Naval frigate upgrades: Federation Navy Comet
We’ve already looked at the Caldari Navy Hookbill and Republic Fleet Firetail changes coming in EVE Online: Dominion this fall / winter. Today, we’ll investigate the changes coming for the Gallente Navy Comet, including a name change. The ship will henceforth be known as the “Federation Navy Comet”, and it will turn into a competent frigate droneboat.
Drones
The old Comet had vestigial drone capabilities at best, with a 5 m3 capacity and 5 MB/s bandwidth. But after the revamp, the ship will have 30 m3 available and 15 MB/s. This will allow the ship to easily field 2 flights of 3 light drones each, increasing the available firepower by a factor of 3 with more backup available just in case. The loss of the two launcher slots partially offsets this, but in general Gallente pilots tend to train drone skills rather than missile skills so this undoubtedly nets positive for them.
Really, drone users don’t have many choices for T1 frigates. The Gallente Imicus has a 15 m3 bay with 15 MB/s of bandwidth, and the Maulus has 10 m3 and 10 MB/s. No other T1 frigate can carry more than one scout drone.
Design
The Comet not only loses two launchers but one high slot, with a new 3/3/4 layout (though still only two turrets). Interestingly, though, the bonuses make up for this loss of firepower, as the small hybrid turret damage bonus per level of Gallente Frigate increases from 5 to 20%, meaning that a fully trained frigate pilot gets a 100% damage bonus. The 7.5% tracking bonus per level remains unchanged. The CPU gets a nice 21% upgrade also, increasing from 125 to 152 tf. CCP does not plan any capacitor tweaks for the Comet.
Like the Hookbill, speed bumps up a little (282 to 350 m/s) with the corresponding inertia modifier increase we’ve seen in the other naval frigates (2.79 to 3.3). Scan resolution decreases slightly, from 590 to 580 mm, but most pilots should not notice this negligible change in most circumstances.
Most Gallente frigate pilots should really enjoy the ship, as the new design plays to their strengths and receives negligible decreases. It may well replace the Rifter as the preferred PVP frigate, at least for pilots intending to focus on drones rather than turrets. I will almost certainly try to get one for my drone pilot, at any rate, even if they don’t put the “GFPD” back on the texture.
The series will end next time with a look at the Amarr Navy Slicer.
Naval frigate upgrades: Caldari Navy Hookbill
After my examination of the Firetail, let’s take a look at the changes to the Caldari Navy Hookbill coming in the Dominion expansion. Like the Firetail, the Hookbill will get major changes to its bonuses and thus role: primarily it will become a missile boat rather than tanking with split damage.
Missiles
Prior to Dominion, the Hookbill has a 10% shield capacity bonus and 10% small hybrid turret falloff bonus, each per level of Caldari Frigate skill. These bonuses will get removed in favor of missile damage and velocity bonuses: 20% kinetic missile damage, 10% other missile damage, and 10% missile velocity. To go along with this, the ship will no longer have any turrets, only 3 launchers.
This compares favorably with the other Caldari missile frigate, the Kestrel. This ship has one extra launcher but half the damage bonus (10% to kinetic, 5% to other) and no velocity bonus. The Minmatar missile frigate, the Breacher, gets 3 launchers, similar bonuses to the Kestrel (though the 10% is for explosive damage rather than kinetic), and a turret.
In fact, this starts to look more like the Hawk assault frigate, though without the shield boost bonus.
Design
Despite the loss of the shield capacity bonus, the Hookbill still will have a decent tank. Instead of the old 4/4/3 setup, the new Hookbill will have a 3/5/2 layout, allowing for more shield tanking modules in the mid slots. A 10% boost in the powergrid (from 150 to 165 MW) will help with the fitting, of course.
Similar to the Firetail, the revised frigate will have less capacitance but faster recharge (362 to 281 GJ but 234 to 187.5 seconds). The scan resolution will also increase from 550 to 600 mm, which won’t completely change anyone’s life but is welcome anyway. And while the Hookbill won’t start winning any races, the nearly 40% speed increase from 268 to 370 m/s shouldn’t go unnoticed. Slightly offsetting this, CCP will increase the inertia modifier by about 35%, from 2.44 to 3.3.
Overall, the new ship might not score a lot of points with Caldari hybrid pilots, but in general the ship becomes a far nastier mission ship. While regular level 1s might not pay out well enough to justify the expense, the revised Hookbill could see some use by militia units in the State Protectorate.
Next: the Gallente Navy Comet
