No. Its a double dps bonused ship. It is not slow at missions, it is slow at missions if you blindly copy paste a dumb afk setup from battleclinic.

and also no, drones will not cause player aggression merely by being set to aggressive whilst someone loots stuff. being afk is however a good way to get shot by a wartarget.

my main concern (for the moment) is to finish the amarr epic arc. while I understand the sentiment of going where my amarr ships are better suited, what I REALLY want out of all of this is amarr standing, I dont make my money off of missioning.

While I agree with the people who say paladins/marauders generally are great, I dont think its going to get me through the epic arc. its way too cap dependant.

Rattlesnake really seems like the way to go for the epic arc (but I think for the regular L4s a Paladin would be a much faster alternative).

I used a tengu and had 0 issues running the arc, then I ran it as a group with a tempest, tengu, and basilisk, and then I ran it in a gila (passive tank, CPRs to keep the ab running under neuts). These missions are actually really easy, the neuting isn't very strong and the only real issue is tracking disruption, so just don't use turrets, or if you do, you AC/Arty. With a bit of speed and range the rats should never hit you at all.

To be fair though, I have never finished the amarr arc on the amarr side, I always switch to sansha, and I never destroy the neut towers because you lose sansha standing when you shoot them. For the low sec sansha part, an ishkur works fine, if you are really scared a cov subbed tengu is fine too.

You can still steal from their wrecks and be considered aggressive and have their drones attack you last I checked.

been flying droneboats for years and had my loot stolen, drones never aggro thieves. EVER. Wont aggro if someone locks you up. Will only retaliate if someone uses an agressive module on you. or if you of course tell them to.

Just PYFA'ed a rattlesnake and a Paladin

and wow...ok im kind of mad now for two reasons...


1. the rattlesnake is a correct answer...i hate "right" answers...I want choices!
2. if I had done this from the start I could have saved myself alot of ISK and heartache

for HALF the price of a well fitted Paladin, a rattlesnake has MORE DPS and DOUBLE the tank without needing any frickin cap!!

gah! im so mad!

Wait...what? You can get 1300 dps with a Paladin. There's absolutely no way you're getting even close to that with a Rattler, even with full damage mods, torps, and similair implants.

not when youre trying to tank the sh*t out of it so you can survive the amarr epic arc...
if I was going for a DPS fit it would be a very different story, but thats a very flashy way to lose 950m isk and not my idea of a good time.

Dominix would get destroyed in the Gallente Epic arc. Studio 1 and Showtime are painful missions.

Also the Amarr epic arc has a few neuts in various missions.


Domis might be great to go afk in, but the mission will take you far longer than any active tanked gunboat. Also Domi's run a risk of being picked off by griefers who'll take advantage of your aggressive Drones. Same goes for Rattlesnakes that afk with Drones/FoFs.

The discussion when I replied was discussing AFK dominix setups. Hence my various points related to Studio 1, Showtime and neut missions. Hell the line you quoted for this bit even specifically mentioned AFK setups again.

The Domi is still slower than a gunboat, the Drones make up for the fact you're not only stuck with 6 turrets but the PG is so low that you're forced to use smaller guns. It's a good ship for newer players but once you actually have gunskills worth a damn it's overlooked by many others.

Flying it afk or actually flying it?

You may have meant that only AFK domis would get blown up in the epic arcs (and I would agree to that), but your initial response did not put that in context, probably why a few pilots jumped up to defend the Domi.

Also, though it might be that domis are slower then gunboats, the decrease in fitting requirement for turrets have made it much easier to fit big guns on the Domi.

Flying it. It may look like a space potato but actually flying it can improve its performance considerably.

I see some rattle-hating going on and want to clarify that my main reason for recommending the Rattlesnake was due to the request for a "foolproof" L4 mission boat (thread title). You would literally have to offline your mods on purpose to be killed in a level 4 in the fit I posted, even with mediocre skills. Sure its DPS isn't stellar compared to a nightmare or marauder but that's not really the point.

For your skills, and doing Amarr Epic Arc, I would select a standard Apocalypse with eight megapulse lasers and a anti EM and Thermal tank.

True, a Navy Apocalypse is a tougher ship, but you are going to lose a few ships learning the general style. So hold off on the Navy ship until after you have the same ship with no losses for a few months, then you can get a Navy Poc and start collecting faction mods.

Now I assume you have all the core skills, laser and Amarr battleship skills at level five, a 3% hardwire for large laser damage and another implant for tracking or rate-of-fire would be a plus.

There are mission-runner fits for Apocs at several sources, but if you have been running Amarr for a few months you probably have a good idea what to fit. Battle clinic is said to have some good public information about fits.

Biggest hint: On any unknown mission, align to a warp out on entry to each level, kill scrambling frigates first (Acolyte II's or Hobgob II if possible) and watch your tank. Warp out, repair, return. Shoot webber towers and neut towers first if possible, if they are close let the drones fight them.

Oh, and fit tracking enhancers as well as heat sinks, as your NPC enemies will use tracking disruption, and fly T2 if you can, but Meta three if you have to.