Hippo, you have any good hawk loadouts? The only thing they seem good for is my wallet.

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Hippo,

I need a good setup for a manticore to do some low sec recon and also kill a few rats here and there.

Hi hypnotic, i have a manticore. They're not really NPC ships, but they'll work against cruiser rats if you're careful. I'm posting the common PVP setup, since I don't think anyone uses them to rat. They're just too expensive for that.

Highs:
3x Cruise launchers, named are preferred due to their low CPU. I'm using limos atm.
1x 75mm II. Just in case
1x Improved Cloak.

Meds:
2x F-90 Sensor Boosters (saves on CPU).
2x Named sensor damps (saves on CPU).

Lows:
1x Ballistic control, dunno if T2 will fit.
1x Micro aux power core.

I think the MAPC can be swapped out for a nanofiber if your fitting skills are good. Wrath cruise missiles will hit for around 500 or so. The procedure is to align to something, uncloak, engage your sensor boosters, target, damp the target, fire cruise missiles, recloak once they hit. The damps are there since the manticore is weaker than a normal kestrel. You also can't recloak when locked, so this helps increase your targets locking time and reduces his target range. I don't know if damps work against NPCs though.

If you want to do low-sec recon, i'd suggest you get a Buzzard (not a bustard), with a covert ops cloak. The covops cloaks are a bit more expensive, but you can warp cloaked with them, unlike improved cloaks.

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Scorpion anyone?

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Scorpion anyone?

Here's a fleet setup for blobs. Target the battleships and pray you jam.

4x 425 Rails
2x Heavy Nos

2x sensor booster
6x T2 jammers

3x 1600mm Plates
1x RCU

Anyone got suggestions for Retribution and/or Vengeance?

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vengeance isn't too good

here's a retri setup that a corpie uses

highs:
4 medium pulse IIs
1 small nos

med:
1x 1mn AB II

Lows:

1 MAPC (i think)
1 T2 thermal hardener
2 heat sink IIs.
1 Small Armor rep II

You're going to need Adv Weapon Upgrades for beams.

edit: forgot the small armor rep.

Yup, I don't have pulsies atm, I'll see what I can do with Beams instead

While we're here, if Hippo or Phreak would mind canvassing their corpmates about Lachesis setups...

Why has the word canvassing become so popular recently?

they all say its crap