So I have been thinking and playing with Pyfa (EFT hasn’t been updated yet, oh well) on Tier One Battlecruisers and have been wondering why people or FC’s haven’t been giving them a second look. I, for one, think there a very good and cheap easy ship to get into and for the billions of drake pilots out there branching out into a Ferox would be anything short of amazing. The Ferox is cheaper then the drake, may not have the tank of one but that will be changing soon with the drakes nerf incoming, and is a ship that uses both missile and gun skills. Meaning that its a ship that crosses all types of training, some people like guns over missiles, others like it the other way around and this ship dose both. It can be configured with more missiles then guns or vice versa and has a good DPS output in either form. Being a shield ship that leaves the lows lots of room for damage mods and even with poor guns skills you can get a good 400 DPS out of blasters. Now why blasters? Well caldari have optimal bonuses to there gunboats and as people who like the Naga have seen, even caldai can put some hurt on with blaster boats. The ferox is faster then the drake in speed but only slightly at any rate it still can do good speed to chase down ships and get within its gun range. Fleets of these ships in both configs combining missile and gun ships would be one fleet that could fight on any terms, it also is a fleet that would be going with what people have trained meaning that your DPS and overall damage will be higher then forcing people to half assedly cross train into something else (e.g a missile person training into guns, or a gun person training into missiles). The tank on these ships will very between 50-70k EHP, which isn’t too shabby and is close to the current drakes power, and will be where the drake will wined up after its nerf.
Now there are other Battlecruisers out there besides the Hurricane and the Drake, other ships that are just as good or even better then those ships and are cheaper. However there is one race that is completely ignored by everyone in both BC’s and BS’s and that is gallente. The Tier 1 and 2 gall battlecuisers are two ships without any home, for one the brutix, a ship that is not even used anymore, or anywhere. Yet that ship has some serous DPS power, something that, only up until recent times, has been able to be reached. The Tier 3 Gall BC has power to reach over 1k DPS but even before that ship was even made the brutix was already doing that reaching the near 1k mark with med blasters. Now the issue with using blasters on any ship is they require you to get close as even there fall off isn’t that great yet fleets of blaster toting ships will tear battleship fleets and in some situations even other battlecuisers (drake fleets) because those ships need to be fast in order to be able to use there guns. Generally speaking this means a weaker tanked ship as you sacrifice tank for damage and speed, however going with the new trend of ships that are starting to show up this is more and more becoming less of an issue. The other battlecuiser is the Mermydon a ship that is a jack of all trades. This ship can truly be configured almost any way and fits into any type of tanked fleet. As its bonuses are towards drones and not to any one type of gun it has the ability to fill some gaps that show up in other types of fleets. Its tank bonus is one that is oriented to PvE so in large scale PvP it is mostly ignored and in small gangs it still works quite well in the absence of logi. However it is a ship that can be shield or armor tanked and can do them equally quite well. Also with its lack of a gun bonus it can be fitted with any type of gun so fleet members can fit what there trained up with the most. It is a good ship for drone pilots too as the 8 or 9 million SP you have in drones from being a super pilot will not go completely to waste. Its a ship that can do everything but has a hard time doing anything good, much like a particular minmatar battleship but thats for another post at another time.
So are there new fleets to be made around some older ships? I for one think yes as FC’s who can think outside of the box start experimenting with new fits and new tactics, even some old hull types may see some new light. There is EFT warrioring and then there is testing. Test on FC’s, Test on…….
