Zaxix
Black Frog Logistics
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Posted - 2010.02.19 18:08:00 -
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I can fly both Prowlers and Cranes. I fly the Crane for low sec and hi sec. I use the Prowler for 0.0.
The Prowler is the fastest and most agile, hence its use in 0.0. There's just one problem: not enough power for the MWD. So I use ancillary rigs to get the extra juice and nano's in the lows. Why nano's? They give you agility AND increased velocity, which you need, along with the MWD, to get out of bubbles. Its also useful for the other things you find yourself doing in 0.0, like creating instawarp undocks before you go into a station (you do that, right?). Better velocity means faster travel while cloaked. I use the ancillary rigs rather than power mods in the lows, because the mods nano, i-stab, wcs, and cargo expanders give me a lot of options. If I used the rig slots for that and the lows for power, I wouldn't have even half the flexibility.
I use the Crane for losec (no bubbles) and hisec (more cargo). I use agility rigs and I still have the same sort of low slot flexibility for tasks. I almost never use MWD on the Crane because I never need to escape bubbles. You may not realize it, but having a MWD or AB on your ship increases its mass and lowers its agility (see below). Not what you want unless you absolutely have to use it.
One thing not mentioned previously (i think; tl;dr) is that increased agility is increased acceleration. Thus high agility shortens your time to enter warp. When you come through a gate, alignment is irrelevant, because you are (despite the visuals) already aligned. Only time to accelerate and enter warp is relevant coming through a gate. Alignment time only becomes a factor if you are already in motion (e.g., undocking or changing direction). Expanders decrease your agility and thus increase your time to warp. The cloak is your best defense, but if you lower your agility, you're going to be sitting at your start point for longer and can be caught or decloaked. If you are in a bubble, you're going to go in a random direction, turn on your MWD, and then cloak. Now you are in motion at extremely high speed. What would have been a clumsy turn anyway becomes that much worse with the expanders. Its not the end of the world, but if the camp is big enough you're going to have to correct course to avoid other ships. Its also critical when you are coming TO a gate. People always talk about leaving a bubble once they jump through. You hear less about what happens next. If you go straight to the next gate and there's a bubble, you're going to have a problem. That means you need to have gate warp off points. And if you warp to a gate warp and see a bubble on the gate, you're going to have navigate your way through to the gate. Agility is most critical here; not at the original escape, where your MWD saves your life most of the time.
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