Marauders
Marauders are T2 battleships designed to be damage dealers with a strong local tank. For that, they can fit the Bastion Module which doubles the rate of fire, the local repair amount, and improves resistance to damage and EWAR, but at the same time has drawbacks such as making the ship immobile, not receiving remote repairs, and giving a weapon timer. Besides that, they have additional strong hull bonuses: A 100% bonus to their corresponding weapon system means that their four hard points correspond to eight un-bonused weapon slots which are further improved by skill-dependent bonuses. The Paladin, Golem, and Kronos have a 7.5% bonus to their preferred local tank per marauder skill level which results in 37.5% with maximum skill. The Vargur receives a 5% per level bonus for both armor repairs and shield boosting, resulting in a 25% bonus to both at max skills. Further, they have a 70% reduction of the MJD reactivation delay which changes the delay from 180 seconds to 54. And tractor beams' range and velocity are doubled when fitted to Marauders. The four Marauders are:
The base hit points of marauders are increased compared to their T1 counterparts but not as much as the corresponding navy faction ships. Their EHP is increased through their natural resistances even though those aren’t especially high compared with T2 cruisers.
All Marauders have 19 slots of which 7 or 8 are high slots which leave 11 or 12 for mid and low slots. As only 4 of the high slots are used up by weapons (4 hard points), they have 3 to 4 utility highs of which one is usually used for the Bastion Module leaving 2 or 3 open for other modules.
The lock ranges are big even for battleships ranging from 105.3 km (Vargur) to 123.5 km (Golem). Also, their cargo capacity is relatively big with 1125 m³ (Paladin) to 1275 m³ (Kronos).
Bastion Module
An electronic interface designed to augment and enhance a marauder's siege abilities. Through a series of electromagnetic polarity field shifts, the bastion module diverts energy from the ship's propulsion and warp systems to lend additional power to its defensive and offensive capabilities.
The Bastion Module is a high slot module that can only be used by marauders. Its cycle time is 60 seconds and it gives the following positive and negative effects when active:
- 50% reduction to turret and missile launcher cycle duration, i.e. doubling the rate of fire and thus DPS. This bonus is not stacking penalized.
- +25% Missile Velocity, Turret Optimal Range, and Turret Falloff Range. This bonus is stacking penalized.
- +100% Shield Booster and Armor Repairer amount.
- 30% Shield, Armor, and Structure Resistance to all damage(stacking penalties with Damage Control and Reactive Armor Hardener). This results in a more than 40% increase in effective tank.
- +100% Sensor Strength which can be interpreted as 50% ECM resistance. No stacking penalty.
- -100% maximum velocity.
- Cannot dock, tether, or enter warp.
- Applies a 60 second weapons timer. This timer is refreshed constantly during the bastion cycle so it will last 60 seconds after the cycle ends.
- Cannot receive remote repairs or capacitor transmission.
- 95% reduction to friendly Remote Sensor Booster and Remote Tracking Computer effects.
Ship plays a short transformation animation, and stays visibly transformed until the module deactivates. The module description incorrectly states that only the repair bonus is stacking penalized. The rate of fire bonus is not stacking penalized and the resist bonuses are stacking penalized with damage control and reactive armor hardener. Other bonuses are stacking penalized normally.
In effect, the module turns the marauder into a stationary turret and one-ship army, making the marauder a long ranged, rapid fire, extremely resilient platform to stand alone versus a small fleet. However, because it blocks all remote assistance, it forces the marauder to stand and fight alone. Furthermore, while the Bastion Module makes the marauder highly resistant to most forms of electronic warfare, it offers no resistance to Energy Neutralizers, which can drain the ship's capacitor, shut down its local repair systems, and leave it dead in the water.
Even though Bastion immobilizes the marauder, the MJD bonus makes up for that. The MJD is ready for use again after 54 seconds which means less than one bastion cycle. This makes it possible to jump 100 km every 69 to 72 seconds (depending on MJD skill level) while being in bastion most of the time. This corresponds to roughly 1400 m/s. As a comparison a Machariel with a meta MWD fitted has a velocity of a bit over 1500 m/s (without extra modules or command bursts). This means that marauders are actually fairly mobile for a battleship.
Interestingly, while a Micro Jump Drive will not function while the Bastion module is active, the Micro Jump Field Generator of a Command Destroyer is not blocked, and so bastioned marauders can still be booshed around.
While the Bastion Module is similar to Industrial Cores, the Triage module, and especially the Siege module, it doesn’t use any fuel. It also doesn’t require any capacitor.
