Ships I Fly - Republic Fleet Firetail

Ever since the recent changes to frigates I have fallen out of love with the Rifter. Where once it was the king of frigates, now it is no longer. Slower than any of the attack frigates from the other races, and the lowest dps/tank of the other combat frigates, the Rifter is no longer the king of frigates, in fact it may now be among the worst :(

The good news is that there is a great alternative, the firetail. Thanks to a price crash due to Faction Warfare these ships now hover around 10 million isk for the hull, about 20 million isk fitted. This is about twice the price fitted as a Rifter.

Why is this ship so much more viable than a Rifter? There are a couple of key differences. While they both have the same number of slots the Firetail has one less highslot and one extra midslot. The loss of the highslot is completely mitigated by the 20% per level damage bonus giving the Firetail slightly more overall DPS than a similarly fit Rifter. But it is the extra midslot that makes all the diference. Once the holy trinity of AB/SCRAM/WEB is fit, the firetail can add an extra e-war module. Usually this is a tracking disruptor. Another advantage is speed. While still not as fast as an attack frigate (like a slasher), it is significantly faster than a Rifter. This makes it very hard for an attack frigate to simply disengage.

This is how I fit my firetail normally:

[Republic Fleet Firetail, New Rifter]
Damage Control II
200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Small Armor Repairer II

1MN Afterburner II
Balmer Series Tracking Disruptor I, Optimal Range Disruption Script
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I

200mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
200mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
Small Diminishing Power System Drain I

Small Projectile Burst Aerator I
Small Projectile Metastasis Adjuster I
[empty rig slot]

With the fit above the firetail is able to engage a rather large envelop of ships successfully. Pretty much any ship that is dependent upon turrets for damage. Even a thrasher, with it's tracking bonused autocannons, can be engaged with a fair chance of success. It's main limitation is the pitiful DPS. This really is restricts it to 1v1 fights since it will take too long to drop the first target before moving onto the second in a 1v2 or 1vMany fight.

Stupid Stupid Stupid Stupid CCP Nerfing Popular Low-Sec PVP Sites

Edit: Please show your support by posting on the following forum thread... Don't Change the 2/10 Plexes!

All in all there are lots of things in Retribution that I like. However one little note caught my eye..

1/10 and 2/10 static DED complexes have been moved to the exploration system.

Anyone who does small scale PvP in low-sec knows that these DED complexes (like in Heild and dozens of other low-sec systems) are basically hubs for fun PvP. Not really worth it to camp solidly, they are worth warping to anytime you are in a system. About half the time you get a fight, the other half time you get a few million isk worth of modules. Watch Sard Caid's stream or go to Molden Heath. These sites are probably the most active frigate PvP sites in the whole game.  I drove by Heild's Angel Creo-Corp site to demonstrate. See below for the image. Three wrecks on screen by the entrance. Several others in the plex itself. Where else in EVE can you find a spot where PvP is so constant.

So what does CCP do, they ditch them in the new expansion. Apparently there are people in hi-sec who farm them. I can understand removing them from hi-sec, but removing these from low-sec is ridiculous. Basically they are saying that if you want PvP in low-sec it can only be in the form of using probes and getting ganks. There are no  fights in belts anymore and now there will be no fights in these anomalies anymore. Yes, there is always faction warfare, but considering that the entire faction warfare mechanic (plexes that appear on the overview) is pretty much a poor copy of these static plexes, I don't think that is a great example. So CCP, please don't get rid of low-sec plexes.
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