Fit Kitchen: Cockroach

Ever heard of the Cockroach in EVE? I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. It’s a dev ship with some… interesting stats to say the least. We’re talking 99.9% resists, 7.5b EHP (yes, billion), and the ability to fit almost anything. Typically they are used as testing vessels thanks to their generous PG, CPU, slot layout etc. We get this from the description of the Cockroach itself:

The specially adapted rogue drone scanning technology integrated into this unique frigate-sized platform is reserved for the exclusive use of the elite Equipment Certification and Anomaly Investigations Division (ECAID) agents. The femtometer wavelength scan resolution allows the pilot to virtually dissect and analyze any object at a subatomic scale, divining all flaws and defects with an uncanny level of quality.

Sounds pretty great then, but it has no role bonuses meaning I can’t do my normal format. Instead we’re looking at something a bit like this:

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The Ultimate Gank Ship

You might have wondered just how much the Cockroach can tank and it does indeed get very high. So does CONCORD’s DPS. It turns out that a single CONCORD Police Commander does 40 million DPS to 250km. That’s the equivalent of 3-4,000 cap gun Dreads all perfectly applying at once. Given that the Cockroach has a base EHP/s of 33.3 million EHP per second, it can’t tank that for too long without a fit. So what do you do? How can you possibly gank someone and get away with it? The answer is to fit a single Small Core Defense Field Purger I, taking your EHP/s up to 41.7M. Hooray! Now you can sit and be scramwebbed all day. You’ll survive at least.

Now for damage, there’s a problem. While you’ve got enough tank, you have literally no damage bonuses. Outside of the 20,000x damage and range modifier of a QA Damage Module, you’re stuck with only having HAW Dread DPS vs subcaps through a combo of guns, drones, and light fighters. By that, I mean about 5,364 DPS with Pyro and before implants. The aforementioned QA module would theoretically pump that up to 2.25 million DPS out to >300km but we can’t use that module. We also can’t use the ship itself but ssshhh let’s pretend.

You might notice that this fit also features many Heavy Scrams. Naturally, this is so you can solo those pesky ratting Supers without them warping away. Nobody gets away from the Cockroach. Do note that I’m only using 0.2% of the drone bay here. If you wanted to truly fill up THAT cargo then you’ll need about 20,000 heavy drones, or the equivalent of 35 billion ISK in Praetors. 506b ISK if you want a bay full of augmented drones instead. To complete the set, there’s also enough room for about one billion Exotic Dancers in the main cargo (or 1,250 Keepstars worth 250 trillion ISK).

Better Than a Shield Super

[Cockroach, Gank me harder CCP]

Federation Navy Magnetic Field Stabilizer
Federation Navy Magnetic Field Stabilizer
Federation Navy Magnetic Field Stabilizer
Imperial Navy Drone Damage Amplifier
Imperial Navy Drone Damage Amplifier
Imperial Navy Drone Damage Amplifier
Omnidirectional Tracking Enhancer II
Omnidirectional Tracking Enhancer II

Domination Heavy Warp Scrambler
Domination Heavy Warp Scrambler
Domination Heavy Warp Scrambler
Domination Heavy Warp Disruptor
Federation Navy Stasis Webifier
Federation Navy Stasis Webifier
Coreli A-Type 1MN Afterburner
Coreli A-Type 5MN Microwarpdrive

Neutron Blaster Cannon II
Neutron Blaster Cannon II
Neutron Blaster Cannon II
Neutron Blaster Cannon II
Neutron Blaster Cannon II
Neutron Blaster Cannon II
Neutron Blaster Cannon II
Neutron Blaster Cannon II

Small Core Defense Field Purger II
Small Core Defense Field Purger II
Small Core Defense Field Purger II


'Subverted' JVN-UC49 x5

Cyclops II x6
Cyclops II x6
Cyclops II x6
Cyclops II x6
Cyclops II x6
Templar II x9
Templar II x9
Templar II x9
Templar II x9
Templar II x9


Agency 'Pyrolancea' DB9 Dose IV

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The Tanky Grand Prix Cockroach

There are more things we can use the Cockroach for, of course. For one, it’s stupid fast. With all the slots you could need and 1.25km/s base velocity, we can do some really silly things. A heated Core-X Type 500MN will travel up to about 55km/s with Quafe, Overclocker, and High Grade Snakes. A full set of Overdrives and Thruster rigs will bump it up to 78km/s. A good abyssal module adds some more, up to 85.4km/s, and to finish it off we can add a C6 Black Hole and Sleipnir links for 202km/s. That’s fast, but it is actually possible to (briefly) travel at 585,681 m/s through a Tachyon Cloud in a Dark Matter Abyssal Filament.

