Monday, June 14, 2010

Low Sec Orca Fitting

UPDATE: In the fittings, I changed T2 Covert Ops Cloak to T2 Improved Cloak. My mistake.

Ok I have been researching fits for the Orca, and I have dramatically improved flying safely in an Orca for Low sec. I feel as comfortable flying my Orca through low sec as I am now with my Occator. You too can fly an Orca safely through low sec. That is if you have a few billion ISK to spend.

Implants in your head: Full Set of 6 Nomad implants, Alpha through Omega

Faction implants have secondary effects in addition to the attribute boosting effects most people are accustomed to. The Nomad faction implants give you +2 to each attribute, but in addition to that primary effect, they also grant a boost to your agility. With a full set of 5 implants, you get a raw 15% agility bonus, plus 10% bonus for the set of 5 implants granting a total of 16.5% agility boost. If you have the sixth Omega implant, you get a further 25% boost to the bonus giving up to a little more than a 20% bonus to agility. Better agility lets your ships turn and accelerate faster. These cost approx 2 billion isk at time of writing, though haggling can get them for less though. I got mine for 1.5 billion ISK by haggling with people who had contracts up for 2.1 billion ISK. That’s a 600 million ISK savings. Of course if you have 400,000 loyalty points or so with the right corporations, you can buy them from the NPC corporations that sell them. Phoetec Pharm makes them; I don’t know who else sells them for loyalty points.

Ok so you are asking, “Why would you spend 1.5 to 2.1 billion ISK for 20% boost to agility? You can get that with a T2 I-Stab”. Well mate, yes you are right, but consider this. My low slots are ALREADY filled with T2 I-Stabs and I still need the extra agility. “So why don’t you just use Low Friction Nozzle Rigs?”. Answer, I did that, but it still wasn’t quite enough. Plus I _discovered_ Engine Thermal Shielding, which boosts my MWD duration by 20%. Two of those and my MWD cycle is 14.4 seconds rather than 10 seconds. That’s 144% duration to my MWD cycle, the length of the MWD cycle means I have more time to align to warp WHILE CLOAKED. Which means I stand a MUCH better chance of being in warp before my cloak has dropped. So…..implants, these give me that extra sliver of agility that guarantees that I am in warp before my cloak drops instead of _almost_ in warp. Being _almost_ in warp, means you are going to eventually be _not almost, but actually and really_ dead.

That 1.5 billion ISK has let me fly my Orca in low sec with exactly the same confidence I have flying my Occator through low sec. What does that mean? That means, with my skills, I am able to fly a transport style ship through low sec that can carry 34,500m3 in the main cargo hold, 40,000m3 in the Corp Hanger, 50,000m3 in the Ore Cargo Bay (if I carry ore, which makes sense to carry some ore instead of minerals for this purpose). Plus several assembled (depending on size) ships in the Maintenance Hangar. My Occator could carry a little more than 38,000m3 which is pretty big, but this is MUCH bigger. No it’s not a freighter, and it’s a bit smaller than a jump freighter too, but I don’t need a Cyno team member, nor an alt…e-gad…and I fly normally carrying a lot more than the largest regular industrial ships you see flying around.

What are the drawback? The cost obviously…I have a lot of ISK in my head right now, so that really means I have to stop auto piloting around…even in high sec…unless I am flying a ship that can take a beating while waiting for CONCORD to come and clear the area for me. Last night, on my way to picking up the implants, my Helios was destroyed and I was sitting in Jita in my POD. On the way back I Auto piloted again (dumb mistake), and when I got back, my ship’s armor was gone and half the hull was gone, but my shield had fully recharged. CONCORD successfully intervened just moments before my ship was destroyed. I shouldn’t have been auto piloting a little light ship like that anyway, but it was REALLY stupid of me to do it with so much ISK on the line now. Never again. If you are going to autopilot through hisec, make sure you are flying a ship with enough raw hit points and resistances to take a good beating until CONCORD shows up.

Ok so the fitting:

Implants:

Nomad, full set of 6

Rigs:

2x Engine Thermal Shielding, for a 44% increase of MWD cycle time.

1x Ancillary Circuit Router (gives extra Grid so you can fit an MWD)

High Slots:

1x T2 Improved Cloak

2x of whatever else you want(I fit tractor beam and salvager)

Medium Slots:

1x Meta 4 MWD (You can’t fit a T2)

1x T2 ECM Burst, so you get another roll of the dice to get away if you do get caught.

1x Large Regolith Shield Extender for extra hit points to your shield so you last longer while trying to break target locks with WCM Burst and ECM Drones. Invulnerability Shield Hardener for Resistance Boosting (Giving you even more effective hit point on the shield)

Low Slots:

2x T2 I-Stabs, for more agility…i.e. faster align and acceleration times

Drone Bay: 5x Medium ECM Vespas (to gain more dice rolls to let you escape if you get caught…If you are doing mining support in low sec, launch these drone ahead of time so they automatically lock an aggressor, also keep your distance from the belt and stay cloaked until you need to tractor a can in, your tractor beam can pull from MUCH farther away with ship role bonuses.)




