Spider Tanking: Battleships

This wiki page describes the general recommendations and considerations for fitting a Remote Repair (RR) Battleship. RR Battleships are generally used in PvP fleets, often with smaller ships in support roles. For a description of the operational and tactical procedures while flying in an RR Battleship Fleet, or "RR Gang", please see Spider Tanking.

While the recommendations and considerations in this page might also be applied to other ship classes, this is not common practice and this page is limited to Tech 1 Battleship fittings.

Although RR Battleships are mostly armor tanked, shield RR Battleships can also be used. However, they are limited due to the skill requirements needed to fit them, the availability of battleship hulls with sufficient mid slots, and the high CPU requirements of shield transport modules.

Hulls

Some battleship hulls are more suitable than others for RR fleets. The properties important for an RR Battleship are:

• Plenty of low slots for fitting an armor buffer tank and some damage modules.
• Sufficient mid slots for fitting a MWD, capacitor booster, and other utility modules.
• Bonus for damage dealing.

Amarr

Close call between the Armageddon and the Abaddon. The Armageddon is less cap intensive and has a large drone bay, while the Abaddon has an armor resist bonus but is extremely cap hungry. The Abaddon has an extra mid slot, and better fitting attributes, often making it the preferred choice.

Gallente

Both the Megathron and Dominix can be used in RR battleship gangs. The Dominix is often fitted with energy neutralizers in its high slots instead of guns. The Megathron is usually a better choice with its higher damage potential. However, blasters have a very short range, which can be problematic; while rails have better range but terrible tracking at short range (even with the Megathron's tracking bonus) and mediocre damage output.

Minmatar

The Maelstrom is not suitable for RR fleets due to its lack of low slots. The Tempest is decent and has an extra mid slot. The Typhoon is often preferred, with its better fitting attributes, and ability to fit torpedoes. Torpedoes have the advantage over autocannons of being able to apply more DPS up to 17 to 20 KM, depending on the pilot's skills. Furthermore, while the Tempest only has a 75m3 drone bay, and matching bandwidth, the Typhoon has 125 bandwidth and a whopping 175m3 bay, giving it more utility.

Caldari

Caldari really don't have any good options. The Raven needs to dedicate all of its low slots to fit the standard tank, while sacrificing a trimark for an ancillary current router. The only real saving grace is that it has 6 mids: even after fitting the MWD and cap booster, it can provide some utility with tackle and target-painting.

The Scorpion can make a powerful addition to most fleets, being able to take out hostile DPS with jams. It is often the obvious primary target with a low tank, while being forced to close to close range to recieve RR from other battleships is a bad combination if the ECM cannot jam enough of the hostile ships. It can have the option of staying at long range, preventing it from recieving remote reps, but which some enemy fleets will have difficulty reaching.

Modules

Most RR BS will have a MWD and a cap booster, however this can vary. Some RR BS are designed for station hugging and thus do not fit a propulsion module. Most pilots prefer a heavy cap booster, however they are difficult to fit, and some ships downgrade to a medium cap booster. An afterburner is totally inadequate for RR BS fleets and should never be fitted instead of a MWD.

Remote repair

• Recommended fitting: Large Remote Armor Repair System II or Large 'Solace' I Remote Bulwark Reconstruction. Most ships fit one, although some fit two.

Although T2 or high meta is not strictly required, higher is better in this case. Many people prefer the 'Solace' meta 4 repper, as it repairs nearly as much as the T2 module, but has lighter fitting requirements.

Buffer tank

• Suggested minimum requirement: 100k EHP.
• Recommended: 115k to 150k EHP depending on hull.

Having a big buffer is important as it gives your gang mates time to lock you, and start repping. On top of that resists are highly desired as they increase to effectiveness of the repairs received. In most places, the standard fitting is 1 DC II, 2x 1600mm RT plates and 2x resist mods, but some like to add a third plate there for extra buffer to give your friends extra time to lock. The Abaddon is sometimes an exception since it gets a very good built in resistance bonus, so they can afford to drop to only 1 resist mod, but most prefer to use 2 of them anyway.

