While messing around in the Ship Tree, I took a look at advanced battleships for each empire and discovered the Marauder-class battleships. Basically, they appeared for my as good L4 runners (maybe even L5 ?), which can also salvage the room while running the mission, and are extremely expensive ships.
I have some questions concerning them :
Once I gather enough ISK to pay myself a subscription, could those ships be considered as a good long term goal, or are they just extremely expensive battleships with the Bastion gimmick ? And if I stick to L4s, would a Rattlesnake be better ?
I looked at the Golem, and obviously it is bonused for large missile launchers, which aren’t really my best currently
Would the gallente Kronos be a better idea if I want to use railguns, or should I say â– â– â– â– it and train for good missiles skills ?
They are okay when it comes to efficiency but overall they are best for wormholes. If you are just starting I would not shoot for them yet. They are not very good for PVP RN, so I would wait till the meta changes. If you want to do Missions then shoot for a rattle or bargest.
Don’t train for that as goal only train if you need want one.
They are self tackling BoB tanking lame ships,they are result of what happens when CCP take ship class and sprinkle it with carebears hope and dreams.
I trained Marauders 5 and never found a use for a Marauder. Full clearing missions doesn’t make enough ISK so I, like most people, tend to blitz them. For blitzing 4s a Machariel, Leshak, Barghest, or Rattlesnake is better. They’re pretty bad for level 5s as well because they’re active tanked and cost as much as a carrier and a carrier can do 2000dps+, tank more without being locked in place, AND they have jump drives.
I’ve heard they’re good for 10/10s and the like, but I have no experience in that area.
For PVP they’re actually pretty amazing despite common belief, yet way too expensive and isk inefficient to be common on the battlefield so they’re really high profile and attract blobs like no other, which could be fun if that’s your thing.
The Golem and Vargur are generally regarded to be the best ones because of choice of damage types. The Kronos and Paladin are damage type locked.
Overall they’re fine ships but reallly isk inefficient. I personally believe there’s no issue with the way Marauders are balanced but the materials required to build them are too much. They’re too expensive. There’s better/cheaper alternatives for almost every activity.
Some people consider marauder as downgrade from rattlesnake for pve.
Marauder only good at lv4 missions or high level WH. While RS can cover you in null ratting too. Faster to train, wider choice of weaponry.
Not to mention the fraction of the marauder price. For one marauder you could get three RS for your fleet and could finish site running faster in WH.
You better aim RS as your goal. After that, just go and get nyx/thanny.
Though, you could yolo your way to a lowsec gate camp with a marauder. Kill 20 of those player ships before their neuting bhalgorn come to suck you dry.
Marauders are niche ships, but they’re very good at those niches. They make great polarized platforms, Full clear Lv4 mission boats, blitzing specific missions and WH content.
That said to start off with aiming to maximize the capabilities of some of the other battleships. The Barghest, Machariel, Rattlesnake, Nestor or even T1 hulls like Domi or Typhoon are all pretty decent, cheaper and somewhat more flexible platforms to aim for initially.
So really, Marauders are just really expensive and “safely” (such big targets must be gank magnets) inside of highsec, so no L5s for now. That Rattlesnake look really nice, tho ^^
Anyway, if I want to stay with railguns, Rokh is my best bet. Maybe a Vindicator with long range webs would be interesting in a distant future, nobody knows ^^
Also, I have a question that goes a bit far away of the subject, but how do you get those escalations while running high sec anomalies ? I ran Hideaways and Burrows, but none of them always popped, are they extremely rare ?
Alright, I managed to get a Guristas Scout Outpost, in an highsec system.
The first room is tearing apart my destroyer, but after multiple warps I managed to kill an overseer cruiser. I don’t know what’s the thing he dropped, but I don’t think I can go further;
Thanks ^^
I guess 4/10 DED complexes need something a bit bigger than a destroyer
I guess I need a cruiser, but meh. I doesn’t have the skills to get one and I’m still training for T2 shield modules for a Ferox, I’ll pass on this complexe --"
If anyone want to do it it’s in the Isanamo system.
Hideaways and burrows don’t SEEM to escalate for every rat type. Try Dens and refuges. Dens definitely escalate the most often in my experience and I’m fairly certain they do it for every rat type.
For angels modified hideaways do escalate - but you don’t get expedition, instead you get commander spawn (domination) which can drop domination module… domination ammo is often dropped by it but I got one domination missile launcher from one (100M) - I just haven’t killed nearly enough of them to say how often they drop something of worth.
Know that I know my little destroyer cannot run every escalation I get, I would like to know : do anomalies always have the same escalation ? If yes, until I get my Ferox, it’s quite useless to run them if I can’t run the escalation behind
Also, I discovered on the Star Map the option to show DED Sites. Are those the signatures I have to scan down to go in a complex ?
Maybe stick to hideaways? Those can escalate to a 1/10 i believe. And yes anoms always escalate to the same expedition.
Oh boy… these are weird. I’ve been playing 8 years and I’m not 100% sure what’s going on with most of them. So full disclosure, I might be wrong about some of this stuff.
The ones under “DED Deadspace Report” are stationary rated sites. Most are 1/10s in starting areas and were part of a new player experience revamp back in 2015, though they don’t seem to really get used for much anymore. There’s no indication to a new player that they even exist and the new player experience has since been revamped… again. They seem to have been intended for new players to do small sites without having to scan but anomalies accomplish that end as well and they’re more common.
Others are older than 2015. I remember some going back to when I started playing Drakes online in 2010. They might be of value. I’ve heard of some in lowsec or out in NPC null that are quite valuable but information on them is sparse and they apparently get farmed repeatedly by locals, with strict rules on how they’re supposed to do them. I’m not 100% sure though, just rumors.
The ones under “DED Agent Site Report” are also weird. Some are sites designed for COSMOS missions which drop a hand in item that can be bought and sold from a contract. COSMOS missions are really old and in a dev ama a while back I remember a dev saying they were leaning towards removing them from the game because of all the problems they have. They give a massive amount of faction standing though, so they’re worth doing. Many of these sites are farmed repeatedly for items such as “Isone Flosins’s Corpse” or “Maqeri Cancen’s DNA” to be sold on contracts.
Also under DED agent Site Reports you’ll find various odities such as the ubiquitous Abandoned Battlefield, Abandoned Gallente Outpost, Natural Phenomenon, Roden Shipyards Manufacturing and many others. As far as I can tell they seem to only exist for the sake of lore. You fly there and get some flavor text and that’s about it.
So to make a long story short. Just ignore them. The only value they have are for cosmos missions or if you have access to one of the ones out in null/lowsec.
then shoot for a rattle or bargest.