I used to run level fours in an Ishkur.
Mr Epeen 
Another echo for “Don’t use a drake for L4s”. Don’t use any battlecruiser for L4s, they’re not an optimal ship. You don’t need to use a marauder to clear them in a decent speed, a BS will get you through them plenty fast if fit right, but a BC is just an tedious experience.
Sure, you can make them have enough damage, but you’re going to have a paperthin tank. Or you can make them just about tanky enough but with bugger all dps.
You want to be rocking at least 800 dps with your main weapon, ideally 1000+, and with enough tank to stay there long enough to clear them. BCs just don’t have the ability to do that.
You can make a 550-600m fit BS that will clear L4s with very little problems, and quickly at that, which is not much off what you’re going to have to put into a BC to make it just about able to run them.
Look up the shield regen in fitting window and multiply by proper kind of resist, the one npc will deal the damage. Do the same with active tank version. If passive is less than active tank, you should use active tank. Problems are only with the cap stability, but you can use more cap regen mods and rigs.
This drake is around 90m with 5k missiles (or 85M naked) and can pretty reliably run LVL4 securities:
[Drake, Arty Drake]
Damage Control II
Co - Processor II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Large Shield Extender II
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Target Painter II
10MN Y - S8 Compact Afterburner
Medium Micro Jump Drive
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Auto - Targeting Heavy Missile I
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Auto - Targeting Heavy Missile I
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Auto - Targeting Heavy Missile I
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Auto - Targeting Heavy Missile I
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Auto - Targeting Heavy Missile I
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Auto - Targeting Heavy Missile I
Information Command Burst II, Sensor Optimization Charge
Medium Rocket Fuel Cache Partition I
Medium Hydraulic Bay Thrusters I
Medium Hydraulic Bay Thrusters I
Jump into the mission deadspace, cycle the MJD, and then pummel NPCs until they close in too much. It doesn’t have as much ehp as most other fits but with its’ effective 108km range it’s also out of effective combat range of most NPCs, and can MJD again to get out of pressure once the rats closed up.
It’s not just reliable at running the sites, it will also be reliable at being boring to use. You can flip a hardener for a sensor booster which will provide for 127km effective range. For more then that… use a 250mm Ferox.
On the long run, a Cerberus will provide a better experience then a Drake, but it’s also more expensive. If you want to do active tank, use a Navy Drake (which is more expensive) instead … or use a Cerberus.
If the arty drake isn’t boring enough, you can try a Marauder.
I’ve run all non-burner lvl<=4 securities with a Rocket fit Hawk, and it’s easily doable.
My recommendation would be to use a microwarping HAM Cerberus though as it packs the best combination of surivability, movement speed and DPS. The active tank variant of the Cerb can get expensive though due to fitting constraints, but on the other hand with enough bling a Cerb can do the Talos burners, too.
errr… really?
The salvager, along with the tractor, are the number one clichee items to have on a marauder. You forgot to mention the most important argument about the Golem though:
- while crabbed, it’s super tanky
The damage application argument might pass in a comparization with a Raven, but a Drake uses Medium sized launchers, which have significantly better application.
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If you multibox you can run several drakes in an L4. Thats how a friend and i did it until we could get our ravens
I wrote start not ever do.
The issue is to recommend newbro to start L4s with a BC. It ends up poorly for them.
Also don’t use a painter with AT .
And don’t use a DC if you passive fit.
Shape it how you want man. Salvagers are nice in lv 4s. The golem can 1-3 shot many NPCs unlike the tiny puny drake.
Tank is irrelevant in lv 4s as a marauder. I should have included it, and you are right. But between the DPS tanking ability of a marauder, the ability to put a LARGE booster (not XLSB) , and extra bastion resists, it underscores the fact of how OP PVE marauders are and their ability to min/max the tank/DPS (application also) in PVE situations.
You’re also going to take forever and a day to complete the missions with the 440 dps it has when using scourge fury missiles against 0% resists. Even with a 25% resist, which is half of what battleships in L4s regularly have, you’re only talking 330dps. I’m pretty sure you also need implants to run that because the power is significantly over.
You’re going to take like 40 minutes to complete any half decent L4 mission with that. In the same time it takes to complete that mission you could have run half a dozen L3 missions.
A BS with 1000+ dps will take just under 20 minutes to complete the blockade, for example. That thing would take the best part of an hour. If you come up against something like Serpentis, which will sensor damp from absolutely miles away, you’re going to struggle.
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The drake is just suboptimal for lv 4s hands down. You need a BS or if you don’t like the BS t2 or t3 cruisers are an excellent choice, (gila also).
I am amazed on how some people want to twist this simple fact with all their arguments defending the drake.
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One word, Marauder.
Drake can work. Slowly…Its what I did back in the 2009 start lol up. I used SPR loaded passive drake.
