Mardauders always beed a juicie target for gankers.
But now… what a genius need to be to use it?
Using them now you literally put on the red shirt with “KILL ME!!!” banner.
Yah… 3k DPS you say.
And? No matter how much DPS you have if you’re dead.
So if before it was useless because any average T1 BS can outperform them with cheap gear then now it useless because risk of a suicide attack outperfom any DPS buffs at all.
Only thing i regret is that i’m not kept my golem up to now, cuz i could easly double my ISK
Flying a marauder won’t put a target on your back. Flying a loot pinata will. Don’t fit enough bling to make yourself a a profitable gank target, and you should have nothing to worry about.
Okay, there are gankers that will gank for the lulz, or just because the hull is expensive. Kusion, for example, said that he will gank expensive ships just because they are expensive. The profit-minded ganker, however, isn’t going to be dropping polarized taloses on every marauder that moves, just so they can get peanuts worth of loot in return.
Bling smartly. Follow the guidelines I put forth in the following video. Use mutaplasmids to make cheaper alternatives to faction damage mods and deadspace armor reps. Don’t do stupid ■■■■. Use intel tools to see if gankers are active in your area (i.e. zkillboard or the in-game map). Don’t autopilot to your mission. Don’t linger on warp gates or beacons. Don’t bastion on the beacon. Use your d-scan to look for combat probes or incoming ganker ships. Add known ganker groups with bad standings. If you see a bunch of orange jump into local, maybe de-cycle your bastion mod and be prepared to warp out. And if you’re really worried about gankers, maybe swap a damage mod for a plate (or swap a damage application mid for an LSE). I know, I know, “but muh efficiency,” you exclaim! Well, check this out. A kronos with 2x T2 Mag stabs will still do over 3k DPS. I don’t know man. Seems like it’s still worth it to me.
Usingmutaplasmids to make cheaper bling
You can, of course, use mutaplasmids to make god mods, but you can also use them to make cheaper faction variants. Here’s how.
Use Jita buy order to buy mutaplasmids.
Sell god rolls, and use mods with “dump stats.” For example, incursion battleships tend to have plenty of spare CPU. Thus, you don’t need the all around god rolls for your damage mods –the CPU savings do nothing for you. So, sell those mods, and use the ones with crappy CPU, but really good damage modifiers. This strat will greatly reduce costs (and depending on prices and luck, perhaps even turn you a profit).
T2 Mods + Decayed Mutaplasmids are the cheapest option. They can get as good as faction with a perfect damage and ROF roll, but this is super rare.
T2 + Gravid can get better stats than faction relatively easily, and can even cost you less money.
Note that the increase to broker’s fees that happened a while back has severely discouraged frequent price changes (no more .01 isk war). So, now it’s easier for casual traders to get their orders filled without babysitting them. Of course, it used to be easier to pop over to Jita to setup/update orders before Niarja flipped.
Finally, some people like to “gamble” with mutaplasmids. They roll a handful of expensive modules in the hopes of getting a Zeus roll, and then suffer from something called “roller’s remorse” when things don’t go their way. I advise against gambling with mutaplasmids. Personally, I treat it like a probability problem. Depending on what I’m rolling, and how many I need, I’ll roll between 20 and 100 mods at a time. I then expect a percentage of them to be sell candidates, a portion to satisfy my requirements, a portion to be worth saving for other fits, and a portion of them to be straight up garbage.
Bee Tea Dubs, flying a marauder can be quite safe as long as you practice proper risk management strategies. Thus, I can only assume one of two things when it comes to the naysayers: (1) they want to krab in perfect safety, or (2) they still have a lot to learn about the game.
So after all the complaints about the paladin I actually logged into the game to make a first test on level 4 missions myself.
Level 4 Pirate invasion took me 10 minutes, (That includes undocking → full clear, not blitzing → docking and turning in the mission)
11.29 million ISK + 4k LP
edit: While that is not an impressive payout, keep in mind that this is a mission that does not have a good ratio in regards to Time needed vs Payout
A Lv4 Blockade for example takes more or less the same amount of time and pays 20-25 million in ISK and 7+k LPs)
—edit ends here—
I could have done it faster, but I was using a double plated paladin with just 2 heat sinks and 218k EHP.
The fitting itself is not even worth 500 mil ISK and that includes 2xT2 Trimarks.
(Did not even have Turret implants in my current clone, but a mid grade amulet set)
No cap problems at all… never dropped below 50% cap and even had my repairer running more than I actually had to.
Even with that setup I can most likely finish a mission series like Enemies Abound in around 75 minutes (or even faster).
75 Minutes for 250-300 million without even going with a full dps setup and in high sec on top of it…
Seems broken to me, but not in the way ppl here claim.
