As any mission runner knows, there comes a point where the level of missions you’re currently doing no longer holds any challenge but you can’t quite handle the next level up. Missions then start to become a chore, and quickly become routine and boring. I discovered a solution to this last night, thanks to a suggestion from a fellow citizen of New Eden. That solution? Do Level 3 missions in an Assault Frigate.
I ususally take a Brutix battlecruiser out on these forays but it was getting to the point where I could happily be having three conversations in various chat channels and only have to actually pay attention to the mission to switch targets. Needless to say this was getting tiresome. So I decided that on the next relatively easy mission I would go out in a Retribution (fit details below) and see how I got on.
The mission was ‘Stop the Theif’, a fairly simple kill mission against a frigate and 5 cruisers. My sheild disappeared in a couple of hits and I almost warped out. The I realised that my armour was holding. I was orbiting so close and fast that the cruiser’s guns just couldn’t track me and putting out as much, if not more, damage than I would have been in Brutix.
The thing with flying a small ship against bigger ones is that you have to keep moving. As the quote from ‘The Battle of Britain’ goes “If you’re moving in a straight line for more than 10 seconds, you’re dead.” So I jinked, weaved, ducked, dived and occasionally orbited at speeds in excess of 800 m/s and had a whale of a time. If I wanted to give my capacitor a breather I simply shut off my guns and armour repair module for a few second and orbited my target, its not like they were hitting me anyway.
It might be a while until I try the Retribution out against one of the tougher level 3s but at least now I know that if I want to inject a little adrenaline into my missioning I have just the ship for it.
Here’s the fit I used for all you number junkies out there, if you can suggest any tweaks which might help, let me know.
Retribution (Amarr Assault Ship, Punisher Hull)
High Slots (5)
4x Medium Pulse Laser II (Multifrequency S)
Medium Slots (1)
1MN Afterburner II
Low Slots (5)
Damage Control II
Small Armor Repairer II
2x Adaptive Nano Plating II
Heat Sink II
Ship Stats:
Effective HP: 7,629
Tank Ability: 54.73 DPS
Shield Resists – EM: 12.50%, Ex: 89.06%, Ki: 73.75%, Th: 30.00%
Armor Resists – EM: 70.38%, Ex: 88.15%, Ki: 77.78%, Th: 61.49%
Capacitor: Lasts 1m 25s (All modules active)
Volley Damage: 321.66
DPS: 135.83
Till next time, fly safe and good hunting.
