ShipStudy: Drake, PvE

So, I made a rookie mistake.
I chose a huge project for my first ShipStudy. So, I'm going to break it into two. First we'll talk about the drake in PvE, along with some drake basics, and then we'll talk about the drake in PvP in my next entry.


The drake is the Caldari Tier 2 Battlecruiser. 
It has a 5%/Level bonus to Kinetic damage on heavy missiles and heavy assault missiles per level.
It has a 5%/Level bonus to shield resistances per level.


Basics:
This gives us a couple of pretty good indications right off the bat. The drake is a boat for dealing missile damage while shield tanking. That's a good place to start. Let's dig a little bit into the ship properties, though.
The big thing that drakes are known for is their ability to passive shield tank. Two factors play into this ability on an unfit drake: the native shield (~5500 HP) and shield recharge time (1400 seconds, lower is better)
Comparing that to the other ships in its class, the shield recharge time is identical (I was surprised to find), but the base shield is over a thousand points higher than the nearest follower (Hurricane), which makes a big difference in the ability to passive tank.
It's also important to notice here that the big boon that the drake offers is twofold: high resists, and quick recharge once fitted. For the purposes of PvE, the buffer isn't the biggest factor ever, so I'm not reporting those numbers in the statistics section. They are available to you through copying and pasting these fits into EFT, however, so have a blast!


But let's throw some EFT at this, and see exactly how we can put together a solid drake fit for whatever it is that we want to do in PvE.
So, let's first just go all the way into the tanking-overkill zone that I like to call the Brick Drake. It's a brick because it moves like one, but is also about that hard to destroy.


[The Brick Drake]


Statistics:
997 Omnitank, Passive
406 Signature
10 Targets
175 m/s
317 DPS (Kin)
8.6s Align
Capacitor: 7m 29s (!!)


Notes: This setup can be played with, changing any of the modules there for other ones on the build, or shield rechargers. I chose to post this one because it was the highest omnitank that I could come up with on the fly.


What does this mean? Well, to me, it means that you can tank the drake hard enough that you could warp it into any given PvE site and go afk to make yourself dinner, knowing it will be okay when you get back. almost 1000 tank? Yes, please.


Unfortunately, all of this comes at a cost... an opportunity cost. What I mean is this: each module that you are fitting on there is costing you the ability to fit something else. A propulsion module would be nice on there in a lot of situations, as would a ballistic control system or two. Also, it would be really nice to keep this cap stable, especially given that the capacitor is responsible for a lot of your tank (drops to 633 DPS Omni without capacitor).


So we can say that while the fact that drakes can tank 1k DPS is something that we should keep in our back pockets, it probably is also not the most useful fact in the world, in terms of putting together most PvE fits that we will be interested in. It could be useful in certain fits for things like tanking an L4 mission with additional DPS being added from other pilots, but by and large, something more balanced sounds like a much better plan.

In search of this balance, let us consider the exact opposite end of things, a drake set up purely for damage.



[The HML Gank Drake]

Statistics:
460 DPS (Kin) (HML)
261 Omni Tank, Passive
446 m/s
378 Signature
9.8s Align
Capacitor Stable at 62%


So, the trade that we just made:
We can hit an additional ~150 DPS in trade for 700+ DPS in omnitank. Kind of sad. And yes, to be fair, you could throw on _one_ more BCS2 to give yourself 21 more DPS, but you lose 44 m/s mobility, and you are deep into marginal returns at that point.


Along these same lines, though, you can put together a drake that utilizes the other primary weapon systems for a drake: heavy assault missile launchers. These trade a lot of the range advantages offered by HMLs for a little additional DPS. This kind of loadout might look something like:



Statistics:

550 DPS (Kin)

237 Omni Tank, Passive

446 m/s

378 Signature

9.8s Align

Capacitor Stable at 55%

So this setup gets into a different DPS bracket than the BrickDrake, with almost twice the DPS, but it lacks both the tank and the range. This quickly begins to frame the fundamental tradeoffs that you can make when considering a drake fit. You can make a fit that is long range, high tank, or high DPS, but you can't have it all. Likewise, instead of making a higher DPS fit, you could keep the lows with shield power relays (still reducing your cap stability) while opening up a few mids for some kind of utility (a web or a target painter could work nicely). This basically gives you all the tools that you need to fit a standard issue PvE drake. Obviously, for most K-space purposes you'll want to use rat-specific hardeners to increase your tank even further to those types of damage.

