Rupture



DEFENSE

The essential theory behind a Rupture’s defense is to run a shield booster forever and launch defender missles for the odd missles that may be a threat. Keep in mind NPC missles won’t hurt you when you’re shield boosting unless there’s a good amount of heavies coming at you. Since the last patch the frigates don’t fire heavies so you have less now. Of course when you go down to lower security status areas you will run into some problems with missles but that’s what the defenders are for of course.

OFFENSE

The Rupture’s offense is one of the strongest among cruisers. In fact, projectiles are the hardest hitting guns. Sometimes 650mm Artillery Cannons can be good and are still popular, but ideally you will want the Howitzers with a compliment of various ammo types to account for different ranges. You will NEVER beat a Howitzer for damage when loaded with Phased Plasma or EMP. The downside is Phased Plasma is expensive as hell. It requires Zydrine to produce. In addition to Howitzers you WILL need missles. When ships come too close or fly too fast you need something else, not to mention missles have a very good range compared to turrets. Sometimes you can destroy ships before they even become within range of your turrets.

MISCELLANEOUS CONCERNS

The higher your skills the more slots you will free up. This is true for any ship in any situation. The Rupture has a good amount of low slots and they are VERY valuable so don’t waste them. Things you may want to consider: Warpcore Stabilizers, Gyrostabilizers, and other low slot items to increase defense or offense.

Required Skills


Yes, you will need certain skills to properly pilot a Rupture. I hope you didn’t rush to train up your cruiser skill and ignored other ones because you WILL lose your Rupture without the proper skills.Engineering skills are paramount as are electrical. You DON’T EVER want to use a coprocessor. You will also need good capacitor and capacitor recharge rate. Below is a list of the bare minimum skills that you will need. Keep in mind you always want skills to be higher and the consider working to make the marked ones as high as possible. You will also need Gunnery skills.

Electronics 3
Engineering 3 ***
Shield Operation 3
Energy Systems Operation 3 *** (I’d really say 4 because it frees up low slots)
Energy Management 3 ***
Gunnery 4
Medium Projectile Turrets 3 *** (Again, I’d say 4, bare minimum is 3)
Weapon Upgrades 2 (Saves you CPU!!! You won’t be able to fit everything without this. Also gyro.)

Note that these skills aren’t mandatory but, you’ll feel a lot better if you train them, they should train quick.

Rapid Firing 3
Sharpshooter 3
Motion Prediction 3 *** (Faster moving ships will require this)
Surgical Strike 2 *** (2 because it’s quick to train, but more if you can of course)
Energy Grid Upgrades 3 (Saves a little CPU depending on your loadout)

Fitting


HI - SLOTS



3x 720mm Howizters (or better named ones)
1x Rocket Launcher (defender missles)
2x Heavy Launchers

If you want, you can subsitute a heavy missle launcher for a 4th Howitzer if you have enough power and dislike the cost of missles. Be very careful as to not short yourself power elsewhere. For the shield booster, etc.

MED - SLOTS



2x Capacitor Recharger I (or better named ones)
1x Medium Shield Booster (tech2 preferred, it is worth the little extra cash)

LOW - SLOTS



2x Capacitor Relay I
1x Power Diagnostic I
1x Warpcore Stabilizer
1x Gyrostabilizer I (tech2 if possible, need Weapon Upgrades level 4 though)

Alternatively
You may want to consider two warp core stabilizers and ditch the gyrostabilizer if you are in a nasty part of space with many human pirates. Or you may choose not to use a warp core stabilizer at all and go with another module. I suggest a power diagnostic since it increases everything or even a nanofiber for more speed. You can also try an armor repairer if you have the cpu. Here’s where the flexibility of the ship comes in and where the only variation should be (minus the turrets and missle launchers). If you have low skill training then you will have one free low slot. If you have decent skills, you will have two low slots. If you have high level skills then you probably will have 3 low slots to play with.

An even better defense is possible.
If you have high enough capacitor recharge rate and can ditch a cap relay and put in a power diagnostic or something else then you can boost more. Remember the relays have a -10% boost amount penalty.

Drones?
If you have them, why not use them of course. They will prove valuable especially when things are too close to you.

Why defender missles? Why a rocket launcher?
Two reasons. First: A rocket launcher requires very little cpu and power. Second: A rocket launcher will fire a missle every 3 seconds or so. You can’t find a faster launcher. I know it only holds 10 so your argument is with a bigger launcher less reloading. Well guess what? An assault or any other launcher still fires slower than the time it takes to reload the defender missles. As for smartbombs...They aren’t as good believe it or not for defending against missles unless you have a few of them going off alternating and then after that, you have splatter damage to consider.

Why so many cap rechargers?
I can use more relays and free up a medium slot for a MWD or shield amp. Yea, you could. However, a shield amplifier on 90hp won’t really add up to much and you will be defeating the point when you have to put on an extra relay or so to compensate for the loss from the cap recharger since cap relays reduce the amount of boosters. As for a MWD...You already move faster than most cruisers becuase the Minmatar have the fastest ships. A MWD or afterburner could be something to consider depending on what you’re fighting though. There is always a setup to outdo another setup, but you don’t know what setup you will face.

