Posted - 2010.10.30 21:53:00 - [2]

 

3.5m sp, a bs should be the last thing on your mind. Having been in the game for more than a year i'd hope you know that by now.

Aside from that, you haven't explained what you'd use it for (ratting, plexing, roaming, gang pvp, fleet pvp, ship spinning, etc), but since you seem to want an answer anyhow...

no.

Posted - 2010.10.30 22:07:00 - [4]

 

Originally by: Hauler Darby

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What don't you understand about mining security? Just curious.

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What don't you understand about 3.5mil sp character in a battleship not being anything short of laughs on a lossmail?

Get your character into a cruiser or a bc at most. They can handle the rats and won't be so halariously harsh on your wallet when players show up.

Also, stealth bombers will be your primary concern in you're in a big nullbear system for mining. Frigates are the best counter there.

Posted - 2010.10.30 22:11:00 - [6]

 

If you're just fending off rats for your mining team, a Drake would probably suffice your needs. Good training speed, no need to train smaller weapon systems (unlike guns), and minimal skill time to get a Rat-worthy passive tank. Fending off other players with it like this tho will likely get you killed, but if you're just securing them from rats it should suffice.

If you insist on a BS, a raven (for missiles) is good. Or a mega (for guns) would probably work, but you'll have to invest more training time since large guns require you to train through the smaller guns first.

Resisted the urge to say domi, since your drone skill are admittedly lacking, but if you wanna provide some logistics for your miners on the cheap as a long term goal, would probably be a good bet too

Posted - 2010.10.30 23:47:00 - [8]

 

Edited by: Hauler Darby on 30/10/2010 23:53:15
Ok, I didn't want to have to tell the rest of the story because most of it is irrelevant, but . . .

I'm not asking if it can be done, because I'm already doing the job with another 3.5 mil SP character, and she's happy and healthy, thank you very much. She has two strikes against her, though. First, she's a dedicated refiner with barely enough SPs for a Heavy Missile Scorpion. Second, she's on the same account as my second hulk pilot, who has no combat skills at all. So, if I switch the refiner for the Hulk pilot, I'll be ratting, not mining.

The reason is that my main security comes from my other Hulk pilot, who has 5 mil SPs and barely enough of them are combat skills for a Cruise Missile Raven. He's doing security full time now, and I need him back in a Hulk.

The only person left is the hauler.

As to Drakes, I love them to death, but I've tried them and they can't take the damage with the skills I have. Basically, if they draw aggro, they have to leave. The BSs can tank the damage for long enough to decide on flight or fight.

As I said, I'm not interested in fits. I know how to use EFT and, more importantly, what works for me.

The goal is to have both Hulk pilots flying Hulks again, and the hauler switching back and forth between his Iteron V and an unspecified BS. The refiner's Scorpion will be in the POS in case she's needed, but, naturally, she will be logged off until then.

Now, back to the original question. Which BS do you suggest and why?

Edit: read the above again, and two more comments.
1. Again, no faction or T2. The ships are expendable so I'm not going to waste money on them.

2. Again, he has a few Gunnery skills, but absolutely no missile skills.

Posted - 2010.10.31 00:19:00 - [10]

 

I know its not what you asked for, but you could always train up for some interceptor real quick.

Draw aggro, and just run in circles while your miner can do its thing. Should work with a fast t1 frigate as well with minimal time investment, probably even more effective than a badly trained BS, and doubles as a scout.

Posted - 2010.10.31 00:53:00 - [12]

 

Edited by: Hauler Darby on 31/10/2010 01:45:36
Edit: Response removed.

Posted - 2010.10.31 04:09:00 - [14]

 

From what I gather, you are Caldari, will be mining in 0.0 space, using (3) low SP toons.

I would suggest using the Scorpion, armour tank it best as you can in the lows, with a shield booster and ECM in the mids.
It seems your plan is to just hold the rats long enough to get your hulks out of danger. Know that, if you are in the belt when the rats show up, they will target your hulks before they target the BS (normally). You could then use the ECM to break the locks (while warping the hulks to safety).

Also know that, if you are using your hauler to also tank rats, he is stuck there until your miners safe up, but when the "tanker" goes to switch to being the "hauler" and goes back to the belt, the rats will be waiting.

I would suggest one toon to be your (semi)permanent tanker/ratter, and your two hulk pilots cross train as haulers. When needed, one hulk pilot docks up, comes back with the hauler, when all the ore has been moved he comes back in the hulk.
That keeps the rats at bay, keeps one hulk mining continuously and gets your ore to station in a safer fashion. I would suggest that this would be far more efficient than warping your miners out every time rats show up (hoping they target your "expendable" BS first, which is unlikely), and then trying to come back for your ore in a hauler some time later.

