Anomaly (1-2), Cargo and Recon (1-3) can all be run with a shield buffer Hecate. In propulsion mode it has a super insane align time so it literally starts and stops on a dime.
Pirate and Assault can be run with anything that sports a MJD. There’s also a way to ‘cheat’ some of the missions with the MJD and acceleration gates, so the MJD can potentially be even faster than a MWD for getting between rooms. This tends to lend itself more to Marauders as they have the MJD cooldown bonus.
Well Cargo, Recon 1-2, and Anomaly 2 can be run with any fast frigate. I currently use an interceptor but, frankly, a T1 Atron does those missions almost as fast. Those aren’t the kinds of missions I’d normally expect anybody to use the Mach for to begin with (though it is good for Anomaly 1 and Recon 3). Though between a Hecate and interceptor, I still think the interceptor is faster due to it’s greater warp AND sub-warp speeds. I don’t think saving 1 second on the align time would overcome those advantages.
To efficiently run all of the blitzable L4s you need both a fast frigate (or destroyer) to run the missions that don’t require combat and a larger ship for the missions that require you to shoot a specific target. In the debate between a Mach and marauder, it’s really only the latter category that are in question since you don’t use larger ships for the former category anyway.
The Hecate is faster. The insane inertia allows it to stop on a dime which means you don’t bounce off objectives when MWD’ing to them.
Yeah, that seems possible. I’ll give it a shot in place of my interceptor for those missions.
You can also configure the Hecate with Blasters to shoot the Pressure Silos in Anomaly 1. Just swap out a small shield extender for a medium version for Recon 2 and temporarily deactivate the guns.
All you need for tank is a DC, an EM and thermal amplifier and a medium shield extender.
I doubt the hecate beats the warp speed dramiel. which has faster prop mod speed, warp speed, and better align time. And sure you can blitz them, but most of those missions don’t pay enough that they are worth running even in a warp speed dram, if you can run burners.
My AC armor mach lost ~50 dps, and gained a few km of falloff thanks to the extra tracking comp. My arty shield mach just gets used to blitz Dread Pirate, so adding a sensor booster helps a little.
The AC shield mach looks like it should still work pretty well, just fitting gets very tight unless you spend a bunch on faction mods to free up some CPU. Could probably play with it a bit more to get a more reasonable fit. Loses ~1km fall off but gains a little optimal so not sure there’s much of a change there anyways.
The Dramiel dosn’t have enough tank for Recon 3, but I guess if you don’t run that mission anyway it’s somewhat moot. I just like the fact that I can run 6 missions that I consider “blitzable” with a single ship/configuration.
The vast majority of missions I run are 0-1 jumps (with a max of 2) so warp speed is not mission critical. I find that anything over 4 AU/s is usually more than sufficient. I wasn’t finding that the Machariel was blitzing or clearing faster than anything else, and that if anything it was performing poorer post change.
last time I tried it worked fine. If I remember right it gets to ~1/2 shields, it’s so fast it only takes the first hit or two.
Can fit a damage control, medium shield extender, Em ward, and an invlun, plenty of tank.
and kinda agree on the warp speed, I’m tempted to rip out my slot 6 warp speed implant and try a 5% small turret damage, but that would mostly be for laughs to see what kind of max DD damage I could get. Probably not worth it being realistic. no idea what difference the 5% cap implant would make though, or maybe 5% speed?
I think it would definitely help with Burners.
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