Marauders in Bastion can jump wormholes as normal and are instantly out of Bastion on the other side.
Bastion + MWD trick
The Bastion + MWD trick allows marauders to reduce their align time when after coming out of bastion. Hover the mouse on the decycling bastion module to see exactly how long it has left. At the 9 second mark, start cycling the MWD for one cycle and start spamming "warp to" hotkey. After the bastion mode ends you will get one second of MWD that accelerates you to near warp speed and the marauder will warp in 2-3 seconds.
PvE
Marauders are very popular in a wide range of PvE activities. Some examples:
- They really shine in level 4 security missions but can also be used in level 5 missions even though it’s more popular to blitz those in a carrier.
- They can run wormhole sites as high up as class 5.
- They can run nullsec combat sites - both anomalies and DED sites.
- They are a mainstay in nearly all highsec Incursion groups.
- Pochven PvE often utilizes marauders.
PvP
Marauders are also popular in PvP. They provide a significant amount of DPS in smaller engagements. There it's also less important that they cannot receive remote reps (while in bastion) as their local tank is so strong. Energy neutralizers are often effective against marauders as they don't have resists against those. But the shield based marauders, Vargur and Golem, can do tanks which don't require any capacitor by using ancillary shield boosters. On the other hand, marauders themself usually fit energy neutralizers in their utility highs.
Marauders are usually not seen as a ship for large engagements. While their local tank is strong, it still won't be able to tank a big hostile fleet and they can't receive remote repairs while in bastion. Nevertheless the alliance Pandemic Horde introduced a Paladin doctrine in 2022. The reasoning is that the Paladin should mostly be used outside of bastion and outperforms other options even without bastion (the fit includes a bastion module fitted though). At the same time they claim that it can be better sourced than corresponding faction ships.
History
For many years, marauders were a neglected class. For PvE purposes, they only matched the damage of pirate battleships, without the mobility of a 
Machariel or a 
Nightmare, leaving them unsuited for mission blitzing. They were also generally more expensive than pirate battleships, with marauder hulls costing around 2 billion ISK when comparable pirate hulls could cost anywhere between 500 million and 1 billion ISK, making them more expensive sidegrades if the bastion module or utility highs weren't being leveraged. For PvP purposes, they were outmatched by HAW-equipped dreadnoughts, a configuration made possible by a capital ship rework in 2016. They had comparable cost, and could similarly anchor themselves down in solo PvP against multiple enemies, but held significantly more damage and tanking potential. And prior to 2021, bastion lasted 60 seconds, which complicated its use in high damage fleet environments. Thus, they were left as expensive highsec mission boats, which could comfortably, but not speedily run them.
Marauders received significant buffs in 2021. this includes explicit buffs in the Bastion of War update[1] as well as implicit changes due to industry. This lead to a huge popularity of marauders in 2022 which makes people already speak of "marauders in Space".
The Bastion of War update doubled the damage output of marauders while in bastion. Later in 2021, the industry changes[2] made big T1 hulls (battleships and capitals) significantly more expensive while marauders were barely affected. At the end of 2021 ore amounts were increased this included moon ores.[3] This lead to a price decline in higher tier moon goo i.e. r64s and r32s. As a result the prices for T2 hulls including marauders declined significantly. As of mid 2022 marauders are at their lowest prices since 2016 usually costing a bit over one billion ISK but the Kronos already dipping below that.[4] The buff to battleships in general by adding the role bonus regarding plates, extenders, and bulkheads made marauders so strong that they are even considered viable in big fleets. The addition of frigate escape bays before those changes is also especially helpful to marauders as this gives a higher chance to save a pod with implants.[5]
Patch History
| A long, long time ago... |
|---|
Viridian expansion - 2023-06-13 Patch Notes
19.09 Release - 2021-10-13 (Patch Notes)
19.06 Release - 2021-07-13 (Patch Notes)
19.01 Release - 2021-2-23 - "Bastions of War" update (Patch Notes)
18.04 Release - Build: 1706308 - 2020-04-15 - "Surgical Strike" Update (Patch Notes)
|
References
- ^ Bastion of War dev blog and patch notes
- ^ A significant update to Industry dev blog and patch notes
- ^ From Extraction to Production dev blog, forum post, and patch notes
- ^ See charts for marauders on the market website adam4eve: https://www.adam4eve.eu/price_chart.php?groupID=900
- ^ See Battleships#History
