Fit Kitchen: ESS & Torpedo Special Edition

Oh boy am I late with this article. I do try to stay on top of current updates, but the ESS and torp changes somewhat slipped past me while I worked on other articles instead. Nevertheless, I intend to cover all things ESS and torp in depth thanks to the changes in the Explosive Velocity and Dynamic Frontiers updates.

There aren’t any specific ships to cover at the beginning as I often do, but there are some key questions that I know people will have about the ESS, so here’s how it works:

Every system in nullsec has a mandatory Encounter Surveillance System locked behind an acceleration gate. It will steal bounty payments from players in the system before paying them back to those players every two hours. The catch is that within those three hours, any player can come in to initiate a countdown and take a chunk of the ISK as tokens from the Main Bank. There is also a Reserve Bank which will store up much more ISK over time and will eventually require keys to access.

As it stands, you can only access the ESS using a cruiser, battlecruiser, or battleship and you will land in the middle of a 75km bubble. Inside that bubble, the following rules are in place:

• Warping is disabled
• MJDs are disabled
• MWDs are disabled
• Cloaking is disabled up to 150km from the ESS itself
• No cynos may be lit
• No filaments may be activated
• You must stay within ~10km of the ESS to steal from it. This takes 6.5 minutes

*Corrections thanks to DaltsTB on Reddit

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Explosive Velocity

Torpedoes are deadly in an ESS environment. With every other target being cruiser and above, the only worry you have is trying to kill something like an Orthrus at range. With the proper setup, though, you can easily drop a surprising amount of DPS out to 70km. Up close it gets even better with many torpedo ships hitting 1,500 DPS and some with a 10k volley.

As for the ships that can actually use torpedoes, we only have a few to choose from. Here are the best options with their respective bonus to missile damage output. I’ve also made a simple graph to demonstrate each one’s range and total damage output. Some do have application bonuses so this is also worth considering. It’s just very difficult to quantify how good some of the application or range bonuses are. You need to fly these ships to get a feel for how well they work. Or just watch one of Stitch’s videos…

• Praxis – 25% damage bonus
• Typhoon & Typhoon Fleet Issue – 25% RoF bonus & 37.5% damage bonus respectively
• Raven & Raven Navy Issue –25% RoF and no damage bonus respectively
• Scorpion Navy Issue – 25% RoF bonus
• Barghest – 50% damage bonus
• Rattlesnake – 50% damage bonus
• Widow – 25% RoF Bonus

Torps will fit in small amounts on other ships but I’m not sure I’d call that good and the Armageddon performs better using rapid heavies and neuts to remove smaller ships from grid. And bombers? I’ll do an article about them eventually, but not today.

Onto the fits anyway and I want to start by showing off an ESS version of the best torpedo battleship I’ve used so far. Unsurprisingly, it’s the Praxis. With torps it can get about a 102k EHP tank, all the application mods in the world, and a delightful 10,000 damage volley. This is roughly equivalent to other top choices such as the Raven Navy Issue at a third of the price fully fit. If you’ve been a long time reader then you know I’m a big fan of ISK efficiency. The blob will always arrive eventually and your blingy ship will die just the same as my Praxis.

Something you might notice is that the mid slots are nearly identical to what Stitch Kaneland uses. That’s because you can really make almost any torp ship work in this same way. Simply fill up the highs, fill the mids with some application, and drop in as much tank as you can while staying over 1,100 DPS or so. The real difficulty comes when you try to make shield fit torps work. I know my corp mates can certainly do it as in this video vs LZHX at least! 😀

So how would I fit a shield torpedo boat? Well, the best choice is the Barghest due to that insane damage and range; a Rattlesnake also tops the charts with insane DPS but that just feels like cheating by using money and faction EHP to your advantage. A Scorp Navy Issue is fit in the exact same way. This leaves us with few cheap options. The Minmatar ships aren’t any good since 5 mid slots just won’t work for application and you’ll drop your shield tank below 70k EHP (though there is an armour fit in another article).

So my choice then is the classic Raven. It really is befitting that the best cheap torp ship is a Caldari one and the Raven really does shine. By limiting your tank to just two mid slots it turns out to be something truly terrifying, albeit with only 90k EHP. Double painter is also one of the better combinations as per my experiments in Pyfa. This thing, using Caldari Navy ammo will apply 1,080 DPS to a Loki orbiting at 45km… You can fit a grapple instead of the Guidance Computer for close-range Rage dunking but hot DAMN that DPS is good. Who the hell expects torps to hit full damage at 50km?

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Dynamic Frontiers – ESS Fits

So is the Phantasm the best ESS ship? The Nightmare? Well, kind of. They’re obviously extremely potent choices and excel in an afterburner only environment due to their AB bonus. This is, however, like me telling you that interceptors and fast cruisers are good in a nanogang. Of course they are. If you need more than this then I do already have a specific Phantasm article.

