From: Fleet Master K.
To: GOTG Ratting High Command, GOTG Carrier Division, GOTG Ratters, SPAIs.
Hello All, Keyes reporting in.
I have now finished the preliminary report on Carrier ratting, requested by Leadership due to the massive amount of misinformation floating around in space.
It will be as brief as I can make it as I know you are busy, calculations will be left out, this will be quick and dirty, so let us get started.
The question we had to answer was “Is Carrier ratting worth it?”
We have done so in a satisfactory way starting with an intro -> Carriers(short) -> Combat Sites -> Fitting your Carrier -> Drones to use -> Implants??? -> How to rat(This is important to avoid losing fighters, especially with the new patch coming out)
Why? – A lot of different claims floating around about carrier ratting profitability, videos on youtube claiming “average ticks” of 35 Million ISK, something making many people not even consider Carriers, as their Rattlesnakes will make them between 30-38 million ISK per tick, considering the cost of a Rattlesnake 0.5-1BIL vs. a carrier at 2-4,5 Billion ISK depending on the fit.
The Misconception: We have all heard some people claim they get 70 million ISK ticks, and we have also heard people say they only get a consistent 35 spiking to 40. What we have found is that both can be true, but reaching the high ticks you have to be dedicated.
Is it worth it? – Yes, very much so.
Carriers:
We have 4 different Carriers with different bonuses, in this case we will only look at the Carrier bonus relevant to Ratting.
The Archon gets a 4% bonus to Armor resistance per level, a completely useless bonus for ratting – This carrier is guaranteed the lowest possible ticks from ratting.
The Chimera gets a 4% bonus to Shield resistance per level, also useless for ratting – This carrier is as useless for ratting as the Archon.
The Thanatos gets a 5% bonus to fighter damage per level, as well as a 2,5% bonus to fighter hitpoints per level – This is amazing, at Carrier 5 it is 25% fighter damage and 12,5% fighter hitpoints, almost able to get the highest ticks.
The Nidhoggur gets a 5% fighter damage bonus like the Thanatos, but the second is a 2,5% bonus to fighter velocity per level. – This is also amazing, super fast fighters will make it possible to get the highest possible ticks.
Recommendation: We recommend either the Nidhoggur or the Thanatos, and will not work with the other two as they are inferior as ratting capitals.
Combat sites:
There is a multitude of different combat sites (Alt+P) spawning, different layouts and different spawn locations within the site as well as wave-sizes and damage output from the sites.
As the analysis has been done before by others we will just provide the priorities of sites here:
- Havens (Rock Havens)*
- Forsaken Hubs
- Sanctums (Ring Sanctums)**
This is the priority in which you want to run sites, personally I do not run Ring Sanctums because I found their damage output to be a little too high for my liking, whereas the other sites provide decent ISK and low Risk.
When you undock in your ratting system, the first thing you should do is open your Probe Scanner with all the signatures, start by sorting by name and then Ignore all the sites that are not one of the above 3 types. (I also ignore Sanctums). – now you only have sites you are interested in and if any new sigs spawn you will see them.
*: The trick to find out if a Haven is a Rock Haven and not a Gas Haven is right click -> warp to -> ctrl+space to stop the ship. If the Haven in question is a Rock Haven, you will get a pop-up saying “I have detected a stargate nearby” – if the pop-up does not appear, right click and ignore that site as well, do this with all the Havens before you start ratting, so you only have the Rock Havens and no Gas Havens in your scanner.
**: There is no trick for Sanctums, you have to warp to all of them(in a fast ship) in order to find out what it is, no shortcut here, hence why I skip those.
After this, you should sort by “Distance” so you get the closest ones on top.
Fitting your Carrier:
Fitting your carrier is very important if you want to achieve the high ticks and not just the low ones.
In order to fit it for pure ratting, you need to be in an alliance that has a good INTEL channel, I cannot stress this enough, make sure the space is safe before you undock your expensive ratting carrier.
As a rule of thumb, for a ratting carrier you want the following:
High-Slots:
– Networked Sensor Array
– Cynosural Field Generator I
– Fighter Support Unit I/II
– Fighter Support Unit I/II
– Fighter Support Unit I/II
Cyno in case you have people that can potentially save you if you get tackled(remember Liquid Ozone), if not you can either add a Heavy Energy Neutraliser or another FSU. I recommend FSU IIs but the T1 variant works more than fine.
For a Ratting Thanatos your mid slots should be:
2x Drone Navigation Computers, below you can see the Maximum Velocity Bonus gains from the variants.
Personally I use Sentient Nav. Comps. because the bonus is simply too good to pass up, and the T2 variant takes several days to train into from the T1/Faction variants. The price for 2x Sentients will be around 230 Million a piece.
| Type Name | Meta group | Maximum Velocity Bonus |
| Drone Navigation Computer I | Tech I | 25% |
| Drone Navigation Computer II | Tech II | 30% |
| Sentient Drone Navigation Computer | Faction | 32% |
3x Omnidirectional Tracking Links, as you can see below, the difference in bonuses is worth noting.
