Cerberus Versus Drake

Alasseo left a comment to yesterday's post agreeing that the Eagle is poorly situated in the game right now, and that "[t]he next thing to note is the Cerb sucks too[...] fly a Falcon, only t2 combat caldari cruiser worth bothering with."

As soon as I saw that, two thoughts popped into my head. I really should compare the Cerberus to its battlecruiser complement like I did for the Eagle and that I do have a Falcon and I love it already. ECM and warped cloaking FTW!

Ok, now onto Cerberus versus Drake.

Deep down, I know how this is going to shake out. You see, last year there was an expansion that released two new tech I ships for each race, a third battleship and a second battlecruiser. The new battleships fit in nicely into the faction's fleets complementing instead of replacing the other two battleships each faction had, such that each one had a cheap simple battleship, a moderately expensive damage dealing battleship, and a very expensive tanking battleship. Even today all three battleships of each race sees use in some situation or another.

But the new battlecruisers were a different story. For Caldari and Minmatar (and Amarr?), the new battlecruisers seemed to completely obsolete the old ones, and for Gallente the Myrmidon was obviously superior over the old Brutix in many ways but the old warhourse was still decent enough to see use.

But for the Ferox, the ten million ISK lower price tag did not make up for the drop in quality compared to the Drake. Or more accurately, the powerhouse Drake was more than worth the extra ten million ISK it cost to use it over the lackluster Ferox. The Drake does more damage, doesn't have a split weapon system, has one more slot in mids and highs, has a damage bonus instead of a range bonus, more shields but the same recharge time meaning it has a higher recharge rate, more capacitor even though its weapons don't need energy to fire... in essence the only thing the Ferox can do better is long range sniping support which is not a role usually required in 95% of a typical player's gaming.

Heck, the Drake (and Mrymidon) even got a slight shield recharge nerf in the middle of last year so that it didn't tank as well as some battleships!

So all of this is to say that I'd be surprised if the Cerberus can even come close to the Drake for damage and tanking. Time to run the numbers: to the EFT-mobile!

*runs EFT*

OK, assuming my Tech II missile skills are trained as per yesterday's post, and I train Battlecruisers another level to IV (been meaning to do that for a year now), here is what we have.

Cerberus: 5 x Tech II Heavy Launchers with Scourge Fury Missiles = 342 DPS, 1832 volley, 74 km range, and about 49.5K effective hit points.

Drake: 7 x Tech II Heavy Launchers with Scourge Fury Missiles = 368 DPS, 2462 volley, 35 km range, and about 65.6K effective hit points.

So we see the Rate of Fire (ROF) bonus of the Cerberus manages to keep it competetive in terms of DPS, it has twice the range, and over 2/3rds the tank. As well, being a cruiser gives it faster speed and agility so all in all I have to say its not as bad as I thought in comparison. Of course, the 80 million ISK price tag compared to 32 million for the Drake should be taken into consideration, as well as the fact that the Drake has room for 5 Tech II light drones whereas the Cerberus has none.