Hello, So I’ve been playing the game for a while now, almost a year to be precise. I went omega a month ago and ever since then my goal has been to get from cruiser to battleship and start running level 4s. I got a Typhoon but to be honest, I don’t really like flying ships with missiles as much as I like using turrets. So my current goal is a tempest. Yes, I know, the maelstrom is better for pve, but my shield skills aren’t the best and the local enemies make an armor tank more viable in pve. Also I just really like the look of the tempest. Anyhow, although I got the tank down pretty well, my dps is painfully low in not only battleships but any class of ship really. In fact, due to my low dps, it makes my good tank almost meaningless when I cant take enemies off the field fast enough to mitigate some of the incoming damage. To give you an example, I can get 90 dps out of the average frigate, average destroyer about 120, average cruiser about 150, average battlecruiser 200, and average battleship about 250 but I use faction ammo for lvl 4s which increases it to about 300. These numbers are way lower than what I hear other people are getting. I hear about people getting more damage out of frigates and that’s embarrassing lol. Even if I were to get t2 weapons on a bs it only increases the dps by about 100. Is there some skills I’m missing? What is the main skills I should train to get these numbers that everyone else is getting and what type of dps should I be looking at to make a battleship be at least decent and not feel like I’m slapping ships in the face with a piece of paper? Any advice is greatly appreciated.
250 DPS from a BS? That’s really, really low. My mission Dominix with T2 fitting pumps out about 700 DPS with Curator. An Armageddon with missiles launchers and heavy drones can produce up to 1000 DPS, but with very light tank. In Fact, most cruisers can deal more than 250 DPS.
You should really look into the weapon systems’ support skills, like Surgical Strike, Trajectory Analysis for Gunnery; Missile Bombardment, Warhead Upgrades for Missiles and Drone Operation skills for Drones.
The old rule of thumb for level 4 missions is Gank + Tank should = 1000 or more to run the missions comfortably. Tank in this context is the resist adjusted dps/second you can repair. Using Pyfa add total dps in the firepower section and the recharge rate which adjusts for your resistances - unlike the in-game fitting tool.
More gank means you clear the rats faster, more tank means you can survive longer.
That’s what ive been training into. Ive been working on leveling up surgical strike and the skill that increases the fire rate. Forgot the name of that one. It seems to be only adding small amounts of dps per skill level though. In that case I’m guessing t2 weapons are a must for lvl 4s?
Ideally, yes. The specializations give another up to 10% DPS even without T2 ammunition. If you level the support skills to V, they will also not only improve your theoretical DPS in the fitting window but improve the application, too, which turns into higher actual DPS on the target (The DPS number does not change, but more of that number is applied to the target).
With the addendum that neither should be less than 300. Otherwise said comfort wears off very quickly.
Minmatar Battleship skill give you 5% per level to rate of fire. Missile launcher operation give a rate of fire bonus 2% per level as well. Warhead upgrades give a 2% damage per level. Rapid launch gives a 3% rate of bonus to all launchers. The individual missile type skills also give a 5% damage bonus per level for example the cruise missile skill. Level up you missile support skills and drone and drone support skills to optimize for mission fit.
Aye, and a bunch of other skills that don’t say “DPS” at first glance. Engineering (for example Weapons Upgrades, Adv. W.U.) - if it helps you install more powerful modules with less trouble by reducing power/cap needs it means you can fit more of everything needed. And Rigging (for weapon rigs) would help too.
How about posting one of your BS fits so we can see if that’s the problem. Also you can use PYFA to see how your char compares to a perfect char with a particular fit. And play around to see how various skills impact the dps/ehp.
Looks like numbers without low slot weapon upgrades.
i would recommend a minimum of 550 dps from your main weapon system for level 4s
this can be achieved with a t3 cruiser which is probably much better to use than a bs with 550 dps
A lot of small gains multiplied together can give big results. sure surgical strike is only 4% per level, but lv5 vs lv 0 is a 25% dps difference. On the tempest each level of battleship gives 7.5% rof and 5% damage, so having a high level bs skill is big. There are also damage implants, the 3% versions should be ~20mil, and when you get going upgrading to the 5% versions is a nice boost on top. That and fit some gryostabs, the first one is +10% damage 10.5% rof and you can upgrade to faction which give another 2% damage, adding more gyros hits some stacking penalties but even a 4th gryo is worth 5% over all dps.
