My buddy and I are getting tired of doing cruiser/frigate roams. We’d thought we go back to classics and do some battleship roams. I would like to see what y’all could theorize on a good duo comp that good hold its own against small gangs.
He likes using the Raven, but honestly we’re both open to any ideas and ship.
What do you guys think would be a good duo? Yes we know one of us could go scout/tacke in a ceptor or something… but we’re kind of looking to take on big fights/gangs.
The problem is there aren’t really any two battleships that have some magic multiplicative effect on eachother. Any two battleships would be good because battleships are big beefy strongbois.
From watching videos and playing with eft I think the magic number is 1000. Try to get at least 1000 dps, 1000 dps tank, and 1000 m/s for the best performance. Those are bare minimums. Go with the ships that have an active tank bonus like maelstrom and hyperion. Use faction heavy neuts to get dank neut range. Use 3200 boosters and have an alt in a hauler carrying extras. Cargo expanders are really good on solo/duo battleships–most people don’t think of this. 3200s are hella bigly. Hyperspatial optimizers are common too. Stasis grappler/webs are an absolute must.
Basically fit them out like solo pvp battleships and they’ll be even better as a duo. You could do some weird spider tanking setup but I don’t think they’re that great because you have to make sacrifices. You need more ships for spider/tinker tanking to be good.
Battleships were kind of bad for the longest time. I think in the last year or so they got buffs across the board, particularly with speed and cargo space. People are starting to fly them more now but it’s a ship category where people have much less experience (in small gang at least, they’ve long been popular in fleets). Most of the battleships I see are buffer tanked/MJD/torpedo fits. Those are really popular right now–you could do two of those and probably find plenty of success. If you had created a post about duo cruisers you would have already gotten a hundred replies. Don’t let that discourage you though. Battleships are amazing and you will earn street clout for flying them.
I guess it really depends since battleships wont be out maneuvering the smaller gangs which means alot of the time they will get numbers to take you on.
Bhaalgorn wouldn’t be bad for one of the ships with neut/nos and web bonuses it will definitely help fight off the smaller faster ships no problem.
Leshak and nestors have bonuses to remote reps which could be handy for staying on grid longer, and of course Leshak DPS when ramped up is insane.
Domis with the bonuses for drones makes engaging any size target easier, fly a pair with neuts on both and you’ll chew through ships quickly
Hyperions are good self reppers which could work for you since its just the 2 of you, blaster DPS is great on them but of course you need to get in range.
Typhoons are decent missile boats with a utility high on them, i prefer them over Ravens only because Ravens are bonused more for range where the typhoon gets a small bonus to application with torps and cruise
Just a few ideas i could think of off the top of my head. Hope it helps
…and now that I thought about it some more, leshaks also like to partner up if they are fit this way.
However, there are many combinations where battleships can partner up. The Dominix would be a cheaper duo, since it has no gun bonus and you have 6 high slots to play with.
I’ve dicked with leshaks a lot in EFT and the spider tank leaves a lot to be desired. It has a bonus to range and cap usage but not amount. I think you’d be better off with 2 solo fit leshaks because then you can have neuts.
I can’t get good numbers out of the dominix at all. Seems pretty bad for pvp outside of certain specific cases. I mean… it’s not that it’s bad, but compare the speed, tank, dps to something like a hyperion and it’s just not even in the same class. Though you can get a TON of utility out of a domi.
Might sound like a weird idea, but it’s still a valid one:
Two battleships with lots of high, medium and lowslots.
Smartbombs benefit from bigger hulls, so you might want to consider that as well.
High you fill with smartbombs.
Medium with tank against your smartbomb damage type and maybe a target breaker, just in case.
Lows you fill with warp core stabs.
Rigs you fill either for aligntime and tank, or just additional tank.
Fit cloaks for flavour and or combat probes, if you want to.
Two roaming disco battleships aren’t much, of course, but it’s a start.
Thanks to your stabs most people will be having a hard time pinning you.
It’s useful for the usual gate camping or, much better, interfering with other people’s fights.
That would be possible with other weapon systems of course, but this is a different kind of fun.
I gotta dig out the story of the first known lowsec smartbomb warrior … (i write “warrior” because it’s part of the often forgotten legends of EVE ONLINE)
