Fit Kitchen: Transport Ships

Everyone needs a hauler – there comes a point sooner or later in EVE where you get tired of moving ships one by one and you don’t want to pester your corpmates anymore. Enter: Deep Space Transports and Blockade Runners. The DST is a tanky as hell hauler that can fit a Micro Jump Drive and is naturally resistant to two points or one scram. Blockade Runners, on other hand, are fast and can fit a Covert Ops Cloak. I’ve got fits for all of them, so if you need to haul some stuff then this is the right place!

Now, there’s something you need to know about Transport Ships these days. Both DSTs and Blockade Runners can use Interdiction Nullifier Modules. HOWEVER, you should not use a Burst Jammer if you plan to make use of them. This is because if you have a Burst Jammer fitted it will actually disable your nullifier. You won’t realise this until you’re deep in the trap of a Sabre.

And talking generally about the fits you’ll find below, I’ve gone for good all-round haulers which will do well in and out of Highsec. If you know that you need more tank or a faster align time then go ahead, but you won’t get a better balance than these fits without throwing bling at the problem. Remember that the best way to haul safely is to have a decent fit and simply haul less stuff. Don’t walk around with 10k EHP and 5b ISK of loot or you’ll be picked off by the first Tornado out of Jita.

In traditional Fit Kitchen fashion, here are some example stat blocks from my favourite two haulers: The Mastodon and the Prowler (because they’re Minmatar!) In case you didn’t know this, too, you can expect to get about 67,000m³ in a DST and 13,000m³ in a Blockade Runner.

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Deep Space Transports (DSTs)

If you’re just now getting into transport ships then you might now be wondering which race to go for. In truth, it doesn’t matter – and for that reason I’ve divided this into ship types rather than races. I personally use Minmatar because I’m a Minmatar fangirl and I like the designs. I’d say that Gallente is probably your next best choice after this but pick whichever you like the look of or whatever your friends fly. Sharing ships can be handy.

You should be able to perform the cloak MWD trick with any of these. If you don’t know what that is then you need to align to the next gate, immediately hit MWD and cloak, disable them as the MWD cycle comes to an end and spam warp. This will let you travel through most systems being nearly uncatchable. If you end up in wormhole space then make good use of your Interdiction Nullifier Module. I have intentionally provided the T1 variant on as many of these as I can. The T1 version has the fastest cooldown which is the only stat you care about, letting you escape another bubble sooner!

Now in terms of design philosophy here, I’ve tried to give each DST 60K EHP at least, an MJD, a Warp Core Stabilizer, and good align time. You might also notice my use of the ‘Aura’ Warp Core Stabilizer. This particular storyline module has the longest activation time for the best price while remaining low CPU. Definitely worth the money if you intend to make good use of your hauler. If you can’t get it for some reason then maybe try the ‘Halcyon’ version.

And if you’re curious about the unique benefits of each hauler fit:

• The Mastodon can travel at a crazy 1.8k m/s.
• The Occator gets a 10MN Afterburner in case it is stuck scrammed on a Highsec wormhole.
• The Impel has the strongest armour tank with balanced resists.
• The Bustard has the best tank vs the common Void ammo used by gank Catalysts

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Blockade Runners

Moving on to cloaky haulers you’ll find that they’re not nearly as complex. All you need to know about them is that people tend to haul expensive stuff. The result of this is that sometimes a Tornado will just take a shot at you to kill you. Given that Tornadoes will alpha for 10-11k damage in one shot before dying to CONCORD, we need to aim to tank about 20-22k EHP just in case. No, this might not save you from a 1% chance wrecking shot or great skills, but it’s the best I can do while keeping the fit well-rounded.

Once again the best strategy to staying alive in haulers is to simply haul less. Don’t think you’re invincible because you can cloak. Keep your potential losses small and take that one extra trip or ask a friend to help you out. Gankers can and will catch you on a station and you might end up being unable to cloak due to a cloud of CONCORD/wrecks on a Highsec gate. On that topic, make some instaundocks (a few hundred km away in a line from the undock) and instadocks (a bookmark within the docking radius).

Again on the general design of my fits here, I have tried to give each fit a pair of Cargohold Optimization rigs to maximise your hauling capabilities (DST’s do not need these as they have a Fleet Hangar). When I fly these I will typically change the low slots as I need to, swapping between various levels of align/having a warp core stab/more cargo space. For that reason, they don’t really matter too much. I just suggest that if you have lots of space free then take some Expanded Cargoholds off and use some of the mods you see in my fits here.

Looking at what is unique about each of these Blockade Runners:

• The Prowler is relatively balanced with a nice shield tank and good speed if you need it.
• The Prorator has a super quick align if you fit for it but really struggles on tank. Fitting an armour tank is not worth it.
• The Crane is slow and needs an AB instead of an MWD. This is so that you can still have tank and fit for full cargo, allowing you to haul a cruiser plus fit (as all my fits here can).
• The Viator is good all-round. The Shadow Serpentis Inertial Stabilizer shaves a full second off the align, but drop to Restrained if you’d rather not spend that money.

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The Other Hauler Fits

While I’m not going to go all-out and make full tank, max align versions of every fit, I do have a nice selection of other fits which will serve this article well. Just note that if you are after T1 industrials then you are better off checking out EVE Uni. T1 industrials just aren’t suited to any level of real hauling. Fit them however you like as long as you have a 50MN MWD and a T2 cloak. My version on EVE Academy will also work, I designed that one to survive a single shot from a Tornado while being simple enough for a day one character.

Looking at these strange extra fits anyway we can start with the hauling Sunesis. This little destroyer fills a nice gap by being the only instawarp ship that can carry a huge amount of cargo. It fits 1.79k m³ in the instawarp configuration and 2.63k m³ when fully cargo expanded. This can be useful if you need to get large amounts of goods through a frig hole. I’d also argue that it is better than many industrials for a newbro! Turrets, probes, and drones are obviously optional here.

Now moving on to my favourite bait ship ever, the passive Wreathe. Everyone knows a Sigil can passive tank over 1k DPS, but did you know a bloody Wreathe does it just as well if not better? This fit tanks about 915 EHP/s while remaining super inconspicuous, having a cyno, and fitting a scram. Hilariously, the blinged 152m ISK version with Nirvana implants will tank 1.77k DPS. Pithum C Type Multispectrums will take that to 2.2k. With links and a pulsar wormhole it will tank over 6,000 DPS. It’s crazy what a passive tank can do!

And finally I have a suggestion here for a bait Occator. They’re not so obviously bait since Occators are a very common hauler. Fitting a simple dual rep tank rather than align will let you tank fleets surprisingly well while your friends come over. The other DSTs don’t really do this as well. It all comes down to the awful PG and CPU on Deep Space Transports.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this anyway. I’ve got some more fits that I could share but I’ll leave it there for now. If anything it’s more effort to create their own section to write about them and properly format them. I’m going to try and make an effort to get more articles out soon if I can, I’m just so damn busy and FFXIV is hella fun too.