Greedy Goblin

Friday, November 20, 2015

Guide: The transport Tengu

As mentioned, the safest way of hauling is in an uncatchable ship. All ships with covops cloaks are uncatchable. Interceptors, shuttles and specially fit frigates can align and warp in 2 seconds, which is the theoretical limit of pointing someone under current server technology. You can haul tens of billions in any of them ... and die.

Why? Because of fails and bad lucks. These ships are uncatchable assuming both the server and you operating without error. One little mistake, one disconnect, one overloaded system with traffic control and you are a sitting duck with a bunch of money in it. If you think "I haz skillz", be my guest, the morons of the day posts need material. The rest of us - with no skillz, but brain - need EHP to help us out this case. Please understand that the primary line of defense is still uncatchablity: no one in his right mind would place a positive sec status ganker fleet on a gate wishing and hoping that you'll fail or DC right front of them. But many are sitting in a gate waiting for anybody to fail and if it's you, he'll take his chances. So the tank of the ship should be enough to survive the odd opportunistic ganker or crazy smartbomber.

This crosses out interceptors, frigates, shuttles, covops haulers, luxury yachts and whatnot. Sure, if you are a new player, hauling a couple hundred millions, you can do it in a Merlin, like I did. But once you are skilled to fly a Tengu, you fly this beauty:

[Tengu, Transport]
Damage Control II
Domination Nanofiber Structure
Domination Inertial Stabilizers
Prototype Hyperspatial Accelerator
Thukker Large Shield Extender
Thukker Large Shield Extender
Thukker Large Shield Extender
Thukker Large Shield Extender
Pithum B-Type Adaptive Invulnerability Field
Pithum A-Type EM Ward Amplifier
Pithum C-Type Adaptive Invulnerability Field
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
Medium Core Defense Field Extender II
Medium Core Defense Field Extender II
Medium Core Defense Field Extender II
Tengu Defensive - Supplemental Screening
Tengu Electronics - Emergent Locus Analyzer
Tengu Engineering - Capacitor Regeneration Matrix
Tengu Offensive - Covert Reconfiguration
Tengu Propulsion - Gravitational Capacitor

The above is an EFT list, if you copy it, the client recognizes it in your clipboard and inserts it into your fitting window. Implants: SM-705, WS-615, High-Grade Ascendancy Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon.

The mid slots, the rigs, the damage control and the defensive subsystem are for tanking, providing the 280K EHP which is unreachable by any ganker except the most dedicated gangs - who will not sit on a gate wishing and hoping. Please note that the EM hardener is passive, despite an active one would provide better defenses. It is to plug the EM hole even if you disconnect or fail to activate your hardeners. The extenders are Thukker due to decreased signature, making large guns partially miss you. If you can't afford these modules, feel free to use T2 or lower faction until you can.

The only highslot module and the offensive subsystem provides cloak, while the Nanofiber and the inertia stabilizer provides faster align. The Hyperspatial Accelerator, the propulsion subsystem and most of the implants provide faster warp. This ship can travel with 8.3AU/second, almost as fast as interceptors, which greatly increases your ISK/hour. The rest of subsystems were chosen for maximum medslots.

What about the rest of the T3s? The Loki has no Gravitational Capacitor, cutting into your ISK/hour badly, but you can use it while training for the Tengu. The Proteus and the Legion can't be reasonably shield tanked. Armor tanked T3s align slowly, making decloaking possible. This case interceptors sit on the gate with pre-overheated microwarpdrivers and when you start aligning, they speed to your last known location. They can arrive before you warp off, decloaking you, suicide-pointing to stop you from warping and then you can be ganked. Also, they need Slave implants for proper tank which knock out Ascendancy ones, making your warping slow too. You really don't want to do a Rens-Jita run in a Proteus.

You can see an unlucky warp, there was a random ship nearby, so I had to warp uncloaked. You can also see I'm warping to an insta-dock spot which is close to the station enough. If you warp to station, you can end up 2000m from it, you need to travel it before docking, which gives enough time for a gank! You can see the insta-undock which I use to immediately warp off after undocking. Aligning at the undock is a very bad idea. You can see there are 17 bookmarks and I rotate them often so no one can wait for me with a gang. You can (and should) make such bookmarks with an empty, MWD fit frigate.

May your Tengus serve you well in your quest to be filthy rich!

This post is part of the guide "why was I ganked?"

13 comments:

Provi Miner said...

meh, rather do it with a BR but what ever works for you.

Kevan Smith said...

Everybody wants to kill Gevlon, so this is his fit. Have you seen him on a killboard?

@shots_on_target said...

Thanks for the tips, Gevlon. Always appreciate your train of thought. Relatively new player here and your blog has helped me get deeper into the game and enjoy it all the more.

Anonymous said...

I presume you are not using this ship with Gevlon Goblin do you? Another advice you should give players, especially the ones with a blog, that they should never tell their ingame haulers' names.

Gevlon said...

Of course I do. And hiding never helps. Someone will always find you. Simply fly something they can't gank.

Diana Olympos said...

Just so you know. Luxury Yacht have a cruiser size tank. So it's really efficient. For an entry level low skill one...

Anonymous said...

10:18 Anon that they should never tell their ingame haulers' names.
Security through obscurity isn't security at all. With this fit you could taunt and troll boast all day any day as long as you want in highsec. No one will bother killing it no matter how hatted you are.

Anonymous said...

"Security through obscurity isn't security at all. With this fit you could taunt and troll boast all day any day as long as you want in highsec. No one will bother killing it no matter how hatted you are."
At the same time, if you were just an anonymous hauler in the same ship you'd be as safe due to the ship fit, but people would also not be trying to kill you through hate so you'd definitely be more secure even if only marginally.

Anonymous said...

There is the theory that a proteus is ungankable, since it would take so many people and spawn so much concord that the server would crash before it died.

Gevlon said...

Indeed. But that marginal security upgrade comes at the cost of always having to watch your mouth. I'd rather give up 0.01% chance of losing my ship than my voice.

In 0.5 a decent Trasher/Cata puts out 12-15K damage before it dies (Nados/Taloses miss due to very low sig of Proteus). A max tanked Proteus with overheated hardeners and links is about 1M EHP. So 80-90 gankers can take it out. We see much more gankers without issues in Burn Jita.

NuTroll said...

Its not security through obscurity to disguise your hauler , its encryption (of sorts).

Encryption has an expiration date on the data, but you still use it and it works for its intended function. Why not add another onion layer to add (not replace) EHP, by not accepting contracts/buying/selling with a hauler toon, but a 3rd party one that your replace often.

Same concept as having 17 bookmarks. Even if i know all 17, don't know which one you are using until you are using it.

Unknown said...

Thanks for bothering putting such guides together. Quick (and late) question tho, how (roughly) would you fit a Merlin (or other low-skill hull) for "pre-tengu skills" phase? I guess sub 2s align time and as much warp time as possible are givens, but how much tank should one aim for (to counter stuff such as smartbombs for example)?

I tried a couple of setups but I'm not sure what should one aim for besides sub 2s align when fitting fast transport ships.

Gevlon said...

I don't know if a Merlin can be 2s align. A Stiletto on the other hand can and also can fit decent tank.