New ships in EVE Online: Rubicon. Ship Fits in EVE Online: Vexor Fast and Free Vexor Repair

The Nestor has been a problematic ship practically since its creation; it's the least used of all the faction battleships. Even the Barghest, despite being added mere months ago, has more kills and more losses on zKillboard than the Nestor. CCP recently announced a small change to the Nestor, adding refit capabilities to it; however, I don't think that this will solve the Nestor's issues. Its popularity stems from two problems with it — a smattering of mismatched bonuses, and horrible fitting problems. Let's break them down.

First, the Nestor's bonuses imply that it should be useful at pretty much everything, when most Eve players learn at a very early age to over jacks of all trades. Running down them:

  • 4% bonus to all armor resistances per level of Amarr Battleship
  • 10% bonus to drone hit points and damage per level of Gallente Battleship
  • 50% bonus to Large Energy Turret optimal range
  • 50% bonus to Remote Armor Repairer strength
  • 200% bonus to Remote Armor Repairer range
  • 50% bonus to exploration probe strength
  • +10 bonus to Relic and Data Analyzer strength
  • Finally, the Nestor has an absurdly low mass, allowing it to go through wormholes with low impact.

This hull tries to do everything. It can be a dedicated logistics boat, a split logistics/drones RRBS platform, a laser gank boat, a drone boat; it can even be an exploration platform. (The last of these is the most laughable - nobody sane is going to use a battleship in data/relic sites. In lowsec/nullsec, you're risking an easily-probed billion-isk hull in that site; in high-sec, someone else is going to finish off the site while you're slowly motoring between cans.)

The few successful fits for an Nestor rely on ignoring almost all its bonuses in favor of one or two — either it's a brick-tank brawler that ignores the remote rep bonuses, or it's a plus-sized brother of the Oneiros , for use in high -alpha-strike environments (incursions and C3/C4 wormholes).

However, even once you’ve picked a role to focus on, the Nestor’s anemic fitting stats and relatively sub-par bonuses bite you:

  • The short remote-rep range bonus is risky, as is the capacitor needs. A 25km range is a bit short for logistics use, and the Nestor's comparatively slow speed (just under 1km/sec with MWD on) and long lock times means that you'll need to pulse your MWD often to stay in range of the ships that you're repping, if you don't have them orbiting you. And with no capacitor bonus for either MWD or reps, cap stability becomes an issue. (Most of the logistics-oriented Nestor fits out there invest in an deadspace X-type MWD to stay stable, or are reliant on a full set of cap rechargers or multiple injectors.)
  • Drone damage output is questionable due to having only six lows, on a ship with an armor tank. If you keep to a relatively small 4-slot tank (suitcase, two EANMs, 1600mm plate; a risky gamble for a 1B+ faction battleship) then you only have room for two Drone Damage Amplifiers. Furthermore, while it may have the same damage bonus as an Ishtar or Dominix, it doesn't have the tracking/optimal bonuses of those hulls. The combination of short range and low mobility means that you're forced to use heavy drones, or must stick to low-damage long-range sentries such as Curators. You can compensate for some of this with using your ample six mids on ODTLs — and you’ll have no choice but to do so, really, due to the fitting issues:
  • The Nestor has absolutely abysmal grid, which particularly impacts laser builds. With a hair over 14k grid at Engineering V, you can't fit a MWD, a 1600mm plate, and a full set of Mega Pulse Lasers on it. You’re a whopping 27% over, even with Advanced Weapon Upgrades V. And that’s before you even consider putting on an injector, option highs (neuts, smartbombs, remote reps), or a second plate! Due to this grid crunch, all laser fits for a Nestor either spend multiple rig slots on ACRs, or downgrade to Dual Heavy Pulse Lasers (terrible damage output) or use faction lasers (expensive, and no Scorch). On top of that, you can fit a maximum of two Heat Sinks due to the same problems as DDAs. For all these reasons, combat Nestors usually focus on drones, and fit 2-3 ODTLs in their mid slots because they have nothing else viable to stick in there—there’s not enough grid for a MJD or a second injector. And in general, what do you do with six mids, when the ship is generally armor tanked? It's too slow to tackle something, it has no ewar bonuses, and it struggles to fit multiple prop mods.
  • The ship's low base shield HP, high sig radius, and low mobility makes shield fits questionable. T2 CDFEs and two invulns are needed to push a shield fit above 100k EHP, and two nanofibers barely get you to 1400m/s under MWD. In comparison, a single 1600mm plate gets you above 100k EHP even before Trimarks are added. Also, it has a gigantic signature radius; most shield tanked ships are 425m or less. A shield-tanked Nestor with CDFEs would have a sig radius of 520m when slowboating and over 3000m when MWDing — that’s bigger than a carrier!

