Shereza
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Posted - 2010.06.26 20:41:00 -
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From a purely Amarr ship perspective I'd have to say abaddon first, armageddon later.
Abaddon: The ship's bonuses lend itself well to tank and spank, but not so much cap stability. While capacitor stability is a great thing for people just breaking into L4 missions it's not a really good thing to try for with Amarr ships. It's about like trying to have a perma-run XL Booster on a Caldari or Minmatar ship in fact.
The abaddon makes a good "new pilot" ship despite its higher base cost simply because you can fit a solid tank, have the tank itself cap-stable, and manage all that while fitting a full set of mega beam lasers even at lower skill levels. Mega beams provide adequate damage with decent tracking and range. This is especially important considering that pulse lasers don't really shine well until you can use Scorch ammunition and, as a result, require you to mount an afterburner. Even an apocalypse would want to mount an afterburner on a pulse ship as at maximum skills, and using 3 T2 heat sinks, you're only putting out 400 DPS from guns at 40km with standard crystals and getting only 20km optimal with MF crystals.
The biggest problem with the abaddon, however, is capacitor usage with the lasers. The only real workaround for this is to make sure you can tank the ship while remaining at a minimum of 45% of your capacitor. This should let you fire your guns long enough to kill at least one, if not two or three, battleships even in situations where you need your tank running non-stop. You can also compensate for capacitor issues by buying best named mega beams (or faction if you fit a grid module to compensate for the higher fitting requirements) which use a significantly lower amount of capacitor/shot than named or T2 lasers do.
The armageddon, however, is quite a different beast. Once you've trained up to use T2 pulse lasers and T2 drones (especially T2 heavy drones if you buy a navy armageddon as it can fit 5 each heavy and medium drones) you can achieve great damage at a good range with Scorch crystals while dishing out more non-EM/Thermal damage than virtually any other Amarr ship in the game. The last part is absolutely key when doing non-Blood Raider/Sansha/Amarr/Serpentis/Drone(/Merc?) misssions, especially Guristas (whom laugh at EM) and Angel (whom giggle at thermal) missions.
The primary flaw with the armageddon is the low fitting capacity. As I said with the abaddon, new players are more likely to find mega beam lasers useful than most other battleship class lasers, and while the armageddon can fit a full rack of them it cannot do so and fit any meaningful tank, at least not without devoting all of its low slots to a dual or triple MAR setup, and even with a MAR using only 150mw (T1, named, faction) you'd need to fit a grid module to put anything else on it. That's also at maximum skills.
Another primary reason to not start out flying the armageddon is that it survives more through gank than the abaddon needs to, and when first starting out with L4 missions you really should emphasize tank over gank. Most players will eventually start downgrading their tank and upgrading their tank as they get used to missions, buy better gear, and get more/better skills, and when they get far enough along this route they'll reach a point where the armageddon's increased damage capacity will easily make up for the loss in tank over the abaddon. Just don't expect to see it anytime soon as with a newer character.
To summarize, the armageddon makes a great ship for a skilled pilot, but the abaddon generally makes a better ship for a new pilot. It won't kill things faster, but you'll be able to survive longer.
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