Drake and even the beloved tengu (for another non battleship option) are more blitzers and not room cleaners. Work triggers, don’t die, warp out on mission completion ASAP.
Marauders are room cleaners. I’ll kill everything in marauder unless its the extra mjd and bastion that is not really prudent.
So look at blitzing when possible.
Also if staying missile pve look at implants. Try to keep them general. Ones for skills all missiles use. I’ve done say missile x damage implant and had buyer’s remorse. It hits when you leave a raven (variant) to slum it in tengu or even taking a jackdaw for a spin.
Hell when I dualed boxed I could even use general implants in a manticore. I miss the pre aggro switch days in that regard. Drop a brick fit in, get aggro, let the bombers play.
I do the same with gun pve clones. I’ll take more general. I am not always in a large hybrid kronos.
Drakes did have 7 missile launchers back then, and I did run a ridiculously large number of level 4 missions in one. Losing a missile launcher doesn’t render them ineffective at running level 4s, but just make sure you have an extra pot of paint to watch dry.
Where they excel at the moment is as an inexpensive ship for running event sites, mainly because a passive Drake laughs at the various ewars CCP loads into the site, while slowly motoring through it. It may take longer to get through the sites than throwing a billion isk of bling at them, but you are pretty much guaranteed your 80 mil
Drake will come out the other side intact.
Learn something new every day…I did not know it lost a launcher. A moment of silence for a fallen once loved ship I spammed forever.
why Iiked the goto passive fit drake back in the day.
With the agent quality in the past gank pests were on the best caldari level 4 agent 24/7.
They didn’t want the drakes. The passive might live the alpha strike. they wanted the tengu’s lol. Gank pests jsut tore them to shreds really.
absolutely agree. BC generally have less sustainable tank then cruisers and less buffer tank then battleships while taking BS grade damage in most situations, i.e. they’re less tank-able then either cruisers or BS. Minmatar being an exception here but their BC have way less effective DPS then the application bonused cruisers or debuff-module (TPs, Webs, ->Stasis Webs<-) fitted BS, too.
I would actually not recommend battleships to new players, either, because using cruisers or frigates makes learning the game mechanics more rewarding then BS, and especially marauder usage.
Nevertheless, the OP explicitly asked for Battlecruisers.
The DC is the most versatile Tank module. It provides effective +12.5% shields which is the same as the Power Diagnostic effectively provides in non-critical situations, and the only low slot modules that will give more are the flux coils which reduces shield buffer and the power relay which reduces capacitor (on the drake which has capacitor issues to begin with).
More importantly it’s passive which means it can’t be forgotten to be turned on, will stay effective if you’re cap drained, can’t get alpha-ed into ineffectiveness before you can turn it on (e.g. by a tornado camp) and most importantly, on top of the shield bonus it also provides additional armor and hull ehp, which is what you rely on when your primary tank broke and you decide it’s time to get out. How many ships are lost while aligning for warpout w/o being tackled?
I’m not saying it’s the best module in any situation, or a must have (it is an almost-must have for armor tanks though), but rather that it’s competitive to many and superior to most other low slot modules. You shouldn’t be saying “Don’t use a DC”, but “use XXX instead of DC” advocating that XXX is a superior module in this specific situation.
A Battleship has to choose whether it wants to inflict damage or wether it wants be tanky. A Marauder doesn’t have to make that choice, it can be both at the same time. And if it “balances” tank with damage, it will do both better then a BS does whatever it opted for, at the same time, too. You can fit an XLSB on a golem and at the same time have it spam 1500+ on-paper-dps, you can “dps tank” w/o having to bother how to handle the situation your DPS tanking effort wasn’t good enough and the NPCs broke your tank, because they won’t break your tank even if you fail wrecking them to begin with. In a space w/o gankers, i.e. some backwater high/low (and true 1.0 sec which is blue donut null , though there’s no npc missions in truesec), you can literally kill a trigger rat that causes the next wave to spawn and then go to sleep with your marauder in the mission deadspace, and when you wake up the next day it will still be there face tanking the NPCs… unless the “no gankers” situation changed in the meantime.
This is what makes the marauder great, it just doesn’t have the weaknesses most other ships have, at the expense of being boring to use: It doesn’t move, so navigational manouvers are irrelevant, it always gets hit at perfect application by most rats (and players) so there’s no point in bothering how to reduce incoming damage, it’s tank won’t be broken even w/o overheating, at least not by lvl4 npcs, and it’s capacitor won’t run out or be neutralized away by anything in a lvl4 site, either.
It also has the negative aspect of being a bright shining gank target, as even with a “cheap fit” it’s still expensive.
370 dps with faction ammo that enables it to long range snipe 
but yeah, it won’t be all that amazing, which is why i explicitly wrote that the drake is reliable at getting you bored.
