Today we continue our review of the Pilgrim Force Recon.
As I mentioned in my initial post the Pilgrim gains a significant bonus to the use of Energy Destabilisers (or neuts) and Energy Vampires (or nos). To fully achieve the maximum effect of these modules you will need to train the Recon Ships skill to at least level IV, preferably V.
Whilst the Pilgrim gets no bonus to nos/neut range its bonus increases the ‘transfer amount’ at each level of Recon Ships – this means that either your nos will ‘suck’ more capacitor from your target or the neut will destroy more capacitor from your target.
Now neuts use capacitor to run, which means if you have a high skill in Recon Ships you are using your neutralizers more efficiently, removing more cap from your target for the amount of cap you yourself are burning.
Note: The Medium Energy Neutralizer II consumes 150gj of cap to destroy 180gj of target cap. (Not much of an advantage there!)
To make this module type more effective on the Pilgrim we should also give serious consideration to getting the skill Energy Emissions Systems to V. As a rank II skill this shouldnt be too much of a hard ship and provides the following:
“Operation of energy transfer array and other energy emission systems. 5% reduced capacitor need of energy emission weapons per skill level”
Couple this with Recon Ships V and that 150gj / 180gj equation becomes 112.5gj / 360gj every 12 seconds.
Even with maxed skills that amount of cap use is still a hefty drain on the ship over the long term. Luckily the Energy Vampire module can offset this somewhat. It’s important to recall here how nosferatu mods work. The Medium Nosferatu II drains 36 cap / 6 seconds adding the drained cap to your own ship - however it will only drain that cap if your % capacitor is lower than your targets % capacitor.
This is a crucial consideration: if your target is very low on cap, and you’re very high on cap your nos essentially does nothing. This is something to bear in mind when you are looking at say EFT and grinning at your infinite sustainable cap: turn off the nos and check again!
Lets look again at how this module performs with Energy Emissions and Recon at V: Now the nos is draining 72 cap every 6 seconds. This means in 12 seconds it will have recovered 144 cap, enough to run 1 Medium tech II neut over one cycle.
Now there are a couple of modifications we can add to make our neuts that little bit more efficient. One is to fit the rig ‘Energy Egress Port Maximiser’ . The tech I variant reduces the cap need of your neuts by 15%, 20% for the tech II version.
A single t1 Egress rig will reduce the cap need then for a T2 medium neut to 95 cap, 83 cap with 2 t1 Egress rigs fitted.
The final option to improve the efficiency of your energy neuts is using the rather more expensive Talisman implant sets (or low grade versions). These implants reduce the activation time of your neut/nos modules – with a full set of low grade talismans for example you will reduce the cycle time down to 8.7 seconds – a significant advantage in terms of cap warfare.
These implants however are generally pretty pricey and its arguable that you would be better of spending your hard earned ISK on other implants or faction modules.
Next time – Tracking Disruptors. ‘Til then, cloak up!
C.
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