Having Nightmares

Or rather, having dreams about a Nightmare.

Faction battleships were once the pinnacle of solo ship ownership outside of capital vessels. Then the loyalty point store and the advent of the Marauders lowered the price point of the empire faction ships to practically reasonable levels. I bought my Navy Raven for under 300 million ISK. The prices of the Navy Megathron, Navy Apocalyse, and Fleet Tempest are similarly depressed from times past.

But the pirate faction battleships are still hard to get a hold of and are still very expensive: The Vindicator, Machariel, Rattlesnake, Bhallgorn, and the aforementioned Nightmare. Last year at this time I bought a Vindicator as a splurge but ended up selling it as I came to my senses a month later as Carrier skillbooks and parts costs came to my attention.

But now the urge to own a bling boat is coming across me again. The Navy Raven didn't do it enough for me, the rarer pirate battleships call out to me.

Machariel - Requires Gallente and Minmatar Battleship skills and projectile training. One of the sexiest looking battleships in the game, known for speed and short ranged damage.

Vindicator - Also requires Gallente and Minmatar skills, it combines hard hitting blasters with more performant MWD and huge armour tank.

Bhallgorn - Requires Amarr and Minmatar skills. I don't know much about it but it seems to be a close range neutralizing boat, using a bonus to webs to snare a target and a bonus to nos and neutrs to train its energy before killing it.

Rattlesnake - Requires Gallente and Caldari skills. Best known for an amazing passive shield tank, but split weapon damage bonus makes it less attractive for DPS. Since I already have the skills for it now and its a Scoprion hull it is attractive to me except that the Navy Raven can out DPS it in a similar configuration.

Nightmare - Requires Caldari and Amarr skills. This is the ship that intrigues me the most. First off, it looks very deadly and awesome. Secondly, pulse lasers, even tech 1, are WTFBBQPWND deadly. Thirdly, training for Amarr Battleship IV and Large Energy Turret IV takes about 19 days total. Ultimately I can get a Nightmare to have an equivalent tank to the Navy Raven but with more DPS at 30km plus 9.5km falloff and the option to go to 85% more damage then the CNR at 15km plus falloff.

(Click to give yourself a nightmare!!!)

Downside, the ship alone is a billion ISK. Bling boat indeed.

However, I have been considering cross training to Amarr ships and lasers lately in order to broaden my horizons. Tech II Khanid ships with bonuses to heavy assault missiles also appeals to me.

* * * * *

You may notice that since Faction ships are combinations of two empires, that there are two Gallente-Minmatar lines creating the Angel Cartel ships and the Serpentis pirate ships, and there is a whole bunch of combos missing. Furthermore, only the Angels and the Sanshas get their own unique ship models while the other pirate factions have to slum it with the copies of empire ships.

Since there are only 5 pirate factions and they are all represented, we will probably never see anymore faction ships added. Here are my wild musings on model and basic concepts for the missing ships.

Amarr/Gallente - This should have been the combination for the Serpentis pirates instead of a second Gallente/Minmatar combo. The ships would use the Gallente line like they do now, but get bonuses to armour tanking instead of MWD usage.

Caldari/Minmatar - New pirate faction using Minmatar ship hulls as the basis of their fleet. Have combined missiles and speed bonuses.