All of this speed is enough to travel about 1,250km (outside of Abyssal Deadspace) in just 10 seconds from a dead stop. You can also bump a Ragnarok exactly 750km with a perfect full speed bump. To top it all off, the Cockroach can arrive on grid from a 58.9 AU/s warp speed with Ascendacies.

Now we can also assume that someone will try and gank this ship. You need a good number of arty Tornadoes to do so (618,455 of them with max skills and a T2 fit) so we should prepare with a bit more buffer. We have to do this with modules other than extenders since 6x Large Shield Extenders will only give us another 20 million EHP. Instead, a full rack of Estamel’s Multispectrums and such will reach about 49 billion EHP, enough to withstand just over 4 million Tornadoes or 70 million individual large smartbombs.

There wasn’t really anything else to put in the high slots so I’ve just gone with some harvest equipment to harvest tears as you go. My Pyfa unfortunately doesn’t support any fancy modules like the QA Smartbomb. If it did, however, then we could be doing 6,666 DPS over pretty much the entire grid per smartbomb for 53,333 total DPS and a 160k alpha.

58.9 AU/s Tanky Cockroach

[Cockroach, One Warpy Boi]

Prototype Hyperspatial Accelerator
Prototype Hyperspatial Accelerator
Prototype Hyperspatial Accelerator
Layered Energized Membrane II
Layered Energized Membrane II
Chelm's Modified Multispectrum Energized Membrane
Chelm's Modified Multispectrum Energized Membrane
Unit W-634's Modified Damage Control

Core X-Type 500MN Microwarpdrive
Core X-Type 100MN Afterburner
Estamel's Modified Multispectrum Shield Hardener
Estamel's Modified Multispectrum Shield Hardener
Estamel's Modified Multispectrum Shield Hardener
Estamel's Modified Multispectrum Shield Hardener
Estamel's Modified Multispectrum Shield Hardener
Estamel's Modified Multispectrum Shield Hardener

ORE Miner
ORE Miner
ORE Miner
Syndicate Gas Cloud Harvester
Syndicate Gas Cloud Harvester
Syndicate Gas Cloud Harvester
Salvager II
Salvager II

Small Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II
Small Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II
Small Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II


High-grade Ascendancy Alpha
High-grade Ascendancy Beta
High-grade Ascendancy Gamma
High-grade Ascendancy Delta
High-grade Ascendancy Epsilon
High-grade Ascendancy Omega

Quafe Zero
Agency 'Overclocker' SB9 Dose IV

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So How DO You Kill It?

The simple answer is that you don’t. The only thing which comes close to killing a Cockroach is either CONCORD (almost) or another Cockroach beefed up with non-existent modules. It is possible for players to do it if they work together, though and pop one. A few full paint Huginns, some 99% web Vindicators, and exactly nine Bhaalgorns can cap out and stop a Cockroach dead still. 0.478 m/s with a 163m signature to be precise.

What this means is that if you could pull together the support ships and scram the Cockroach then it is possible to kill it with about 1,500 max DPS Moros fits. For reference, each Moros will do about 20k DPS using Void, reaching 30 million DPS or so. You could then heat to break the passive shield regen, or just bring more Dreads. Given that EVE broke a record with over 8,000 players at a single battle, I’d say that it’s totally possible to actually kill an (unfit) Cockroach!

And don’t mind this old killmail from 2012, the Cockroach has had its stats beefed up since then. The stats you’ve seen in Pyfa here are what the ship looks like today in EVE and it’s relatively accessible by editing your Pyfa eve.db file to show unpublished ships as published. This also unlocks the Polaris ships which you may have seen CCP flying about in. They’re not particularly interesting so I don’t have anything to say about them. Either way, have a fun April Fools Day and hopefully 2021 takes a turn for the better.

And for anyone who made it to the end? Here’s a little treat:

o/