A jack of all trades is a master of none. The Nestor isn't particularly good at any of its roles, and hilariously bad once it starts to multitask. I’ve seen effective uses of it as a logistics platform in C4 Cataclysmic Variable wormholes, but it also required a fairly expensive fit to be useful there: A-type hardeners and an X-type MWD.

Where to go from here? Given the opportunity, I'd change three things:

  • Remove one of its mid slots, and add a low slot. This gives two benefits: it allows it to have competitive drone damage with an Ishtar when using a small tank, or competitive tank with smaller damage. It eliminates “fill all your mids with cap rechargers / ODTLs” for all roles, forcing players to make meaningful choices about their mid slots.
  • Increase its base power grid to 13000. This bumps its final grid to around 16300 - enough that you can fit a a MWD, a heavy injector, a single 1600mm plate, and a full rack of MPL turrets, but with almost no grid left for option highs/mids. It allows you a basic ship, but you will have to make sacrifices (in the form of downgrading to DHPLs, using ACRs, or using deadspace/cosmos modules) in order to fit meaningful additions such as extra plates, MJDs, or neuts. Again, the goal is to make the ship viable at a few roles, but to not give the players everything they want; you want to force the player to make choices about how they fit this ship.
  • Abandon the exploration role bonuses, replacing them with a new role bonus: a 50% reduction in capacitor usage for remote armor reps. There's very little reason to run data/relic sites in a Nestor, when the same LP could be used to purchase a Stratios or Asteros instead. The player base has responded well to using the Nestor as an RRBS or plus-sized logistics platform; let's allow this to be done without filling your mids with capacitor rechargers and dropping hundreds of millions on deadspace MWDs. Right now, running more than two reps demands use of an injector or a full rack of cap rechargers, even before you factor in armor hardeners, MWD pulses, and other users of cap.

A final option has occured to me, but I'm not sure if it'd be too powerful: Don't give the Nestor a covert ops cloak, but do allow it to take Black Ops bridges — or even give it a jump drive that only locks onto covert cynos. Right now, there is only one remote rep platform that can take a Black Ops bridge, and it's a shield logistics that's only available in tiny numbers (the Etana). Adding an armor option would give extra reason to use Black Ops ships as combat platforms rather than as miniature titans.

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This was one of the first vessels the Sisters of EVE made available to capsuleers. It had been under development by the Sanctuary corporation, whose interest in exploration includes not only search & rescue operations but also a constant inquiry into the nature of the EVE Gate. Thanks to the Sisters" efforts and the Sanctuary"s particular expertise, the Nestor is an agile, tenacious ship that aptly adheres to the mantra of both rescuers and explorers: Stay safe, stay hidden, and use every tool at your disposal.

It is particularly adept at venturing into dangerous territories, not merely in recovering whatever may be of interest but also in being able to safely bring it back. Its engines have alternate power sources that come into play should any of its cargo - for which it has plenty of room - cause serious interference with internal systems. Its weaponry runs best on renewable sources, an ideal for a ship that doesn't know how long it'll be in deep space. Its carapace is extremely well armored for a ship this agile, and covered in sensors capable of letting its crew track a myriad of different organic signatures. The crew itself is safely protected from any number of transmittable ailments from rescues and other unexpected passengers, thanks to special quarantine bays that are conveniently located near jettisonable openings.

