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So you want to fly a capital ship, huh?

Published on 02. Nov, 2008 ... written by Ecaf Ersa, Tags: Articles, Latest

A guide for those who know nothing about them …

by Ecaf Ersa – 1.5 year old Gallentean jack-of-all-trades - missioner, miner, industrialist and PvPer.

So you clicked on a Thanatos or a Phoenix in EVEmon and it told you 42 days training? Don’t get too excited – you might be able to fly it but you won’t be able to do much with it! For a start there are capital sized armor repair/shield boosters you need to train for. In addition, if you want to fly a carrier, as well as fighters, you’ll want to train some or all of capital sized versions of remote armor and hull repairers, shield and capacitor transfer modules and eventually the triage module. For dreadnoughts there are capital sized turrets/launchers and the siege module. All of these require you to have level 5 in the appropriate skill for the normal or large sized module. Add to that the fact that the pre-requisite jump drive skill requirements are wholly inadequate for practical use.

But first some things to know first:

1. Combat capital ships cannot be flown in high sec so unless you plan on doing things in low or null sec then spend your time and ISK training something else!
2. They cannot use stargates and instead use an on-board jump drive to move about which uses fuel each time you use it.

3. The skillbooks cost a lot of ISK – the capital ships skillbook is 400 million alone and then you have the appropriate carrier skill at another 400 million or dreadnought skill at 100 million. Books to train to use capital modules are anything between 20 and 85 million each.
4. The ships cost a lot of ISK – as a basic guide you should figure around 700 to 800 million for a carrier or 1.5 to 1.8 billion for a dreadnought! Then you have to fit it!
5. These ships are designed to work in a fleet – they are not so great by themselves so are not for lone-wolves! For a start you need another pilot at your destination to generate a special beacon for your ship to jump to, called a cynosural field.
6. Motherships and titans may look appealing but at 15 or 16 billion for a mom and 80 odd billion for a titan you’ll be best off starting with a carrier or dread.

So are you still sold on the idea? Yes? OK then, which one do you want to fly? The skill requirements to get in them are similar but the associated skills you need to actually make use of one are quite different. So what do they do then?

Carriers: These are to all intents fleet support vessels. They boost the fleet’s abilities with warfare link modules as well as keeping it alive with remote armor/hull repair and shield/cap transfer while supplying firepower in the form of fighters – super-drones if you like – which you can field yourself as well as assigning them to other pilots in your fleet who use them in place of their own drones. They can also follow their prey into warp which is pretty cool! I have heard more than once that each fighter does the damage of a cruiser but has the speed of a frigate. Carriers also have a ship maintenance bay and corporate hangar allowing corp members to store and fit ships. Carriers are the backbone of POS repair operations with their excellent capacity to mend damaged things! You cannot put turrets or launchers on a carrier!

Dreadnoughts: These are the überpwn machines! They can fit turrets or missiles launchers and make use of the siege module to enter what is known as siege mode. Many things happen in siege mode - on the plus side your turret damage is multipled by 7.25 times, your armor repair/shield boost amount is doubled and the cycle time halved, ie. you repair 4 times as much as normal, and you become immune to all forms of electronic warfare. Pretty cool huh? The downsides are that your sensor strength is quartered so you can go and make a cup of tea while waiting for target lock and your already slow tracking speed/explosion velocity is reduced quite dramatically by 92.5%, meaning that those turrets and missiles are only going to damage something that is stationary or moving very slowly. In addition the EW immunity also includes friendly effects so forget your bright idea of having all the other ships in the fleet fitting remote tracking enhancers! But the biggest downside is that you cannot move, warp, dock or jump while the siege mode is operational – the cycle lasts 10 minutes and cannot be interrupted so getting surprised by a superior hostile fleet 1 minute into the cycle will probably spell your doom! As carriers are the backbone of repairing a POS, dreadnoughts are the backbone of destroying them!

So when you’ve made your choice my recommendation is to start training all the pre-requisites while saving for the capital skillbooks. Once you have those start training all the associated skills while you save for the ship and modules! With any luck the end of the skill plan will coincide with your wallet reaching the required amount!

Associated skills:

For both:

Capital Repair Systems or Capital Shield Operation
Jump Drive Calibration
Jump Fuel Conservation

For carriers:

Fighters
Capital Shield Emission Systems *
Capital Energy Emission Systems *
Capital Remote Armor Repair Systems *
Capital Remote Hull Repair Systems *
Warfare Specialist skills (there are 4 of these for using the various Warfare Link modules)
Tactical Logistics Reconfiguration (for the Triage Module)

* go first for the ones your chosen races carrier gets a bonus for.

For Dreadnoughts:

Capital Hybrid/Projectile/Energy Turret or Citadel Torpedoes (as appropriate)
Tactical Weapon Reconfiguration (for the Siege Module)

You can also make use of the emission/remote repair modules but dreads have no bonuses to them.

Good luck and fly safe!

Tags: capital, Carrier, dreadnought, guide, siege, triage