Pretty much all my BS setups do 1000+ dps. Max skills, 4 or even 5 damage mods, faction or t2 ammo, and implants all work together to max DPS. I’d probably suggest a minimum of 500 dps for lv4s, with a suggested around 700. they are doable with 300, but it just takes so long with low damage I’m not sure it’s worth it. You also have to consider application, blaster kronos can do some serious dps, but it only works well in a few missions because the range is so short. The mach has great damage, a lot of falloff, and the mobility that it can move around to apply that dps. Missile ships can put out good damage, but if you are using fury missiles with no application mods or rigs, you won’t be hitting most targets for good damage.
This is a pretty standard mach fit on a tempest, eft says 1047 dps with max skills, that can upgrade to 1157 with the two 5% damage implants in slots 9/10, and then up to 1223 dps with 3 faction 1 t2 damage mod and implants. If you can do missions in this upgrading to a mach will be a nice improvement. The main upgrade points on the mach are extra low slot, better warp speed, and more range thanks to the falloff bonus. This style fit more or less should work on a typhoon, just swap the gun stuff for missile stuff, and use the large drone bay to your advantage. Or you could move to a maelstrom and tank way more, but do a bit less damage.
[Tempest, Mini mach]
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Pith C-Type X-Large Shield Booster
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Heavy Electrochemical Capacitor Booster I, Cap Booster 800
500MN Cold-Gas Enduring Microwarpdrive
800mm Repeating Cannon II, Republic Fleet EMP L
800mm Repeating Cannon II, Republic Fleet EMP L
800mm Repeating Cannon II, Republic Fleet EMP L
800mm Repeating Cannon II, Republic Fleet EMP L
800mm Repeating Cannon II, Republic Fleet EMP L
800mm Repeating Cannon II, Republic Fleet EMP L
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
Large Projectile Ambit Extension II
Large Projectile Ambit Extension I
Large Processor Overclocking Unit I
Hammerhead II x5
Hobgoblin II x5
Hail L x3500
Republic Fleet EMP L x2280
It’s all in the support skills. You gotta train those up or your just cheating yourself. Sure it takes practically no time to get into a bs, but if you want to fly it well you need those support skills.
Thanks everyone for the advice. I will work on getting as many support skills trained as possible.
If I had to point to one single skill that would improve your DPS the most, it would be Minmatar Battleships. This skill will affect different Minmatar battleships in different ways, but for a Tempest, for every level of this skill that you train, you will improve your rate of fire for your guns by 7.5% and your DPS every time you hit your target by 5%. At level IV, this sill will improve your rate of fire by 30% and your DPS by 20%.
There are a variety of other skills that also help, and while each skill may only give a few percent for every level you train, those extra few percent from each skill gradually add up to a significant overall improvement.
The next point is how you fit the ship. Each main weapon system has some sort of module that directly boosts the DPS of that type of weapon, but these modules are all low slot modules. Projectile weapon DPS is boosted by Gyrostabiliser modules, laser weapon DPS is boosted by Heat Sinks, hybrid weapon DPS is boosted by Magnetic Field Stabilisers, missile DPS is boosted by Ballistic Control Systems and drone DPS is boosted by Drone Damage Amplifiers. You should try to fit several of the same module, appropriate to the type of weapon you are using. The catch here is that these are all low slot modules, so they compete with armour tanking modules for low slots. The more armour modules you fit, the less DPS boosting modules you will be able to fit. These modules do not come in different sizes, there are no small, medium or large gyrostabilisers, the same gyrostabiliser that can fit in a frigate also fits in a battleship. There are meta versions of these modules which give different levels of boost to DPS and have different CPU/Power Grid fitting requirements, but any gyrostabiliser will work in any ship that is fitted with projectile weapons.
These DPS boosting modules suffer from “stacking penalties”. The more of them you fit to a ship, the less boost each extra module will give to the DPS. Four of them is generally the upper limit. You can fit more then four, but the extra DPS from a 5th or 6th module will be so small it’s generally not worth fitting more than four of them.
