These past few weeks, I've had the focus of a fruit fly on speed. Everything seemed like a shiny new toy. So this weekend, I sat down and took an honest look at what I actually wanted to do over the coming weeks, and also longer term.
On one side, there was PvP. I've been wanting to dabble for a while now, and I had a small collection of Merlins sitting in hangars without a proper fit between them. I knew the ship could brawl. I just hadn't put in the work to make it happen.
Then there was the Hecate I'd recently purchased. I'd started training for it with this idea of testing it as a fast-align, small-cargo hauler — something to replace the Sunesis now that the Catalyst update clipped its wings. A T3 tactical destroyer doing courier work. Admittedly a strange choice, but if the numbers worked, it could make for an interesting story.
And finally, blockade runners. Rixx brought them up during our last recording of The Safe Spot (YouTube | Spotify). He'd mentioned the Amarr Prorator as a solid ship for the job. So I started poking around the intertubes, and that's when I came across the Caldari Crane. Love at first sight. Covert cloak, decent cargo, warps cloaked — everything the Sunesis wishes it could do.
So there I was: a skill queue that looked like a capsuleer suffering from an identity crisis, ships scattered across half a dozen stations, and Merlins without a proper PvP fit. Something had to give.
I needed to put things in order before this mess became my undoing.
The Merlin gets T2 teeth (in theory)
The Merlin is supposed to be a brawler—scram, web, blasters, get in close and hold them there. At least, that’s the theory. So far my PvP experience has mostly been staring at the fitting window and imagining the fight… which I suspect skips a few important steps.
I'd been running meta Light Electron Blasters with Navy Antimatter, a Damage Control I, and triple shield extender rigs. It worked well enough for getting comfortable with the ship, but I knew it was leaving a lot on the table. So I spent the weekend upgrading, one module at a time, trying to build something that should hold up when I finally undock with the intent to shoot something that shoots back with purpose.
So here's where I ended up after an hour or two of tinkering:
High Slots
- 3x Light Ion Blaster II
Mid Slots
- 5MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive
- Faint Epsilon Scoped Warp Scrambler
- X5 Enduring Stasis Webifier
- Medium Shield Extender II
Low Slots
- Damage Control II
- Micro Auxiliary Power Core II
- Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Rigs
Small Core Defense Field Extender I
- Small EM Shield Reinforcer I
- Small Thermal Shield Reinforcer I
Cargo (Ammo)
- Caldari Navy Antimatter S (default load - x5,240)
- Void S (close-range brawling - x5,000)
- Null S (range fallback - x2,000)
The Right Stats: 201 DPS (Void loaded) | 7,302 EHP | Cap stable at 8.9%
The big changes
T2 Light Ion Blasters replaced the meta electron guns. That alone jumped the DPS from 125 to 201 — a 60% increase, at least in the fitting window. Whether that translates to actual kills remains to be seen. The Damage Control went from I to II for free resists across the board. And the rig setup went from triple shield extenders (raw HP, no resist coverage) to a balanced mix: one extender, one EM reinforcer, one thermal reinforcer. Shield resists now sit at 51/61/58/65 — no obvious hole for someone to exploit. Or so I'm hoping.
The Medium Shield Extender II (MAPC II) is still there. It demands more powergrid than the fit can spare without it, even with Power Grid Management V. That means I'm burning a low slot on fitting support instead of a second Magnetic Field Stabilizer II. It's a trade-off I'm not entirely happy with, but the alternative (dropping to an MSE I to free the slot) costs shield HP I'm not ready to give up yet. Then again, I have no idea how fast this buffer actually disappears in a real fight.
Ask me again after my first loss mail. 😬
The real unlock — I think — is T2 ammo. Void S for maximum damage at point-blank range. Caldari Navy Antimatter as the all-rounder. Null S for when a target tries to pull away. Three engagement envelopes instead of one. That flexibility is supposed to be the whole reason to fly T2 guns. More on that, and where I got that insight, in a later post.
I'll let you know if I live long enough to swap ammo mid-fight.
The skill queue gets a haircut
My training queue had ballooned to 161 days and 39 skills. It was pulling in about six directions at once: Hecate, Crane, missiles, exploration, navigation Vs, drones. It looked like a skill plan written by a committee.
So I stripped it down to three phases, in priority order:
Phase 1 — Hecate (~17 days)
- Gallente Destroyer V <- finished training earlier today
- Gallente Tactical Destroyer I <- finished training earlier today
- Gallente Frigate IV → V
- Evasive Maneuvering V
- Light Drone Operation IV
- Drones V
Phase 2 — Merlin PvP (~2 days)
- Shield Compensation IV
Phase 3 — Crane (~34 days)
- Caldari Hauler IV → V
- Industry I → V
- Transport Ships I → IV
Total: roughly 59 days. Down from 161. Every skill maps directly to a ship I'm planning to fly. No waste.
The stuff I cut: navigation skills to V (incremental improvement, not urgent), exploration suite (Archaeology, Hacking, Astrometrics — nice to have, not flying exploration right now), Heavy Missiles III → IV (not in a missile ship yet), Small Railgun Specialization II (not flying rails), and Energy Grid Upgrades V (marginal benefit for the cost).
A few things I didn't need to add, because they were already trained: Thermodynamics IV (overheating is non-negotiable for PvP), Advanced Weapon Upgrades IV (fitting skill), Tactical Shield Manipulation IV (prevents shield bleedthrough), and all the gunnery support skills at V. My foundation was stronger than I realized. The queue was just cluttered with aspirational training that wasn't serving any immediate goal.
What's next
The training queue fully unlocks for my Hecate in about 17 days. I'm still planning to test it as a fast-align hauler in Propulsion Mode, though I've been warned — fairly — that I might be fighting the ship's design. We'll see what reality says once I can actually fly it properly fitted. If the numbers don't work for hauling, it's still a Gallente blaster platform with mode switching, which is a very different kind of fun.
After that, it's the Crane. Covert ops cloak, warps while cloaked, decent cargo bay. It does everything the Sunesis used to do for low-sec hauling, but better and safer. The Industry I → V pre-req chain is annoying — six days of training a skill I'll never otherwise use — but that's the cost of admission.
In the meantime, the Merlin is ready. 201 DPS, balanced resists, three ammo types in cargo, and a pilot who's still learning how to pick fights he can win.
Finally, I'm also working on a companion post covering overheating and ammo selection — the practical side of actually flying this thing. It'll be a rundown of when to overheat your guns, when to swap from Void to Null mid-fight, how fast heat damage stacks up, and all the small decisions that apparently separate "good fight" from "why is my pod floating in space." It's based on 2 fantastic YouTube tutorials I came across down all this research the past two days.
Stay tuned for that one.
Time to go lose some ships.
Wish me luck...
o7
No comments:
Post a Comment