Fitting Ships

As anyone who knows me can tell you I am about as far away from being an EFT-warrior as is possible. I don't know if there is an official term for it, but I am a 100% fitting leach. Given access to a new ship I am more likely to wander around Battleclinic or FHC looking at the suggestions for ships there than actually fire up EFT to see what I can design for myself.

With the Thukk You, Frill Me! protest coming up I have been training Geo with the appropriate skills to fit and fly a Stabber. My first instinct was to disappear onto the web to find a suitable fit to guide his training and I came up with something on FHC. I plugged this into EFT and then EVEMon and, lo and behold, I had a skill plan.

Today I decided I wasn't satisfied with this approach and that it's maybe about time I learned how to fit my own damn ships. Given I can't for the life me remember the Stabber fit I found on FHC I decided that would be a good place to start. Firing up EFT and importing Geo's skills was the easy part. Loading up a new fit for the Stabber was also easy. From there I was presented with a blank canvas with the words "fit it to its bonuses".

Stabber: 5% bonus to Medium Projectile Turret firing speed per level and 5% bonux to max. velocity per level.

"Well, at least that's the guns picked for me" I think fitting four 425mm Medium 'Scout' Autocannon I's. This leaves me two high slots to either fit missile launchers or some utility modules which I'll come back to later when I know what powergrid and CPU I have left. So, shield or armour tanked? This being a Minmatar ship I have an equal number of mid and low slots so there is no obvious hint

which way to go first. As I'll be in a fleet I might as well try a shield fit first with some damage mods in the lows. In my mids I put a Large Shield Extender, a scram and a web. In the lows I put two Gyrostabilizers and a Shield Power Relay. Still having plenty of PG, CPU and Cap available I revisit the remaining high slots and stick in more damage dealing in the form of a couple of Assault Launchers. At this point I realise my resists are pretty terrible so I stick in two EM and one thermal shield rigs.

I'm not over the moon with this fitting. Although I'm not used to actually working out my own fittings so have no idea if my feelings are justified. My thought are that the resists and EHP are too low. So, let's try an armour version. After ripping out the Large Shield Extender, the rigs and the lows I add a 400mm plate, an armour repairer and an explosive resist mod. To give me back some speed I put a 10MN afterburner in my now spare mid slot. My resists are again a bit poor so I put a kinetic and thermic rig in and then add a trimark pump to give me a bit more buffer.

This looks more like I've read to expect a PvP fit ship to look like. I'm almost maxed out on powergrid and I am not cap stable. What about the rest of the stats? First off I notice I've lost about 1000 EHP and 70 DPS. Not a great start. I have gone up about 10% in my resists though which should help with the armour rep but I have no idea how to judge the effectiveness of this.

To my unskilled eyes I get the general impression my shield fit is the better of the pair, but how does this compare with what I found on FHC? The first thing I noticed from the two fits on FHC is they are both shield fit, which is what I figured was best. The second thing I notice is I totally forgot that Damage Control modules exist. While tempted to go back and rework the above fits to include a DCII I decided to go through with this little experiment.

I noticed that both FHC fits have about 25% more EFT than I do, but almost all of that is from the forgotten DCII so I don't feel too bad. Other than that, my resists are better, my DPS is better, but I'm going a hell of a lot slower and my falloff is shorter. This probably is a major oversight on my part as I need to be up close and personal for such short range guns. I suspect if I took my fit out to battle I'd never get a change to actually hit anything. Going back to my original fit, I swap a Gyrostab for a DCII and swap the web for a MWD. As a result of fitting the MWD I also have to go down a size in missile launchers.

After these changes I find myself with an extra 1800 EHP compared with the FHC fit with almost 40 more DPS. I go a little slower but still pushing 2000 m/s which isn't too shabby. I have no idea how this would do in a fight though.

This has been an interesting little experiment but I'm not sure I could spend a vast amount of my time EFT warrioring. Does anyone care to comment on my though process throughout this? I realise my mistake in missing out the DCII was pretty silly and one I know I shouldn't have made. Getting speed to fight at my range is probably an experience thing and one that will only be rectified by flying in fights. So I guess that's what I'll just have to do.

Should I fly this on the 15th?