RELATED UNI-WIKI REFERENCES
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Our pride, our liberation, our legacy.
- – Unknown citizen recalling the first Rifters above Matar
The Rifter is a very powerful combat frigate and can easily tackle the best frigates out there. It has gone through many radical design phases since its inauguration during the Minmatar Rebellion. The Rifter has a wide variety of offensive capabilities, making it an unpredictable and deadly adversary.
SHIP BONUSES
Minmatar Frigate bonuses (per skill level):
7.5% bonus to Small Projectile Turret rate of fire
10% bonus to Small Projectile Turret falloff
Required Skills
Training Time what's this?25m 0s
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Grouping
▪ Variations Wolf
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 48 MW  135 tf
 375 m/sec
 165 m³
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,Jaguar
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 39 MW  180 tf
 368 m/sec
 130 m³
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Ship Attributes
Fittings |
High 3
Launchers 2
Turrets 3
Rig
3
small
Calibration 400
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Navigation |
Base Time to Warp 4.73 s what's this?
Base Time to Warp is essentially the time needed for this ship to align and accelerate until it reaches 75% of its top speed and goes to warp. The time displayed here is the base calculated time with no account for any warp related skills, modules or any other effects.
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Drones |
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Targeting |
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Structure |
Structure Hitpoints 350 HP
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Armor |
Armor Hitpoints 450 HP
Armor Resistances
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Shields |
Shield Capacity 450 HP
Shield Resistances
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Summary
The Rifter is the primary Minmatar damage-dealing frigate. For tackling, a Slasher is a safer bet, as it has tackling bonuses.
Skills
As a basic Tech 1 frigate, the Rifter is a forgiving and undemanding ship. New pilots will get more out of it, though, if they train at least a few levels of relevant gunnery skills to back up its bonuses for projectile turrets.
Tactics
The Rifter is not an outstanding frigate, but it does have a balanced 3/3/4 slot layout, which allows pilots some tactical flexibility.
PvE
With no need to tackle the kind of enemies faced in new-player PvE combat and Level 1 missions, Rifter pilots can try mounting a small shield tank and putting a Damage Control and Gyrostabilizers (for more damage) in the low slots. The Rifter is a perfectly good ship for most or all Level 1 mission work, but pilots will probably soon move on from the Rifter to the Thrasher and then (for Level 2 missions) the Rupture.
PvP
The Rifter sees some use in small-scale Faction Warfare battles. With its speed and its falloff bonus (and especially with T2 autocannon, which can use the falloff-boosting Barrage ammo), the Rifter can try to kite at the edge of warp scrambler range. Artillery fits are a squeeze, but can attempt kiting beyond scram range and within point range.
In PvP fleets, the Rifter is not a bad choice for a new Minmatar character who wants to bring some small-sized DPS to the table, but it is worth checking with your FC whether or not a tackling Slasher might offer more utility to the fleet.
Notes
For more than a decade of Eve Online's history, the Rifter was the best of all Tech 1 frigates, highly popular for solo PvP and for cheap, low-SP "swarm" fleets. It was regarded as "EVE's AK-47": an affordable and reliable weapon wielded by many. This popularity, and perhaps its iconic silhouette when seen from above, gave it pride of place in publicity material and player memes.
Since a major frigate rebalancing in the middle of the 2010s, the Rifter has become a significantly weaker ship, and one seen much less often in PvP. Its iconic silhouette is still used in game for the fitting window icon and the cargo hold button within the Fitting window, however, and outside the game itself a picture of the Rifter is used as the icon for the popular third-party fitting tool PYFA.
More recently, the 2022 Uprising expansion has attempted to breathe new life into the Rifter with an increase to its firerate with small projectile turrets.
Patch History
[show]A long, long time ago...
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Version 20.10 - 2022-11-08 - Uprising (Patch Notes)
- The rifter is an iconic ship which has languished a bit too long at the bottom of the kiddie pool. Improving its damage should make it a bit more competitive, particularly in areas such as novice factional warfare complexes.
- -CCP Aurora, Balance Updates Coming with Uprising, October 2022
- Small Projectile Turret rate of fire bonus increased from 5% per level to 7.5% per level
November 2019 Release v.1.1 - Build: 1617768 - 2019-11-26
- 5% damage bonus per level replaced with 5% rate of fire bonus per level
Lifeblood v.1.0 - Build: 1203953 - 24.10.17
- High slots reduced from 4 to 3 (-1)
- Low slots increased from 3 to 4 (+1)
December v.1.0 - Build: 995003 - 08.12.15
- Rifter and Slasher are getting a moderate fittings buff to help artillery fits and to make it easier to use the utility highs.
- +5 CPU, +3 PWG
Rubicon v.1.3 - Build: 761459 - 12.03.14
- Removed +7.5% Small Projectile Turret tracking bonus per level
- Added +10% Small Projectile Turret falloff bonus per level
- + 10 m/s velocity
- +0.01 inertia
Odyssey v.1.0 - Build: 584903 - 04.16.13
- Some tech1 frigates and cruisers balanced during Retribution and beforehand have been iterated upon based on player feedback and performance metrics.
- +1 PWG.
- +50 Armor.
- The rifter's thruster locators have been moved closer to the hull.
Inferno v.1.0 - Build: 377452 - 22.05.12
- Rifter: role and bonuses unchanged
- Unchanged Slot layout: 4 High, 3 Mid, 3 Low; 3 turrets and 2 launchers.
- Unchanged fittings: 37 PWG, 125 CPU.
- Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 450 / 400 / 350
- Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / cap per second): 250 / 125 s / 2
- Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 355 / 3.19 / 1067000 / 3.19 s
- Drones (bandwidth / bay): 0 / 0
- Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 22.5km / 660 / 4
- Sensor strength: 8 Ladar
- Signature radius: 35
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