The Sanctuary corporation poured uncountable resources into making the cloaking technology developed for the Stratios fit the Nestor, but were eventually forced to concede that it was impossible. The effort was not without benefit though, as part of their work focused on reducing the Nestor's mass enough that it could make its way into unexplored territories that might've been hazardous to bulkier vessels. This paid off by affording the Nestor unmatched access to wormhole space, and meant that the embedded miniature rescue vessel on the ship's hull could be relegated to a decommissioned role. With covert function off the table, the Sanctuary turned their eyes on logistics and now the Nestor serves as one of the best support platforms in New Eden.

The stats above are for Rosewalker and not a mythical perfect pilot. One of Rosewalker's big deficiencies is that he only has both Amarr Battleship and Gallente Battleship trained to 4. I'll have the battleship skills trained sometime in February as I'm finishing up the racial drone specialization skills and Advanced Drone Avionics V first .

The Nestor is a versatile ship and my fit does not take advantage of all of the bonuses. The three bonuses I do use are:

  • Gallente Battleship bonus (per skill level): 10% bonus to drone hit points and damage.
  • Amarr Battleship bonus (per skill level): 4% bonus to all armor resists.
  • Role bonus: 50% bonus to Large Energy Turret optimal range.

So how bad is my fit? Let "s check out the high slots first. I don" t know much about laser weapons other than they use capacitor and that tech 1 crystals are forever. I selected the Mega Pulse Laser II because pulse lasers use less power grid and my fit is very tight without trying to shoehorn in heavy beam lasers. I do want to shoot at range, so I selected Scorch L, which gives a theoretical maximum of 217 DPS. I fill out the two utility high slots with a pair of Drone Link Augmentor IIs. The modules give the ship, with my skills, a drone control range of 105 kilometers, going up to 108 km once I finish my training plan.

My low slot choices hopefully give me enough tank. I chose to go with a Large Armor Repairer II along with a Damage Control II and Reactive Armor Hardener. I like the Reactive Armor Hardener because I don't need to swap out modules to adapt my tank to the damage type of a particular NPC. The module, after a short time, adapts to the incoming fire for me. The DCII is almost an automatic choice, not only giving a 12.5% ​​bonus to shield and 15% bonus to armor resists, but increasing the hull resists up to 59.8% across the board. .

If the fit has a weakness, I think it lies in the mid slots. I chose an Omnidirectional Tracking Link II in order to improve the optimal range and tracking of any sentry drones I deploy. The Tracking Computer II aids the tracking speed and range of the turrets. I don't know if I want to use a script to increase the tracking speed further at the cost of range. The Target Painter II is present to help both my drones and lasers target and hit NPCs.

Fine so far, I think. The next two modules might raise some eyebrows. I chose a Large Cap Battery II in order to stretch out my capacitor as much as possible. The fit is not cap stable, but I can run all my active modules, except for the repair module, for 27 minutes. In a mission, that is forever. While running the armor repairer, the max capacitor life is only 3 minutes, 45 seconds, which requires pulsing the unit.

I included the Large Micro Jump Drive for two reasons. The first is as a get out of trouble card. Just jumping 100 kilometers instead of totally off-grid can save my drones. Even better, with my drone control range, hopefully the drones can keep fighting while I shut down the lasers and slowly repair the ship while slowboating back towards the fight. The second reason is just as a quick way to dart to the next gate in a multi-dungeon mission, especially if I kited the NPCs.

The final module is the 100mn Monopropellant Enduring Afterburner. I chose the meta module in order to use less capacitor. I figure the lower cap usage makes up for the slightly slower speed with the afterburner turned on.

The final area is the rigs. I use two Large Ancillary Current Router Is in order to have the power grid to fit everything. Finally, I reserved the third rig slot for a Large Anti-Explosive Pump I. The rig plugs the explosive hole in the armor. I know that PvE ships are not supposed to omnitank, but when I finish training the racial battleship skills, I"ll exceed over 60% resists across the board. With the presence of the Reactive Armor Hardener, I"ll probably see resists exceeding 75 % against some NPCs.

