Originally by: Shintoko Akahoshi

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Originally by: Prodigious

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k everyone stfu. Rifter hands down. nuff said.

breacher wont b as cool after the patch.

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Nope. Sorry. The Breacher is currently at least the equal of the Rifter, and post-patch will likely be far superior. The reason for this is the ships targeting range. A Rifter has a very short targeting range (IIRC, somewhere around 24km), while a Breachers range can go up into the 40km+ range (Breachers get a targeting range bonus for your minmatar frigate skill). Currently this means you can do some really nifty Breacher tactics to take out Rifters (for instance, head away from the Rifter to try and get it to follow you. Target it at 40km and then turn around and head at it. If both of you are running with MWD, it will probably not be able to target and web you before you pass outside of web range).

Post patch a Breacher will be able to simply hang off around 40km from a Rifter and spam light missiles at it. The missiles will go faster than the Rifter (assuming the Rifter pilot hasn't fitted an extra AB or a pair of good overdrives) and the Rifter won't be able to do anything back (since it can't target at that range). The only thing the Rifter could do in that case is to warp away.

As for using frigates to take out cruiser spawns, it's actually pretty simple. The easiest spawns to take out are Serpentis, so try it out on them (assuming we don't get our missile-nerfing patch tomorrow): Fit out a Breacher with 3 launchers, MWD, sensor booster, cap power relay and an overdrive. Stock it with a pile of heavy missiles (I carry EM missiles to drop my targets shields, plus explosive missiles for use against armor and structure). Find a nice spawn. Turn on your MWD and sensor booster and make long, elliptical orbits (you'll have to do this manually) taking you from around 30km to around 80km from your targets. Target one of the cruisers and fire your EM heavies when you're inbound at around 40km. Reload while you're heading back out, then come back in and repeat. When your targets shields are down (this usually takes 6 missiles for small cruisers, more for bigger ones), switch to explosive missiles and continue. The frigate escorts typically take 2 EM and 4 explosive missiles to take out. The most time-efficient way of doing this is to load up all EM, target 3, and fire one launcher at each. Then reload with explosive and do the same thing. Reload with explosive again and fire at the three, and that ought to take care of the three targets. Keep in mind that this is all pre-patch, and that it can take quite a while (I've taken out a spawn with multiple cruisers up to 85k, with frigate escort. It took over half an hour).

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