For many players carrier ratting is Eve’s PVE end game. I was never a big fan of ratting in my Eve carrier, but since carrier ratting seems to be such a big thing, I decided to buy myself a shiney ratting carrier and give it a try.

First thing I noticed was, that a ratting carrier comes with a serious price tag. A  carrier hull costs more than 1 billion ISK already, but you also need the capital sized modules and a bunch of fighters which comes to at least 2 billion ISK you need to spend for the hull with fitting. Secondly, you will need a properly skilled pilot to fly the ship. Since capital ship skills have only limited overlap with subcapital ship skills, it is usually recommended to have a dedicated capital pilot to do your carrier ratting.

So I bought a Nidhoggur hull locally in Geminate and shipped the modules and fighters in from Jita with one of Horde’s courier services.

The Fit

The fitting concepts for a ratting carrier are very similar to fitting any other ratting ship. If you want to have a deeper inside on how to fit a ratting ship just read the other parts of my ratting guide. You can basically use any carrier to rat in but the Thanatos and Nidhoggur have both bonuses to fighter damage and the Niddy even to fighter velocity, which will directly result in more ISK per hour.

After reading up on some suggested fittings I came up with the following Nidhoggur fit:

The high slots: 3 Fighter Support Unit Is, which upgrade your fighter’s shields, velocity and rate of fire. These can only be fit by carriers and supercarriers and are simply awesome. A Networked Sensor Array, which increases your sensor strength by incredible 500%. Without this one, locking stuff takes forever in a carrier. Finally, a Cynosural Field Generator. This one is for jumping in your capital ship friends when you are attacked by hostile players. Never undock a capital ship without one fitted. Never! Also bring plenty of Liquid Ozone in cargo to actually activate it.

The mid slots: We fit a shield buffer tank with two Capital Shield Extender IIs and an Adaptive Invulnerability Field II.  2 Omnidirectional Tracking Links will increase the damage application of your fighters to smaller targets. Use Tracking Speed Scripts in these. Finally, a 500MN Microwarpdrive, which you can use to get into warp faster when necessary. Just warp to any object and immediately activate your MWD for one cycle.

The low slots: 4 Drone Damage Amplifier IIs to increase fighter damage. These strangely work for drones and fighters. Since a carrier warps very slowly, you can fit an Experimental Hyperspatial Accelerator to increase warp speed. Much time ratting in a carrier is spent warping around in system, so this will get you faster into action.

The rig slots: 2 Capital Core Defence Field Extender Is and one Capital Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer II. This brings your buffer tank to over 1 million EHP and patches your EM shield resistance hole. Notice that we are not tanking the ship against any NPC specific damage. The damage done by NPCs will not be big enough to break your buffer tank even without specific resists. The biggest thread will be other players.

The fighters:  3*9 Dragonfly Is for the best damage against Gurista NPCs. Use the other fighter types if you need a different damage type against your local NPC pirates.  For PVE you always use Light Attack Fighters, which deal the biggest amount of damage. Since the fighter bay of a carrier has a lot more space, you can also bring other types of fighters that will help you in a PVP situation. These would be Space Superiority Fighters (e.g. Grams)  or Support Fighters (e.g. Sirens for tackle).

As you can see, the fit is not much different to a regular VNI fit. The main difference is the tank, which is not specific against the NPC’s damage type and some of the carrier only modules that increase your fighter stats, warp speed and sensor strength. Some people prefer to fit Capital Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizers in their rig slots to further increase warp speed. I rather fit a proper tank to survive longer if I get caught by hostile players. The bigger tank might give you a couple of minutes more before you die, which can make all the difference for your friends to arrive and safe you.

How to run an Anomaly

You only run the high level anomalies like Heavens or Sanctums in a carrier, which spawn lots of battleships and give the best ISK per hour. The lower level anomalies contain too many small NPC ships which are harder to kill in a carrier and not worth the effort.

You warp to your anomaly at 100km range and as soon as you land on grid align out to a friendly citadel. It is very important to always be aligned and to warp immediately to safety whenever a neutral player enters your system.

After aligning, you launch your fighters, lock the NPC ships and send your fighters after them. To move your fighters, you can select the three squadrons and command them as if you would command your own ship. As long as the fighters are selected, all commands will be performed by the squadrons and will not affect your ship. You can use the fighter’s propulsion module to get to the NPC ships faster.

The key point of ratting in a carrier is to always keep your fighters moving. NPCs love to shoot your fighters and can easily destroy them if you forget to keep them moving, so always let them closely orbit your current target at 2000 meters. If your target is destroyed, select another one and start to orbit with your fighters before activating weapons on it.  

Your fighters have two weapon systems to attack. There are the standard guns that don’t use ammunition and should be activated on all targets. Fighters also have a heavy rocket salvo weapon system that needs ammunition and does good damage against bigger targets. Don’t waste rockets on small ships. When all NPC ship waves have been destroyed that way, warp to the next anomaly.

