So this isn’t necessarily a series or anything, more of a look into the way I like to look at fittings. See, one of the ways I theorycraft is by looking at the maximum possible output of a ship given certain conditions. Theoretically, if you know all of the different possibilities for a fit, you can combine them together and make new fit ideas on the fly. It’s also pretty damn useful when you’re out flying somewhere since you can guesstimate what to expect from an opponent. You can look at a Naga for example and see that it does over 1800 DPS up close if it gets the chance to try, if it isn’t using rails that is.
The fits described in this article were created before the resistance nerf in April 2020. Post-patch revised fits will be marked with a ++ at the start of each fitting name although screenshots will not always be updated.
That isn’t to say this is completely min-maxed, that’s usually a stupid idea (like all of this, eh). Hell, this fit breaches the 2200 DPS mark with a teeny bit of bling.
No, that’s a dumb idea. Nobody sits there and tells themselves that the Naga is such a good ship and that they need to get that much damage out of it. It’s instead about being realistic and taking the max reasonable output so that you can hopefully then move on to use that in another, more useful fit. You might have also noticed that the fit above is not polarised by the way. That’s 2765 DPS if you’re curious, but that’s a completely different way of fitting so we’ll move away from it for now.
80km blasters and you
So usually the first step when testing the limits of a ship is to look at what the bonuses are. In this case the Naga is sitting pretty with lots of range and uh, a lot of range:
Caldari Battlecruiser bonuses (per skill level):
5% bonus to Large Hybrid Turret damage
10% bonus to Large Hybrid Turret optimal range
Role Bonus:
95% reduction in Large Hybrid Turret powergrid requirement
50% reduction in Large Hybrid Turret CPU requirement
50% reduction in Large Hybrid Turret activation cost
My first thought then is “I wonder how far I can make blasters go?” The answer ends up being somewhere around the 60km at falloff (31.4km + 32.9km) which is pretty interesting if you ask me. In real terms that translates into dropping over 400 DPS cold onto an Omen Navy Issue anywhere from 20-50km quite reasonably depending on ammo and scripts. The fit itself isn’t too interesting. Obviously, range increases more and more until stacking penalties rear their ugly head. Your best bet here is some sort of nano tracking computer Naga with a shield tank.
Technically the fit above also let you do a little bit of damage out at 80km, but the reason for the title of this section was more just because of what happens you apply a remote tracking computer Scimi to the setup. Doing that with three tracking computers is a bit excessive, but you get a hell of a blaster range at 86km! (34.9km + 51.5km) Kinda unrealistic but I wish more people would use that bonus and not just incursion runners. Maybe if there was an AOE module that did the same thing so fleets could be lazy; that’s a bad idea, though.
Tier 3’s Tank Too
Since we’ve already looked at the damage output let’s see just how tanky these “squishy” battlecruisers can get because seriously, half the reason people love to shoot these is because they die fast. The first step in doing that is to address the pitiful base HP of 2.83k. Unfortunately, that means that lots of shield extenders are the name of the game here. Pumping resists will only go so far when you start so low. What you end up with, however, is 100k EHP with links and a 20m implant, impressive!
Yeah, links. It’s not something you always want to consider, but 100k was just such a nice round number. Without them you’re looking at a cool 77k EHP; still plenty enough to hang out next to a blaster mega for about a minute.
There are two real ways you can take this from here if you want to actually use that tank, though. The first one is to go for some sort of bait fit. You won’t have a web doing it like this, but you can get about 55k EHP pre-links (only a 20k drop from max!) for 79m ISK. Technically an XLASB fit will get about 5k more, but then you’re playing with fire at those low shield buffer amounts. I know from experience of flying an active Vagabond against webs and arty.
The other way to use that tank to its fullest is to make an actual fleet fit with actual tank. Turns out that you can deal 1000 DPS per Naga and rep about 1000 DPS per Osprey with about 50k EHP each, cold. Obviously, you need to mix up the scrams and webs (maybe a paint, too) among your DPS ships, but it isn’t too bad at all if you ask me. For the low price of about 1 billion ISK you can end up with a fleet that tanks 4-5k DPS and deals 8-10k depending on heat as long as you have a link ship to give that extra push.
No, the 50k EHP won’t scale up that far. You’re probably better of using them from wormhole space on a “fun fleet” or as gank ships if you like. The best part though is that they’re going to be at least a little unexpected. Park your fleet at 70km and pretend to be a rail fleet and you might just get someone try flying their blob into your waiting arms. Here are the Naga and Osprey fits, friends:
[Naga, Blaster Naga Fleet Fit]
Damage Control II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
50MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive
Warp Scrambler II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
EM Ward Amplifier II
Ion Blaster Cannon II
Ion Blaster Cannon II
Ion Blaster Cannon II
Ion Blaster Cannon II
Ion Blaster Cannon II
Ion Blaster Cannon II
Ion Blaster Cannon II
Ion Blaster Cannon II
Medium Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer II
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Polycarbon Engine Housing II
[Osprey, Cheap Reps]
IFFA Compact Damage Control
Mark I Compact Power Diagnostic System
Power Diagnostic System II
10MN Afterburner II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
EM Ward Field II
Medium Remote Shield Booster II
Medium Remote Shield Booster II
Pithum B-Type Medium Remote Shield Booster
Medium 'Regard' Remote Capacitor Transmitter
Medium 'Regard' Remote Capacitor Transmitter
Medium Processor Overclocking Unit II
Medium Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Fits You Probably Should Never Fly
Behold, the other side of “maximising fits”. This is a place where cows are represented by spheres in a vacuum and the Drake fits an armour tank (it’s possible, you know!). Our first stop here is to oogle at a really weird Naga capable of passive tanking two ‘canes quite comfortably. Granted, it is in a pulsar with links, but it’s a funny thought:
Moving swiftly on we have the brief attempt at a T2 ass-clap armour tank for lowsec because “hey, all those mids are useful right?” Nah, not when you might accidentally be mistaken for a wet noodle if someone doesn’t look twice. So yeah, don’t fly that, but at least now you know you could theoretically tank a single cruiser in armour if you really want to let your inner snowflake out. You’d be better off with buffer in those lows, giving a cool 59k EHP before links, providing you have HG Slaves. To complete the trifecta of stupid by the way, a hull tank gets 24.3k EHP.
So what have we learned from this weird menagerie? Well for one, the Naga can tank surprisingly well! Despite the fact that it has historically been a lightly tanked sniper, it can also work pretty well up close. That range bonus unsurprisingly also works with your blasters, too. With a bit of help from tracking computers, you can fly in a nanogang with some efficiency and pop kiters with short ranged weapons and natural blaster tracking. I didn’t include a specific fit for that here, but it beats the heck out of only flying the flavour of the month (or year, knowing CCP).
If I write another one of these we’ll see how it goes, but I doubt there will be much in the way of a structure to how I write. I don’t need to make an entire section describe why a hull tank is a bad idea on this ship. I may also change the name of the articles. It depends if I stick to the original plan or not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Tune in next time anyway so you can tell your friends “did you know that the Svipul can do 10km/s sustained?”
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