FoH guide to EVE Online

[Manticore]

Originally Posted by Khorum

Gangs yeah, fleets not so much. Though I've been seeing them more and more in fleet actions lately (briefly lol).

clearly people are calling in their last reserves by now!

[Tolanin]

ravens are dumb to use in fleets, scorps are cheaper and infinitly more useful in fleets so other than just having no other ship theres no reason to bring a raven... in gangs they are ok depending on the mission and makeup of the gang, burn edens always used ravens to great effect in their small gank squads.

[TrooperEbonblade]

Sensor damps WILL break existing locks if it lowers your targeting range enough.

Fight Serpentis rats enough and you'll see it all the time.

[Faille]

Originally Posted by Xequecal

Wait, wait. Sensor dampeners don't break existing targeting locks? I'm pretty sure that's BS.

How would it be good, then? That sniper boat surely targeted everything he needed to target as soon as the engagement started, and if the damper doesn't break that lock at 100km he's still going to be able to pop it.

It is BS. Dampners will break already locked targets if you reduce their target range to below what their target is at.

[Dildo Faggins]

Arent Dampners stacking nerfed against sensor boosters? Makes them quite useless if someone has a pair of those, and a lot of snipers will.

[Faille]

Originally Posted by Dildo Faggins

Arent Dampners stacking nerfed against sensor boosters? Makes them quite useless if someone has a pair of those, and a lot of snipers will.

Yep, that's pretty much the defence against dampers, much like ecm have mods to guard against.

Boosters are applied first, followed by dampners which then suffer the stacking penalty on top.

Even though snipers will have boosters, they will also be at close to max range so even stacking penalised dampners will hurt them.

[Xequecal]

Originally Posted by Dildo Faggins

Arent Dampners stacking nerfed against sensor boosters? Makes them quite useless if someone has a pair of those, and a lot of snipers will.

They are, but that doesn't make them useless. If you damp a 100km sniper to say 60km, they lose a LOT of their effectiveness.

The big problem with dampeners is if your target doesn't have the counter fitted, it's basically deathtouch. The target can't do shit. You can't say that about any other module. ECM still lets you do stuff some percentage of the time, even without ECCM. Tracking disruptors still let you use NOS, command drones, and web/scramble targets.

Dampeners also function as poor man's ECM. Did you fall into a trap? Train your dampeners on the interceptor that's webbing you and suddenly they have a 1,000m lock range and a lock time measured in minutes, you'll easily get away.

Recon cruisers can abuse dampeners tremendously. Pilgrim with NOS and dampeners beats ANYTHING that doesn't have BOTH a sensor booster and 2+ Heavy NOS equipped. I'll see if I can dig up that video of the Pilgrim soloing a Megathron and two interceptors, he damped the Mega out of the fight, then sucked the interceptors dry one at a time and killed em with drones.

You can't even call in friends on a damp recon, since you aren't locking them they can just instantly recloak as soon as anyone else shows up. Even if you HAVE boosters, your friends better get there damn quick before you're out of cap and your boosters turn off.

[TrooperEbonblade]

How much difference is there between the 4 tech 2 drones?

I can use tech 2 Gallente drones, but they're so expensive compared to say Caldari drones. (Look up Hammerhead IIs vs. Vespa IIs)

On paper Hammerheads seem better in every way, which was a suprise to me, I assumed it was just damage type, but that's not the only difference.

Basically, is it worth me dropping another 12 mil on the Caldari Drone spec skill, or just suck it up and stick with Hammerhead IIs?

[Wodin]

Depends entirely on how much you plan to use them. I have all four trained up because I like having cheap T2 drones in throwaway Arbitrators and Vexors as they pack an absurd punch for their cost. You'll want Gallente and Minmatar for PvP(hardest hitting and fastest respectively) and everything else is gravy.

Seconding damps being very very powerful, btw. During fleet ops if I'm not in a dictor I'll usually be toodling around in a Celestis with RSDIIs. Total cost is maybe 6m isk and I can completely shut down two opposing ships without trouble.

