Tuesday, April 12, 2005

My Blasterix And I

A good week and a half into level three missions and I'm rolling along nicely now. I still avoid rogue drones, but I don't see that lasting much longer. With the exception of Silence The Informant (what I hear of the second stage leads me to believe my Brutix will be totally overwhelmed) I think it's time to delve into that danger pool. The level three Angel Surprise, destructor of my original Brutix, reared its head at last and I confidently tore it apart. It wasn't a walkover (I had to warp out once to be safe) but I've finally put that demon to rest! That and Mordu's Headhunters are the only two missions I need to warp out from, so that's not bad going. My Brutix setup for all level three missions, for those drifting here by Google, is as follows:

High Slots:
3x named Medium Ion Blasters (with Antimatter ammo)
4x named Small Neutron Blasters (with Antimatter ammo most of the time)

Medium Slots:
Named 10mn Afterburner
Named (X5) Webber
2x Cap Recharger Is

Low Slots:
1600mm Nanofiber plate
Tech II Medium Armour Repairer
Named Energised Thermal Plating
Named Energised Kinetic Plating
Named Energised Explosive Plating

Drone Bay:
5x Hammerheads (Mediums)
4x Infiltrators (Mediums)

The weaponry is working very well, with the three medium blasters doing plenty of damage for punching cruisers, and the small blasters also chewing through quite nicely, whilst having the benefit of hitting frigates more often. I don't think I'd want a fourth medium blaster, but I would love to be able to replace one or more of the Ions with medium Neutrons.

The named afterburner is essential as you need all the speed you can get to make this work as a blaster boat. Navigation trained to level five and Acceleration Control trained to level four is also pretty essential. I'd like to replace one or both of those Cap Rechargers with Cap Recharger IIs, but the pricing is prohibitive.

The Tech II repairer is essential if you want to make the best use of the Brutix bonus (you should have the Battlecruiser skill trained to level four, which yields 384 armour repaired each cycle). You're never going to be fast moving, so the more armour you can repair in a short period of time, the better. Equally handy is having as much armour as possible, which is wear the 1600mm plate comes in. You could gain even more armour by going for a different type of plating, but I don't fancy sacrificing more than 5% of my speed for it, hence the Nanofiber.

Dropping like a (not particularly fast) hammer onto my targets is tremendous fun, and is working out very well so far.