Look at this graphic. A marauder class ship is not an improvement but a special snowflake.
The machariel is a pirate faction ship and the top tier, well at least used to.
Back in 2013 CCP had a huge ship rebalance for all ships in EVE and this is how it was supposed to look like and for a while it did.
However the new graphic would look more like this:
itikursa > triglavian ships >>>>>>>> super capital ships >>> capital ships >> else
Bah. I didn’t even have the chance to hop on this thread before he saw the light!
The Vargur is a beast, and flying both, it’s superior to the Mach at most things except pure blitzing and cost. (Mach wins on pure fun, though, which is something worth seriously considering.)
The mach is king of smartbombing gatecamps.
And bumping AFK Orcas…
No more giant nullsec wars. Now Eve makes the news because of highsec ganks.
500 billion autopiloting to jita?!
wow…
loot fairy clubbed out a hard denial on that one.
Maybe he thought the orca still had an unscannable bay on it…
Still epicly stupid…wow…
that kill there might be worth a couple of “giant fights” of yore…
I think you are mixing PVP and PVE.
IMO marauders are not to be used with bastion. I mean, they can be fit with bastion, but it’s best to have them fit for non-bastion gameplay.
Now, comparing non-bastioned vargur and mach :
Let’s compare a vargur with AC, gist XTXLSB, MJD, core x500mn, and a mach with the same (vargur has bastion but offline)
I added with a TC to compare the effect.
Basically : same DPS, mach is better close, and around 30km the are the same, then vargur is slightly better. Mach wins for this one. With a TC, only the range changes: from 30 to 40km.
This does not consider tracking though, which is bonused for the vargur. So in many cases it will hit actually more .
However you can compare the base of the two :
So all in all : vargur is better when it comes to tank. Also ammo usage, and salvage/tractor but that is useless. Mach is better otherwise, better close range DPS, better mobility, better cost.
So yes IMO vargur is not that good. But its not THAT bad either, because its tracking bonus helps it move and shoot, its tank allows it to be much more aggressive, and the DPS bonus of the mach is neglected when it needs to use cap rigs, and invul mid, while the vargur can use DPS rig + TC mid, and still have better EHP/s. Worth the difference in price ? Dunno. Up to you.
Those ships are made for different roles and some of the advantages that OP mentions don’t work so well in practice. I mean, so what if Machariel has more powergrid? It needs it because it has 3 more turret slots and it still has more trouble fitting a full rack of 1400mm’s than a Vargur. More base HP also mostly doesn’t matter since Vargur has better resists profile, giving it better active tank even out of bastion. Sensor strength? Irrelevant for Vargur when it’s in bastion. Machariel excels at Lvl4 mission blitzing, but will struggle at tough Lvl4 Epic Arc missions like “Showtime” where Marauder’s tank won’t fail, or on missions with strong EWAR that bastion module can neutralize, such as Serpentis or Sansha versions of “Blockade”. And Machariel can’t solo C4/C5 sites. I would say that Marauders are well worth their money, once you are able to afford them.
Want to throw a brick that’s armed to the teeth into a combat zone? Get a Vargur
Feel the need to #gofast? Get a Mach
Basically… They are both completely different ships used for different roles and you can’t grab 5 stats off of both ships and say “X is better because of guns”. There are more factors in play for these 2 ships, even before factoring in playstyles and preferences. I personally liked my Marauders back in my mission days for some missions (or how I felt at the time) because you can just park them in a deadspace, pull the handbrake (bastion) and blap away.
Though if I felt the need to #gofast, out came the machariel and burner ships and fast I went.
I see where you are coming from. I used my Marauders in PvE for one major reason - EWAR resistance. Non-Angel EWAR can be pretty brutal and DPS lost to it fairly significant.
Angel EWAR is laughable for Battleships, so Machariel does not get major drawbacks in this regard in comparison to Vargur. Angel salvage also seems to totally suck in terms of ISK, so another major advantage of a marauder is lost right here.