If you go that route, I would then suggest you look at a Rokh, mainly because even with low BS skills you get resist bonuses (5%/level) and it uses guns. More expensive, but if you train the pilot up, it is less likely you'll lose it to belt rats (gankers/hot droppers is a whole other situation though).

Posted - 2010.10.31 06:45:00 - [16]

 

i'm sorry but I have to agree with others. If you cant tank it in a drake tanking it in a raven is 100m+ just asking to be lost. I'm relatively new to caldari ships (rolled a new alt to dual box missions with my amarr main) and hes in his drake. Has around the same sp as you guy and hes tanking a good 400 dps (i have one hardener offlined and 2 Invun II atm as traning fit skills). I highly doubt you'll get enough rats in a single belt to overwhelm that.

I've read many forum posts of people "rushing" to the raven and ending up throwing alot of isk away because they dont have the skills to fly it properly. Drake is what 20mil fit so if you lose it no biggy raven to fit is 100m easy thats alot more mining to make that back. Do the math be smart. Drake takes very little time to be tank ready compared to what it takes to get the raven tank ready.

Posted - 2010.10.31 07:15:00 - [18]

 

Edited by: Motamiter on 31/10/2010 07:26:14
I would advise op to go for a Dominix.

Single repper T1 fitted cap stable dominix can safely tank all you need and kill all you want in this situation. Plus its definetly not skill intensive, nor do you need to train for missile/gunnery skills just drone skills. It can also fit its high slots with MinerIIs and field full miner drones while not killing rats to help you mine! Hell, it can still mine while its drones kills the rats :P


the only skills you need to reach are:
Gallent Frigate 4
Gallent Cruiser 4
Gallent BS 1
Drones 5
Scout Drone operation 1
Heavy Drone OP 1
Jury rigging 1
Energy Grid upgrades 1
Electronics 3
Hull upgrades 3


and here's an example fit:
[Dominix, WTF am I?! Mk2]
Rat specific Hardner I
Rat Specific Hardner II
Rat Specific Hardner III
1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Expanded Cargohold II
Large 'Accommodation' Vestment Reconstructer I

Cap Recharger I
Cap Recharger I
Cap Recharger I
Cap Recharger I
Cap Recharger I

Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II

Large Capacitor Control Circuit I
Large Capacitor Control Circuit I
Large Capacitor Control Circuit I


Ogre I x5
Hobgoblin I x5
Mining drone I x5


Sure beats all the other options I see so far.

You can swap the armor plates and cargo expanders out for 2 capacitor power relays and another repper if you feel unsafe...but heck I would even fit 2 more cargo expanders in place of armor plates so I don't have to eject the ores that often.

Posted - 2010.10.31 08:41:00 - [20]

 

Edited by: Hauler Darby on 31/10/2010 08:51:13
Thanks for the input Motamiter. That sounds doable. However, drones are contra-indicated because I can't seem to control them well enough to keep them from screwing up the chaining. For now at least they stay in the hanger. I'm not sure skill training will fix that.

Posted - 2010.10.31 17:46:00 - [22]

 

Edited by: Hauler Darby on 31/10/2010 18:01:42
Sorry, but no apologies for the WOT. Read it if you like. Otherwise, don't.

This certainly is a friendly place but I'm not sure about it's usefulness. I'm left wondering if I'd asked for advice on an Industrial for moving chicken manure it would have p****d off so many people if I'd rejected the Drake option. I used to really like that ship, but it scares me now. Apparently it rots your brain out after some unspecified amount of use. I considered fire-saleing every Caldari ship I have in order to avoid this, but my Heavy Missile Scorpions are just too good at what they do.

Yes, Heavy Missile Scorpions. Why do I fly them? Because the pilot needs another few days of training to move up to a better ship and better weapons. It doesn't appear that any of you have ever had that problem. I'd ask how you avoided it, but . . . . The other problem with that character is that she's my refiner, and currently working on Scrap Metal Processing on an account with two other active characters. (No, I'm not going to even consider cutting back on the number of characters I use.) She needs to spend as much training time on her primary function as possible. Upgrading her rat protection skills is not a priority.

Anyway, I kind of thought that, if I stated the problem parameters carefully, and gave some hints on the type of solution I was looking for, this would be easy. I think I will have to reserve that approach for places where people have better reading comprehension.

Seriously, it appears to me that only two, maybe three people even bothered to read the description of the situation. Also, the situation as stated is not some flight of fantasy. I'm mining there now, and haven't lost any ships yet, but that isn't the problem. The problem is still that I can only use one of my Hulk pilots because the other one has to keep the rats under control.