What about drone damage? With sentries, the Pyfa damage lists somewhere between 504-604 DPS with my current skills. Ogre IIs give the biggest numbers at 703 DPS. I have confidence that my light and medium drone damage will suffice to take care of frigates and cruisers.

I should add the above stats are for solo PvE. When I mission, I really like dual-boxing with a Claymore. Since the Nestor is an armor tanking ship, I plan to switch to the Damnation. Both the Claymore and Damnation are bonused for heavy missile and heavy assault missiles, so they should feel similar to fly. The Damnation does get bonuses to armor and information links, which I plan to take full advantage of. Having a Nestor that not only can control drones out to 105 km, but target out that far as well? I'll take that any day.

The game is very captivating, you don’t want to leave it at all, and the first few dozen ISK accumulated for completing missions and killing mobs are already pleasing to the eye. But the ship is frail, the guns are weak, and it’s time to have more powerful drones… And you also need to accumulate a little more than a billion ISK as soon as possible in order to buy the long-awaited PLEX (paid account for a month), learn new skills, farm more complex ones, and not only "threes" and "fours".

Buying a ship: where and what to buy

Starting to play EVE, you immediately notice one feature of the economy: there are no NPCs that sell or buy something, all trade is carried out only between players. Sometimes you have to look for the desired component for a long time, or fly through the "zeros" in order to pay less at the desired station. It is easier to immediately decide on the optimal place where you can make a purchase / sale transaction with the greatest profit. In any game there is a location, a kind of "mecca" of trade, where there is always a maximum of players and prices are acceptable for absolutely everything. In Lineage 2 it's Giran, in Archeage it's Mirage, and in EVE it's Jita Station.

It is here in the general chat that you can “catch” a bargain at a sometimes ridiculous price, or in the store you can find what you need at the best price. When going to Zhita, keep in mind: there online just rolls around the clock, and if the computer is not very powerful, make the settings to a minimum, otherwise you will get stuck tightly in the lags when approaching.
Finally, we got to the bottom, we open a store and look for Vexor, this particular ship is the best option for a beginner, but an ambitious player. On Vexor, if a 3/10 comes up, with the right fit (detailed below), it takes about 15 minutes, and then slowly. "Fours" bite more painfully, take longer, but carefully, and they can be farmed.

As soon as the ship is bought, it must be insured immediately! This is not a whim, but a necessity, and we choose the largest platinum insurance: we will pay more, but if the ship dies, the bulk of the claims spent on Vexor will return. The insurance is valid for a month, at the end of this period you will definitely receive a letter with a proposal to renew it.

The main components of a competent fit on Vexor

There is no universal fit, especially since different ships do not have the same number of slots, and what fits on one will not “fit” on another. But in the fit for Vexor there is a list that is required.

1. Drones are the main weapon of Vexor

You can release five drones at the same time, but it is optimal to have ten with you in Drone Bay, five medium and five each. Until PLEX is turned on, heavy drones are not available, but the right ones, medium and light, are also not bad. Buy 5 each Federation Navy Hammerhead and Federation Navy Hobgoblin, the first medium, the second light. For convenience, the screenshots will always open the skills that you need to learn IN ADVANCE before collecting a fit on Vexor.

Why are there twice as many drones? With hard farming, it is the drones that receive the main damage, you can recall the damaged ones and call in new ones. Light drones are more mobile, fly to the target faster and dodge better, but their damage is weaker. Medium drones hit harder, but collect more aggro. You can combine, release three medium and two light ones, and vice versa.

2. Guns

We buy three 150mm Prototype Gauss Guns, because you can put three guns on the Vexor at once (some more expensive ships have a limit of only two). They need cartridges, they need to be purchased with a stock of thirty thousand at once - Antimatter Charge S.

3. Fast and Free Vexor Repair

You need special equipment, the so-called "turnips", to "heal" the ship and drones during a battle or a break. The first goal is to buy Medium Armor Repairer II, and to repair drones - Medium Remote Armor Repairer I. Of course, you can dock at the station and do a full repair there, but, firstly, it's not free, and secondly, it's much more convenient be repaired in space. Both must be used very carefully, turned off in time, otherwise the capacitor will sit dry. In order not to get confused and not accidentally turn on the wrong thing, just remember: there are two rows of arrows on the "turnip" for drones.

