Qu4NtuM's guide to endgame slaves

With t20 augs not being available you really don't have much to work with. So after wasting lots of creds and ships and augs... here is the secret: bank powered slaves.

Basically, you will NEVER be able to make a slave that can do damage and be able to power it's weapons with under t20 augs so don't even try.

-SHIELD HIGH shield bank, regen is irrelevant since they will not be able to tank big things anyway and you really want them to live, worry about shields after you have won the fight. Also, low shields are priority target on AI and you really don't want high lvl AI shooting your slaves. This is before any hostility is pooled, so essentially all the new spawns (UZ, bana, etc...) will go for your slaves and the slaves will die cause they are still stupid and don't dodge. Also high regen shields eat up loads of elec. With elec being by far the biggest issue on endgame slaves you really want minimal elec use.

-DMG vs ROF High damage mod, LOW rof. Try to avoid all rof bonuses and get as much dmg augs and overloaders as you can (OS 5 is the best cause I said so). Also use ares control bots if possible. It's not very well known, but slaves don't get a rof bonus since some issue. The 2% to all stats listed in the skill actually give no rof and you get 2x the dmg to compensate . I'm calling this a feature, because if this DID work, then any and all high end slaves will stop working because the elec issues already present will become a really huge problem. I really hope they keep it the way it is , or if they do fix it slaves better get a hefty elec tempering bonus to go with it. Essentially slaves always fire at the base rof of the weapon and are not subject to rof modifiers of any kind as far as I know.

-RANGE AND WEAPONS I find range bonus is horrible in most cases. With projectile weapons like jacks slaves will miss alot and since it's not exactly something they can power you loose lots of DPS. So try to avoid range bonuses from augs or anything else if you are using projectiles. It helps with beam weapons that insta-hit, but those weapons usually come with lower dps, bad dmg type (most lazorz suck, m'key?) and huge elec needs which means they can power them even less.

However, beam weapons are most effective so if you find something that you feel works (I used jade quark lasers before t20, these work, but look very gay) go for it. Slaves have like 95% accuracy with beam weapons, so if you are going after something agile use them.

Also consider that slaves pass over a target, then turn around aiming at the target and drift out to their weapon range. All that time firing. So if you are using mags, they will fly far out and at the edge of the range with a mobile target you will loose lots of dps since they will miss alot. Same goes for jack-type weapons since the projectiles have a base speed at which they move. So bullets coming out of a slave while it's backdrifting will actually stand still, which means they don't hit, which means you loose dps.

Shortrange weapons seem to work best on agile fast slaves since the margin that they will miss is very small. Also it makes then buzz around more since they reach their max range fast, which in turn makes them harder to hit with pulse weapons that most AI carry and prefer to use

-LCs don't work, cause the bullets are too slow -Catas don't work (vigi cata works), cause the projectiles are too slow -Excomms don't seem to work, cause thier base dps is poor and slaves don't get any mining control or stuff like that. Only in special cases like platties do they work as good as anything else. -DWOs and lipos don't work cause they are jack type and have really long range so you may loose up to 40% dps into thin air Mags suck, thier base DPS is low, the range is too big. Pretty much anything that will not near insta-hit really fails. -Jacks (MD, pulse shotguns etc..) do work, but you need agile slaves and you can't have any range bonuses -Any and all beam weapons work, but it really comes down to EPS. For this reason Jade quark lasers are actually really good (I'm not kidding). And you can buy them at AI, and they are cheap. -Pulse type of weapons work more or less. Things like MBP and panther paw. But you need agiles fast slaves for that -Any REALLY close range (like 20 range or whatever) weapons actually work if your slaves are fast and agile. Things you may think suck and people can't use actually work really well.

-ELEC As I already stated slaves are bank powered, means you can't make a sustainable slave. So you want to aug up and use an energy that will get you a good bank (minimum 10k with t20 weapons) and 200ish regen. Bank is actually the bank you get with augs applied, regen is base regen of energy. Go look in TLA for anything you think might fit that description and your hullspace and all that. But yea, energy with 200ish regen that gets over 10k bank when augs are applied. This works in most situations. You can go with REALLY high bank and very small regen using panels. But panels and antipanels don't seem to work together very well so I predict issues with powering.

