May 23, 2021

This fit was somewhat hastily put together. It uses blasters and is shield tanked. Be careful. With blasters (sawed off shotguns) you can do a whale of a lot of damage up close, but when you're surrounded by rats in a Rally Point, you come up the loser with this fit and have to warp off and repair. Longer range guns would be ideal, but I used what I had. You can handle a Yard just fine…up close or kiting. A Rally Point requires you to kite or have longer range guns. With the MWD off, you're cap stable running the shield hardener full time. 727 DPS, 55922 EHP at this time.

[Gnosis, Reaper]
Damage Control II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

50MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive
Stasis Webifier II
Warp Scrambler II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II

Prototype Cloaking Device I
Heavy Neutron Blaster II
Heavy Neutron Blaster II
Heavy Neutron Blaster II
Heavy Neutron Blaster II
Heavy Neutron Blaster II

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



Hammerhead II x5
Acolyte II x5

Federation Navy Antimatter Charge M x3000
Antimatter Charge M x3000
Null M x3000
Void M x3000
Nanite Repair Paste x50

August 21, 2021

I've improved the fit for more EHP by: 1) ditching the warp scrambler for another large shield extender II, 2) replacing the tech 1 core defense field extenders with tech 2 versions, ditching the stasis webifier for a small cap battery II.

Also, since I'm spending more time ratting in null sec, for now I've replaced the hobgoblins with a single T1 Ogre.

The highest DPS (890) comes with 5 Hammerhead II and Void ammo in the blasters. EHP is 72,959. Quite an improvement, but at a significantly larger expense for the rigs. The earlier fit works quite well for all hisec combat anomalies, and for belt ratting in nulsec, so this fit is for when you're feeling extravagant.

[Gnosis, Reaper-PVE Max EHP]
Damage Control II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

50MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive
Small Cap Battery II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II

Prototype Cloaking Device I
Heavy Neutron Blaster II
Heavy Neutron Blaster II
Heavy Neutron Blaster II
Heavy Neutron Blaster II
Heavy Neutron Blaster II

Medium Core Defense Field Extender II
Medium Core Defense Field Extender II
Medium Core Defense Field Extender II



Hammerhead II x5
Vespa II x2

Null M x5000
Void M x5000

September 15, 2021

I’ve been wanting to get into a Tengu, a T3 strategic cruiser, for a while. I had to wait out a lot of skills, for the ship and its subsystems, for missiles, and various related skills. I’ve still got a ways to go, but had more than enough to start flying and getting acclimated to the ship as of two days ago. I had a mental block when it came to fitting it. Anytime I get into a new ship, it’s a challenge to figure out where to start fitwise. Finally, I searched the net and decided on several as starting points.

Pros

1. Cloak reactivation delay is only five seconds. That’s a big deal!
2. The shield tank on this ship with a decent fit is fantastic.
3. Being able to use combat probes is great. I’ve not used them before. More on that in a minute.

Cons

DPS and speed are currently my big disappointments. The DPS with heavy missiles is nothing to be proud of. Overheating gets you up to decent numbers, but I’m still underwhelmed.

Observations

Learn to use overheating. I’m using an afterburner fit. I was underwhelmed until I realized how much I could gain by overheating. I’ve not used overheating much. That has now changed. I’ve put nanite and thermodynamics skills at the top of my queue, so overheating damage can be repped quickly. Those skills, plus the inherent bonuses in the ship, will make life a little better. With a 10MN Afterburner II, I'm getting 244 m/s base speed, 550 m/s with the 10MN Afterburner II, and 703 m/s when it's overheated.

DPS with Scourge Fury Heavy Missiles in Heavy Missile Launcher IIs is at an underwhelming 346, but is 408 overheated, way less than what I can get with blasters and drones in a Gnosis. I’ll be skilling up for heavy assault missiles.

Being a blaster and railgun guy to date, missiles take some getting used to. First, while they always hit their target, they take time to get there, and you can end up sending one or two volleys in excess of what’s needed to destroy a ship because of that. Need to gain some experience with this. There are still some skills to get to L5 to improve things.

Eschewing an MWD at the moment, I have to get used to (relative) slowboating between cans in data and relic sites.

Combat Probes

These are way cool. No more time consuming trial and error with dscan, but they’re not magic. Anyone smart enough to see combat probes on dscan is, usually, smart enough to cloak up or stay on the move to avoid being scanned down. Regardless, they’re extremely helpful.

I had no idea you could reload either core or combat probes in your launcher on the fly. Nice. Neither did I realize that combat probes can still be used to scan down cosmic signatures! Their probe strength is shown as 54, but per this article, you really need to double that number to compare them to core probes. Further, if you need to reduce your scan to 0.25 au, yeah, you need core probes. I get 109 scan points in the Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher with Sisters Core Probes, and 54 scan points with Sisters Combat Scanner Probes.

First Kills and Lessons Learned

I scored a Tormentor (combat frigate) and capsule kill in wormhole space, and a Heron kill in losec today. Both were learning experiences.