4. Let's speed up, the enemy is on the tail!

It happens that you need to sharply increase speed upon arrival, or vice versa, flying away from the enemy (not to be confused with the warp, when the ship moves a long distance in a few seconds). The required item for this is 50MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive. The required skills are shown in the screenshot below.

5. Scanning space for invisible anomalies

Not only novice players feed on greens, it's time to look for hidden anomalies, in a different way - to scan them. To do this, you need Core Probe Launcher I, it is better to buy the most expensive plugs available for it - Sisters Core, eight pieces. Their high cost will pay off with fast and accurate scanning of anomalies.

6. Protecting the ship from the main types of damage

The main part of the fit that protects against damage is the "medical box", don't be stingy and get Damage Control II right away.

7. Collecting loot from "wrecks"

This item is the most expensive item after the ship, but it is highly recommended to buy it, it is extremely useful! It's so tedious and long to fly up to each "vrek" and check it for "loot"! A magical thing called the Mobile Tractor Unit will attract "wrecks" to itself and "loot" everything that is in them. It is only necessary to throw it into space, and when the "wrecks" are all empty, take what you need from it, and do not forget to put it back into the hold. The tractor is not a part of the fit, it is placed as a cargo in the hold, it does not require any special skills.

In the second part of the EVE Online Exploration Guide, we'll talk about ships and skills. The material was prepared together with the guys from our corporation - The Eastern Cartel, as well as using English-language sources. Let's start with the ships.

1. Ships to explore in EVE Online

1.1 T1 frigates

The most accessible ships for exploration are Tier 1 frigates: Imicus , magnate , Heron , Probe. They have small bonuses to scanning and breaking containers. Pros include low skill requirements and low cost. The disadvantages include the fact that you cannot put Covert Ops Cloaking Device II on them. This is a key module for lowsec, zeros and W-Space exploration. It provides invisibility during the warp, and also does not impose restrictions during normal flight. Without it, you will be easy prey for lowsec gate campers and those who want to catch you in the BX.

However, with pumped skills and straight arms, these frigates pose a threat to other ships of a similar class. Let's say the nondescript Imicus has a fairly roomy drone hangar (for eight) and is able to fly four. The other day, my cocorp on such a boat dismantled the Manticore stealth bomber, and before that he rolled Heron. True, he is a fan of PvP on frigates, so this is a special case.

Therefore, the recommendation is simple: fly them in highsec for the initial experience. Of course, no one forbids you to fly in lowsec and climb into wormholes, but be prepared for the fact that lovers of easy prey will catch you there.

1.2 T2 frigates (Covert Ops)

More advanced versions of explorer frigates -, Anathema , Cheetah , Helios. In addition to stronger scan bonuses, they can carry Covert Ops Cloaking Device II. This qualitatively changes the process of moving through dangerous sectors of space. You can warp with a carpetcloth while remaining invisible. This makes the ship almost elusive. Also, clock does not affect the normal movement speed, unlike other similar modules. This is a big plus if you are warping for a date or relic, and the containers are at a distance of 60-70km or more. In addition, T2 frigates have bonuses to combat capabilities. The pluses include the fact that T2 frigates are relatively inexpensive. A body kit with a body kit will cost you 25-30kk. This money is repaid for one successful flight.

The disadvantages include the fact that it takes a long time to pump skills into them. Requirements: Racial frigates and Electronic Upgrades in V, which takes about three weeks in total. In addition, they are completely unsuitable for passing combat anomalies and dates and archaeological sites protected by sleepers. It only takes a couple of sleeper frigates to turn your ship into junk.

1.3 Faction ships

Faction ships for exploration include ships from the Sisters of EVE faction: frigate Astero, cruiser and battleship Nestor. They have bonuses for scanning and hacking. The advantages include low requirements for minimum skills and the ability to carry a carpet cloak. Often, beginners choose these ships because they can be boarded quickly, rather than waiting three weeks for the skills needed for Tier 2 frigates to swing.