Another look at the Astero

I can (mostly) show you my current Astero fit by linking this lossmail. Just replace the Data Analyzer with a Stasis Webifier II and you have my pvp fit.

Yes, that's a pve lossmail. What happened? I discovered Ghost Sites. With my face.

I didn't atually work out what happened until doing some after-the-fact research. It turns out that some exploration sites are actually giant bombs. Gosh, how fun.

RIP little Astero. I made well over a billion ISK in that little ship. I liked it so much I immediately bought another one. In that sense, Vanaheim has been a huge success. I can lose the ships that I like to fly without worrying about costs.

But on to the fit. It evolved from my earlier fit:

Damage Control II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Coreli A-Type Small Armor Repairer

1MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner
Small Cap Battery II
Faint Epsilon Scoped Warp Scrambler
X5 Enduring Stasis Webifier

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Gatling Pulse Laser II, Scorch S

Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Small Auxiliary Nano Pump II
Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I

Following my fight with the Gnosis, I knew I needed to up my dps. So the first thing I did was drop an EAMNII for a Drone Damage Amplifier II. That brought me up to 145 dps from 125 dps. But it also dropped my ehp from 5.71k to 5.11k and my repair strength from 145/176 hps to 114/148 hps.

I didn't like that drop, but it was necessary. I comfort myself that I still repair (cold) as much as my Tormentor did with an overheated SAAR. With twice as many EHP.

I took a look at adding a second DDA, but I didn't like those numbers. I'll go down that road if it proves necessary, but I think I should start by testing a less extreme change. I used the CPU freed up to upgrade my tackle modules to T2.

So if I couldn't add more drone damage, could I add more turret damage? I tried a DLPII instead of the GPLII, but that only gave me an extra 1 dps, and the better tracking on the GPLII probably meant that I would actually apply more with the GPL in most circumstances.

A Small Focused Pulse Laser, on the other hand, brought me up to 150 dps. Heat gave me another 5 dps, and Conflag (against larger targets) gave me another 4 dps. So I could be doing up to 159 dps against above class targets, and 155 in frigate brawls.

Fitting a SFP would mean freeing up a lot of power grid. I could do that by dropping down to a meta Cap Battery, but the reduced cap flow of the meta module, combined with the increased cap demands of the SFP meant that my cap would become much harder to manage. This was especially true with the cap hungry T2 web and scram, which I would need to drop.

I really didn't want to do that, because the extra range on the scram can be so important for snagging a target, and the extra 5% speed reduction on the T2 web helps the relatively slow Astero better control the range and speed of the target. Seeing I as my tracking would take a massive hit with this change, I felt that the T2 web was pretty important.

So I looked at using a Small Republic Fleet Cap Battery. This had the same low fitting requirements as the meta module, but gave me much better cap regen. It's only about 13 million ISK, which is a reasonable spend on a fit costing about 100 million.

Sold.

For the record, I did look at non-laser turrets. The only turrets that would do more damage than the SFPL were some of the blasters, which gave me an extra 10+ dps, depending on which turret I used. This was very tempting, but the short range persuaded me that this was not a good idea. While fine against larger, slower ships where I should have complete control of the range, there are plenty of small, fast ships that can effectively scram kite me.

This fight against a Hookbill is a good example of that. Scorch helped me win that fight by allowing me to apply full dps regardless of the range. By fitting a blaster, I would be unable to take that kind of fight with any reasonable expectation of victory.

My first test of this fit was against the Oracle I posted earlier in the week. While not the most heavily tanked battlecruiser, it was a good initial result.