Monday, September 28, 2009

Ship Setups - The Minmatar Breacher & Rifter, by Kirith Kodachi

This is a guest post by Kirith Kodachi from Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah. You can follow him @kirithkodachi.


Minmatar ships tend to be odd birds. Besides the use of projectile weaponry, they tend to be all over the map in terms of other major systems. Some make use of missiles, others add in drones. Some are natural armour tankers, others better with shields, and some can go either way depending on the setup.

The downside of this is that you need a lot of varied skills trained well in order to handle the Minmatar lineup; the upside is that once you have those skills you have access to a flexible and powerful fleet.

I'm going to look at two Tech 1 Minmatar Frigates, the Rifter and the Breacher, and discuss some basic setups.


The Breacher


Often overlooked, the Breacher is one of the few Minmatar ships dedicated to missiles and as such can be thought of as a Minmatar version of the Caldari Kestrel. While it only has four missile launcher hardpoints, it is a lot faster with smaller signature radius and higher scan resolution for faster locking. Taking advantage of those strengths is easy.


Lows
Ballistic Control System II
Overdrive Injector System II

Mids
1MN Afterburner II
Small Shield Extender II

Highs
3 x Standard Missile Launcher II

This fast little ship can harry opponents up to 40 km away and fly over 1100 m/s without overheating and without the huge signature increase from a MWD. Not a bad setup for level 1 mission running should you want to avoid getting too close to the NPCs.

It takes a lot of practice to balance the capacitor using modules and make sure you don't run dry at the wrong moment, but once that skill is mastered you can take on a lot of ship types and be confident of coming out on top. The numerous named modules is to save on CPU.


The Rifter


The Rifter is actually decent at level 1 missions and frigate belt ratting as well. While the armour tank will work adequately in that scenario, the Rifter is one of those ships that can choose to shield tank in a pinch.

Lows

2 x Gyrostabilizer II
Overdrive Injector System II

Mids

Small Shield Booster II
1MN Afterburner II
Small Capacitor Booster II, Cap Booster 200

Highs

3 x 200mm AutoCannon II
Rocket Launcher II

You're going over 1200 m/s and the shield booster can keep you alive in those situations where you bit off more than you can chew. Your DPS is surprising with the Gyrostabilizers and big 200mm calibre weapons. Fly in, orbit tight, kill target, hit the next one. If things get too hot, boot it out of there with your afterburner and shield booster blazing.

Now, there is a world of options between the first and second setups. Passive armour tanks, bigger guns, energy neutralizers, afterburner versus MWD, the list is damn near endless. Hence why the Rifter is well liked by pod pilots.


The opinions shared here are those of its author and not necessarily mine. /CrazyKinux

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

i used to fly a passive shield tanked rifter that could do L2s with no issues at all. it is truly the greatest frigate in all of EVE.

the only problem with flying matari is the skill requirement because they are so widely varied.

admittedly, if i had known that in the beginning, i never would have started flying matari ships, but now that i have 15mil skill points in it, i couldn't be happier.

Anonymous said...

Is this article geared toward new players? Or experienced ones?

New players won't be able to use all that T2 gear you put on those ships.

And I wince as I look at those fits... A PVE Rifter with absolutely no resists and cap boosters? >.<

Anonymous said...

Oh, and tracking will get VERY tricky at 1200 m/s and with 200mm autocannons. Even with the gunnery skills that I have, I can barely scratch frigates at that speed and with that tracking.

mbp said...

The breacher and rifter are both great ships and will certainly see a new player through level 1's but nobody with the skills to fit all those tech 2 modules is still running level 1 missions.

How about a more realistic fit out for running missions using only skills that can be got within a few weeks?

Kename Fin said...

Nit picking - the breacher has 3 or 4 missile hard points?

:)

Anonymous said...

I like the thoughts on the breacher, granted I do not like missiles but it certainly does have it's advantages.

The rifter, only thought i have on the rifter (and with many Minmatar ships is fit as much firepower and speed as possible. I tend to prefer a warp disruptor/scrambler over a shield booster + we are berated by all our FC's if we do not use an MWD. Yes I have tried to school them in this but they will not be dissuaded...they REQUIRE an MWD.

None the less nice of you to guest post bro.

Anonymous said...

@Manasi

If you want a straight out PVP fit Rifter, the best way to go is fast tackle.

Lows
1X Gyro II
2x Inertial Stab II

Mids
1x 1mn MWD II
1x Scram II
1x Small Shield Extender II

Highs
3x 200mm AC II
1x Small Nos

Rigs
2x Low Friction Nozzle Joints
1x Polycarbon Engine Housing

Load it up with Barrage, orbit as tight as possible to get under the bigger boys guns, and pray the heavy tackle gets in before you go down in a ball of flames.

With the Nos, you can keep your MWD going full time, with speeds up to 3251 m/s (i get 2586 with my skills, that is all V)

Since you're only there to keep them in place, the tracking doesn't matter quite as much.

i understand your reservations about using an MWD and the major increase of signature radius, but when you can move fast enough around the ships to evade most damage from their missiles, you get some more survivability.

of course, this fit is mildly skill intensive...

Kane Rizzel said...

Grim, not to critique your setup too much but for PvP you're gonna get pasted with that. If you're running a MWD then you should run a disruptor. Running a scram means you yourself are in scram range meaning your MWD is useless and any frigate with an AB is going to make you miserable.

Secondly, a tight orbit with Barrage means its tracking penalty will make you miss more. With barrage your ideal engagement range with a Rifter is 7.5km. For close in work you want EMP and Republic Fleet make the best flavour.

Your setup would be ideal as a ranged tackler but needs the disruptor. All it would do is tackle though for without a tank of any note it will die very quickly in disruptor range.

I took Kirith's setups as purely PvE. The Rifter is truly versatile and can be run in a myriad of ways, for PvE and PvP, just make sure that your setup is keyed to what you want to achieve.

Letrange said...

You guys are missing one of the neat T1 tricks with a scram equiped rifter: Depending on your skills you can equip a plain T1 throw away with a medium shield extender an AB and a scram for those close in tackle jobs where you want to last a little longer than "blip", but still be cheap enough shrug if you loose it.

Anonymous said...

@kane

critique away, because you are absolutely correct.

quickly messing around with EVE fits when you should be working is a very bad idea and will lead to ships being popped.

CrazyKinux said...

Love the feedback and advice. That's exactly what I was looking for with these Guest Posts. Hopefully, Kirith is also reading them!

@Grimmlock - Go back to work Sir!! :p