In 12 days, I will have been a capsuleer for 1 year. In 12 days, I will be able to fly HAC's [Just a coincidence]. In the mean time, I've learned how to fly several t2 frigates, including interceptors, stealth bombers, covert ops, and assault ships.I thought stealth bombers were OK, but they're definitely a gang ship, especially now that they use torps. I still need to do about 500k of missile skilling before I'm willing to actually use them in combat.
Covert ops, kinda cool, but I'm not that great at probing. Next...
Assault ships. God, I love my assault ships, once I get in under the target's guns, the only thing that can hurt me are their drones. Once those are down, it's just a matter of keeping up my transversal with an AB.
The Enyo is currently my ship of choice, it can put out the hurt, and maintain a good tank to boot. Especially since it's so difficult for larger ships to hurt me. The only problem with said Enyo is that it has only 2! Midslots. So, I'm basically limited to a warp scrambler and AB II.
Then there's the Ishkur. It can dish out 200DPS, with a decent tank, and has the flexibility of 3 midslots. It makes an excellent ship, it can maintain a good 2 KM/S speed, and it's drones can catch up to almost anything.
Then there are the interceptors. I've never had great luck with them. My first one died in a fiery explosion whilst going in for the tackle. My latest one was murdered by an Ishkur before I could get out of warp scrambling range.
I recently tried to give them another go, at the behest of my fellow pirate, Spectre3353, who is very good with them. With something like 270 kills for 30 losses, using a taranis, "you just can't argue with results" and I would tend to agree with such logic.
But I don't feel comfortable with such a paper thin hull beneath my feet. The taranis has an insanely small sig radius, as do my assault ships, and has a very good pointing ability. Against larger ships, like cruisers, both the taranis and AF's are on fairly equal terms.
But I think the problem is with smaller ships, once the interceptor's MWD is down, it's a sitting duck, waiting for the drone swarm to finish it off. And it just can't outlast an AF, like the Ishkur in toe to toe combat. [The Ares is probably more survivable, imo] .
It just seems to me that flying into warp scram range with an interceptor is just a Bad Idea. But it's obviously not the ship's fault, just mine.
If you fly the Taranis [especially the blasteranis], what do you do to get those kills? And I'm not talking about big ships, which are easy to avoid/kill. I'm talking about that Ishkur which ambushed me, took out my MWD and shredded me with drones.
2 comments:
It sucks to have to tell you this but the truth is that you'll never totally have a feel for what to engage or how to survive in it until you've flown it a lot and lost a bunch (I lost tons of Taranis's early on when I first started flying them but the ratio is much better now... I think I had about 35 kills on my last one before it got popped).
That being said, one of the first rules of flying a close range inti is to never engage an assault ship. Even with the amount of DPS a Taranis can put out, you just can't blast through them fast enough and your tank is just a bit too thin. I avoid assault frigs like the plague.
Also, it is much more difficult now (almost impossible in some cases) to turn and flee when a situation isn't going your way. It used to be quite possible to run from a bad situation but warp scramblers have made that a thing of the past. The key is just to not attack targets that are going to kill you. When solo, I tend to go for anything that is a frig (except AF's and Rifters), younger pilots in cruisers (you can be considerably more aggressive against cruisers with no drones) and ships that are matched up poorly against a small high-DPS ship like the Vagabond or Cerebus. For example, a Vaga is pretty much dead in the water and cannot track you once it is scrammed/webbed and a Cerebus has no drone bay.
I'd be glad to take you out if you want to fly Taranis's together until you get a good feel for things. It is a fantastic ship and pretty much the only one I fly solo but it still has its weaknesses and if you engage anything and everything you will get shredded more often than not.
I'd be more than happy for a triple gang of Blasteranis wtfpwnage, would be loads of fun.
But I suspect what your comment basically boils down to is pick your targets wisely. Asides of the benefits of being an inty (fast, good locking, hard to hit) you need to pick your targets wisely, as in all other ships.
I suppose it's the same with my AF's, but I'm just more used to flying them than inties.
At any rate, AF's and the ranis are the same-ish idea of up close and personal, cross your fingers that they can't hit you ships.
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