Fit Kitchen: Caracal & Caracal Navy Issue

The Caldari sure do love their simple missile ships and the Caracal is no exception. It’s sister ship, the Caracal Navy Issue, is no different either for that matter. Both ships excel at putting out ok missile damage to ok ranges with ok tank and ok speed. They don’t excel anywhere in particular, but being so well rounded is something which makes them particularly attractive in both solo and fleet gameplay.

Those comments, I should mention, are better applied to the baby T1 Caracal rather than the bigger navy faction brother due to bonuses and price. Under 20m ISK with and having a range bonus makes the T1 Caracal one of the most price-efficient Rapid Light Missile Launcher platforms there is. The Caracal Navy Issue certainly has more DPS (and applies more due to an application bonus), but it isn’t always worth 5x the price.

Here are the ship bonuses as usual. Two ships this time!

As you can see, the only real difference here is explosion radius (better application) vs missile velocity (range). Other than that, the Caracal Navy Issue has an extra launcher with the fitting to use it, more raw HP & capacitor, and five drones instead of two. Quite minor changes, really.

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T1 Caracal

It probably makes sense to split this into the two ships, starting with the T1 version. Also note that if you’re here for Proving Grounds fits then you could check out the specific article on them. There isn’t a whole lot you can really do with these fits so I’ll be keeping this quite brief. Fun fact by the way: My first ever loss in 2012 was a Caracal fit like this. I died to a Kestrel in hisec that can-flipped me then sat there really upset that he was “unfairly using T2 modules”. Proof that we all start somewhere eh.

Anyway, the first and most obvious way to use a Caracal is in the typical anti-tackle Rapid Light setup. This kind of fit will deal about 400 DPS to most frigates out to 63km and you’ll find copies of it all over Zkillboard. The equivalent fleet fit might use Heavy Missiles + Reactor Control/Power Diagnostic and another Multispectrum Shield Hardener but really, they’re all the same. You could also use HAMs by dropping extender/point for scram/web and it will fit perfectly.

Here are some useful numbers to remember if you ever fly one with rapid lights:

• DPS against standard Wolf (MWD off) – 330 DPS
• DPS against Wolf with MWD – 226 DPS
• Sustained max Fury DPS + Drones – 271 DPS
• Total damage before reloading faction ammo – 16,500
• Total damage before reloading Fury – 20,000
• Total drone damage in one reload – 1,500

To use those numbers effectively, consider a 23k EHP Stabber. By the time you finish shooting your 20 Fury missiles, he will be in structure with about 1-3k EHP left depending on your drone DPS. You’ve now got to survive a 35 second reload with almost no damage output. That’s not to say it’s a bad ship, you should just know your limitations.

If you want to fly a more unique Caracal then I’ve got one good suggestion. It’s a fit where you mod your Heavy Assault Missiles to fire out to long-range. Assuming you have webs and scrams on grid, applying 600 DPS from range really isn’t bad at all. It’s tight fit, but downgrading the extender, multispectrum and/or 50MN to compact will solve any newbro fitting problems quickly. Typical max DPS range here is about 30-35km, but you can reach to 44km with Caldari Navy ammo or to 66km with Javelin.

There isn’t a lot to say about it past this and that’s a shame. The armour Caracal lacks DPS and has a similar tank to the shield variant if you wanted to try that as bait of a sort. I had tried to make a strange fit with 5x neuts and an armour tank because who the hell expects a Caracal to neut them? It would work, but it would only work because it’s unexpected. The fit looks like this.

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Caracal Navy Issue

As we’ve already discussed, the Caracal Navy issue is a little bit like a beefier Caracal. Most see it as a terrible ship because you’re paying a lot more and losing out on the range bonus that the regular Caracal is most well known for (alongside rapid lights). You could even fit it in the same way as the fits above and have moderately more success but I don’t suggest it due to the aforementioned price issues.

Now as for being effective with a Caracal Navy Issue you have at least two decent options. The first is to go all in on DPS with polarised HAMs. Your application bonus plus scram/web and a Rigor Catalyst make sure that you apply hilarious amounts of damage with Rage to anything destroyer and up. Even frigates will take about half of your 1k DPS. The fit I’ve provided below has a painter instead of scram to really make sure that you dunk. If you know that it will primarily be cruisers and up (or are solo) then put the scram back on and go to town. Just be aware of your own 18.8k EHP and don’t get attached to the ship too much.

Another way I could think to use the Caracal Navy Issue (and the only other fit I’ll provide for it here) is a 100MN variant. I have to say upfront that this is one of those fits which I’m not 100% sure about and haven’t flown, but it should work. The idea is that you sacrifice everything in the name of killing frigates that chase you. Pick a direction and burn; scram anyone who gets close to keep their webs away while slapping at the frigates with Caldari Navy ammo. There’s no point in having a Warp Disruptor here since your agility means that you’ve got no way to hold an interceptor down in the first place. Don’t forget to kill drones before they overwhelm you.

And that’s about it for the Caracal and it’s bigger navy issue friend.

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Caracal SKIN Giveaway

Same rules as before for this new giveaway and the SKIN image is on the right.

• One entry per person, please do not attempt to game it.
• You must have a Discord account and should join my server to verify this. If I notice many people signing up with brand new accounts then I may change this slightly.
• Your EVE character must be at least one month old.
• Signup on this form right here: <Form now removed>

Voting has now been closed, winners are below. If you wish to know more about how I conduct these polls, check out the relevant article. Seeds used this time were: ‘AbbadonWidow‘ for the main draw, ‘Maelstrom‘, ‘Primae‘, and ‘Manticore‘ for followups after the disqualification of three entrants.

4ndr23j

Davor Stormborn

Thoroughbreed

Sam calm

shrecken

Praetor Skywalker

Rex Reynolds

Rico Noir

Garbothot214

thahitter

Exo Saken

Bieomax

Koh Sehkutor

Zaakary Barnes

Kraid Dorf

Eris Kirke

Gale Kautsuo

Astarelle Mor

Shichika Tsukaya