A C4 Vargur

Ever since I came back to eve after the Rubicon patch, I have been wanting to try the new marauders. With the "mini-sige" mode the bastion module offers, they're now a totally new ship. Perfectly targeted for mission-runners, or maybe even more so for anybody that want to kill some sleepers efficiently.

Back in my mission-running days (yes, I actually did that for a brief time) I used to run a torp Golem, and since then i have skilled both Minmatar and Amarr battleship 5. Skill-wise I was therefore quite well setup to try them all out. Well, except the Kronos then, but with the engagement range of the sleepers in C4s, I don't see how that would work. Rails? Nah.. never liked them much.

ISK wise it looked dire. When I came back to game I had 5B in my wallet, but now I had almost blown half of it on different stupid ships, implants and stuff… I could fit one marauder and try, but I would not have ISK for a good C4-fit for a Vargur, Paladin and Golem. I decided to start with a Vargur, find a good C4 and simply run the sites, making the ISK for the next ship. After all, the whole point of the marauders was to make ISK, right?

I guess there's plenty of different schools when it comes to how to fit, but what I did was just take the fit from Lord Planck and his C5 Vargur, and scale that down to work in a C4. I wanted an enjoyable experience, calm and relaxing, with as little micromanagement as possible. I wanted a fit where I could perms-run a 1.5K tank and that would reach out to 80km with as much dps (obviously!) as possible.

This is what I came up with;

C4 Solo Vargur
High power
4x 800mm Repeating Cannon II
1x True Sansha Large EMP Smartbomb
1x Bastion Module I
2x Salvager II

Medium power
1x Gistum C-Type Adaptive Invulnerability Field
1x Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
1x Gist B-Type Large Shield Booster
1x Shield Boost Amplifier II
1x Cap Recharger II
1x Tracking Computer II

Low power
3x Republic Fleet Gyrostabilizer
1x Damage Control II
1x Tracking Enhancer II

Rig Slot
2x Large Capacitor Control Circuit II

I will not go into details about the fit, it's not that interesting or unique in any way. The variations I tried was small, and mostly focused on the three high-slots. A nos for the cap-conscious plexer, or two smartbombs instead of one for more effective killing of frigs? In the end the faction large smartbomb both had enough range and dps to clean the frigs just fine. It was possibly one of the better investments I have done for this ship.

Since the introduction of the Personal Tractor Unit, the life of the solo-plexer have drastically gotten better. Even if a Noctis still is more effective, there are something really nice about salvaging as you go. You don't have to dual-box, and having to visit each site just once is nice too. Especially if you are "ninja-plexing" under the nose of somebody else (with smart scouting of course) you really appreciate that you can just pick up and bail whenever, not leaving your hard earned wrecks behind.

What I said about just visiting each site once showed to be not quite accurate. Unlike lasers or missiles, the nature of projectile guns means that they will work almost totally in falloff. Unless the sleepers are so close they block the light from the sun, you will not do full damage - hence; the closer the better. To achieve this you really need a bookmark for the sites so you can warp to the center, not ending up 90km from the first wave.

I found a C4 system with a lot of sites to try my new toy in, and set up a small tower, and got to plexing. I like the small POS'es because of the short ancho/un-anchor times, if I want I can pick it up and move it to another system in under one hour.