What battleship to plan for?

Hello,

I haven’t played in like 6ish years so I decided to not play my “main” from back in the day and made a new guy. I’m wanting to spec in drones starting out in this fresh start existence. I’m going to work out a skill plan and build towards being able to “okay” fly a standard drone battleship in the next 4-6 months that can do that lvl 4 mission life.

My question is, do you guys think I should try and do a Dominix or an Armageddon as a drone mission boat in this plan. My sps are extremely low so whatever I can get into the fastest matters the most but also am slightly valuing what mission ships I can get into after the initial standard battleship.

I’m personally leaning towards the Dominix because I feel its a stepping stone into Rattlesnake life which seems to be the mega standard for drone missioning. I also am leaning towards gallente ships because I feel like the Myrmidon might be a better lvl 3 mission boat than a prophecy? (matters because I’ll be doing a lot of lvl 3 missions while I skill up for 4’s) Would love your guys opinions and thank you for your time.

Fly dangerously out there broskis o7

Praxis ftw!
Honestly, it’s quite cheap, needs less skills, and offers a versatile slot set. Drone bay is ok, it’s not a Domi, but still it can carry and deploy some heavy drones.
So for a start, give the Praxis a try.

I’d say aim for the rattle.

Don’t run in SoE hubs LOL.

Start with a sniping domi with a MJD that will carry you through to being able to fly something that can actually run level 4s well.

That being said drones while a great supplementary skill are a bit of a dead end on the PVE front.

If you want to run level 4s we’ll then you will want a macharial or a marauder for blitzing. Macharial best. Of the marauders the Kronos is one of the worst so gallente BS skills are again a bit of a dead end, with the exception that hyperions are great fun for pvp so you will use them eventually.

Til they ■■■■ up the ishtar, its great for afk L3s

I love me the ish.

In the time it takes you to be in an Ishtar you can be in a BS doing level 4s.

That being said HACs are very useful for when you set aside pve.

True, but for better isk comparison, we at the USIA figured blitzing l3s is much quicker than l4s for raising standings

There’s something else that has to be raised to fly a T2 HAC …

I also caution against flying expensive hulls with poor core skills. Reaching the minimum requirements is not necessarily the same as having the skills for protecting your investment.

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Thank you for your replies (all of them). I have a 2nd account that follows behind and salvages everything, in a destroyer atm but going to be upgrading to a noctis soon. I’m probably going to kill everything in a mission so I always loot / salvage instead of blitzing for pure lp. I was leaning more towards rattlesnake for my extreme long term goal instead of a machariel.

Do you still recommend a machariel as my long term goal when I get all the core skills trained up even if I want to loot everything with a 2nd account following behind?

Also maybe I should switch to Caldari ships and use missiles while I build up my skils intead of Gallente and drones if I want to be using a Rattlesnake. thoughts?

It depends, if you are running the missions purely to earn isk which you can do more exciting things with then you will want to blitz and yes the macharial is king.

If you are doing the missions because you genuinely enjoy them and doing full clears then you will want to get into a marauder. Paladin has the perfect balance of DPS to range if you ask me but like the Kronos it’s limited damage types is a problem vs certain factions. Golem and vargur will let you fight any mission faction effectively. However perhaps slightly less efficient cost wise in ammo.

I don’t recommend you salvage drones missions. Drone salvage is terrible. I also recommend you limit looting to serpentis and angel missions. The reason being you can get loot from them that is 4 mil a pop and two or three of them in a single mission is a nice boost to earnings.

If you still want to salvage everything then you should understand that the MTU paints a target on you. They are easy to scan down and you know that if you scan a mission via MTUs then you are almost guaranteed to scan down a ship that is staying still for a good period of time so it is usually the place to start. If you follow along behind in a noctis again you are putting both ships at risk by not giving your full attention with either. It really should only be something you do if you for some reason are interested in it.

The rattlesnake while not being the best level four boat can actually do some level 5s so will give you somewhere to go with your PVE that is slightly more thrilling than high sec.

Awesome info man! I think I might do the rattlesnake route. I just don’t know if caldari missile boats or gallente drones would be the best to focus on while I approach that rattlesnake life.

If you’re keeping a long-term plan in mind, someday you will outgrow battleships and be ready for caps and drones are where it’s at for capital ratting. A standard carrier does 3k dps and a supercarrier does about 20k.

If you’re going with the Rattlesnake then training both missiles and drones makes sense and even with T1 missiles you’ll still get over 1000 dps with the rattle if you’re using T2 drones, so it’s not necessary to put a massive amount of time into training both weapon systems.

To answer your OP, I’d say Domi, then Ishtar, then Rattlesnake once you’ve got some missile skills, then someday you’ll be in a better position for carrier compared to having trained large guns to fly a mach like some have suggested.

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