Also here the T2 variant takes time training into, and the Faction modules cost around 50 million a piece, definitely worth it. In this module you can also fit a Tracking Speed script and an Optimal Range script.
We have played around with the different scripts and we have come up with the best for us being 2x Optimal range and the last either with a Tracking speed script or with no script at all – you should test for yourself with your faction rats, we have tested VS Guristas.
| Type Name | Meta | Explosion Velocity | Explosion Radius | Falloff | Optimal Range |
| Denny Enduring Omnidirectional Tracking Link | Tech I | 6.6% | -6.6% | 12% | 6% |
| Omnidirectional Tracking Link II | Tech II | 8.25% | -8.25% | 15% | 7.5% |
| Federation Navy Omnidirectional Tracking Link | Faction | 9.625% | -9.625% | 16% | 8% |
For a Ratting Thanatos your Low Slots should be:
4x Drone Damage Amplifiers, in this case the T2 variants are not hard training into but as you can see by the Damage Bonus (that also applies to fighters), the Faction variants are significantly better that their T1 or T2 counterparts, these will run you in 130 million a piece, you could also switch the 4th DDA out for a T2 variant because the fourth slot does not provide any significant boost because of diminishing returns.
| Type Name | Meta | Drone Damage Bonus |
| Drone Damage Amplifier | Tech I | 15% |
| Drone Damage Amplifier II | Tech II | 20.5% |
| Imperial Navy Drone Damage Amplifier | Faction | 23.8% |
1 x Capital Armor Repair Module, here you should start with a Tech 1 Capital I-a Enduring Armor Repairer,
this thing is relatively cheap and will do the job. I would not advise you to train Tech II, because it takes 6 more days, and I haven’t done that.
What you could do is buy the CONCORD Capital Armor Repairer, it reps 25-30% more than the other one, but it has a price tag of almost 600 Million ISK, compared to the 90 mil for the I-a Armor Repairer – this is up to you, personally I wouldn’t buy CONCORD unless I had enough ISK to throw around, but if you live in risky space it can provide more time for your rescue fleet to arrive.
1x Centum C-type Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane (EANM) for the final low slot is what we have used due to the resists it provides, 24% / 27% / 27% / 26%, which on our ships provide around 50.000 EHP more for increased survival. – if Survival is no problem you could put on an Experimental Hyperspatial Accelerator which increases Warp Speed so you get faster from Site to Site.
For any ratting carrier you Rigs should be:
3x Capital Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizers.
These rigs increase your Warp Speed by 20%/25% depending on the T1 or T2 variant.
Price for the Tech ones are 43 million, whereas the price for Tech 2s are 190 million, which begs the question “is it worth it” and you are the only one that can answer that question.
For one of our testers, 0 rigs equals 1.70 AU/s warp speed.
T1 rigs = 2.66 AU/s warp speed (130 million ISK)
T2 rigs = 2.95 AU/s warp speed (570 million ISK)
Fit as you like, T1 rigs makes it more survivable if you have to sell it or you need to refit it to a combat carrier sometime, it also depends on how long you hope it will survive.
Difference between ratting Thanatos and Nidhoggur in fitting them:
As the Ratting Nidhoggur is a shield fit, you should utilize the extra Mid Slot for a Capital Shield Booster I, or T2 if you have trained it and a CONCORD if you have the ISK for it.
As for the low slots I still recommend 4x DDAs and instead of the armor repairer and EANM you could put in a Damage control, or something else you could want.
Fighters to use:
Before you undock, you need some offensive capability, AKA Fighters, for this you should look at what type of damage your target is susceptible to, we have compiled a little table below you can use.
What we recommend is 3 full flights of Light Fighters, that is 9 fighters per squad, plus some spares, personally I only have 5-10 extra, perhaps more will be needed in the new patch, I only carry them “in case” I lose one if I go afk or fuck something up.
Additional very important is having a squad of Dromi webbing support drones, I carry 10 in the fighter bay in case I get tackled, then it is nice having a squad of webbers to slow the interceptor down, again, better safe than sorry even though they are expensive.
| Faction | Weak to | Recommended Fighter |
| Angel Cartel | Explosive | Einherji |
| Blood Raiders | EM/Thermal | Templar/Firbolg |
| Guristas | Kinetic | Dragonfly |
| Mordus Legion | Kinetic | Dragonfly |
| Rogue Drones | EM | Templar |
| Sansha | EM | Templar |
| Serpentis | Kinetic | Dragonfly |
Implants???
