You were right. I went into game when I got home from work and I am pulling 509 DPS even without the turret. 530 with it. After that I opened the Neocom app on my phone again and magically it starting reporting correctly, LOL. It’s like it’s not totally synced with my toon in real time or something. Anyway, thanks for you help and everyone else as well.
Quick Drone Link Augmentor II question: I see the control range bonus is 24,000m. Am I correct to understand that means I can rat at 44,000m away with that module fitted, since 20,000 is the standard drone control range?
See now that’s the thing I don’t get. The Eve University page on drones says that default drone control range is 20,000m. If I put a Drone Linke Augmentor II on, that increases it to 44,000m. Unless you’re saying that the default 20,000m is adjustable by skilling.
You are making quite a lot of mistakes. I have been flying Gallente since I started and still do even though I fly all ships now. So let me point out some things to you when making ship fits, especially for active armor.
You do not need 100% cap stability. Aim for about 4-8 (around 5-6 is best) minutes of cap stability with everything running, then turn off your armor rep(s). With the reps are off you should have full cap stability. You do not rep all the time, you rep only when taking a lot of damage.
You use a ton of cap recharging stuff to get stable cap. This is wrong and doesn’t work out the way you think it does in this game. To recharge cap you need primarily volume, then maybe a single recharger. So get rid of your recharging rigs and all that, and fit just 1 +20% cap volume rig and see the difference. Also fit 1x Large Pb Acid battery, or if you can’t fit it due to lack of PG/CPU then medium T2 cap battery. Capacitor Batteries give you more cap regen then rechargers. I know, its stupid, but that’s how the game works.
Unfortunately you need more skills, train up your medium drone specializations to 4 and your heavy drones to at least 3. Forget light and sentry drones. You can kill frigates with mediums very easy if you fit correctly, even heavies but that takes a bit too long because they will miss.
There is a huge, gigantic difference between max possible (theoretical) DPS from the simulator, and actual applied DPS. Often times you will not even do half of what you see on the simulator if not fit and played correctly.
Drone tracking: You need to have 1.3k+ on drone tracking to be able to hit small very fast moving elite frigates, 1.1k for the regular ones. Need around 900ish for destroyers, 800ish for cruisers and battlecruisers and battleships you do not need to worry about. You can find your drone tracking on the simulator, activate all your tracking modules etc, then with them active click “show info” from drone management box and scroll down in attributes to check their tracking.
Your drone movement speed is extremely important, the faster they are the easier to control and the less damage they take and of course get to and from their targets faster, so always have 1 drone movement speed module or rig, or your ship needs to have it in hull bonus.
Forget the shield VNIs. Those fits are optimal for AFKers and bots, operating in groups of 3-10 per anom and looking for minimum price per ship loss, not performance or gameplay. Seriously. You can use it if you want, but its not a good fir for an actual actively playing player. You get a ton more out of a VNI using armor because you free up your mid slots.
On a VNI, 100MN afterburner is most effective, use the 100 MN Compact if powergrid or CPU are issues. Thing to note is that your alignment time will skyrocket to the point that it will be difficult to keep tight orbits. If you orbit you need to use around 15-20 km orbits to not get hit, If you have a lot of Battleships, you can tighten it up and go lower to get under guns but watch your speed, don’t let it drop below around 700. You will take a bit of damage but can comfortably repair, just a single rep every once in a while, not all the time.
Because of the way drone movement and tracking works out, you are best using Gallente drones for DPS and Minmatar drones for tracking and movement. So you want to carry 1 flight of Ogres, 1 flight of Hammerheads and 1 flight of Valkyries. the Valkyries is what you will use for the extra small and fast targets, Ogres and Hammerheads will be your bread and butter. You can replace them for the Amarr drones, only if you specifically need EM damage, and forget the Caldari drones.
This here is a picture of my VNI, its not even that high DPS, I can get a VNI fitted to 1150+ but that gets too pricey for me and my wallet so I don’t, + I took it on wrong implants, not in a drone clone currently. Also I won’t be able to actually apply that DPS to my targets. The fit will only be usable against cruiser+ size targets, it will have too much trouble with frigates and destroyers.
This VNI has about 4 minutes of armor rep on it. And its all I need, if you are inexperienced, you may need a bit more. Note its speed and alignment time with the 100 MN afterburner.
This is with all level 5 skills. If you lack the CPU, then scale down the Drone Link Augmentor and Drone Navigation Computer from T2 down to T1, and the AB from faction or T2 down to T1 Compact 100. This also has a large cap battery, if you can’t fit a large, you can check if you can fit a large faction (Thukker) but thats pricey, or go down to T2 medium. Again, batteries give you better cap regen then rechargers.
Note that I use autocannons on it as my secondary, just to plink small targets, instead of hybrids. Thats because autocannons don’t use any cap and can equip all damage types ammo and don’t need any additional tracking, they hit just fine by themselves, unlike hybrid or laser turrets. I put a targeting comp in there just for the passive bonus, not the active, but you can put whatever you like there, tractor beam, probe launcher, leave empty, whatever.
Your implants should help you a bit too. I highly recommend you get the cap volume and cap recharge implants, then ship agility, then armor. Do not use turret or missle implants for drone pilot and drone ships. You can have different implant sets on different clones and clone jump into them, even in the same station.
So VNIs are actually really powerful and flexible ships, you just have to get the skills for them and fit them right.
LOL, aaa dang, my bad, my bad, still, I’ll leave this here just cause there are quite a few new, returning, or newish players (switching roles from indy etc.) that have these sort of questions.