Very rarely, you might get a dreadnought spawn in the final wave of your anomaly. If this happens immediately warp off before the dreadnought can point you, because you cannot kill the dread in your ratting fit. If you get pointed, use the warp core stabilizer refit explained below.

Avoiding hostile Players

This is actually they key part of carrier ratting. Since you fly a pretty expensive ship, other players will go through a lot of effort to destroy your ratting machine. The easiest way to survive long enough for your investment to pay off is to pay close attention to any intel that you can get.

Watching local is the most obvious thing to do and the same rules apply in a carrier to ratting in a VNI. If a neutral player enters system, recall your fighters and activate the fighter’s propulsion module while staying aligned to your citadel. Once they are back, warp off.  If a players enters grid while the fighters are still out, just warp off anyways. However, as long as the fighters are launched you will not be able to dock or tether at your citadel. That’s why you abandon all your three squadrons while in warp and then dock as soon as you land.  It is way better to lose 100 mil ISK worth of fighters than your 2+ bil ISK ratting boat.

If you are in a bigger corp or alliance it is key to organize a proper capital group and intel channel. All corp members should post neutral players and their location in the intel channel so you have a clear picture of hostile players in the surrounding systems and can dock up early before hostiles enter system.

It is also a good idea to have other accounts logged in to have eyes in hostile systems close by that are in capital jump range of your ratting system. If people start to login in these systems, they might be up for hunting capitals within jumps range. So check your enemy’s  citadels for undocked pilots in bombers or other capitals, that are getting ready to hunt you. Again splitting this task between multiple carrier pilot’s alt is a great benefit of organizing a group.

If you get tackled by hostiles, you should inform the other capital pilots on your corporation’s comms that you are being caught and need assistance.  If it is only a few players, you can light your cyno and the other capitals can jump to you and fight off the hostiles. Your corp mates could also form a rescue fleet and come for help in subcapital ships.

Also watch out for so called login traps. If a hostile enters system and disappears from local shortly after, he just might have logged off. If you then start ratting again, he can just login a couple of minutes later and directly enter system. If you are still at the same anomaly, the player might even directly warp to you within seconds and tackle you.

Refits!

Another big point when using a capital class spaceship are refits. A refit is a set of spare modules in your cargo, that you can swap your fit to by launching a Mobile Depot. That’s why you should always carry at least 3 Mobile Depots on you in case they get reinforced while getting onlined. There are a couple of different refits for different situations:

Warp Core Stabilizers: It is a great idea to switch all your low slot modules against WCS to escape when tackled by hostile players. If you are not bubbled by an Interdictor or HIC, your enemies might have less than 5 points of warp scrambling strength on you. By refitting to all WCS in the lows you might just be able to warp off to safety. The same applies, when tackled by NPCs, e.g. an NPC dreadnought. Just refit to WCS and warp off to safety.

Large Smartbombs: If you are tackled and attacked by hostiles, a lot of damage might be in the form of drone damage. Just fit a couple of smartbombs and destroy all the drones that are attacking you to buy more time until help arrives. This works also great against tackle frigates close by, that warp scramble you. By killing some light tackle you might be able to fit enough WCS to warp off.

Capacitor Refit: A capital ship needs at least 72% capacitor to jump to a friendly cyno. If you are too low on capacitor, just refit your lows to Capacitor Flux Coils and mid slots to Capacitor Rechargers to regenerate capacitor to more than 72%. You could also fit Heavy Capacitor Boosters with Cap Booster 3200s. By this you boost your capacitor over 72% and jump out.

Full Tank Refit: If you cannot get to safety when tackled, you can refit your mid slots to maximum shield tank by extra shield tanking modules to buy more time. Even fitting armor tank modules in your lows might buy you a couple more minutes to survive before help arrives.

How much ISK I can make?

So I ran a couple of Havens in my newly purchased ratting carrier in Horde space. I picked a system a little off the staging system and any other main traffic pipes in the region. There were very little corp mates in system during my ratting sessions, so there were always enough Havens in system to run them back to back. In average I took me about 20 minutes to finish a Haven including travel time between the anomalies. This came to about 95 million ISK per hour in bounties after Horde’s ratting tax. I did not loot the wrecks or salvaged anything in the sites. Of course this number gets lower the more interruptions by hostile players you encounter. Unluckily, I did not get any escalation after finishing around 10 sites, so there was no extra ISK from selling or running these.

I think the ISK you can make from carrier ratting is rather average considering the big investment you have to make in order to start. A return of investment of over 20 hours seems like a lot to me. Furthermore, you should better have one extra account to scout for hostiles, that is not making any ISK during your ratting session. Multiboxing Vexor Navy Issues can also make you 30 mil per hour for each account and requires a lot less investment and attention to run the sites.