Unique Ships - Amarr Imperial Amrageddon and Apocalypse

Previous articles:
Amarr Magnate Frigates
Freki and Utu Assault Frigates
Mimir and Adrestia Heavy Assault Cruisers
Opux Luxury Yacht and Guardian-Vexor Cruisers
Raven State Issue and Tempest Tribal Issue Battleships
Its amazing how much Eve history is hard to dig up. Take for example the Amarr Imperial Succession Championship. There is no one easy spot to say what it was, all of the winners, and what the prizes were. From what I can piece together, the AISC was a tournament between players to determine which of the Amarr royal hiers would take the place as Emperor back in late 2003. The winning team received four Imperial Apocalypse battleships and the four losing teams received one Imperial Armageddon each. Currently it is reported that three of the Armageddons are still alive and only one of the Apocalypses.

Imperial Armageddon

Stat-wise, the Imperial Armageddon is not superior to the Navy issue in very many ways. The Navy issue has the same slot layout, more hitpoints, bigger drone bay, high top speed, and slightly smaller sig radius.

But that is not to same that the Imperial version is without any merit. It does have a massive powergrid which means fitting big modules is less of an issue. Its bonuses are the same as the other versions:

Amarr Battleship Skill Bonus: 10% bonus to Large Energy Turret capacitor use and 5% Large Energy Turret rate of fire per level.

This led me to think of building a short range bruiser, concentrating on the biggest guns I could find and defending with reams of armour plates. REMINDER: fits are for comparison to more common ships only!

As you can see, the powergrid is no issue but the CPU becomes problematic. But with high damage pulse lasers and heavy drones there is more than enough DPS to ruin anyone's day. I did consider a more radical approach with smaller lasers and doing an active dual repper tank and dual cap boosters, but the CPU constraints became really noticeable and I opted to go with standard tank and gank.

Imperial Apocalypse

On the other hand, the Imperial Apocalypse severely outclasses its counterparts on almost every comparison. One extra low slot over the base Apoc and one extra mid slot over the navy issue, more powergrid, significantly larger drone bay with bandwidth to match, and about 2000 more shield, armour and hull points than the Navy Apoc. Its one deficiency is the lower capacitor and slower recharge time.

Related to that, while the Tech 1 and Navy Apocalypse classes have bonus to laser energy use and opttimal range, the Imperial has bonus to laser cap use and capacitor max capacity:

Amarr Battleship Skill Bonus: 10% bonus to Large Energy Turret capacitor use and 5% maximum Capacitor Capacity per level.

What this means is that the lower base capacitor is actually not lower once you sit in it, but actually higher by about 10% with Amarr Battleship Level V. So how to outfit it? Without the optimal range bonus it really has to work to be a sniper and I think we're better off outfitting it for close to medium range fighting. I tried to make a close range brawler much like the Armageddon but the lower overall CPU and lack of damage bonus really hurt its DPS output. So I went with something more akin to ranged fighting without being a full blown long range sniper.

The end result is a ship that can deliver around 800 DPS reliably to 45 km range. With a quick change to short range ammo, a 1000 DPS at 20 km, and ~600 DPS at 65 km. Go to tech II ammo Scorch and you're tossing 900 DPS at ~60 km. All figures including the sentry drones of course.

So the natural next question is since the range DPS looks so nice what can the Imperial Apocalypse do with beam lasers instead of pulse?

Its not the best sniper in the business due to the effort to make the range but it would suffice in a pinch. The other more common Apocalypses are better suited to the job.

Next, we take a look at the last remaining unique ship: the Federate Megathron.