Ultimate Rattlesnake Ratting Guide

Rattlesnake is by far *the* most popular and at the same time the *best* pirate PVE battleship there is.

Unfortunately though, it is also one of the most misunderstood, which leads to only slightly above mediocre tick output, leaving inexperienced player with no choice but to slowly train boring and expensive Carriers, or switch to completely different factions, which is also furthermore wastes time.

This page was created to explain just how Rattle is supposed to be used in order to get you 70-90 millions per hours with ease, without wasting billions of isk and time.

Popular misconceptions:

1) Bulk DPS > Precision.

This is by far the worst misconception there is, when it comes to Rattler.

People think they can just add Fury missiles+Gecko to ship and after that it's completed cauze now it has dps output of 1500.

In actuality, people who think that just don't understand what Rattle bonuses really are. Rattle has the biggest bonuses to damage any ship has, but it does not have support for it, like tracking or explosion velocity boosts. If you decide to use Fury+Gecko, even having Omni and Guidance computers will not help you, alpha output will be mediocre and disappointing, leaving your wallet with barely 16mill ticks, if even that.

On the other hand, using Precision(or even T1) missiles and best tracking sentries you can, against any type of NPC(for example Curators against Sansha) will only require to add 1-2 computers to support offensive system your char is most skilled with, while providing you with 23-25millions per tick.

Besides, both Gecko and Fury missiles waste your time by getting to target much more slowly and being absolutely useless against frigates.

Lesson here is: Tracking, Falloff and Precision > Dps and Alpha.

2) Rattle can and should be passive tanked.

Another waste of your time, skills and resources will be passive tanked Rattle. Maybe in previous patches it was working perfectly but now, even if you drop 300+millions of isk on t2 purgers and t2 shield rechargers you end up with tank that is barely better than active one *only* when shields are already about 25% damaged

You much better off with simple and cheaper C-type Large or X-type X-Large booster, whatever you prefer.

3) Rattle is good semi-afk ship

This misconception is only possible after people assumed previous two were true. Of course, when you have pretty fast Gecko instead of sentries you can easily align somewhere on 1\3 speed and check local lazily, while watching youtube kittens.

As we now know, that will get us only mediocre results. Even more, it can get you in hard-to-get-out situations, which *will* get you killed*.*

*Do not* semi-afk in Rattle, to have best output it requires your utmost attention. You must know what enemy to kill 1st and what frigs are the biggest pain in your ass, so you can shoot them as fast as possible, before they force you to get sentries in and lights(light drones that is) out, wasting precious ratting time.

4) Rattle is good for newbies

This is *the* main reason most people end up using VNI or Ishtar to the end of their days, without even trying to switch for Machariel.

Rattlesnake requires both of it's dps system to be trained for t2, using Faction and Meta will just not cut it in any way. It is by far the worst ship to use when you char cant compensate for cruise's baffling explosion capabilities and drones not having any implants or boosters to up their dps or tracking. While other drone+ ships, like Dominix, have tracking bonus, rattle leaves you with only pure damage one, which makes both systems into giant shotguns trying to hit small bugs in dark room.

Conclusion:

Rattlesnake must be trained as main and end-game ship if it will be trained at all. You must forget the dps-wankery while using it and cling to the most precise and fast ammo there is.

Using this guide will help you to perform so good you will never even need those expensive, slow Carriers "just to have bigger ticks".

Reference List:

1. ↑ Tick is a term for CONCORD payment you get for attacking NPC with bounty on it's head. 1 ticks is only given every 20 minutes so the faster you are at killing the more enemies you can get into every single payment thus ensuring the best profit.
2. ↑ And that's without even using Faction Damage Amplifiers.
3. ↑ Because in EVE, the more damaged your shield is, the faster passive repair becomes.
4. ↑ Which can only be considered a better ship *because it already* has falloff bonus and used with AC guns, so you don't need to have too many precision compensation.
5. ↑ I have 30million ticks on my barely Faction Fitted Rattle. Go figure.