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So here’s my dilema: How do you test the effectiveness of a ship, whose setup varies greatly depending on its purpose? See, the more I pondered some of the criticisms of X1376, and the more I looked at the reasons why I chose to use the Rapier as I do (which is doing rather well in combat) the realization came to me that for me to give a serious and honest assessment of making an Effective recon would require alot different testing. I try my best to make sure that I give not only a good, solid setup.. but also the reasoning behind it, the flaws pilots will need to overcome, as well as any tactics I have used in PVP that I found useful. However, with ships like the Prophecy and Muninn, their tasks are relatively simple compared to that of Recon. Therefore, I am now developing a series of tests, specifically for the Rapier to find out if the configuration I have laid before you as a quality fit performs as good, better, or worse than what has become a standard configuration Rapier.
So far, the test will consist of the following things:
- The Tackle Test – This test compares the ability of the Rapiers to tackle a target (the example case will be a Hurricane or Harbinger) and hold onto that target for upwards of a minute and a half to two minutes while being attacked by the target. The timer is what I estimate to be worst case scenario for a support fleet to reach you for the kill.
- The Pirate Test – This test compares the ability of the Rapiers to destroy an enemy target. The target will again be a battlecruiser (either a Hurricane or Harbinger) and the purpose will be to get the target into structure using any and all means necessary, but limited to bonused e-war and combat drones.
- The Support Test – This test covers the effectiveness at what I personally think is the hardest task in a roaming gang. Taking out an interceptor trying to crash a gate. I have already done this using my armor tanked Rapier to great effect (caught a Dramiel on a Regional gate once, and quite a few inties at other times as well), but it would be good to compare that to the standard Rapier setup.
- The Roam Test – This test will simply cover how well this ship travels. To be honest, I only need to do one test and that is with my configured Rapier in a HAC gang. Armor tanked ships are notorious for being slow to align and slow to accelerate to warp. While this isn’t much of a problem in Battlecruiser gangs, HAC gangs are very much a different story since they rely alot more on speed to outflank the enemy. I KNOW the armor tanked Rapier will perform worse than the shield tanked Rapier, but I need to know by how much.. is it a little bit, or is it critically more?
If you have any additional testing suggestions, or if you see a flaw in my testing procedures, please feel free to give suggestions. The results will be posted later when I go through with it and I will let folks know if perhaps my configurations are “not good” (edit: I thought he said “fail”, but I was wrong) as X1376 puts it, or if they are a more viable alternative than most have assumed.
In the meantime, make sure to keep your ammo loaded and your targets running.
I hope you will enjoy the tests and even score some kills. I have nearly bad feeling if I used word ‘fail’. Experimenting is the most funny thing about fittings as long as the fit still makes sense. I hope you will have good time with Rapier.
I think it’s almost counterproductive to try to come up with a metric by which to test ships. Each ship build should have a purpose; if the ship you’ve built fills the need you have, then it’s a good ship — regardless of whether it fills other roles or not.
There are ‘standard’ builds for just about every common ship. It’s more fun, for me at least, to build my own. Sure, I run the risk of somebody calling me a failure and mocking my fit — but do I really care? Not so much.
A smart pilot can find multiple ways to fit the same ship for the purpose and the way he or she flies. Smart pilots should not fear coming up with a build other people aren’t commonly using. Smart pilots should be out there killing the people who spout off about “fail fits” and “comedy killmails” in their custom built, asymmetric, machines of war.
Ya know, I agree that its hard to find a metric (which I think is a good thing about how CCP has done the modules and ships, etc), but honestly.. I want to really find out. Those four things are the things I do most often in a Minmatar Recon and I know I can be wrong. So, why not test it out.. and then post the results? At the very least, it’ll be fun and I can say that I am PVP’ing.. for science!