And that brings us to the issue of tank fitting. The more DPS modules you fit to the low slots, the less armour modules you can fit to the low slots. Without knowing your skill levels or how you’ve fitted your Tempest, I suspect here is where you are losing DPS. You’ve probably used so many armour modules in your low slots that you don’t have enough free low slots left to stack a reasonable number of DPS modules.
The first option is a shield tank, such as the one Chainsaw posted, which leaves your low slots free for DPS modules.
If you really want to armour tank a Tempest, I personally don’t recommend using armour plates for PVE. I do recommend improving your armour resistance skills and using modules that increase your armour resistance, meaning whatever is shooting at you has to throw more DPS at you to grind through your armour. Rather than try to write my own essay on armour tanking and the skills and modules involved, here’s an Eve-University article on the topic. https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Armor_Tanking_101
One point to keep in mind is that there are “rigs” (a special type of module) that improve your armour and can be used as substitutes for some low slot armour modules, to free up low slots for DPS modules. Unlike regular modules, a rig is “destroyed” when it is removed from a slot on a ship, so select rigs that you expect to leave fitted to the ship for a long time, and use low slots for modules that you expect to swap regularly, such as resistance modules specific to the NPC rats you are expecting to fight in a mission.
I also like flying turrets mostly. Since you say that an armor tank would do better in the space that you live in I assume that you are fighting Sansha’s Nation. I also live in that space and have some fittings available publicly in Osmium for the kind of ship that I like flying.
This Maelstrom will get me some 680 DPS. In a better-skilled character it will do more damage. It is meant to be positioned at a distance from the rats (~70 km) and kill them from there as they fly towards you using both artillery and sentry drones. The ship should take little damage if positioned correctly.
Note that I have shield-tanked that ship. The Maelstrom has a bonus towards shield boosting that you are better off using.
If you prefer something more dynamic and closer-range, I recommend this Machariel. You orbit with your afterburner at 25 km and destroy the battleships. You must burn away from the rats or orbit without afterburner at a higher distance to kill frigates.
Another alternative is to go for a smaller ship, such as this Hurricane, and orbit the rats at 25 km with afterburner, similar to the Machariel above.
I haven’t tried yet with different turret types, but I have considered using lasers on ships such as this Nightmare, which I haven’t yet tested but should work well keeping range at about 40 km and minimizing transversal velocity.
You are clearly low on levels in important skills.
I get around 600dps from my Gnosis which can run most L4 missions (yes not AE bonus room, but the rest is fine).
One thing you can do is use EFT to model your setup and then right click on drones or turrets to show the skills affecting the damage output and then train up accordingly. Each skill level in most ships tends to add quite a lot of damage.
Have fun
Yikes. I tried lvl 4s in a battlecruiser with around 250 DPS once and couldn’t finish it: The mission had battleships with a tank I literally could not break with DPS that low. Sooner or later you’ll run into that problem, too.
As my personal rule of thumb, you’d not even try a mission lvl. if you can’t reach this kind of DPS:
Lvl. 1 missions: below 100 DPS
Lvl. 2 missions: 100-200 DPS minimum
Lvl. 3 missions: 200-300 DPS minimum
Lvl. 4 missions. 400 DPS minimum
And this is really generous, since many lvl. 4 missions can be a pain to run if you are below 500-600 DPS. 400 is just the minimum necessary to even be able to complete most of them.
Otherwise, just do what everyone else has been suggesting, and you should have no problems.
your gunnery skills are probably the bottleneck. you should be getting at least ~500 from T1 guns and ammo out of a BS. T2 guns and ammo are irrelevant when your only getting 250 dps from a BS.
Are you doing artillery Tempest? Yeah you get higher volleys but your dps drops massively unless you are running a Mach.
You should use auto-cannons.
Gunnery to 5 of course.
Rapid Fire, Surgical Strike should both at least be at lvl 4.
Also make sure you are applying the proper damage type to the specific rats you are missioning against.
Can you link your EveBoard?
Skill up t1 tempest(fleet issue is garbage) got highest dps among minmatar ships not even machariel(pirate hull) can match it in guns dps…
…it’s not her it’s you 