I seen a guy using a gecko in a blood raider event and was surprised you could, it never crossed my mind to check it (gecko), I love the vexor and am currently getting 540.6 DPS from a blaster but wanted to know as well is the VNI is worth the small gains, I don’t really want an ishtar because of having only 2 turret slots, anyway, suggests?
Ishtar has 4 Turret slots. https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Ishtar.
I like my Isthar with the geckos. 
Gecko are sweet, and you’ll probably like them. The downside is that each one costs considerably more than the best elite frigates, so you won’t ever want to lose one.
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I got a kill mail once and you can see geckos were the weapon I used. I felt like a badass lol! Geckos are very good and worth trying
The difference is that Heavy drones are more likely aggroed by those rats.
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Geckos are very strong. They have slightly better tracking than Berserker IIs (the best tracking heavy drones) along with the same velocity, they have double the damage of Ogre IIs at max skill (the highest DPS heavy drone). And they are about 4 times as durable as typical heavy drones. Oh, and they deal all 4 types of damage.
There are situations where using T2 heavy drones is technically better, DPS-wise, specifically for shooting resist holes, but not by much. You can easily argue that the Geckos still win just through shear Tracking, being able to hit stuff like frigates with ease, especially on a tracking-bonused hull.
The single biggest argument against Geckos is their pricetag.
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Geckos get bonus only from heavy drones skill. T2 heavy drones get also bonus from racial drone skill. But even so, only 2 Ogre II with full skill slightly outdamage 1 gecko. Rest of racial T2 rones are worse.
Is the gecko worth training for? Let me offer up some thoughts for you to consider.
I will not comment on the PvP side of the game since I have never used the gecko in that environment.
So that leaves the PvE side of the game.
For the vast majority of activities the answer is no. Despite claims to the contrary and numbers posted from fit tools supposedly proving they are better the pure damage output and the greater dps per unit of bandwidth of the standard drones will win out in the end, why? The gecko is omni damage by that I mean it shoots equal amount of all 4 damage types every time it fires, as a result at least half of the total damage is hitting against the NPC rats strongest resistances where all of the damage from the standard drones is hitting the NCP’s biggest resistance hole. In virtually all situations a flight of 5 mediums will outperform a single gecko, and when you are up against many smaller faster ships (usually cruiser and below) the 5 mediums are better than two gecko despite the paper dps advantage the gecko have.
Why yes I did try the gecko, in fact I used them almost exclusively for about 3 months after they were first released. For about six months after that I experimented with combinations of the gecko and other sizes of drones in a single flight and in the end standard drones proved to be better in virtually every single situation so the gecko are now sitting lost and forgotten in a hanger bay somewhere in New Eden collecting rust and dust.
With all of that said there is one situation related to player wishes / desires where the gecko is without doubt the best drone in the game. Essentially it comes down to lazy, for those who want drones but do not want to be bothered with changing drones on a constant basis the gecko is the superior choice because they are so flexible.
So in the end we get back to your question OP, is it worth training for the gecko?
Only you can really decide that and here is the crazy part the only way you will know if the gecko are right for you is to train the skills and compare them to the other options available.
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Throwing a 80m worth of drone onto your vexor?
You should come to null sec and rat in a 800m ishtar.
A gecko is worth training for for sure, the requirements are very low and you will want to have the skills to fly heavy drones if you are a drone pilot. Being able to fly a VNI with 5 heavies, or a vexor with a mixed flight, is a necessary step in a a drone pilot’s life any ways.
Do you want to buy a (few) gecko(s)? That’s an entirely different question and, unless you are lazy or really short on drone bay space, the answer may very well be no.
Isk is not a barrier to buying geckos, ive reached a point in the game that production is high enough to be buying things and make investments for more profits.
You can do fine without getting geckos; the problem is that there a some instances where they really shine. Combining your Rattlesnake with a gecko gives you a great option to go with your sentries. I keep a pair to use with my exploration Stratios fitted with 2 faction omnidirectional drone enhancers for general site cleanups. In certain rooms they are the go to choice, since sites like the second room in a Serpentis Watch have elite drones that chew through my hobs/hornets quickly, but can’t seem to touch the Geckos. As stated, you don’t want to use them if poor internet connection or under the influence, since losing them is costly and even feels far more if it is by carelessness. Once you go through a frantic effort to re-ship to a combat scanner before someone finds the Geckos you left behind during a late night exploration roam, then your future drone operation/protocol will be forever changed for the better.
Imagine a set of well-tanked T1 cruisers using battleship turrets with cruiser-level tracking, flying towards you at 2.5+ km/s. That’s basically what Geckos are like in terms of PvP.
People will generally avoid fighting Geckos directly, trying to pull them away from me or kite them, so I tend to whip them out first just to gauge what I’m facing. If they’re kiting and I don’t feel confident that my medium or light drones can catch and kill them before their reinforcements arrive, then I pull the geckos asap and disengage. If they pull range I do the same thing, except I then put out sentries to shred them at distance. If they’re stupid and try to fight the geckos, they usually just die.
Yeah, the vexor really impressed me last night, I cannot believe the dps it can put out, ï was having fun I forgot what time it was, 2.5 hours past my bed time…only wife aggro made me realize I went over.
Geckos are also good for VPE in Incursions or WHs since they don’t have a weakest resistance.
I’m a big fan of using a Stratios with two geckos to hunt people in wh space.
back then they were given for free by CCP, then someone had the bright idea of tossing one into a rattlesnake and rest is history.
imho 80m + for single drone is wayyyyy to much.
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