Eagle's Niche

Ripard was going to do an Eagle FOTW post but opted for a Cerberus fit instead (one very similar to mine from last week) because compared to the Eagle "there are sooo many other ship classes in that attack profile at that range that I was kind of hoping for something that would blow me away a little". Agreed.

Let's take a quick look at the Eagle, shall we?

Essentially, if you are going to fit rails you are pretty much limiting yourself to fighting at extreme sniper ranges. Here's a fit I came up with:

Rail Eagle

I went with the 200mm rails as I found I could not get two shield extenders without needing a power grid upgrade with the 250mm railguns. This gives me a 30km optimal and 459 DPS with faction antimatter but low tracking even with the tracking computer fitted with tracking speed script. And that's the best case scenario; if a ship gets closer your low tracking speed will kill you and things farther away will require you downgrade your ammo and sacrifice your DPS.

Yes, you could go for uber range sniping with sensor boosters and 250mm rails with spike ammo but that is such a niche application with limited PvP opportunities that its almost not worth considering.

Let's look at a blaster fit Eagle. Perhaps the optimal range bonuses makes the blasters on this ship more flexible and dangerous?

Blaster Eagle

With faction antimatter and three Mag Stabs, the DPS "jumps" to around 526 and 5 km optimal with 6 km falloff. Colour me unimpressed. Yes, the 58K EHP tank is nice, but the speed is horrible at under 1500 m/s with MWD and a 6 sec align time with MWD off.

Compare this with a shield (!) Deimos:

Deimos

With its considerable drones put to damage use, it can achieve over 800 DPS with 2.25 km optimal and 9 km falloff, can be fit in low slots for a speed approaching over 2300 m/s and align time of 6 seconds with MWD on. The tank is far less impressive of course, but that is beside the point. If you fit the Eagle for blasters you are outclassed in damage and mobility by several other Tech II and Tech I ships. Its as if someone looked at the Blaster Moa configuration and asked themselves, "how can we make it worse?".

So to sum up, the Eagle's advantage of big tank in short range combat is negated by its slowness and anemic damage, and negated in long range combat by its extremely long range capabilities. The only niche it fits in , the Eagle's Nest if you will, is ignoring its tank and going full out snipe fit and hoping things will move slow enough or get tackled enough so you can hit them.

If you really want blasters on a Caldari cruiser, save yourself the ISK and buy a few Moas instead:

Blaster Moa