Since I've already spoken a little about implants, I may aswell write a
little more about your options if you've got a wallet full of ISK and you're
itching to spend it.
Pirate Implant Sets
The three obvious Pirate sets are the Slave sets, the Halo sets or the Snake sets, which affect armour HP, signature radius and speed respectively. All of these are decent options, and honestly it just depends on
your willingness to spend ISK and what implants you've already got. Obviously,
if you're using Genolutions then you'll either have to live with a partial set
of Slaves/Halos/Snakes or upgrade your Guardian to
T2 rigs and drop the Genolutions.
Slave Sets
So let's look at the stats. First up, Slaves. You've got two
options here, Low Grades or High Grades. We'll use our "Pimp Logi"
fit with all V skills as a baseline.
No Slaves
Armour HP: 7886
Total EHP: 57,101
Low Grade Slaves
Armour HP: 10,554
Total EHP: 74,769
High Grade Slaves
Armour HP: 12,116
Total EHP: 85,112
As you can see, Slave sets can add a serious amount of
EHP to your Guardian, with a High Grade set adding almost 28K of
EHP to your ship. That's almost a 50% increase, pretty substantial! Of course,
there is a major drawback to this, the price. Current Jita prices put a Low
Grade Slave set at around 650 - 750mil and a High Grade set
at approximately 1.8 - 1.9 billion (both prices for the sets include the Omega).
Yeah, that's pretty painful.
So is it worth the cost? Honestly, I think it depends. I've only ever
seen one Logi die in my time as flying as one, but I've seen multiple DPS ships
pop, usually in Assaults or HQs where they broadcasted late and a Logi couldn't
apply reps in time. So if you fly both Logi and DPS and you've
got the ISK spare, then feel free to invest some extra defense into your ship.
It's expensive afterall! Plus a Slave set (Low or High
Grade) opens up interesting fitting options on battleships, such as the
ability to remove the plate entirely for another damage mod, allowing you to do
more DPS. But for someone who only flies Logi? I'd say if you want to spend ISK
on the survivability of your ship, you might aswell get the "Pimp
Logi" fit, it's cheaper than a Slave set and offers a
decent increase in EHP.
Halo Sets
So the next major option is a Halo set, which affects signature radius. Make no mistake, this attribute has a significant impact on the amount of damage you'll take, effectively increasing your defense. In my opinion, these implants are better for pure Logi/T3 pilots, since Battleships have massive signatures anyway. That's not to say it won't help a battleship, it'll probably make a decent difference, but T3s and Logis start with a small radius so making it even smaller just makes it hard as hell to hit you. Oh, and since Halo implants are in far less demand than Slaves, they're cheaper too. Low-Grade Halos are worth about 380mil for the full set, and the High-Grade Halos will set you back around 1.5billion. Once again, set estimations include the Omega. Still expensive, but not quite as bad as Slaves. Plus if you shop around, you might get lucky and find one of the more expensive parts of the set ten, twenty or even fifty million cheaper than usual.
Let's look at the stats. Once again, we'll use the "Pimp Logi" fit with all V skills from the second post to compare.
No Halos
Signature Radius: 70 metres
Speed to Signature ratio: 9.02
Low Grade Halos
Signature Radius: 60 metres
Speed to Signature ratio: 10.52
High Grade Halos
Signature Radius: 55.5 metres
Speed to Signature ratio: 11.38
Now this probably looks like a minuscule improvement in terms of numbers, but it's a reduction of 14.5m total for the High Grades. You'll just have to believe me when I say that's a pretty decent loss in size, in terms of percentage it's around 20% smaller. That's quite alot for an already small ship. Now I have to admit that I haven't tried these implants in practice, but I know several logistics pilots who have the Low Grades and they swear they notice a significant improvement in the amount of damage they take. Of course they don't have any numbers to back them up, and it could just be a placebo effect. So if you want to take the jump, I'd recommend starting with a Low-Grade set first. If you like it and feel a difference, then sure, jump for the High-Grades. And even if you feel the improvement is limited, you can just stick them in an empty clone and use it for fleet stuff. Interceptors in particular benefit greatly from Halo sets!
Snake Sets
The next set, the Snake set, is similar in effect to the Halos, they make you harder to hit. But they do it in a slightly different way, they boost your speed instead of reducing signature. Snake sets also come in Low-Grade and High-Grade variants. A Low-Grade set is worth around 700mil-1bil and a High-Grade is worth approximately 2.5bil +.
Ouch.
So the stats. Let's see what they do. Once again, base is "Pimp Logi", blah blah.
No Snakes
Speed: 632m/s
Speed to Signature ratio: 9.02
Low-Grade Snakes
Speed: 733m/s
Speed to Signature ratio: 10.42
High-Grade Snakes
Speed: 788m/s
Speed to Signature ratio: 11.26
So there you go. In my opinion, Snakes are far too expensive for what improvement they give, Halos give a bigger speed/signature ratio for a much lower price, although to be fair Snakes are more of a PvP set than a PvE set. I'm not a fan of them personally, but hell if you want to splash your ISK around, go ahead!
So that's the three major pirate sets you can spring for. But what else is there? Hardwirings of course!
Hardwiring Implants
I've divided the following hardwire implants into slot group, and what they do. The asterix denotes the "level" of the implant (i.e you put in the number you want), so SA-703 would be a 3% Scan res implant and SA-705 would be a 5% Scan res. I've also ignored any implants that aren't useful in some way for a Guardian pilot, like implants focusing on shields or weapons. Anyway, here we go!
Slot Six (please note that the "Omega" implants go in this slot also)
EE-60* series: Increased CPU (helpful for tight fits, otherwise ignore)
EO-60* series: Reduced cap recharge time (can be helpful if cap chain fails)
EG-60* series: Increased PG (helpful with tight fits, I use this one personally)
AC-60* series: Increased speed under AB/MWD (helps mitigate damage)
NN-60* series: Increased base speed (similar to previous implant, but doesn't req. AB to work)
Slot Seven
RA-70* series: Reduce cap need for remote armour reps (not massively useful with a cap chain)
SA-70* series: Increased scan res. (Good in HQ/Assault sites where you have to relock people)
ES-70* series: Reduce cap need for energy emission systems (see RA-70* comment)
EM-70* series: Improved agility (helps you orbit tighter at a higher speed = more tank)
Slot Eight
MC-80* series: Increased hull HP (might help save you in a tough site, but I doubt it)
EM-80* series: Increased cap pool (possibly useful if cap chain fails)
Zor's Custom Navigation Hyper-Link: 5% bonus to MWD/AB speed (stacks with AC-60* which is nice)
Slot Nine
Nothing that great from what I can see. Don't bother.
Slot Ten
HG-100* series: Increased armour HP (cheapo Slave set?)
So those are all the implants you can mess around with. Of course, none are truly required, but every little can help! Anyhow, now you've got your skills, your ship, maybe some shiny implants, it's time for you to get in a fleet and start making ISK. We'll look at that in Part 4 - Let me in damn it!
Good luck out there guys
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