The Ultimate Guide to Hauling Ships
As a supplement to the Ultimate Guide to Hauling I am pleased to publish this partner document, hopefully you will find some of it useful.
So now you can recognise a good or a bad courier contract. What next?
Well, it all depends on where you will be flying and the types of risk involved. Not all ships will be covered here and also bear in mind that you don't have to haul in ship type dedicated to hauling, valuable small items can sometimes be best transported using Interceptors etc.
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Industrials
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These are the beginners of the hauling class and certainly have a useful place in New Eden. But you do have to remember they are paper thin despite the many and varied ways of fitting them.
You can make a Tanking Badger or a Stealth Iteron, in fact Industrials have been entered into the Eve PVP Tournament before.
It's safe to say that whatever fit you use, all of the rules I have mentioned still apply.
Research the risk you are taking to gain your reward, research the route, use your address book to track if your contractor is online and be wary of contract scams.
All said, you can have a lot of fun in an Industrial and it's where everyone starts off. If you are looking for fits there are plenty on the internet but if you follow some of the information below you will be able to generate your own fits confidently.
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Freighters
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If you are mainly transporting huge amounts of cargo in hi-sec and perceive little risk then the freighters are an obvious choice.
It's not recommended to fly these in lo or null-sec unless you are with a strong escort and/or have scouts.
The Providence, Charon, Obelisk and Fenrir all do the same job essentially with minor differences in cargo capacity. Basically, these are the bricks I was taking about in my previous post. Huge and unwieldy, these ships do what they say they do but they do it slowly. There are no module slots so the only room for improvement is increasing the racial freighter skill which is the same for all of them; 5% bonus to cargo hold capacity and 5% bonus to maximum velocity per level.
You can decrease the alignment time by having a corporation member accompany you and use a stasis webifier on you.
Another improvement for busy stations, Jita 4-4 I'm looking at you, is to create a bookmark 200Km directly out of undock. Warp to that or indeed even align to it and it will help you get out of the way of jostling and ship bumping that happens. In a freighter this can be crucial. Having undock bookmarks is almost de riguer to pvp'ers as they allow you to escape station camps.
Starting at a base capacity of 720,000m3 and rising to 981,250m3 depending on ship and skills (Charon having the most capacity), they can carry pretty much anything and are floating pinatas just waiting to be bashed open.
These make them gank targets in hi-sec despite the what I feel to be obvious intention to prevent this by the size of their structure and armour values.
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Transport Ships
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Lo-sec and null-sec ship types are the recent Transport class vessels. It's important to remember that all ships in Eve have a purpose and bonuses around that purpose. So fit them with the grain rather than against the grain.
For example, the Viator (Blockade Runner) has a CPU bonus to reduce the CPU cost of fitting Covert Ops Cloaking devices. This makes the Viator the "be invisible anywhere" choice for Gallentean pilots although it has a small cargo capacity of 3750m3 unexpanded.
Equally, the Occator (Deep Space Transport) has more effective HP, more base cargo capacity of 6250m3 and more slots (noticeably low slots) and a built in bonus of +2 warp strength so is the choice of the "I can rough it and tank this baby" Gallentean pilot.
The difference between the two are striking with the Blockade Runner essentially being the faster, nimbler and more invisible ship type. And the Deep Space Transport almost expecting to get caught in a gate camp but having the necessary ability to slip away if piloted and fitted well.
Other races have a similar split, Prorator and Impel for Amarrians, Crane and Bustard for Caldarians and the Prowler and Mastodon for the Minmatar.
When fitting, it's essential to keep the intended use for the ship in mind and you will need a few ancillary skills to fit these well.
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The Blockade Runner
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This shiptype is intended to be the quick, stealthy, nimble, small cargo carrying transport.
One fit that is good for the Blockade runner is:
[Viator, New Setup 1]
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
10MN Afterburner II
ECM Burst II
Invulnerability Field II
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Medium Low Friction Nozzle Joints I
Medium Low Friction Nozzle Joints I
Bear in mind that what I have done here is equalise the cargo capacity with the Occator to a reasonable 6096m3. You could fit Inertia Stabilizers instead of Expanded Cargohold however they will increase your signature radius and make it easier to lock you quicker.
It's your call obviously and I concede I have fitted against the grain slightly but I have not made any of the specifications worse as a result. I have not improved them as much as they could be improved upon but then again, my aim was to carry equivalent cargo to the Deep Space Transport but in a quicker and more stealthy manner.
The ECM Burst disables locks on you as an area effect so do not use near friendlies or gate guns / Concord / etc. If want something safer the most common item would be the Remote Sensor Dampener. That way, if you are locked you can break the lock of the tackler speeding toward you and cloak then warp.
I fitted Afterburner as a personal preference. They do not increase signature radius as a Micro Warp Drive does - 500%+! You want to remain as hard/slow to target lock as possible. MWD will make you as big as a really big thing and super easy/quick to target.
Invulnerability Field is just some resistance protection increasing your effective HP should the going get tough.
The Low Friction Nozzle joints improve your agility by a small amount, providing small compensation for not fitting Inertia Stabilizers in your lows.
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The Deep Space Transport
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I like to call these the Marmite class because you either love them or hate them.
The important thing to remember about these ships are that they are slow, carry more, are intended to tank a bit but ultimately escape gate camps.
So when fitting you need to work all of that into your plan.
[Occator, New Setup 1]
Inertia Stabilizers II
Inertia Stabilizers II
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Medium Armor Repairer II
Remote Sensor Dampener II
10MN Afterburner I
Improved Cloaking Device II
Medium Polycarbon Engine Housing I
Medium Polycarbon Engine Housing I
Okay let's go through this and I'll explain some of the thoughts...obviously there are many ways to fit a Deep Space Transport, this is just one.
The Deep Space Transport has awful agility. So really you want to improve that to reduce the align time to warp and increase its ability to escape gate camps. With all skills to max, it has an align time of 19.1 seconds without mods.
Inertia Stabilizers improve the agility but also increase signature radius. Tough choice but I want to take the risk because I have also fitted Warp Core Stabilizer. This makes my warp strength 3 which makes it so a single tackler is unlikely to hold me in place. It's reduced my targeting range and increased my targeting time but I'm not bothered as I'm flying defensively.
I have also fitted Nanofiber Internal Structures, these give me a speed boost as well as improving agility so my align time is really coming down now.
But what if I'm caught? I'm likely using this is lo-sec with crossover into hi-sec. I really ought to be using the Blockade Runner if I knew there were gate camps or I'm in null-sec so my only real option is breaking any target locks on me again. Safely though so a Remote Sensor Dampener is used, the disadvantage is that this affects only one target at a time. ECM Burst is a possibility in lo or null at a gate if I can be fairly sure I can warp off and sit out the Galactic Crime thing for 15 mins.
The Afterburner again is as before. Personal preference, no signature radius penalty. I don't want to make it easier for people to lock me.
Improved Cloaking Device. This is a lifesaver when you need to wait out a gate camp or if you are being chased at a gate, have built up some speed you can activate this and slow boat away. When you do that though, do not maintain your old heading, change it because tacklers will be circling hoping to bust your cloak open at 2km range of you.
Medium Polycarbon Engine Housings provide speed and agility making align time 13.6 seconds. Still high but better than 19.1 and hopefully enough to help.
Of course, this is not the best fit, there is really no such thing. It's a fit for a purpose though and if you want you can always play around.
You will need to use a tool of awesomeness for that and it's called EFT - Eve Fitting Tool.
