Oï mate !
First of all, welcome to the beautiful and rare world of officer hunting ! Because I love to explain things in the forums, I am going to admit you have very few knowledge concerning the rarest of the rarer : Officer rats.
First of all, if you do manage to find a battleship rat with a way different name compared to the others (generally followed by an escort, you can try to compare the name of the rats to see if you got the jackpot), DO NOT stay near them in a faction cruiser : you WILL die. Why, you may ask ? Because of one thing : I suppose that because you are interesting in nullsec belt ratting, you know that a rat with a bigger bounty on its head generally mean a tougher rat, both in terms of tank and DPS. Officer are, in terms of bounties, a bit below NPC dreadnaughts and titans (plus carrier for Rogue Drones). This still mean they have one of the biggest bounty allowed on a NPC.
Example : in this video, you can see that the capsuleer recording the scene met “Selynne Mardakar”, a Sansha’s Nation officer. Her head is already worth 21 millions ISK of bounty, and she is not the toughest officer of the Sansha’s Nation (more on that later) ! You can also notice she is escorted by regular battleship rats. This video is also perfect to show you how even a “lowclass” officer like Selynne can be deadly. The guy here is using the Gurista’s battleship Rattlesnake, one of the best subcapital ship for ratting. And he is even supported by a Naglfar-class Dreadnaught (althought, I do not really now if the capital ship was actually shooting the rats, or could even track them), and yet both of them have a tough time dealing with Selynne, and each of her shots on the pirate battleship are devastating (and we’re talking about the ship that can mount the biggest passive tank of every battleship).
Second good point the video showed you earlier : in the wreck left behind the officer spawn, every dropped moduel was a True Sansha one, basically, the best (outside of officer modules) you can get out of a Sansha’s Commander spawn. And you may have noticed the Estimated Value of the drop was “only” 307 millions ISK, but that is because officer’s modules are so rare, the market doesn’t have a fixed value for them.
Now, concerning how to find an Officer. You must know that those rats are rare because the place you are ratting in need to meet certain requirements to allow an Officer to spawn in the asteroids belts of said system. Those requirements are :
- The system must be of truesec -0.7. to -1.0. If you do not know what “truesec” is, it’s simple : security ratting of a system is rounded. The true sec is the value not rounded, you can find it on Dotlan (example, the 3-DMQT system is of truesec -1.0).
- You must be in the “home” region of the respective pirate organisation of the officer. These regions are called “NPC NullSec”, because capsuleers alliances cannot take the sovereignity away from the pirates here, and it’s also the only places in New Eden where you will find stations owned by pirates, and Mission Agents belonging to their corporations. I’ll explain what are those regions shortly.
So, now, concerning the “toughness” of an officer, or its ranking, you name it. Not all officers are born equal, and some are stronger than the others, which mean they will be harder to kill, they’ll deal more damage, but because their Modified modules will have stronger bonuses, and possess higher bounties, they will reward you even more. Those pirates are (in order of toughest > weakest) :
- Angel Cartel (not sure on this one), only spawn in the Curse region : Tobias >> Gotan >> Hakim >> Mizuro.
- Blood Raiders, only spawn in the NPC part of the Delve region (can be seen at the top right corner of the link) : Draclira >> Ahremen >> Raysere >> Tairei.
- Guristas, only spawn in the Venal region : Estamel >> Vepas >> Thon >> Kaikka.
- Sansha’s Nation, only spawn in the Stain region : Chelm >> Vizan >> Selynne (not the toughest !) >> Brokara.
- Serpentis, only spawn in the Fountain region : Cormack >> Setele >> Tuvan >> Brynn.
- Finally, the Rogue Drones also have officers, but I don’t know if they spawn anywhere within drone infested spaces, or have an assigned region. Because I do not know the power order of Rogue Drones, I’ll simply leave the link showing you all four : Rogue Drone Officers.
On a final note, I want you to understand that Officer modules represent the last step in terms of module. Those are the rare ones that can bear a Meta level going from 9 to 17 (Meta Levels) and can give truly impressive bonus, like the Estamel’s Modified Adaptive Invulnerability Field, giving a whopping +50% bonus to every shield resistance. But you’re not the only one knowing that, and this module can cost you a lot (around 40 billions). This is certainly not something you’d fit on a faction cruiser, but more likely on a supercapital if you really don’t want to lose it.
Also, please note that some officer module actually have the same stats as a deadspace version, sometime even worse. Example, a Pith B-Type Shield Boost Amplifier is identical to a Thon’s Modified Shield Boost Amplifier.