes.
Someone claiming he’ll fight off gankers with a PVE marauder either has no clue what he’s talking about, or has no competent gankers in his area, especially given that it’s going to be a 1vs1 for a very short time only given what a bright shining gank magnet a marauder is.
Nighthawks are more flexible at that point then marauders, but they, too, are too efford-constraint to replace and considered too good of a killmail not to expect a lot of people coming to be on it.
With a throwaway able Cruiser or BC, I have just as much of an initiative as the ganker has.
With an expensive T2BC/T2BS, especially with an “optimized PVE fit”, which is likely useless against gankers, the ganker has the initiative.
The same goes for Wardec Hostiles independend of security space. They can come for a Drake, maybe it’s gonna hurt them, maybe they’ll just grab a KM … worth less then 100M isk.
For a marauder… they can get a killmail that is priced at the level of a medium sized structure before even accounting the modules on the marauder, and they can get it without having to bother about citadel invulnerabilities.
Indeed, Drakes are used to multibox C4/C5, C3 is T3C solo material.
A Cerberus can probably be fit to “reliably” run all C3 sites, though that fit will likely require quite a bit of bling, and even then, either the Emergent Preservers or the Awakened and Sleepless Preservers will be quite painful, depending on whether the Cerb has HM/HAM failing to apply on the emergents or RLM inflicting only insignificantly more damage then the awakened and sleepless can spider repair.
How exactly does blinged Cerb crabbing in Wormholes relate to inexpensive Drake lvl4 security running, though?
A Drake, like any Missile Boat, isn’t damage locked though. It’s the Ferox and Naga which are locked to thermal and kinetic, a Drake can inflict whatever it wants.
The mainline BS were in the 100-130M isk range by 2019, i.e. a third of the current price. Here’s some historic market data if your memory doesn’t serve you well:
They buffed the marauders, and also the battleships’ tank module buffer bonuses, well after they implemented the industrial changes, and primarily because outside of highsec, noone was using battleships any more.
In the time between the indy changes, and the BS and marauder buffs, which lasted about a year, marauders were used in highsec virtually unaffected by the rise of investment cost.
It was written by someone else in post 21, and by me, too, in post 24, and contested by your claim a BS, T3C or gila was needed in post 29.
Any T2 Frigate, and any T1 frigate “trash”, too, can complete “The Recon, part 2”, absolutely reliable and faster then any BS, as it implies no less then 3 times aligning and 2 warps, i.e. 3xAB pulses which take 3x8 = 24 seconds simply to align the battleship if the site is in the same system, providing an example of a mission that’s done faster with a t1 trash frigate then with “optimal for lvl4” marauder. The distance to cover is 70km, any frig can cover that in 24 seconds. A Marauder can use MJD to achieve the objective, but even then the MJD takes 9s to spool and that’s after the warp was slower, and resulting in the BS very likely being moving at full speed in a direction it can’t warp out, i.e. taking two instead of one AB pulses to align out.
The ecm anomics can be done with a Griffin too btw. Odds to mess it up are just higher.
You are aware the text you’re quoting is a reply to a user who claimed the eve PVE meta hasn’t changed in 20 years, are you?
And these pro and cons make each of the marauders optimal at something, assuming the game has a concept of balancing. I.e. for whatever a Paladin is optimal, a Golem will not be.
The Drake is optimal, like the whole BC class, in being a medium tier high DPS/Tank for low isk investment.
A Raven deals more DPS on paper and in some settings, such as fighting other BS, stations or capitals it also deals more DPS on grid, but what’s the DPS/isk of a Raven fit and what’s the DPS/isk of a Drake?
How about mobility? While among the least mobile BC, a Drake doesn’t have to shy a comparization with a BS on the mobility front, either. A random pvp-drake for brawling, which is what a drake is usually best for, can be used for PVE in any mission that doesn’t have a lot of webs in it, too, while having 80k-ish ehp and 700dps-ish damage on paper. A Raven can easily be fit to outperform both, but comes at a significantly higher isk investment. Also, damage application consideration is much more important on a Raven then on a Drake, which applies better out of the box.
I always had the impression that all decent marauders had an on-grid fit and a travel fit, as the cloak and microwarp would have too negative effects to keep them installed on-grid, while jumping a stargate into a decent camp, w/o cloaky MWD capability, might end up being not so optimal at all, and for that reason, to marauder pilots refitting the marauder in missions was the most trival thing to do, rather then them considering it to be doing something wrong if they had to refit. And since you’re refitting anyways, how about fitting mods that are superior for the specific mission even if inferor for another?
OR not refitting, but then also not claiming it was optimal.
Noone needs a screenshot. If you want to share your fit, use EFT export, so people can import/simulate it and consider how it would perform. Posting it would, btw, make you the third user to share a fit in a 90+ post thread about fits, so compared to the most posts here, which focus on bashing other fits rather then at providing examples, a Golem fit in a Drake fit thread probably might be considered on-topic given it matches at least the fit part.