So my here’s my question, I live out in Null right now, PvPing with the Dramiel, Daredevil, and Cynabal (love all of these ships) my question is, when coming up against a ratting VNI in a Dramiel or Daredevil I seem to have a little issue trying to kill the VNI since the drones aggro to me after a while. With a small ship what is the best way to kill a VNI without losing your ship or having to warp out in hull? Do you get a scram on the VNI first then target the drones? Or go straight for the VNI itself. I’ve seen some kills where a Garmur or Worm can kill a VNI, just wondering if a Dramiel, Daredevil or even a T3D could kill a VNI solo and how would you got about doing it to get that kill?
One thing, many VNIs do not use a microwarp drive when ratting. Instead they use an oversize afterburner. This gives a high speed and no sig radius bloom associated with an MWD. The drawback is your maneuverability sucks. However when orbiting a beacon at 75, it’s not an issue. This means a scram isn’t that useful. Instead, the worm or garmut would use a long point and drones or light missiles to kill from range. These ships could also keep their speed up at this range letting them kite the drones.
Your ships of choice can’t do this. So… You may have to kill the drones. This may be doable if the player is AFK. If they are not… I tend to keep a flight or 2 of warriors spare. I would abandon my main drones, launch the lights and hope you get killed.
So my suggestion… Pick a new ship that gives you a range option. Sorry.
Alright that’s what I was thinking of with my observations from trying to kill VNI’s shipping up or too something different that can kite a little better or tank a little more.
cynabal with an oversided AB, keep a long point on them and orbit as close as you can without loosing your tracking. don’t bother with a web, you will be able to match speed with them just fine, their heavy’s won’t be able to touch you, use your own light drones to defang any mediums they have, and keep the pressure on them till they die.
speed is the VNI’s primary tank, but it can also be their biggest weakness since their biggest damage dealers don’t do well with high speeds.
Ah okay. I currently have a cynabal dual prop fit that has been working very well for me. So I won’t have any trouble keeping up with a VNI in the Cynabal, just haven’t taken it to kill VNI’s, been using it for some small gang roams in Null. But will definitely give it a go
It’s not called pvp if it’s against VNIs. PVP is against other players in pvp ships. Low sec is a good place for faction frigate fights.
That said, if you do want to kill VNIs you’re going to need a reasonable amount of fire power and surivability if your target knows what they are doing. a cyno Loki landed on my ratting VNI the other day and he was podded before his mates in Black Ops BS that jumped in could take me down.
A solo frigate is really going to struggle unless the target doesn’t fight back. Your best bet is probably just to web him so that the rats can kill him (and if the rats target you instead, you warp out and find another target).
I routinely kill ratting VNIs with a dual-prop, scram web Dramiel.
first step: research the area of space they’re ratting in and figure out what their resist hole is likely to be. eg: hunting VNIs in Gurista Space, they’re likely to have a huge EM hole in their resist profile, so pack lots of EMP and Acolytes. You can even tailor your own resist profile depending on what you expect to encounter. So in Gurista space (again as an example), you may wish to beef up your Kinetic resists as you’re likely, but not guaranteed, to be facing Kinetic damage.
second step: KILL THEIR DRONES. lock up their drones and shoot 'em. I find that Depleted Uranium ammo is very good for this thanks to the tracking bonus. You need to be on the ball if a VNI launches Light Drones at you, they can and will hit you pretty hard. Knock a few of them down and you’ll be golden.
In a frigate your only option is to hope he’s afk or stupid enough to pull drones and keep them in, sure you can use a garmur but you can get trapped easy if you need to bug out… and tbvh id probably rather use a daredevil where the web will stop them dead no matter what size prop mod they got…
so your left with what? what space are you hunting in? what resists will the vni have? etc…
Ive killed ratting vni’s solo before in a dual prop taranis and to be very honest theyre not much of a challenge in anything bigger and they dont tend to be good for loot or escalating for a gf.