Triple Trimark rigs usually complete the buffer tank, although some fits require an ancilliary current router for powergrid requirements, and some pilots like to patch the explosive hole with an anti-explosive rig.

Weapon Choice

• Recommended fitting: high damage weapons.

Some people prefer long range weapons, as they can start to apply damage from further out but long range guns suffer from tracking issues at short range reducing the effective DPS. Others prefer short range weapons as they do more damage and short range guns don't suffer as much from tracking issues. The size of the gang and how the fleet commander wishes to use it will usually determine if short or long range weapons are appropriate.

Utility Modules

• Required fitting: Heavy or Medium Cap Boosters and Microwarpdrive.
• Recommended Fitting: Heavy Cap Booster and Microwarpdrive.
• Optional fitting: Point (Warp scrambler or Warp disruptor), stasis webifier, ECCM, sensor booster with scan resolution script, target painter, energy neutralizer.

Cap transfer mods are usually NOT fitted on battleships. The ones fitting those are the dedicated logistics ships. Guardians and Basilisks get a huge cap use reduction from the ship skills, which is the only reason they're worth it on those ships. It's much better to save the slot for something else, like extra RR or a neut.

Cap stability is not important: it is generally not achievable due to the high cap usage of remote reppers. A heavy cap booster will usually supply the ship with enough cap for the duration of the combat encounter.

The value of ECCM is situational. Not many hostile fleets use ECM against E-UNI fleets.

Sensor Boosters will let you lock and repair faster, but since your fleetmates are in big battleships locking will be fast anyway. Of course, fitting a Sensor Booster will also let you lock and do damage to the enemy earlier.

Implants

• Slots 1-6 - Slave Set - 53% more armor HP.
• Slot 6 - PG2, PG4, PG6 - 1%, 3%, 5% more powergrid.
• Slot 6 - KTA10, KTA100, KTA1000 - Reduces launcher CPU need by 1%, 3%, 5%.
• Slot 6 - KMB25, KMB50, KMB75 - 1%, 3%, 5% more CPU.
• Slot 7 - ZET20, ZET200, ZET2000 - 1%, 3%, 5% less RR cap use.
• Slot 10 - ZET50, ZET500, ZET5000 - 1%, 3%, 5% more armor HP.
• Slot 10 - KZA500, KZA1000, KZA2000 - Reduces turret CPU need by 1%, 3%, 5%.

Tips

• Use hotkeys to request remote repairs, and for drone attack and return to drone bay.

• Keep your fleet window open to the broadcast history tab, and pay attention to any new requests for repping. Control-click the broadcast display at the bottom of the window to lock the broadcast target, or right-click in the history list above to lock previous broadcast targets.

• Make sure you know which ship will serve as anchor and keep at range 2000m from it. The anchor could change during a fight, so pay attention to the FC's orders. Make sure you stay close to your fleetmates so they can rep you, and don't let yourself drift out of range because of a misclick.

• Manage your MWD properly. You may need to MWD in the initial anchor approach, and remember to turn off the MWD if you no longer need it. An active MWD when it is not needed will waste your cap very quickly.

• Try not to shoot your friends nor remote rep your enemies. Pay attention to the standing icons and double check your module and drone targets.

• Add as many of the battleships in your fleet in your watchlist as possible. You can control-click names in the watchlist to lock them.

• Make sure you know how to target ships quickly and manage your locked targets properly. Unlock targets to always keep some targeting slots open for fleetmates to rep or enemies to shoot when the primary changes.

• Sort your overview as needed. Sorting by name can be quite common when there are a lot of hostiles on the field. Normally you should use the watchlist, broadcast window and history to target allies that need RR, but if you have trouble with those you might also want an overview tab with fleetmates on it.

Ship Fittings

• Eve University - PvP Forum

• Scrapheap Challenge - PvP Forum