I'm flying a Catalyst, my first Destroyer, and this SoE mission send me into a hoard of rats (I think that's what they're called). My ship is way too slow to move out of their range and the afterburner drains my capacitor too quickly to do much good. What should I be doing in this situation?
Michael Turner
[ Editor ]
A destroyer will not out run a frigate. Don't try. Take off that afterburner and put on some more capacitor rechargers. In this situation, your mids should be a pair cap rechargers or a cap recharger and shield extender if you can handle it.
Your lows should be working on the 'tank' - the part of your ship design dealing with handling damage. A small armor repair unit and the appropriate resistance. Armor hardeners if you can handle them (cap, grid and cpu) or energized armor plate (grid and cpu) or failing that, just simple resistance.
Each type of rat has a specific set of damage it deals. For example, blood raiders deal EM and therm damage while serpentis deals therm and kinetic. Put the appropriate pair of resistance on your ship. Damage control unit is also good. If you are having trouble figuring out the appropriate damage to resist against, put on a damage control unit and energized adaptive plate to give you an ok covering of all types of damage.
Your high weapons should be all the same type. It is doubtful that as a new player you will be able to put a full set of 150mm railguns on your ship - the grid/cpu requirements are fairly high. Consider putting on 8x 125mm guns. Furthermore, the same type extends to the 'meta' of the gun. Ideally, you would use the 'prototype' version (meta 4), but these tend to be expensive. Going down to compressed (meta 3) or scout (meta 2) will be easier on your wallet.
While doing your fitting (in hanger) shift-drag the empty guns on top of each other. This will do grouping of the gun types so you don't have to have your fingers flail over f1-f8 each type you want to hit something. With 8 guns, two sets of 4 tied to f1 and f2 will make shooting things much easier.
Pay attention to what your range with various types of ammo is.
When attacking frigates learn to recognize what ships need to be taken out first and what ones need to be taken out last. Ships that web you (slowing you down) or scramble you (preventing you from warping) should be at the top of the list.
Even though you won't be out running the frigates, keep moving. This will directly reduce the damage from missiles.
Don't forget to work on your support skills. Improving things such as 'hull upgrades' will give you more armor and provide more things that you can fit to your ship. Engineering and electronics will give you more fitting capabilities. Motion prediction will make it easier to hit ships close to you and long range targeting will let you lock on to ships further out. All of these make for improvements - lopsided skill development can make for lopsided ships which explode easily.
The name of the mission would really help too, to help figure out the specific problem.