So, yes, it is possible to get implants that help you with an extra boost to warp speed, more specifically the
Eifyr and Co. ‘Rogue’ Warp Drive Speed WS-613 and WS-615’s, as you can guess they give 13% and 15% increased Warp Drive Speed, the set goes from 5/8/10/13/15/18%. The 13% implant cost around 100 million ISK and the 15% is around 150 million ISK, the 18% is expensive at nearly 600 million ISK, which is why I recommend the 13 or 15% Implants for Slot 6.
Personally I also have a set of High-Grade Random things for the Attribute bonus, but if you really want to chase the ticks you can fit your clone with a full set of High-Grade Ascendancy set for even more increase in warp speed. By my calculations a full set without the Omega of Mid-Grade Ascendancy implants will cost you around 950 million ISK, and a High-Grade set will be around 2.5 Billion ISK, so don’t just go throwing the ISK around, remember, we will all lose a carrier sometime.
HOW TO CARRIER RAT AND GET DANK TICKS
Now you hopefully have a fully fitted ratting Carrier, with the appropriate Light fighters, and maybe a 15% Warp Speed Implant, some good Intel, you are on comms and in standing fleet, you have a PVE channel for the system you are ratting in to call out the 3 letter signature so no one else lands in your anomaly, and have un-fucked your Probe Scanner so now you only have Rock Havens in there, and Forsaken hubs in case all the rock havens are taken.
Fighters are controlled in a special way compared to drones, so do as I say and set your default orbit to 4000meters. Down where your Modules are, you can toggle between modules and fighter control panel, when on fighter panel click the square below that and detach the fighter panel. What I do is move it up to just below where all my targets are, this is to minimize mouse movement. – Just do it.
Then I click on squad one, shift click and mark the two other squads so the blue circle thing is around the fighter squads and NOT also the carrier.
Module management: I load 2x Optimal and 1x Tracking/nothing Omni, and activate them, keep them running forever. You Repper will have to be pulsed when you have lost enough EHP to warrant a cycle.
The Networked Sensor Array(NSA) you should cycle when the first wave spawns, and from that point on you should start the cycle when you have your fighters target the last rat in the wave.
The Warp-in. – Always warp in at 100km, that is how we do it, some people do it another way, it’s safest this way.
Landing – when you land, the first thing you do is always align to the Keepstar / Fortizar / Safe POS / Station, and set your speed to 80% of full, in my carrier that is around 80m/s.
You want to move your fighters all the time, when you land, you launch your fighter squads, press “w” and click on the pirate gate in the middle of the Rock, this should make your drones move towards it and start orbiting, this is the reason we put our default orbit at 4000 meters, your drones will now orbit the center at 4000m.
Because you landed at 100k you should engage the MWD on your fighters, this can be done manually, or if you marked all 3 squads you can just press F2, shortcut for MWD.
Kill order for rats:
Frigates > Destroyers > Cruisers > Battlecruisers > Commander BS > BS
Frigates: 1 Squad Guns only.
Destroyers: 1 Squad Guns only.
Cruisers: 1 Squad Guns only.
Battle cruisers: 1 Squad guns + 1 Volley (one volley and 1 cycle of guns is usually enough)
Battleships: 3 Squads and 1 Volley from each, basically target and press F1 + F3 to activate guns and missiles on all 3 squads, should take them out in no time. — some people say 1 squad on each BS but we think they regen too much and found it to be ineffective for MAX KRABS —
Movement of Fighters:
An important thing to note is you have to make your fighters be constantly moving, each time they kill a target they slow down to standstill, which means you have to press “w” and click on the new target after each kill, the good thing is you can have all 3 squads marked, but only the squad that is *not* actively engaging something will follow your orbit command.
This mechanic is important, the time it takes from one gun-cycle to the next is enough to let your drones take damage, even die in the new patch, if you keep this “w” orbit movement up your fighters will also reach targets earlier and be orbiting when the gun is ready to cycle(Neat, I know!)
If you want higher ticks, you can look at the Rock Haven and when only Battleships are left and you have them all targeted, you can sort the targets according to range so you start from one end and kill the one close to your previous target instead of having your fighters fly more than necessary.
Aligning and warping:
Now you know how to rat and keep your fighters alive, what is left?
When you are on the second-to-last wave, you should start aligning to your next combat site instead of the Citadel, you should Claim it in your PVE channel and make sure no one else did it first, personally I Ignore an anomaly and remove it from the list if someone else claims it. Make sure the one you claim and align to is close to your current one for reduced travel time.
When you have killed the last rat you call your drones back to your drone bay, press F2 for MWD and they should return to you in 10-15 seconds from 100-130 km out. Once they are in, you warp to a 100km on the new anomaly and repeat for DANK TICKS.
Thank you for reading, I hope it helps, if you found it useful but have advice, please send it to Fleet Master Keyes in-game, donations are also welcome.
Fly safe and rat rat rat!!! o7