Piloting Tactics


You want to carry a variation of projectile ammo. I primarily use Titanium Sabot because it has a good range (20.1km with my skills.) Also Proton for longer range instead of Carbonized Lead because I found lead to not do enough damage. Only if I were at extremely far range would I consider it and that doesn’t happen often. I also use Phased Plasma for close encounter of 15km or less. I also suggest a variation of missles. Some Thunderbolt missles and Widowmaker missles because the Thunderbolt will be good to take out shields and the Widowmakers are strong missles. I also like Havoc missles because armor will have low explosive resistance.

Now the essential tactic I use when fighting against NPC pirates is warping into a belt at maybe 40-60km away. This way I can think clearly rather than having a bunch of rats on top of me. Sometimes they are anyway but that’s ok because most the time you can tank (depends on how difficult the rats are of course). I will have Proton loaded first and use that until the ships come within 20km and then I’ll use Titanium Sabot. Rarely will I have the need to load Phased Plasma becuase they usually won’t get within 15km of me. I will use all weapons on one ship at a time and target the biggest one first. If there are some ships real close, then I’ll use missles and use the guns on the ships that are within range.My skills will be different than yours so I will have different ranges of course but they won’t be too far off. A very good idea was shown to me by my CEO of my corp. Write down on a piece of paper, (I use a sticky note) the ammo types and optimal ranges for you so you can use it as a quick reference. This is a very good idea since I sure as hell can’t remember all the ranges. I do know the ranges of the three before mentioned ammo types though. You will have to experiment though and find out what works best for you. I hear EMP is really good against human pilots for some reason. I don’t do too much PVP though so I couldn’t tell you.

Don’t forget your defense! All the time you’re engaged in combat here, you can feel free to leave your medium shield booster on autorepeat. You will never run out of capacitor and you will even have enough to warp out. Also don’t forget to launch your defender missles if you have big missles coming at you. I sometimes leave this on autorepeat as well and now autoreload. So bring lots of defender missles which are cheap anyway.

HOW SAFE ARE YOU?
Of course you will become even safer the better your skills are, but in general you will be able to go down to .3 with absolutely no problems. I’ve also taken my Rupture to 0.0 space with my corp. Let’s just say that they were glad I had defender missles. However, there isn’t enough firepower to take out an NPC battleship unfortunately. So I would say you’re very safe in .3 and all the way down to .1 you should be pretty good too. Of course you also have to watch out for human pirates who like to scramble you and what not.

Thank you for reading my guide! If you have any input, questions, or ESPECIALLY if you’ve found something better please feel free to send me an eve-mail or chat in game. My character name is YAMAN


ADDENDUM - February 2005


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Many many setups out there for the Rupture the following is some new research with some sample setups with my interpretation of how well they perform.



Legend:
best = Best possible as far as I can tell
high = Very good, but there definately could be better
average = Will get ya there
low = Won't last you long at all or do you that well


These do not include ganking setups, the damage there is way off the scale of course, hence "gank." This scale is only in terms of this ship and my research, not in terms or compared to other ships, at least of different class ships.
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HI
---
3x Howitzers
1x Rocket Launcher
2x Heavy Launchers


MED
---
3x Cap Rechargers


LOW
---
1x Capacitor Power Relay
2x Reactor Control Units
1x Medium Armor Repairer tech2
1x Energized Reactive Membrane


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Notes: This setup dishes out great damage, while tanking extremely well. It may be possible to get away with 2 capacitor rechargers if they are named.

TANKING: best
DAMAGE: high
TRACKING: average


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HI
---
3x Howitzers
1x Rocket Launcher
2x Heavy Launchers


MED
---
1x Medium Shield Booster tech2
1x Passive 32.5% Thermal Shield Hardener
1x 50% EM Shield Hardener


LOW
---
4x Capacitor Power Relays
1x Gyrostabilizer (tech2)


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Notes: This setup allows for maximum damage, while tanking at a good rate.

TANKING: high
DAMAGE: best
TRACKING: average

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HI
---
3x 650mm Artillery
1x Rocket Launcher
2x Heavy Launchers


MED
---
2x Capacitor Rechargers (I have one fixed parallel link-capacitor which gives 16.5%, a 1.5% increase
one fixed parallel link-capacitor works without the other one, an even better named one would be better of course, for the small activation costs for guns)
1x Tracking Computer


LOW
---
2x Capacitor Power Relay (Perhaps able to be swapped for a kinetic resist if you have two named rechargers)
1x Energized Reactive Membrane
1x Energized Kinetic Resist <<< Optional - Gyrostabilizer (less tanking more damage)
1x Medium Armor Repairer tech2


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Notes: This setup dishes out less damage, but faster rates of fire and tracking speed which may increase damage over time. It also adjusts your range, so you are fighting a little closer. You can change an armor resistance for a gyrostabilizer to help make up for some of the damage loss while tanking slightly less. Or you can keep the second resistance in for kinetic and tank a little better. Offense or Defense, the choice is yours.

TANKING: best
DAMAGE: average-high
TRAKCING: best

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