[T-rex]

Originally Posted by TrooperEbonblade

How much difference is there between the 4 tech 2 drones?

I can use tech 2 Gallente drones, but they're so expensive compared to say Caldari drones. (Look up Hammerhead IIs vs. Vespa IIs)

On paper Hammerheads seem better in every way, which was a suprise to me, I assumed it was just damage type, but that's not the only difference.

Basically, is it worth me dropping another 12 mil on the Caldari Drone spec skill, or just suck it up and stick with Hammerhead IIs?

Pretty much Warrior IIs (Minmatar) are the best small drones. Other than that a combonation of Minmatar (best speed and tracking) and Gallente (best DPS) is what you want. I wouldn't use the other two unless you need that damage type for ratting, and then just get t1 who cares. The Amarr drones are really super terrible. Worse tracking, speed, and dps than Minmatar ones. I mean, come on.

[ZeckEQ]

Originally Posted by Tirinal

Serious players use Ravens in gangs?

Sometimes being outside of the norm is your advantage. Thats one of the great things about Eve combat, every fight you go into you have no idea what the other guy is bringing to the table.

[Khorum]

Originally Posted by TrooperEbonblade

How much difference is there between the 4 tech 2 drones?

I can use tech 2 Gallente drones, but they're so expensive compared to say Caldari drones. (Look up Hammerhead IIs vs. Vespa IIs)

On paper Hammerheads seem better in every way, which was a suprise to me, I assumed it was just damage type, but that's not the only difference.

Basically, is it worth me dropping another 12 mil on the Caldari Drone spec skill, or just suck it up and stick with Hammerhead IIs?

You want to be able to use gallente and minmatar T2 heavies eventually. Now getting the race drone spec to 5 may or may not be worthwhile for you for the extra 2% dps. Personally I only did Gallente Drones to 5 and kept minmatar at 4. Definitely want to be able to fly berserker2's in addition to just the workhorse ogre2's. Ultimately, most drone pilots use Ogre2's the VAST majority of the time, not just because of their ridiculous damage modifier, but because their weaknesses can be offset a little with drone mods.

If you live in the new regions you'll want to fly praetor2's too.

[Kazgrim]

oh sorry about the bad info on the damps and breaking target locks, I use them to great effectiveness but it seems that nobody else knows about their power, as nobody has ever hit me with them so I have to rely on 3rd hand info on that

That being said I just wanted to reiterate to the newer players that if you want to join an existing alliance instead of just mining in empire for months while you train there are more options than tackle bitch. Actually my alliance uses interceptors for tackle exclusively over newbs in T1 frigates, we put our newer guys in cheap ECM ships as we've found they are more effective for low sp pilots.

[gavinrad]

has anyone ever run level 2 missions in a battlecruiser? cause its kind of funny

[Erronius]

Originally Posted by gavinrad

has anyone ever run level 2 missions in a battlecruiser? cause its kind of funny

Yes, I did. Funny or no, for a new player with few SP, Lvl2s in a cruiser were doable - but I still lost a rupture and a stabber over the span of many, many missons. In fact, I think I was doing Lvl2s before I even had 1m SPs. The cost of a BC wasn't much more than a cruiser if you factor in the cost of having to replace an occasional cruiser.

I could have been 'hardcore' and insisted on using cruisers, but I didn't see the point when training for BCs was fairly quick nor did I think that losing a cruiser was worth being able to say "hey, I did Lvl 2s in nothing but cruisers".

I'm sure I would be able to use cruisers in Lvl 2s far better now that I have nearly 1m more SP (and a BC would be hellatious overkill), but at the time a BC was a good investment IMO. And I wasn't going to wait a month or two to train the skills needed to run a cruiser through lvl 2s with my eyes closed; I was more interested in moving on and the BC was much faster. I'm doing Lvl3s all in a BC atm; I might be able to do some level 4s in it but I am in no hurry, I'm only like 4 days from having large turrets ready so I can fit a BS. Then its back to WU/AWU, eng/elec5, and the skills for covops and Inties.