Know Your Wormhole Enemy: Drake

In the Know Your Wormhole Enemy series (name shamelessly stolen from the Eve Altruist series of posts and then mutilated) I'm going to look at a variety of different ships, how they are often fit and flown in wormhole space, and what they mean to you. This may include, but will not necessarily be limited to; example fits, engagement scenarios, how you should react to their presence on directional scan, at a POS or on grid, what good counters to them are, and how you can potentially use them.

The first ship covered will be the Drake.

Overview

The Drake is a Caldari battlecruiser that has the distinction of being one of the most boring ships in the whole of EVE Online. It generally has a large passive shield tank, it is slow, it rarely has electronic warfare to apply to other ships, and uses missile systems that you do not need to manoeuvre to get the most firepower out of. Nevertheless, it is an important ship in wormhole space because of it's ubiquity.

The Drake has bonuses to the resistance of it's shield tank and a high number of available mid slots, making it one of the most heavily tanked battlecruisers available - although a recent reduction in the strength of it's tanking bonus has impacted this a little. It also has an offensive bonus to the damage of Heavy Missiles and Heavy Assault Missiles, but only for the kinetic damage type. For this reason, it's very rare to see Drakes firing non-kinectic missiles.

For reference, the slightly outdated Eve Altruist Know Your Enemy section on the Drake can be found here; it is still correct in generalities, but some specific numbers are slightly off.

What is it used for in wormhole space?

The Drake is used for everything in wormhole space; many players in high security space use their Drake for running level 3 and sometimes level 4 agent missions, and will have skills that complement the Drake trained to a relatively high level. If someone moves into a wormhole either as part of a new corporation or when joining an existing corp, the Drake will often be recommended as both a good site-running ship for Class 1-3 wormholes and as a reasonable PvP ship for a shield fleet.

As a result the variety of Drake fits is spectacular - and a fair number of them are spectacularly bad. That's often because although the new pilot has been recommended to use a Drake, they necessarily have been provided with an example fit that is tailored to their skills and the task to hand. As a result of the ubiquity of the Drake in lower-class systems, they are often used as disposable bait by wormhole corporations looking to tempt people into attacking a ship on a site. Baiting, assessing whether a ship is bait or not, and how to (relatively) safely "take the bait" will be covered in a later post on The Excession. There's something of a saying that "The Drake is always bait", and in wormhole space quite a lot of the time it will be, but never quite frequently enough to make it a hard and fast rule, or to put people off engaging them.

How is it typically fit?

As described above, how it is typically fit is probably not the best question to ask, but how should it be typically fit is a reasonable one. There are two basic fits that you will find being used in wormhole space, with a variety of different flavours according to the individual pilot's taste or fitting skills.

[Drake, PvE WH]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Beta Reactor Control: Shield Power Relay I

Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Large Shield Extender II
Shield Recharger II
Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
Experimental 10MN Afterburner I

Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Core Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I

Medium Core Defense Field Purger I
Medium Core Defense Field Purger I
Medium Core Defense Field Purger I

The Heavy Missile Launcher Drake is the ship that the vast majority of wormhole-based pilots will have had their first experiences in. It has good damage projection, hitting out to around 45km with Scourge Fury Heavy Missiles. The tank is a rather significant 304dps passive recharge at peak, and people tend to play around with different combinations of Adaptive Invuln fields, EM Ward Fields, and Shield rechargers. For a PvE fit Drake that can be rapidly re-purposed for PvP, the Core Defense Field Purgers are often swapped for Core Defense Field Extenders - the increased total shield HP does provide a boost to shield recharge, but not to the same extent. You will often see the Shield Power Relay switched for a Damage Control to aid cap regeneration, or one or more BCS swapped for more Shield Power Relays if the pilot has low support skills for shield tanking. Drones are either Warrior IIs for helping to run sites faster, or EC-300s for  escaping lone tacklers.

[Drake, PvP HAM]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Damage Control II

Large Shield Extender II
Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Experimental 10MN Afterburner I
Fleeting Warp Disruptor I
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Small Nosferatu II

Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I

This fit can project damage out to 30km with Scourge Javelin missiles while doing 400dps, or drop down to Scourge Rage missiles for 700dps on larger targets that are within ~17km, and that's not including drones. It has 92k EHP and a minor EM hole - given so much of the damage that it will be facing in wormholes will be kinetic and thermal, I wouldn't worry too much about that. This fit has an afterburner to afford some degree of mobility, but if you are light on tackle or need a bit more zip you can drop the afterburner and put a micro warp drive on - all that needs to be done is to drop the Tech II shield extender to Meta 4 and then either drop the nosferatu for something else or use a +2% CPU and +1% grid implant and a meta nos.

Heavy Assault Missile Drakes are much better for PvP at the short ranges likely to be encountered in wormhole fights, although that damage can be mitigated somewhat due to the large explosion radius on Heavy Assault Missiles compared to the small signature radius on Strategic Cruisers. A brief guide on the mathematics of missile damage explaining exactly how these values factor in can be found here

There are also more specialized fits out there, such as budget "Jamgu" fits created by fitting an armour tank to a Drake and filling the mid slots with electronic warfare modules (jammers, damps). These are, however, pretty rare.

How much of a threat is it?

Running a site: the Drake itself is probably not a significant threat to most ships, but it may well be bait for a larger force as noted above. If the Drake is not bait, then the most significant issue that you may run into is that the Drake may be a full passive-recharge fit. If the Drake pilot ignores a propulsion module and is well-skilled, a Drake can break a 700dps recharge rate without having to use any shield boosters! To crack a passably well fit site-running Drake in a reasonable time will generally require at least a couple of battlecruisers or strategic cruisers; any less will give any reinforcements a huge amount of time to finish dinner, log on, get a cup of tea, then warp over to the Drake and assist it.

As backup in a POS:

Almost any other ship would be better as a second responder than a Drake. Typically your heavier, tankier ships should be in the first wave to soak damage from your targets while your second responders should aim to do more damage. If Drakes are used as second responders they should ideally be HAM fit for maximum damage, but frankly are likely to be whatever the pilot had lying around at the time.

On the field in a fight:
In the vast majority of situations, virtually any other ship will be a better primary target than a Drake on the field. Their room-temperature damage alongside spectacular tank means that if called as a primary target a large amount of firepower will be expended on removing an under-par amount of damage from the field. The only exceptions to this situation are:

• If you want to prolong the fight to try and draw more hostiles into it, deliberately targetting the Drake as it will die more slowly may assist you
• If you have vulnerable ships on the field and the Drake has sufficient range to damage them (generally a Heavy Missile fit, possibly HAMs using Javelin ammo), where other ships on the field do not. Examples of such ships would be Tech 1 or dual boxed logistics, or recons such as Falcons.
• If the opposition are fielding an armour fleet with armour logistics but have a Drake on the field (or any other shield ship for that matter), then it should be the primary target as it will not be aided by the logistics support as effectively

How do I counter it?

Drakes have a high native resist to Kinetic damage, so the go-to ship for cloaky damage in wormholes - the Proteus - is actually not ideal to take them on due to a high percentage of it's blaster damage being kinetic. Neutralization can help turn off some of the tank in the form of the Drake's active hardeners, but it won't take it down completely, and nor will it turn off the weapons systems. The best counter to a Drake is damage - preferably EM / Thermal, and Hurricanes at point blank range with Phased Plasma or EMP ammo do a pretty good job of tearing them up.


Final note: If you encounter any inaccuracies on this page, please contact me ingame with an EVEMail or on twitter @OV_Fellblade and I'll try and get them sorted.

Edit: Fixed a fitting mistake on the first Drake fit.