Strategic Cruisers
Strategic cruisers (also 'T3Cs') are the Tech 3 variant of the cruisers. They are the evolution of Sleeper technology into the currently known technology base. In practical terms, they are expensive, powerful, and extremely customizable cruiser-sized ships.
Strategic cruisers have four subsystem slots designed to create a single ship, each holding a part of the ship's basic layout and carrying its own set of bonuses. No strategic cruiser can be fielded if it lacks any of the four subsystem slots. Each race has developed its own set of subsystems for each ship, and these subsystems are not interchangeable between different races' strategic cruisers. Each subsystem has an associated skill, and when combined provide Strategic Cruisers with many more bonuses than any other ships.
To further improve their flexibility, strategic cruisers are also the only ships capable of having Rigs removed from them without destroying them, allowing a single strat cruiser hull to completely refit and change its role in a matter of seconds. To encourage on-the-fly reconfigurations (using a Mobile Depot for example), they also come with an extra cargo bay especially for storing subsystems. And to further encourage pushing the ships to their limits in the field, the main strategic cruiser skill itself does not provide direct combat bonuses, but instead reduces the Overheat damage sustained by the ship's modules, and increases the speed of using Nanite Repair Paste to repair overheat damage.
It takes a lot of effort to build a strategic cruiser, and they consequently cost a lot. Most primary components of Tech 3 production are found in Wormholes, and some of the rarer gases and components are not available outside of Dangerous or Deadly Unknown systems.
The following are the strategic cruisers, by race:
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Subsystems
A Strategic Cruiser is built out of the hull itself and four Subsystems. Each of the four subsystems has three variations. One subsystem of each of the four types is required to complete the ship. Subsystems can be exchanged and replaced at will either in a station or via a Mobile Depot. (And, to this end, all Strategic Cruisers have an extra cargo bay that can hold three subsystems for field refitting.)
As you may have noticed if you looked up a strategic cruiser in-game, they have very few attributes. The slot layout, hardpoints, hitpoints, drone bay, and cargo hold of a strategic cruiser are all determined by the combination of subsystems you choose.
Every subsystem has an associated skill. If you lose a Strategic Cruiser, you will lose one level of your racial subsystem skill at random (note that this is the only way to lose skill points in the game).
Offensive Subsystem
The offensive subsystems give your ship its primary weapon slots, whether launcher or turret hardpoints. They always give 7 high slots. The bonuses provided by these modules include CPU and Powergrid capacity, weapon rate of fire, damage, tracking, range, and fitting, drone control capacity, and drone bay size. All Strategic Cruisers have one Support Processor option which provides bonuses to either Remote Armor or Shield repair systems (or both, for the Loki) and allows fitting Command Bursts.
Defensive Subsystem
The defensive subsystems can give either High, Mid, or Low slots. They also give your ship its armor, shield, and structure hit points, and its signature radius. These subsystems also offer a bonus to a defensive aspect of your ship (Shield/Armor/Hull hitpoints, local repair effectiveness, etc.) based on the subsystem, may give bonus Capacitor capacity, and improve the effects of Overheating some type of defensive module. All Strategic Cruisers have one Covert Reconfiguration option which gives one extra High slot, allows the hull to fit a Covert Ops cloaking device, and provides bonuses to Scanner Probes and hacking modules.
Core Subsystem
The core subsystems generally give Mid and Low slots. They also give your ship its base CPU, PWG, Capacitor, and Sensory capabilities such as scan resolution or targeting range. All Strategic Cruisers have one Augmented Reactor Core Subsystem option which increases Powergrid capacity, either Capacitor Regeneration or Capacitor Capacity, and gives resistance to Energy Neutralizers. All Strategic Cruisers also have one Core Subsystem option which improves some form of their electronic warfare capabilities, and (further) reduces the heat damage sustained by Overheating their modules.
Propulsion Subsystem
The propulsion subsystems give your ship its base in agility and speed. They generally give you mid slots and may give you low slots, but not all of them do. The bonuses provided by these modules include speed or agility bonuses, afterburner bonuses, reduction in micro warp drive penalties, and warp speed. All Strategic Cruisers have one Interdiction Nullifier option which penalizes the ship in various ways, but increases its warp speed and greatly reduces the penalties and cooldown of an Interdiction Nullifier module.
Capabilities and Uses
So, what are these expensive ships good for? Before discussing practical in-game uses, let's review some potential T3C capabilities:
- Tough tanks. All T3Cs can have very high resistances and very tough buffer or active tanks (the Loki is probably the most fragile, but then again its ability to shield or armor tank keeps the enemy guessing). They can be as tanky as T1 Battleships if fit properly.
- High DPS. Compared to other Cruiser hulls, T3Cs can put out battleship-level DPS if fit properly.
- Extreme capacitor stability. All T3Cs have one Core Subsystem that improves their powergrid and capacitor capacity or regeneration and gives them innate resistance to Energy Neutralizers. The added powergrid can also be used to fit Large Cap Batteries, improving stability even further.
- CovOps scouting and Black Ops. All T3Cs can be fitted to warp while cloaked like a Covert Ops or a Force Recon ship, and can light Covert Cynos and take Black Ops Jump Bridges.
- Bubble immunity. All T3Cs can be fitted to ignore warp disruption bubbles.