I had point on the Tormentor, but it kept pulling away from me despite my afterburner, and got away. Twice. After his first escape, I had cloaked up and started scanning him down again, when it showed up in the same relic site. I just decloaked and went after it again. And it got away again.

The third time I got lucky. The accumulated damage I'd inflicted was enough for me to destroy it despite my speed disadvantage.

The lesson learned was to OVERHEAT. I could have easily maintained my web/scram and gotten it the first time if I had overheated the afterburner. It took way too long to get the kill, which drove home the need to simply overheat the launchers as well. Sigh.

The second kill went much easier. I had learned my overheating lessons. This kill was also lucky one in that the Heron pilot was a newbie, and kept hanging around knowing he was being hunted.

Probe Expiration

Somewhere along the line when hunting the Tormentor, I warped around and lost my combat probes. I could see them on dscan, but could never reacquire them. I dove thru another hole that was just a few hisec jumps from the Amarr hub, and bought 8 more Sisters Combat Probes. Then I went back.

I’m glad that about an hour later I was still back in that same system. I had no idea probes had a timer on them. After about an hour, they magically reappeared in my cargohold! Yet another lesson learned today!

The Tengu as an Explorer

I mentioned core probe strength earlier. But I don't take a Tengu out just for exploration…at least not yet. I have thought of it more as a hunter/killer. Refitting on the fly for either role is easy with a Mobile Depot!

I've been in the Jita area for two days now, exploring in a Heron. Yesterday I found four ghost sites. I haven't come across any in a long time, and here I got four! Two Lesser, one Standard, and one Superior. I lost two Herons running these sites. The first loss was due to slingshotting around a can too fast and wandering past the range of my scanner. Bang! The second loss was somewhat intentional. Time was running out, and I risked a red hack…just one more click on it and it would have been mine. Nope.

Having a cargo scanner was helpful. Two cans in one site had less than 2000 isk in loot! I didn't come across any major finds…about 7-9 million per can, and I only run one can per site. Further, more than once in the past, having a warp core stabilizer saved me when rats showed up and scrammed me.

August 15, 2021

Found this in a single can in a Serpentis data mining site in nulsec. I believe this is a record from a single can for me.

September 9, 2021

A couple weeks ago, I got stranded near Jita when a wormhole closed up. I left a Stratios behind in a nearby system, and jump cloned back to home base. Then recently I lost an Astero. I needed to replace the Astero and fetch the Stratios. I'd been having a hard time lately finding a route thru wormholes to get anywhere near Jita. Until today.

I found a route to within a few jumps of Dodixie, and hauled loot from data and relic sites out there. I netted 434 million isk, my biggest loot run to date. While there, I picked up a Heron BPO. I made another run back that way to unload some overseer effects at a Concord bureau. Then I put a jump clone in Dodixie before returning home. Next step was to jump there and buy and fit an Astero. Great trip!

A short while later, I found a wormhole route thru losec and hisec to near Jita. Not being able to jump again today, I took a corvette from my home system thru that route, picked up the Stratios, stopped in Jita to pick up some reasonably priced ammo, and came home.

This was a whale of a good day - replaced the Astero, got my Stratios home, sold a ton of loot, picked up a BPO I've been wanting, picked up some ammo I've been needing, and ended the day up about 435 million isk!

December 8, 2021

I've seen these rats in losec systems only a few times. On finding one today, and looking to break the monotony, I researched them, determined this particular ship was an Orthrus (cruiser - see ship tree under Mordu's Legion Command), and decided I'd come back in a Gnosis and go head to head. I nailed him without too much trouble at all. 2 Hammerhead IIs, 3 Vespa IIs) and 5 Heavy Neutron Blaster IIs loaded with Null. Orbited at 6,000 km. Took no damage to drones, and only minor shield hits! You *will* be webbed and scrammed, so be prepared. The only loot was an Orthrus BPC, but that's worth the trip!

I came back in another ship to salvage the wreck, and only got one very cheap part…not worth the bother to my surprise.

February 13, 2022

In recent weeks I found several routes to other trade hubs, but today I finally found a pretty safe route to Jita. Took two wormhole jumps, then 11 hisec jumps to Jita. I've been hanging onto several high-grade ascendancy BPCs, but only put one up on contract while there…a high-grade ascendancy Omega BPC. Within 3 hours it was sold, for 3 billion isk! I wonder if I should have asked for more…

And for the first time in quite a while, I got caught in a bubble coming out of the first wormhole on my way back. I activated my covert cloak and successfully slow boated my way out of dodge.

March 30, 2022

Unintentionally, I discovered that my Stratios fit can survive a Superior Covert Research Site when rats show up and all cans explode. I was scrammed and down to 14% hull when the rats warped off. I'm unsure of whether I tanked all damage, or whether my flying away from the rats eventually put me out of range. Scary. They showed up in about 90 seconds. Wouldn't want to do this again!