In the past I have talked extensively about my experiences flying gunships, especially the Rifter, Enyo, and Ishkur. Lately I’ve been trying something a bit different and having a play in rocket ships, especially the Hawk and Vengeance. So what are the differences? Well, the most obvious one is that rockets don’t take tracking into account. Instead they rely on the speed and signature radius of their target to calculate how much damage they do, like all other missiles in Eve. Also, despite their recent buff, they do lower base damage than turret-based weapons systems. In this post I’m going to look a little at rockets and in later posts I’ll talk about the fits I’ve been flying and my experiences in them.

If we look at a Vengeanace fitted with Rocket Launcher IIs loaded with Caldari Navy missiles and operated by a pilot with all skills at level V then each rocket does 48.125 HP base damage, corresponding to 21.8 DPS. The explosion radius of a rocket is 20 m and the explosion velocity 127.5 m/s. This means that the rockets will do maximum damage against a ship with a signature radius greater than 20 m and travelling slower than 127.5 m/s. At higher speeds the rocket damage will be reduced. The formula for calculating missile damage is:

From this equation we can see that there are a couple of factors that we need to consider. The first thing to take into account is if our target is moving. If it isn’t then we can ignore the half of the equation with a velocity component and just look at the ratio between the ship’s signature radius and the missile’s explosion radius to determine how much damage is done.

If the target is moving then things become a bit more complicated and we have to evaluate a larger expression including the target’s velocity, the missile’s explosion velocity, and the damage reduction factor as well as the radius variables.

Let’s see what this means for an example Vengeance fit:

[Vengeance, Standard]

Small Bay Loading Accelerator I
Small Warhead Calefaction Catalyst I

What happens if we try and shoot a hypothetical ship with a 40 m signature radius?

The interesting thing about this graph is that it seems best to use Rage rockets in almost all situations. Unfortunately this decision comes with the drawback of a signature radius bloom pushing the Vengeance from 37 m to 49 m.

My biggest concern when flying a rocket ship, though, is that it just doesn’t have the DPS to melt targets like some of my favourite ships do. In solo frigate combat there is a general rule of thumb that you want in excess of 200 DPS in order to kill a target fast enough to do it before his friends arrive. So what happens if we compare the Vengeance posted above to another assault frigate, the Jaguar?

[Jaguar, Standard]

Small Projectile Burst Aerator I
Small Projectile Collision Accelerator I

This Jaguar fit does 206 DPS with close range faction projectile ammunition loaded and 164 DPS with Barrage.

Unfortunately these plots show us that in most realistic situations the Vengeance (and other rocket ships) are not able to lay down enough DPS to take out targets quickly. This is a shame, because in a straight up fight the Vengeance is an excellent ship but it just doesn’t have the punch that I am looking for in a solo roamer.

Thanks to the excellent logistical work of Sard Caid and Red Frog I had all my stuff in Molden Heath within 24 hours of deciding that I wanted to head back to low security space. Now all I needed was a plan. Teonusude is a pretty good market hub and stocks most things at respectable prices. A few of the rigs, especially small ones, cost above the odds but in general things are pretty decent. If I regularly find myself short of something I can always bring some from Rens and fill the market hole myself. My fittings aren’t so odd that no-one else needs the stuff I do. In general the amount of shopping I need to do is pretty low simply because Sard keeps an excellently stocked hangar and most of the modules I need are already in one of our two bases. Still, I was in Teonusude and it was a couple of jumps to our nearest office and I am lazy like that.

What to do, then. I’d heard a lot of buzz about the Vengeance since rockets got a little buff and seeing as I have never made use of Amarr Frigate V until today I thought that would be a good place to start. I hit the market and without thinking bought the kind of modules I would fit on a Punisher except using rockets instead of turrets. It all fitted comfortably so I was ready to head out into space. In Heild there is an Angel 2/10 complex and if you sit there in a frigate for long enough someone will come and fight you. So that’s what I did and minutes later a Dramiel appeared. Perfect. Scram, web, rockets and its back to business as usual. Except that my capacitor was disappearing at an alarming rate and I had next to no buffer because I’d decided that maximum damage was the way to go. The Dramiel’s shields were taking a good pummelling but as he pulled out to a safe range and my rockets became ineffective the fight was essentially over and it wasn’t long before his drones and falloff killed me.

It was only when I began to actually discuss the fight with friends that I realised quite how terrible I had been. In my haste to get out into space and fighting I hadn’t checked the ship’s fitting specifications or even looked to see how others were fitting it. The number of mistakes I made is almost too long to list but here is the monstrosity that I passed off as my first Vengeance:

[Vengeance, Die Hard]
Damage Control II
Small Armor Repairer II
Adaptive Nano Plating II
Ballistic Control System II

Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Small Bay Loading Accelerator I

So let’s list the mistakes that I made:

• The Vengeance has four high slots and four launcher slots. I’d just thought “Punishers have three weapon slots, Jaguars have three weapon slots…” and gone on autopilot. Always read the ship description and bonuses before you start fitting a ship.
• I knew that the Vengeance had good resistances and made a good tank so I put on a fairly basic active armour tank with no buffer for it to work on. While frigates are often fit with small armour repairers they rarely get enough repair from them to stay up without a buffer to keep them alive.
• With no buffer, no capacitor injection, and no nosferatu I was devastatingly prone to energy neutralisation.

After being called out for my stupidity and discussing what I should have done I bought myself a second Vengeance, fitted it up, and set out for the same complex to try again. This time the fight was much more fun with the Dramiel going into about half armour before I finally ran out of capacitor and exploded. Looking at the fit, which I’d blindly copied from Raxip, the reason I’d run out of capacitor and spent half the fight wondering why my afterburner wouldn’t activate was that it wasn’t an afterburner but a microwarp drive. Damn you, Raxip! That said, there was still a good deal of pilot error in that I hadn’t thought to concentrate on removing his drone DPS first. Still, part of the reason I’ve come back here is to learn. Maybe I should stick to Rifters for a little bit. Does anyone know of a decent piloting guide for them?

Anyway, with my lessons learnt this is the Vengeance fit that I will use in the future:

[Vengeance, Die Hard III]

Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I