Ecliptic Rift

Several other bloggers ([1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]) have posted lists of the baddest-looking piracy ship models in EVE. While I generally don’t pirate in the sense that, say, Andrea Skye and Kirith Darkblade do, almost all of us have opinions about the best-looking combat ships in EVE. In the spirit of their posts, I focused on small (sub-capital) ships. Tomorrow, I will follow up with my favorite non-combat ships, because that’s how I roll.

My favorite combat ship models:

#5 Stiletto

The Minmatar “Stiletto” interceptor looks like what it is: fast and deadly. The Claw’s rounded leading surfaces make it look a little less interesting to me, even if it does have more high-power slots.

#4 Cyclone

I really like the “Cyclone” battlecruiser. While the overall shape looks like a hammer, the spotlight on the front adds a really nice touch.

#3 Crusader

I have never flown Amarrian ships, but their interceptor models really stand out. The “Crusader”, and its darker-skinned brother the “Malediction”, both communicate quite well through their design lines: you can’t escape the lightning of God’s wrath.

#2 Harbinger

Another exception to my general disdain for all things Amarrian, the “Harbinger” battlecruiser grabbed my attention during the recent Alliance Tournament VIII.

#1 Hurricane

My favorite by far. As soon as it arrives, the “Hurricane” battlecruiser promises to rock you.

Lyncyne leans into the spanner as she fastens two panels together. Small conduits to protect control lines and transport coolant run across the engine she has started to cover. The roar of impulse engines firing up echo through the hangar as hefty Brutors wrestle machinery into place, but the noise doesn’t appear to distract her in the slightest. The capsuleer who flew this Claw had quietly explained the goals of his next sortie, and so the mechanic felt she owed it to him to ensure that the polycarbon engine housing didn’t come apart during maneuvers.

That had happened to somebody else in their wing last week, actually, when an overheated microwarp drive had come apart on the pilot. A Wolf assault frigate in the same squadron had managed to finish off the enemy Retribution from the 24th Imperial Crusade before it could take full advantage of the mishap. The mechanic responsible took a very long walk out the airlock the next day, and everybody else in the maintenance hangar worked well into the next shift in order to check and double-check the equipment.

Of course, Lyncyne hates the hours and feels like she’ll never get the grease completely off her hands. But she has listened to the pilots or space traffic controllers as they told ale-fueled stories of Amarrian industrial transports and starbase reactors exploding. She knows of the Crusade pilots and commanders introduced to their vengeful god earlier than they’d anticipated. Every day, at mess, she sees the dull eyes of the Starkmanir busboys and cooks working in the cafeteria as part of the Tribal Republic’s re-integration program. Sometimes at night, she thinks back to the girl in her second-year mechanics class who’d taken an assignment to an agricultural world somewhere in the low-security Hed constellation. Her transport never arrived, and while the Tribal Liberation Force had little to say about it, everyone assumed that one of the raiding parties had destroyed it — or, worse, captured it.

So now, in the hangar, perched on the cowling of a pod-pilot’s interceptor, she focuses tightly on rigging the bolts, the housing, and the conduits. Everyone does their part.