Special Considerations:

Web: Adds ballpark 40-60 dps to anything cruiser or below you can web down.

Target Painter: Adds ballpark 20 DPS to anything frigate, or 40-60 DPS to any cruiser you can paint.

(These two "mostly" stack, but these mechanics are for a later entry).

Kin vs. Non-Kin Missiles

This one is a fun debate that I have with people from time to time. Drakes have that bonus to kinetic damage. Some rats tank kinetic damage more effectively than they tank other forms of damage. So when you are in a drake, should you be shooting other missiles, or should you still shoot kinetics? To math we go!

So, in order for a missile switch to be a better idea than sticking with Scourge or Terror, we need the other missiles to be more effective, even with the lost bonus. Assuming L5 skills, this is a 25% difference.

So...

\begin{MATH}

Scourge DPS = Missile DPS * 1.25 * (1 - Kinetic Resists)

Other DPS = Missile DPS * (1 - Other Resists)

So the condition to switch is 

Scourge DPS < Other DPS

1.25 * (1 - Kinetic Resists) < (1 - Other Resists)

Solving this out, the condition to switch off of Kinetic Missiles to another is:

Other Resist < 1.25 * Kinetic Resist - .25 

When this is true, you're doing better shooting the "other resist" whether that be EM, or explosive, or thermal.

Note: This math is based on using resists like: 86% is entered in as .86

Actually finding these numbers is a bit difficult, but can be done here (for example, search for Arch), but can be a bit of a pain to find any kind of generalization.

\end{MATH}

In other words, always do kinetic damage to rats that are weak to Kin, but in general you get good results by matching your missile damage type to the type the rat is weakest in.


The last possibility worth considering for PvE is a situation in which you expect you might be getting neuted (for example, facing sleepers or incursion rats). In this case, it could be to your benefit to run an entirely capacitorless drake, and the way the drake is put together doesn't actually stop this from being a reasonable decision. I haven't ever tried this myself (disclaimer), but the principle is no different than the brick, and the numbers line up reasonably.

[The Capacitorless Drake]

Stats:
372 Kin DPS (HAM)
670 Omni Tank
Capacitor Stable at 100%
175 m/s mobility
8.6s align
Can be put together in either HAM or HML flavors, anywhere along the tank/gank spectrum

Closing Comments:
I like the drake for PvE. I've used one as my sub-level-4 mission boat for a long time. I used to explore in one in nullsec. I've used one in W-space sites many a time. They are the workhorse of the EVE universe, being very flexible for a lot of applications. They can be fit out anywhere along their own personal tank/gank spectrum, depending on the situation, and either tank or gank can be sacrificed to allow for utility slots to be opened up. There are a lot of different ways to put together a drake, so play with it! These are just pieces to work with, and hopefully gives you an idea of the range of things the boat can do, if you weren't familiar with it already.
If I haven't made this obvious yet, I don't think that there is a perfect drake out there. I think that each is tuned to its own particular situation where it is ideal, so the best way to go about it, in my humble opinion, is to have some spare fittings for your drake to be able to tune it to whatever situation you find yourself facing on any particular day.


TL;DR:
If you are fitting a PvE Drake...
HML's are pretty awesome for their range.
Purger rigs give you the best passive recharge tank.
Fit enough tank to comfortably survive what you are doing, and fit the rest with gank/propulsion/utility.
You can put together a drake that uses no capacitor for neuting resistance. Let them neut away, and it doesn't hurt.
If you are throwing a drake into EFT, make sure to change the missiles to Scourge before you cringe at the DPS.
Drakes are pretty powerful for the flexibility they offer, especially given the training time to get into one.


So long, and until next time, o7
-K'