How I handle rats is not up for discussion. Suffice it to say that it works for me. If you do it a different way, fine, but I have no reason to change the way I do it. I wouldn't even consider asking any of you to try my way. Most of you don't seem to feel the same restraint.

Another item stated near the top is that these characters are miners, and will stay miners. They will never fly any T2 ships other than Hulks. Also they're not in the belts to play with the rats. They're there to mine. That's another reason why I'm not seriously considering Interceptors and mining BSs at this time.

As an aside, I have tried a mining Rokh and was quite satisfied with it except that, although they can outmine Retrievers at fairly low skill levels, they can't outmine Hulks at all.

Edit: I almost forgot this part. I don't know where you've all been for the last few months, but rats change aggro on the fly now, and they don't always attack the Hulks first. I've been mining from the same spot for a few days and they seem to have zeroed in on it. The first appearances were 70-80 km away. Now they drop right into the middle of my mining group and aggro the Raven first about 60% of the time. Sometimes I don't even warp the Iteron and Hulk out.

Nearly finally, many of you have mentioned skills, but you don't seem to understand that those who don't have the same skills you do will have greater difficulty doing some of the things that are easy for you. Someone mentioned a 'no skills' Drake that can apparently tank rats very well. Well, as stated above, that isn't exactly what I'm trying to do.

But finally, the problem is resolved to my satisfaction. When it became obvious that I wasn't going to get any responses that would be useful to me, I dropped back to the tried and true 'dart board' method, and apparently the gods favor the Abbadon today. Training is in progress as we speak.

So, once again, thank you for your input, even though I would have appreciated it if you had kept a lot of it to yourselves.

As far as I'm concerned this is the official

END OF THREAD

Posted - 2010.10.31 18:18:00 - [24]

 

Having a mining support ship - even focused on defense more than mining without realizing the benefits of leadership skills and mind-links is a waste...

Since any BC can practically fend off belt rats, and a Drake is already within your toon's skillset, choose a drake...probably the most user friendly, skill-friendly BC out there for most rats. Why not a HAC/BS/or whatever else? Cause those BCs have 8 highs and usually no more than 7 guns/launchers for a reason u fools...

Do it right, then...something along these lines -

Quote:

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[Drake, Drake - HML - Mining Mindlink]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Damage Control II
Beta Reactor Control: Diagnostic System I

Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
Large Shield Extender II
Heat Dissipation Amplifier II
Kinetic Deflection Amplifier II
Invulnerability Field II
Ballistic Deflection Field II

XR-3200 Heavy Missile Bay, Scourge Heavy Missile
XR-3200 Heavy Missile Bay, Scourge Heavy Missile
XR-3200 Heavy Missile Bay, Scourge Heavy Missile
XR-3200 Heavy Missile Bay, Scourge Heavy Missile
XR-3200 Heavy Missile Bay, Scourge Heavy Missile
XR-3200 Heavy Missile Bay, Scourge Heavy Missile
XR-3200 Heavy Missile Bay, Scourge Heavy Missile
Mining Foreman Link - Laser Optimization

Medium Core Defence Field Extender I
Medium Core Defence Field Extender I
Medium Core Defence Field Extender I


Hobgoblin II x5

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yes, it's not perfected, I've just thrown the modules together in a couple of minutes, but TRUST me, it will make a diff, since 98% of your time in the belts (in between rats spawing) you will be doing NOTHING...why not provide a boost to the fleet?

Yes, it takes some time to get to mining links etc, but it's SP well spend for a miner's alt - unlike going for a mining domi + it's support skills etc...eventually those skills will be used in Orcas or other more efficient mining support vessels. If you cannot see the benefits, too bad.

Posted - 2010.10.31 22:32:00 - [26]

 

Hauler, don't you have faction tanks on ur hulks?

rat specific rigs
completely faction fit shield tanks / Faction hardners/shield booster/amplifer<<< Used to cost like around 70mill for the mods back in the day.

mining upgrades in lows ( I stuck 1 mining upgrade and 1 warp core stab)

If you have 2 hulks with faction tanks spliting the aggro....it should be a piece of cake.
Then no need for a tank. Just keep drones with you incase of scram.

You'll need good shield skills. The rats shouldn't bother your hulks. Unless they jam, then I'd suggest a dedicated belt tank or moving to a new area.

This way your hulks can stay hulks and no crosstraining needed.

Posted - 2010.10.31 23:00:00 - [28]

 

I don't always derp, but when I do, I herp a derp.

8/10

Posted - 2010.10.31 23:56:00 - [30]

 

Originally by: Yuki Kulotsuki

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I don't always derp, but when I do, I herp a derp.

8/10

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+1 internets