Widening Ship Choices for Solo Combat

Starwalker had spent some time looking through ship choices for narrowing down the number of ships being flown to help really learn a very small number of ships. Dischordant had noted T1 cruisers were also an option and Starwalker had included two even though this widened the ship choices for solo combat.

Starwalker would probably end up flying all of these ships but he needed to narrow the choices down to the next 1 to 3 ships to fly because he would also need to do the training. He had just realised that he did not have drone skills for Warrior II, Hammerhead II or EC-300 drones. Similarly, to fly anything beyond a HAM Drake he would also need to train medium weapons and that would all take time.

Beyond T1 frigates (Merlin and Rifter) Starwalker had decided to use a shield fit with good damage projection as the basis for considering the different ships both between ship classes and also within a class. It was an imperfect approach and did not reflect the almost infinite variety available but it was a simple way to select ships based on key characteristics and to queue up the training. 

With Assault Frigates, Starwalker liked two - the Hawk and Wolf and he could fly both of these now:

The Wolf is afterburner fit and uses a small armour repairer along with resistance modules. This is the one ship that cannot fit a shield since it only has two mid slots and they are used by the propulsion and scrambler modules.

The cruiser ships offered two options that both seemed good: Rupture and Thorax, no drones specified:

However, whilst these ships offered more firepower than Frigates they seemed under-powered for taking on battlecruisers. And the real problem was the battlecruiser class where the Brutix, Cyclone, Harbinger, Drake and Hurricane all seemed good but with slightly different characteristics, again without drones specified:

Brutix

Cyclone:

Harbinger:

Hurricane:

Drake:

There were lots of good choices but actually the initial battlecruiser decision was simplified because Starwalker has already trained for the HAM Drake. Beyond that he would train all of the medium weapon systems because he wanted to try them all. 

So after much consideration, Starwalker would fly multiple ships and train all weapon systems for battlecruisers. The rationale was that by flying lots of different ships that was the best way to learn about those ships and their strengths and weaknesses. Knowing that would help Starwalker to then fight against them. So much for the idea of flying a single ship...