Missiles Missiles and More Missiles

Starwalker had spent the last week or so flying around in a Kestrel (kiter and brawler) and he also had a Caracal too for an upcoming T1 cruiser roam. Now that the Caracal and Kestrel ship bonuses were to all damage types there was no reason to focus on kinetic missiles exclusively. That capability to select damage type was both a blessing and a curse as a recent shopping expedition to Hek had highlighted.

The original plan had been to buy the highest (T2) damage missiles for each of heavy assault, light missiles and rockets. However, after seeing commentary about explosion radius and how the faction missiles were better at dealing damage to frigates Starwalker had also ended up buying faction missiles too. The original intent was to use faction missiles for frigates and T2 missiles for cruisers and above - Starwalker still had aspirations for (solo) above class kills.

The buying spree result and therefore problem, was simply an overload of too many missiles bought - there were twelve varieties of heavy assault missiles alone:

• Rage = Inferno (Thermal), Mjolnir (EM), Nova (Explosive), Scourge (Kinetic)
• Javelin = Inferno, Mjolnir, Nova, Scourge
• Faction = Inferno, Mjolnir, Nova, Scourge

And an equal number for the light missiles (Fury, Precision and Faction) and rockets (Rage, Javelin and Faction). Missiles, missiles and more missiles - too many missiles. Of course, Starwalker recognised the absurdity of carrying around twelve missile types and knew that it could be simplified to basically carry faction missiles as the most useful against the most targets. The downside to that simplification was some loss of potential damage of using T2 missiles against larger targets.

In any case, Starwalker had bought lots of missiles but that very act had caused a rethink about damage and weapon types and Starwalker knew what weapon system he really, really liked - blasters. There were two defining characteristics that appealed to Starwalker - high damage and very simple ammunition choices:

• Short range - Caldari (or Federation) Navy Antimatter Charges or Void, if the ship bonuses included tracking
• Long range (brawler or scram range) - Null

Starwalker had already enjoyed flying his blaster fit Merlin with more than 200 DPS and the Enyo was truly fearsome at around 400 DPS for a frigate. Despite Starwalker's Caldari roots he was feeling the pull to fly more Gallente ships as natural blaster ships...