Okay I have recently moved to nullsec and have been doing 10/10 combat sites. This is the first escalation I’ve found the time to do, So I did some research. looked at Backstage Lore and Uniwiki. Both of them showed similar spawns in the first room, 2 cruisers and 3-5 frigates or destroyers.
I couldn’t bring my carrier in, so I went in with my old L4 NI Megathron slightly updated for drone tanking. (Low: 3x armor hardeners+ 1 ADNP, corpus-x AR, 2 MagStabs, 1 Drone damage amp) with some 425mm guns on the top, nearly all my gear is faction modules so it is of good quality.
I went through the acceleration gate to find 4 frigates, 4-6 cruisers, 3-4 battlecruisers and around 10 battleships. All starting out within their optimal range lol, the DPS was insane. With this ship, I never had any problems in L4’s and that was with just 2-3 hardeners, not the 3 hardeners+ADNP I just used.
Luckily I have a MJD so I was able to get out of their range, but not before going to 80% hull, I am about to enter the second room and I have no Idea what to expect. I have found 2 additional guides that vastly understate the number of enemies in the escalation so I am a bit worried.
For context this was an escalation off of a “Drone Horde” site in null, please help lol
Okay, in second room now and immediately MJD’d away from enemies for my own safety.
Uniwiki lists the number of enemies in room 2 as Turrets: 11 Frigates: 5 Cruisers: 12 Battleships: 1
Backstage Lore lists the same with 1 less frigate
this guy :http://gamingwithdaopa.ellatha.com/eveonline/outgrowth-rogue-drone-hive/
lists the same as backstage lore.
What I just counted (now that I’m safely 170km away) is Turrets: 11 Frigates: 2 Battlecruisers: 10 Battleships: 16
Because it is a very valuable escalation and you are supposed to run them in fleets or at least risk a shiny battleship. With an MJD, however, there is virtually 0 risk in these escalations. They are just a very nice load test for your tank.
For reasons utterly lost to time, both the 5/10 and 10/10 are called “Outgrowth Rogue Drone Hive”. The vast majority of guides out there are for the 5/10 (and you’ve checked with two of them).
This should give you a better idea what you’re in for, even if it’s technically in German.
I used to do a lot of those and had similar issues at first, mainly because you get a full room aggro in the first pocket. Paladin was my ship of choice, after a few runs I didn’t even had to use the bastion module at all, just slowboated from gate to gate every pocket. I think you’ll get better results over time. Also, the first pocket may be the most difficult one, or at least is one of the most challenging ones
Mega is not a good choice against drones, as you should use EM dmg mainly. They have second best resistances against kinetic