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone, so deal with any mispelling, grammatical errors or strangly out of place words caused by mis-autocorrection.

10 comments:

Helicity Boson said...

Looks good. Generally speaking a solitary pilot is unable to take down an orca on a gate anyways due to gateguns, some good speed and agility may allow you to return to the gate to make a quickgetaway in the case of a bigass camp.

I approve.

Escoce said...

The only problem with that is slowboating back to the gate means you failed. Sure only one frigate might not kill you, but it can keep you tackled for a bit until friend come in.

The point of this fit is the same as the Occator, to bust the camp on the first try with little to no danger so long as you don't fuck up.

I took the orca through a 6 HIC gate camp that was triple SEBO'd, and that's what it's for. Busting through.

Glad you approve, need to get more folks out in low sec.

Carole Pivarnik said...

You should write an Insider's Guide to Low Sec Survival for Carebears for E-ON Magazine. *winks*

Good post, I doubt I'd ever invest that kind of ISK in my business associate's head, but worth knowing in case she ever does decide to use her orca in this way.

Anonymous said...

I don't know dude, reading your article you mention something like "On my way to pick up my implants ---> _last night_ <---".
So you are seriously proclaiming that after 24 hours of flying around low-sec with your implants in an orca that it's as good as a Transport? 1 day of testing? I'll be watching your losses for an Orca heh.

Escoce said...

Anon,
Well I think you are missing a few key points here.

1) I have been living in low sec for quite a long time now, with a grand total of two legit kills in low sec over 3 years. I did have a third low sec kill that I can honestly attribute to a client crash. Even so 3 deaths in 3 years is a pretty good record.

2) because of my time in low sec flying industrial class ships, I know what it takes to survive lowsec flying these ships. I lost one occator to the lengthy learning process.

3) I was already flying the orca for months specifically studying the exact measures necessary to make it safe.

4) the implants I got were because I wanted to be even safer than I already was. They have given me the ability to bust camps with the same confidence as my low sec occator, which is 100% safe barring pilot error or client/network issues. If I get killed in my occator it's 100% attributable to pilot error (or technical difficulties like client crashes). With the nomad implant I have graduated from feeling safe but nervous in my Orca to being safe and content as I am in the occator.

5) I don't do anything in lowsec like this unless I am certain. If it were dicey, I wouldn't be doing it. And when it was still dicey, I kept studying how to make it work before I risked it all.

6) initial excursions were a project. Started in highsec with practice and alliance mates for adversaries, and the initial excursions into lowsec being the final stages of testing with real combatant who really want to see me dead.(or anyone who jumped through their camps).

7) experiment over, orca is in production use with confidence, and I plan to pass on the knowledge, which is good for carebears and pirates alike. More carebears = more targets, and better carebears = more fun trying to catch them. Bigger carebear ships = bigger payoffs for pirates. Lowsec needs helps and that's been my intention the whole time.

noise said...

Could you explain this for me please?

"That’s 144% duration to my MWD cycle, the length of the MWD cycle means I have more time to align to warp WHILE CLOAKED."

Escoce said...

CP,
you hit the mwd then cloak...then you decloak just before the mwd cycle is over, so you don't lose any velocity when the mwd drops. if your MWD cycle is 14.4 seconds, that gives you almost 1.5 times the amount time allowed to align to warp and build up enough speed.

since you remain cloaked while MWD is cycling, you are cloaked for nearly that whole time since the cloak doesn't drop instantly, and it takes time for your ship to resolve and become vulnerable to targetting. this method ensures you are already in warp before a ship has time to get a lock on you. if you are successfully locked and scrammed, you are as good as dead, and the only thing that 'could' save your ship and cargo is a successful deployment I'd ECM bursts and ECM drones which you obviously deploy and abandon while warp spamming your warpout point.

noise said...

Thanks. That clears it up :)

For some reason that seems familiar. Maybe I had learned about that previously but then forgotten about is because I never used it!

Anonymous said...

Interesting post. Have you considered using a storyline MWD (100MNDigital Booster Rockets) instead of a 10% PG rig? This would allow you to fit a 3rd MWD duration rig. Granted it runs about 200mil ISK, but when you're spending 1.5bil on implants that's chicken feed. You can also consider the slot 7 'Rogue' AY-2 implant that gives 5% agility.

More difficult to use there is also the Skirmish Warfare agility bonus, going up to 15% agility with the Skirmish Warfare Mindlink. Aside from having the Leadership skills themselves, this would require you to have another player/alt jumping with you to actually get the bonuses, but it isn't completely out of the question.

Not sure how much this would help, but if it lets you use less Nomads that would be cool. At the very least it would give you more room for error with a full set.

Escoce said...

its not required. The fit I have is already overkill for 100% success.