Maller

This guide will show you how to setup an Amarr Maller to tank like a mini Apocolypse! It can operate in any sec. space down to .1 with ease. It can be great in a party of ships in 0.0. The only trouble I've ever had was when two 75k rats were right on top of me with other frigates around. However the 75k rats were actually as slow or slower than the Maller (which is hard to believe because I went under 200m/s!) so I was able to keep at a 25-30km distance at which they couldn't do squat damage. So while the general theory of this tank is to fight at any range and tank whatever is thrown at you, for some cases you will have to keep a distance which isn't too hard.

The Maller is such a good tank, in fact, that it gives the Rupture a run for it's money. Which ship would win? It's hard to tell. The Maller has superior tanking abilities and dishes out less damage while the Rupture has superior fire power and doens't tank as well as a Maller. Each ship may never deal enough damage to destroy one another. Would two Ruptures take out the Maller? Yes, I believe so over a long period of time at which point the Maller could probably warp out. So my beloved Rupture has now taken the back seat for NPC hunting. While it's quicker, I don't feel like spending money on ammunition and missles and I like the change of ship for a while.

Skills


Engineering level 4+ (you need your powergrid!)
Energy Systems Operation level 4+
Energy Management level 4+
Mechanic level 4
Repair Systems level 4
Energy Grid Upgrades level 3
Science level 2
Energy Pulse Weapons level 1
Gunnery level 3
Medium Energy Turret level 1+ (always train these gunnery skills up, more damage!)
Small Energy Turret level 3

Of course all the skills to fly the Maller.

Fitting


HI SLOTS


Here's where you're going to have some flexibility. You can pretty much equip whatever weapons you feel comfortable with. This may change which skills you need under gunnery of course, but you have that option. Quite simply if you feel like using turrets other than lasers then that's great. It's wonderful actually, because it won't drain your capacitor which you will need for tanking. Why might you ask when the Maller has a bonus for lasers? Well simply because the bonus isn't for damage or firing speed! So it doesn't give you, in any way, any tactical advantage. It merely helps with conservation of power. Which is good because if you do decide to use them you will need your capacitor. The good thing about lasers are they fire fast and they can hit at many ranges. So the hi-slots are definately flexible (just don't short yourself powergrid). Here's what I'm currently using:

(3x) Focused Afocal Medium Maser I
(2x) Dual Light Pulse Laser I
(1x) Small EMP Smartbomb

Why am I using two small sized turrets? They track faster and hit frigates better when they are close. They actually hit all ships when they are under 10km where the medium turrets had trouble. Also, you run into powergrid problems and most likely won't be able to fit five medium turrets anyway. However, you can fit four quite easily. Just not four of the heavy beam ones.

MED SLOTS


(2x) Capacitor Recharger I
(1x) Medium Capacitor Battery (I hihgly suggest tech2 because it gives you the capacitor you need plus it doesn't cost much)

Now, you are probably wondering why I have a battery and not another capacitor recharger...Well, quite simply the cap recharge is a ratio to your total capacitor. You divde these numbers and you can play around with modules until you get the highest number. That's how you know when you have the best recharge rate you can get. I'm not sure the formulas, the capacitor does recharge faster and faster when it gets below 50% though as you probably have noticed.

LOW SLOTS


(4x) Capacitor Power Relay
(2x) Medium Armor Repairer II (spare the extra cash for tech2 because they repair so much more and you'll need it)

Now, before I was able to have 3 cap relays and with the extra low slot I put an Energized Adaptive Nano Plating module which increased all my armor resistances by 15%. The last castor patch really ruined and slightly helped this ship. Since the armor repairers (small and medium only) now take less activation time, you need more capacitor to run them forever. So I had to throw on another cap relay (with my skills). Now, if you had Energy Management and Energy Systems Operation both at level 5, you may be in another situation. Or if you had two Capacitor Recharger II's you also may be in another situation. This would be good as then you could probably drop the last power relay and put in the armor resitance modules (or any other module you wanted to use).

Having a little higher armor resistance is very important and here's where the last castor patch actually helped a little bit. At first I thought, "Crap, now I'm back to low resistances to keep the armor repairers running." NOPE! The patch also increased the Maller's armor resistances by 5% per level! Now I'm above what the adaptive nano plating gave me. With the adaptive nano plating I had all my resistances to at least 50% or so and the EMP was over 70%! So I was excited for a little while. It was then I realized the above mentioned problem. So until I train some more skills, I'm going to have to live with a little bit lower resistances than what I could have had, BUT higher than what they were before the patch. So this ship becomes even better the higher you train your skills.