I want to get some basic fits out of the way regardless and I can probably do so by sharing some of the fits that we’ve recently adopted over at Foxholers as fleet doctrine. We’re using 10MN Phantasms with 100MN Scimitars, supported by 10MN Bifrosts and Storks. This whole doctrine is pretty slippery and hard to hold down while being surprisingly tanky. Under links the Phantasms even reach about 60k EHP and 2.6km/s.

As for the Nightmare, it isn’t part of the doctrine but I can design one as if it were. Strangely, I’d still go for an active tank though. A buffer Nightmare doesn’t gain a huge amount of EHP, it only has about 130k and you still need a cap booster anyway! In a small gang scenario I’d probably use the fit below. Feel free to upgrade the Multispectrum and shield booster as much as your money allows but this seems fine for now. The key is to not get into a situation where you need that tank.

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Non-Sansha Fits

So this is where people tend to ask me what actually works well in an ESS outside of Sansha ships. The answer is really anything that can make some good use of an afterburner. This includes most attack cruisers such as the Stabber, any T3C, and combat recons. The latter isn’t always the best idea in the world, but if you make good use of hiding from dscan then you’re in a winning position. A good gauge for what is fast in an ESS is if you can go faster than 1km/s then you’re doing pretty well.
I don’t want to consider kiting fits that sit outside of the arena and shoot in. That’s just cowardly and anyone can do that in complete safety.

Speaking of Combat Recons, did you know that the Huginn can do almost 800 DPS with about a 50k EHP tank? It really is as simple as putting a bit of buffer and as much damage as possible onto it. Nobody normally does this because Huginns do better as ranged web ships. The fit I’m recommending here is one that I like to use to bait people into approaching it, but you could easily swap the scram to a second Multispectrum, second web, or a paint depending on what you want to achieve. The second Multispectrum, in particular, takes your tank up to 65k EHP which is pretty damn good.

You could use a twist on the Huginn to try and catch hostile Phantasms if you like. It’s also quite possible to use an Ashimmu but I struggle to recommend such fits here. Reason being that it’s obvious. Any long web in an ESS is super valuable and doesn’t need a fit to be built around it. Simply warping in changes the game entirely into catching the Phantasm before he reaches the edge of the bubble. Likewise, anything designed to do extreme damage to such a Phantasm and tank it such as the Gila or a falloff-boosted Deimos… well the Phantasm will just burn away and leave.

Another particularly offensive option you might go for would be one of my favourite battleships, the Bhaalgorn. 28-36km webs, three nos/neuts, and over 800 DPS at point range. What’s not to love about that? Well, the price for one. At the time of writing most Bhaal fits will cost about 5-600m ISK; more if you want the fancy webs that you know you’ll need in an ESS. You get a lot for that money, though, and paired with an Asklepian set and the 10MN Escape Jaguar you’ll be in for a good time.

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On the Defensive

Let’s look at this from the other perspective for a moment instead. Imagine you’re already inside the ESS and you want to steal the money and get out. Nullseccers tend to respond with one of two fleet comps in this situation: they will bring their own krabbing ships or they will flood you with Dominixes. Your options in dealing with either of these comps are pretty much the same. You can either continue trying to steal and brawl it out or you can pull range and deal with the hostile fleet before going back down to take the money too.

This is where you really start to get into the problem of “what really IS an ESS ship?” And what I mean by that is that it’s difficult to nail down what doctrines people should use because most of them will actually work pretty damn well. Here’s a list of examples:

Sentry Stratios Fleet – Drop the Sentries around 0km then burn away

Heavy Neut Curse & Rook with dedicated DPS

10MN Dual XLASB Neuting Gilas

Dual Prop RR Vedmaks with Drekavacs

If you’re really into this and still want to fly beneath the radar then I could recommend that you take either Phantasms or Vedmaks as a doctrine. If you’re instead simply after a good fight then take your best nano cruiser, slap an AB on it and go to town. Don’t believe that works? Watch my favourite ever EVE Online video and try again 😉

[Scythe, Armour Combat Scythe]

Multispectrum Energized Membrane II
Medium Armor Repairer II
Medium Armor Repairer II
Damage Control II
Multispectrum Energized Membrane II

Tracking Disruptor II
Medium Capacitor Booster II
Stasis Webifier II
10MN Monopropellant Enduring Afterburner
Warp Scrambler II

200mm AutoCannon II
200mm AutoCannon II
Rocket Launcher II

Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump I


Hammerhead II x4
Hobgoblin II x1


Nova Rage Rocket x50
Navy Cap Booster 400 x3
Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S x240