Looking to understand Kronos armor tanking in Null and some other random Tidbits

Hi, I have been off eve for about 8 years. I came back and am looking to run a Kronos in Null sec for Pvp first and ratting secondary. I am still trying to understand some things and i figured i would ask here. I am aware that throwing this out here makes me a tasty gank and for learning sake i am ok with that. I am trying to figure out how i am supposed to deal with frigs at close range while in Bast mode. When they get within about 5km im having an issue using ion blaster II. Currently my drone are berserker II (from a post i found a while back) I noticed that i can only launch two due to bandwidth. I am trained up in almost all skill to do with the Kronos as i love this ship and it just feels nice. I have a Vindi also but the tanking on it seems sub par compared to the Kronos (i might be doing something wrong).

To sum this up i am looking for a couple things:

  1. how to make my self more tanky.
  2. how to increase damage without being a piece of cap dead tissue paper.
  3. The choice between 800 cap charges and 3200 charges (replacing a dual cap booster with just loading up 3200s vs 2 with 800 cap charges)
  4. Implants (been doing research on these and am still not totally clear on what i really need to be going for)
  5. How to kill a dam frig at close range (are smartbombs even viable for this job or are they only good for Drones. I am not using a MWD or MJD im purely sit and pewpew atm)

Honestly if you are going to spend the iskies for a Kronos, get a carrier instead. Otherwise, VNI are pretty efficient for nullbearing.

As for pvp, there are others that can comment.

Cheers

Thanks for the response appreciate it. I will continue training Carrier skills.

Carrier is usually cheaper than a Kronos. I typically tell my guys to train carrier and farm ISK in their VNI til they can get their carrier.

Kronos is a great boat, but they’re very vulnerable because they “siege” and have to stay put during the fighting. If a hostile warps in you have very little to do unless your buds can cyno onto you and save your bacon. Not many null alliances have a -real- response fleet.

Grapplers. Hard to fit sometimes but they work better the closer the target is. Slow them right down for your guns. Weirdly TP also help a lot. I dont have the matches handy but check it out

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  1. Asklep set, exile pill, agent hardshell booster

  2. A magstab may help

  3. Just take 3200 charges, the navy ones, when you get neuts, you can thank me later and dontate for my titan fund

  4. askleps, that +1-6% repair efficiency implant in slot 9 i think and see 1.

  5. Fit a stasis web and a stasis grappler, thank me later and dontate to my titan fund

  6. Use small drones for frigates and antimatter

  7. if you are learning to pvp, don’t fly 400 trillion isk ships and learn the ropes with something much easier and cheaper. Try cruisers, then battlecruisers and then work your way up to tech 1 battleships, they will do fine.

It is a little bit hard to say what to improve without a fitting given. As others pointed out the maradeurs are in a bad spot for non-highsec stuff atm since their price is easily comparable to carrier or dread.
The active tank you can get in bastion mode is unmatched by any other subcap tank. Around 3-4k ehp/s with a single repairer and around 7k ehp/s with two repairers. If you throw in drugs, implants and eventually command bursts it gets even crazier. That is cool, but a carrier can match that easily while remaining agile and beeing able to warp off. A dreadnought can get 50k ehp/s tank in siege which is comparable to bastion.
The DPS of your marauder is not that impressing at the other hand. Obviously it depends on how you fit it but usually it is between 750 to 1300 dps without drones. The dronebandwith with 50mbit/s is little so you can just field a set of hammerheads to get extra 150dps against small targets.
There is one really sexy bonus which people often ignore which is the Micro Jump Drive reactivation delay bonus. If you are fitting a MWD and a MJD it can outspeed any other battleship easily.
While technically a marauder should be able to run any combat sites without issues it is not a good idea since you stuck in bastion mode while your clearing speed is not that much butter than a VNI and probably less than the clearing speed of a Rattlesnake. The normal subcap roaming gang may have a hard time breaking your tank but they will bring in the neuts/capitals to kill you once they tackle you since usually a shiny marauder killmail is worth the trouble for many people.
Check the post elitatwo just did post above for extra advice on fitting.
I would have a cap injector (heavy one, Navy 3200s), a stasis grappler, a web and a MJD on it. The mids are probably the hardest thing to fit. And yes against small stuff you can get away with the web/grappler, small drones and eventually some smartbombs. Usually you want a blockade runner on an alt nearby to bring you more cap booster charges since your cargo is limited.

To conclude: search yourself a good corp which will tell you that using a marauder is not a good idea. Start learning pvp in frigates, dessis or cruisers. Run combat anomilies in a VNI like everyone else. It just costs like 100m and not 3b like a well fitted marauder and will just give you slightly worse ticks.

Really appreciate everyone input. I will look into the comments made and try something a bit different then i am now. Thanks for the responses. I have been told Marauders are a bad choice always a bit of a let down not getting to fly something you want to because its outclassed by something else thats of different quality.

Some tips, you can apply to any armor pvp BS, some valids for the kronos other not.

