Unique Ships - Raven State Issue and Tempest Tribal Issue Battleships

Previous articles:
Amarr Magnate Frigates
Freki and Utu Assault Frigates
Mimir and Adrestia Heavy Assault Cruisers
Opux Luxury Yacht and Guardian-Vexor Cruisers

The Raven State Issue and Tempest Tribal Issue were originally known as the Corvus and Storm respectively and were awarded to the winners of the 3rd Alliance Tournament in December of 2006. Specifically:

Each member of the seven-person winning team was given a choice of either a Corvus or a Storm, and the second team was given the choice of a single ship collectively, resulting in a total of eight of this set of unique ships entering the game. In the end, they were split evenly, four Corvuses and four Storms.

Current estimate cost of one of these ships is estimated over 200 BILLION ISK. This makes them some of the the most expensive ships in the game.


Raven State Issue

This is a beast. Make no mistake, even compared to the Tech II Golem the State Raven is pure death for any other big ship in its crosshairs. With 8 launcher slots, a large 150m3 drone bay (and 125 mb bandwidth), and enough power and CPU to fit what you want. Add on top of that nearly 40% more hitpoints, faster cap recharge, and more sensor strength, and extra low slot over the Navy and standard Raven. It also has the same bonuses:

Caldari Battleship Skill Bonus: 5% bonus to Siege and Cruise Missile Launcher Rate Of Fire and 10% bonus to Torpedo and Cruise Missile Velocity per level of skill.

What's it all shape up as? Well, (once again for comparison purposes) I threw together a State Raven with MWD and 8 siege launchers to see the pure damage potential this beast is capable of. Did I mention its a beast?

On pure shield recharge alone it absorbs 150 DPS. It volleys 6882 damage with faction ammo and the 5 heavy drones push DPS over 1500. All with 32K shield points and resists over 70% and no cap issues when MWD is off. And still has room for a flight of light drones.

Tempest Tribal Issue

The Tribal Tempest follows a similar pattern. Eight turret hardpoints, extra mid slot over the Fleet issue, 125 m3 drone bay and bandwidth to match, 40% more hitpoints, powergrid and CPU boost, and more. Only detriment is the slower base speed (120 m/s to 132m/s for the Fleet issue).

Minmatar Battleship Skill Bonus: 5% bonus to Large Projectile Turret rate of fire and Large Projectile Turret damage per level.

I did two setups for this ship, one for normal short ranged DPS like I did for the State Raven, and one with sniper configuration since it is a ship that can be used in that manner.

The pure damage potential is not as high as the Raven but still pretty impressive in short range with drones helping out at over 1400 per second. The shield tank is almost as good but you might consider going for a good armour tank and using some tackling mods for small gang work (if such a ship were ever truly undocked it would be a magnate for gankers everywhere but let's play pretend, ok?).

The sniper configuration has an impressive 8K alpha strike and still decent effective hitpoints thanks to the rigs. At 200 km this ship will really ruin your day. Definitely a keeper.

Next time we'll look at the two unique Amarr battleships!