What Vargur does better, though:
It can run a respectable permatank(vs Angels, Serps and Guris) with MJD+MWD fitted and be very very mobile within the mission spaces, yet also fairly relaxing, offering some leeway for when you are distracted for some reason. Its effective DPS in bastion mode, when omitting drones and regarding fitted modules(TCs in particular), isn’t too far off from Machariel btw.
I showed in the graph that after 30km it’s effective DPS, without TC and without bastion, is better than mach.(40km with a TC) Just from distance ; if you are moving (and a mach should be) you are even better applied DPS since better tracking. Out of bastion.
Anderson, sir, you cherry picked your argument by ignoring the biggest difference between the ships.
If we’re talking mission running, loot and salvage is significant chunk of profitable change – especially with Meta Shield Extender prices through the roof. And in Angel space, the rats come to you.
MWD to the heart of the blob. Pop bastion. Launch a Mobile Tractor Unit. Loot and salvage until the last red blip explodes and then MWD to the next part of the mission.
The Vargur kicks the pants out of the Mach for missioning profitability that way. Except, yes, it is a brick and the Mach is joy to fly by comparison. (Can’t blame anyone for picking it for that.)
I made a lot of data about mission running, and every time, even if loot and salvage look like a good part, it’s actually reducing the value of my time wrt LP income.
Of course if you are running for a bad corporation in a high truesec system, yes the loot+salvage will become better. But then the issue is, why do you do that ?
Ah, masochism, mostly.
I’m getting flashbacks of arguing with Liang…
Fair disclaimer to the OP, it’s been way too long since I dug deep into LP profitability beyond the same fuzzy Fuzzwork math that anyone else can do. Anderson may have my number.
If you like your money relatively on the now side, the Varg is still a fantastic ship. I’m fine being called baised here.
It’s not now, you need to move it to sell it.
Last time I checked, over several hours, going fast brought me ± 100M/h and ±100k LP/h, so around 300M/h from LP+raw isk, then adding fast loot I was around 100 more M/h. To direct orders, for very low volume to move.
I just made a few more missions to check the salvage+ loot (with alts and friends), and the values was … well correct in salvage(something like 20M in some missions), but just the time to undock a salvage ship, salvage and come back, to make it worth I would need to do all of that in less than 3min. Good luck when you are one j away…
I think you’re making my own point, Anderson. 
Loot + salvage as you blast through a mission in the Vargur, and no extra undock or jump required.
Does it add up against the Mach’s speed? Hard for me to say, honestly. I don’t doubt you keep better track of isk efficiency than I do.
I’d just be incredibly curious to see what your data would be if you tried flying the Vargur to its advantages, rather than ignoring Bastion, Tractor and Salvagers on it. (MWD/MJD to blob, loot while everything nearby explodes, reposition every 60 seconds if needed, ignore remaining loot when objective is complete.)
Could be a test that’s literally worth your time, sir.
could try, not sure. I have a few spare B to test.
Theres so much to both vessels its unreal. They hit the head on PvP IMHO.
In PvE:
The Vargur is an absolute beast, the most “jack of all trades” of all the marauders.
The Mach is an absolute beast also, the King of Smash and Grab.
You can look at stats on paper, those charts are sweet indeed, but practical application is king. If it doesn’t save you an entire volley, its not better.
If you’re running permatank in every mission you’re riding the slow bus. That’s not an insult if you’re there for the scenery. The thing about tank is that both ships have a huge gank tank, and the Vargur has way more actual tank. BUT, raw DPS is trash without the utilities that allow you to apply it. So you have to put a rather expensive tank on the Vargur to get it to really shine, so that you can have enough utility slots.
The machariel price is The cost of the BPC plus mineral cost. The BPC sellers have a huge influence on the price. When Vargur was revamped the Mach had been more expensive hust the previous month.
As far as salvaging slowing you down lootwise, it depends on if you know your missions. Blitzing them is the way to make the most ISK for sure, but you need to run burner missions also then. And what you do with the loot from missions is paramount. If you melt it down and build pirate faction ships with the bulk of the items you can turn an extra 50 mil profit right there.
2 completely different ships that can do similar things.