Nope, doesn’t need any implants. OP said skills were not an issue, are you sure you have Shield Upgrades and Advanced Weapon Upgrades maxed? The compact AB isn’t needed to be compact, either, it’s just less expensive then the T2 and only marginaly inferior. If anything it’s CPU constrained because most people don’t skill max Missile Rigging.
The Serpentis have no mentionworth long range damage though, while moving slowly, and the command burst can be recharged with electronic hardening charges to limit the effects of their dampeners.
Rather then Serpentis, Angels are a problem because some of their elite frigs and elite cruisers move really fast, which is bad for both the damage application of the missiles and also for the range tank effort.
The OP said Battlecruiser and inexpensive.
At the price of one golem, you can literraly get enough PVE drakes to suicide gank any PVE golem fit stupid enough to stay on grid, whether crabbed or not (PVE drakes don’t have Scrams or Points so the Golem can just warp off as long as it can take the damage it takes while aligning, which a Golem should be able to), and PVE drakes are hardly efficent suicide ships. Inverse the situation, w/o concord interference, how many PVE Drakes would the PVE Golem take out before it perishes?
While a Golem is more “chilling” to use, it’s an order of magnitude less bang for the buck then a Drake.
EDIT:
I messed up the missile types. It’s supposed to load Caldari Navy $type Heavy Missiles, not the Auto Targeting ones.
While a Golem is more “chilling” to use, it’s an order of magnitude less bang for the buck then a Drake.
Can also use Raven, when Golem is out of reach financially.
Active tanking with XLSB it can do every lvl 4 mission. Cruise missiles provide reach for destruction of whole room npcs from start, they should reach every ship in site.
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CCP should start a “Buy Here, Pay Here” lot for nice ships. Even for pilots with a poor credit history…
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And the OP clearly has no idea what he is doing.
look at the fit I provided .
PD gives +14.7% shield passive regen for 22 CPU. DC gives +14.29% shield EHP and regen for 30 CPU, plus some armor and hull EHP.
PD gives more regen, more PG, uses less CPU, gives cap bonus, basically the only way a DC is better is when you need EHP, that is when your shield tank is going to break.
DC is the WORST low slot you can use for shield passive tank.
So don’t use a DC.
I bought another year of OMEGA and got an Alligator Skin. Surely this is the answer to the Drake runniing level IV’s…
Overhauling the base Drake-class battlecruiser hull to make it their own, the Guristas Pirates have substantially expanded the drone capacity of the new Alligator-class design, and slightly improved missile systems and the propulsion drives. Despite their efforts to improve the handling of the ship, this notoriously sluggish hull’s agility took a backseat to the need to pack in new drone stowage and advanced combat drone management systems.
With the ability to field a full rack of launchers, a flight of upgraded medium combat drones, and formidable defensive shields, the Alligator meets the Guristas need for an assault ship capable of taking on empire patrols and supporting raids against more targets across New Eden.
With today’s prices for an alligator, you may as well buy a marauder 
Also why a gator ? It has +50% base shield HP so +50% regen but all other stats are the same (except it has bonus for thermal missiles). It basically has an integrated LSE
with the drones is it even better than the gila ? I guess having +50% missile is good , but then +12.5% drone MWD speed ?
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Yeah, that was my bad on that. Your fitting paste didn’t have the propulsion module and I clicked on the wrong thing in Pyfa. Kinda hard to see on that sometimes.
Then why would you even give that fit and give the impression it’s doable? Because that’s what your initial sentence implied when you said it could reliably doing L4 securities.
It’s not just about whether you have the DPS to potentially clear eveything without dying. If you’re having to constantly hold really long range so you don’t die, then you not only have the longer clear times of your low DPS, but you’ve also made moving to the next pocket a lot slower. Which is exactly why I said that it’s not viable, and would be better to do a half dozen L3s in the same time it takes to clear one L4.
The whole point of sniping is to pop out on your MJD, kill everything from there, and then you can pop back on the MJD so you can still clear effectively. But you still need high alpha damage to do that, or high DPS from that range, so you can pop dangerous stuff before it gets close enough to be an issue. Which a drake can’t do.
Serpentis will still do decent damage out to 40-50km, and if they’re multiple sensor damping you then you are going to have to get pretty darn close to your own danger range to drop those sensor damps, especially as not only the cruisers do sensor damping, quite a few of the battleships do it as well.
Multiple sensor damps on a BS with similar stats to what you’re rocking with that command burst will easily bring their targetting range down to under 50. Under 30 if you really get targetted hard. A typhoon has a 103km targetting range and 22.8 sensor strength, compared to that drake’s 108km and same strength.
I’m not sure the hardening script would make that much of a difference, considering it takes the drake’s lock range down to 81.2km. It would have to basically make those sensor damps completely ineffective for it to not make you need to get dangerously close to them.
What I do know is that I couldn’t do my normal tactic against sensor dampening in that ship, which is to pop the little bast-, uh, buggers before they’re an issue.