- Difficult to probe. The difficulty of probing a ship down is based on the ratio of its signature radius and sensor strength. Although they must make fitting sacrifices, T3Cs can achieve very high sensor strengths and small signature radii, and thus become possible to probe only with the highest of probing skills.
- Fleet Command bonuses. The dedicated Command Ships comes with a hull bonus of 3% per level to the effect of two racial warfare links. The T3Cs can't fit as many warfare links at once as a Command Ship, but with the right subsystem, they can have a 2% per level bonus to the effect of three racial links.
- Slow-cooking. All T3Cs have a per-level reduction in the heat damage you take when overheating modules, which lets them overheat for much longer than most other ships. They also have bonuses to module repair speed using Nanite Repair Paste. This allows for significantly longer overheating time for less drawback.
- EWAR. Each of the T3Cs has a subsystem that gives them a bonus to some form of electronic support. (Neutralizers for Legion, Webs for Loki, Warp Disruptor/Scrambler for Proteus, ECM for Tengu.) This lets them work as either electronic warfare vessels or long-ranged tacklers. These bonuses are not as strong as the bonuses for the Force Recon Ships, however, they can often be added on to a T3C's other abilities, rather than forcing the entire ship to be built around them.
Achieving any of these requires trade-offs and sacrifices, of course. But that point itself touches on what might be T3C ships' strongest point: since they're so customizable, when the enemy sees one on scan it's hard for them to know what it's fitted to do.
Now let's see how those capabilities work out in in-game uses for T3Cs:
Mission-Running
T3Cs can combine a tough tank with (relatively) high speeds and small signature radii, plus the ability to deal decent damage. This makes them capable of taking on L4 missions. They may not complete L4s as fast as well-fitted and well-flown battleships, but their agility and difficulty to probe makes them suited to mission-running in dangerous low- or null-sec space.
Exploration
T3Cs can combine the ability to quickly and accurately probe things down with the tank and DPS required to do many quite tough exploration sites solo.
Heavy Scouting/Surprise Tackle
Fitted for CovOps-style cloaking and probing, a T3C can be an effective PvP scout, with enough of a tank to tackle a target and (hopefully) survive long enough for help to arrive. Cloak-fitted T3Cs can dispatch weaker targets solo.
Bait
T3Cs can mount fairly ridiculous buffer tanks, pushing over 300,000 effective hitpoints with the right subsystems, skills and implants. Alternatively, they can mount similarly ridiculous active tanks, able to shrug off several thousand DPS and resist all attempts to neutralize their capacitors (short of literally dropping full neutralizer-fit battleships on them). In these configurations, they make great (if expensive) bait.
Command Bonuses
With their 2% bonus to racial warfare links, T3Cs can give a fleet very substantial bonuses.
Logistics
All T3Cs can be fitted for either remote armor or shield repairs (racially dependent, or both for the Loki), and can output comparable remote repairs to a regular logistics cruiser while maintaining greater capacitor stability (with no cap chain involved) and effective hitpoints. And because logi T3Cs are fitted with 7 Medium remote repair modules, rather than 3 or 4 Large modules, they have much greater flexibility in shifting target and repair priorities. However, T3C remote reps are shorter-range than normal logistics cruiser remote reps, forcing logi T3Cs to be grouped with the main fleet. (Although, this can also be an advantage, because it can make these logistics ships more difficult to identify and target.)
High-Danger Travel
Fitted with an interdiction nullifier subsystem and module, warp core stabilizers, and a covert ops cloak, a T3C can cheerfully stroll through most camps. This is useful for scouting, traveling through dangerous nullsec or moving small, high-value items that don't justify a jump freighter through Nullsec. T3Cs are among only ships that can ignore bubbles and use a covert ops cloak; however with the interdiction nullification rework and both Blockade Runners and CovOps Frigates gaining this ability, T3Cs have fallen slightly in prominence as travel ships.
A Super-HAC
It's a bit boring compared to some of the other potential uses, but a T3C can just slot into a PvP gang as a tougher, higher damage, and more expensive Heavy Assault Cruiser, which can overheat for longer (but has no Assault Damage Control).
That said, however, these T3C fits can often easily be combined with the EWAR subsystem to turn a Legion into a HAC with neutralizers, a Loki into a HAC with extremely long-range webs, a Proteus into a HAC with long-range tackle, or a Tengu into a HAC with high-power ECM jammers.
100MN Combat
The prevalence of Marauders in mid 2021 lead to an increase in the use of T3C fleets fitted with battleship-sized 100MN Afterburners. A 100MN T3C is slightly slower than a 50MN T3C, has much slower acceleration and turning, and must make sacrifices in damage or raw durability, but in exchange is extremely difficult to pin down, hit, and kill, because its engines are immune to Warp Scrambling and it has a very small sig radius relative to its speed.
Keeping the Enemy Guessing
Because a T3C can fill so many different roles, a fleet containing many T3Cs can be very difficult for an enemy to read, and key members (EWAR, command bursts, logistics) must be manually identified, rather than just looking at the ship type. This can cause the enemy to waste time on inefficient targets while trying to determine who their actual priorities should be.
History
Strategic cruisers have been rebalanced in the July 2017 expansion which was released on July 11, 2017.