More tanky: with an active fit, use an exile booster. With an passive fit, sometimes a +1 +2 pg implant makes you able to reach a noticeable better fit. You have asklepians/slaves for god mode tanking. For 1 vs 1 an Reactive armor hardener can give you a interesting resistence boost over energized hardeners.

More DPS: bad news are that in a armor ship, dps vs tank work opposite, more tank, less dps, find your balance, add or remove magnetic field estabilizers.

Cap: If you already have one cap booster fited, try to add a cap battery to your fitting. Fiting a nosferatu can help too, if there is ships bigger or the same size than yours it will help.

For killing frigates and other small ships, a Heavy neutralizer + a small drone set ( warriors or acolites, hammerheads ) works quite well, will keep those little bastd. outside of 30km range. Smarbombs are better to kill drones, which is not bad too. Those mods are cap hungry modules, use with care.

As the other guy says, fly cheaper ships for learning pvp, and keep the kronos for farming till you feel confident with T1 BS. I would recommend cheap cruisers to start your pvp carer. You are goinf to loose a lot of ships to learn. Loosing a ship is gainning an experience/knowlege under your belt.

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Depending on what rats you’re fighting I would go for railguns, you’re depending less on tank by hitting things from afar, frigates included. And when hitting from afar you can use Wardens instead of small drones for more damage.

As a rule of thumb the only time to load 800s for a battleship fit is if you want ‘long-term’ endurance for running point+prop(+possibly guns) for the super-rare kiting battleship.

Other than that Navy 3200s are generally superior. There’s been one or two people who’ve told me that Navy 800s can be better for cycling reps under neut pressure but I’m somewhat of the opinion that if you’re taking enough neut pressure to nuke 3200 GJ of cap fast enough that you can’t burn most of it on cycling your own mods then 800s are probably going to be about as useful as 3200s- that is, not very.

To put in perspective, if you want to use 800s for a dual-rep Hyperion you’re probably going to be locked into a dual-injector fit; with Navy 3200s you can run a single injector to fuel your dual reps and still have ample cap to run a heavy neut on top of the reps+guns+tackle.

First off, fit an MJD to a brawling battleship. Always, every single 100% of the time, fit an MJD. Being able to moonwalk out of long points (particularly against, say, carriers or just point kiters in general) is absolutely amazing and TBH is totally critical to an effective probably-solo brawling battleship.

An MJD forces opponents to move in close in order to keep you on grid, which is important because brawling battleships are terribly slow and can really only chase each other or unpropped ships down with anything resembling success, even if you have an MWD. So yeah use a mid for an MJD.

Secondly, as a general rule of thumb for the brawling battleship, you want at least 3 of the following tools for dealing with frigates and destroyers:

  • grapple
  • heavy neut
  • some additional form of application, like a tracking bonus, guidance computer, target painter, or web
  • light drones

(most battleships don’t have the highs to pack both a heavy neut and a smartbomb, and generally the heavy neut will be better 99% of the time; a Marauder like the Kronos however has utility highs for days so a heavy+medium neut and smartbomb alongside Bastion and a full rack of guns (4, in the case of the Marauders) is totally doable)

For example a Hyperion that I have killed several frigates in has a scram+grapple+web and a heavy neut, as well as some light drones in the bay (note that grapple+web does allow heavies to apply to lots of things you wouldn’t expect them to, but that’s only if you’re right on top of something due to grapple range). A buffer Megathron would run grapple+web and light drones, and combine it with a tracking bonus (I’ve heard dual web also works since the tracking bonus means better hits and thus better applied DPS if you have something at heated web range but IMO that just means said something can run away since it isn’t likely to be scrammed).

For a torpedo-fit Typhoon you’d run scram+grapple+painter+missile computer, and optionally use a rig slot for a Rigor Catalyst rig for even more application (torpedo Phoon does however lose a lot of tank to get that Rigor on, since the CPU squeezes tight and requires one of the two plates to be compact as well as a compact DCU, while ditching the Rigor for a third Trimark means both plates can be T2 and as can the DCU; this actually accounts for something like a 10-15 thousand EHP difference too).

As an addendum never fit a Grappler to the Vindicator; with its web effectiveness bonus it basically has a super-Grappler since the grapples have an 85% velocity reduction in their optimal range (1 km cold, 4 km heated), reducing the further you go into falloff, while the Vindicator with MinBattleship 4 has 84% velocity reduction on a T2 web, from 0-10 km cold and 0-13 km heated. So for a Vindi run dual web instead of grapple+web.

Anyway dealing with frigates and destroyers at close range in a battleship isn’t hugely difficult if you fit for it, despite what lots of people would think.

Oh, for non-Marauder turret battleships, also use Keep At Range or Approach to minimize transversal; in a battleship you’re not going to be able to mitigate damage by maneuvering around- it’s just too slow and too fat to do so. That’s why you fit to have 115-120k EHP buffer or a 1500-2000 DPS active tank. By using KaR and Approach you can try and minimize the effective tracking your guns require to land good-quality hits on target, and thus have good applied DPS (note that you don’t need very many good quality hits against most frigates- double 400mm plate Punishers excepted- since you can easily volley through shield/armor; it’s just getting those few hits can be a little tricky).

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