-TRACTOR BEAMS Never use these on slaves. They only gimp performance and are of no tactical or other kind of use. The amplify the elec shortage. They suck, Period. Also because of this warden sucks balls for a slave.

-SPEED faster the better obviously. However too fast and they become less effective. Somewhere around 150-200 seems to work. Too slow and they can't catch some AI. Too fast and they tend to overshoot so weapon choice is really important here

-AGILITY Depends on weapons, short range you need to be very agile and fast, long range agility isn't that much of a problem, however speed is.

-RADAR This is actually very important. You need to have a good radar like a venu seeker, inverto or something similar.

-MISC STUFF Don't forget things like ace pests, overloaders, scoops, diffs - kali laser and energy diffs are rather good.

-BASIC TACTICS -Settings First off, you want to have "fight enemies" turned off. And you want to have "attack my target turned on". You wanna control your slaves not have them run around shooting random stuff they can't even hope to break alone. ALWAYS KEEP AND EYE ON THE SLAVES!!!

-Aggro You need to be the tank and pull all the aggro, because when slaves start getting shot you loose them. Difficult part with the new aggro code and all that is if you drift out of AI range faster then AI then they switch to slaves, means they die, means you loose GG and dps, means you can't kill the AI, means more slaves die, means you gonna die since you will have no dps... means you pay tonns of cash for GG and a tow.

Slaves generate hostility for the owner so if you can stay in the range of AI and dodge/tank you in the green. Means you need to be good at flying your ships to keep aggro (and not die, we will get to that later) from switching to slaves.

If you see a slave getting hit fly in and shoot the AI, if you close to it they usually switch so you save your slave. Also if you have a good healing weapon(which you should have in any case) you can heal the slave that's getting shot and generate healing aggro for yourself, which in turn will make AI switch to you, which is good. But this needs to be a good weapon since you need to offset the aggro that the slave is generating. Basically means heal a lot.

-What to shoot, when to shoot Target priority is very important. First things you need to kill are those with traction augs since they screw up your aggro management big time. Second things to go are fast AI, since they will most likely wear down your shields since you can't control aggro and dodge them at the same time. Then take out things that you feel do LOTS of damage. Like if MF pick takes half your shields with one lucky shot you know it's damage modded and has to go first. Leave things with high shields or resists to the last. If you primary something that you feel is highly shielded switch targets if you think slaves have enough energy. You can judge approximate shields of AI by setting /showslavedamage in event tab.

-How to shoot Hit and run(regen) tactics. Since you can't power anything (trust me you will not be able to I tried and it was an "epic fail" so don't even waste money) for too long you need to take out your target and give time to regen. When fighting big things choose targets only when slaves are at max energy since then they do good dps. When they begin to power their weapons from thier own regen the DPS drops drastically and the target might not die and you will. Also the longer you shoot something the higher the odds that something will go wrong, like AI switch target's to slaves or you die etc. So get in, kill it off, give slaves time to regen, kill off another. Check the energy level on slaves constantly. If you have the same configuration you only need to check one so it's easier. it's the "X" and "status".. and then look in event tab of the chat.. annoying but becomes second nature.

-Targeting With the attack my target on you can either shoot an AI(must hit) or tractor it to make slaves go after it. But you can't make them disengage. So once you choose a target you are commited. With limited energy you can't just switch targets either. So choose wisely and think before you set a target. Setting wrong target primary is usually what gets you. You shoot the wrong thing hotheaded, find it's either heavy shielded really low priority or that you have some insane traction auged demon spawn pushing you out and causing aggro to jump to slaves. 5 minutes later you will find yourself in a pod on the way to sol asking team chat for GG money or help with rescue.

-Stealthy critters When fighting stealthy AI you gotta keep a tractor on them at all time to see thir position. Slaves still get bugs when their target cloaks so if you don't get back in visual range fast enough you may find your firepower drifting off in random directions.

-Tweaks Slaves know how to use tweaks, so keep a few advanced blockers on your slaves since they can save them many times. For instance panthers in UZ have crazy damage that can kill off most things in one pass. With blockers they only get in the first volley since any large damage will cause slaves to tweak up and rest of the deathspray will do no harm. Don't use ABs when solo, since if it comes to that you are probably shooting something that hurts like hell. If you AB away your stupid slaves will lag behind and get killed off and you will have no DPS.

-Bring it on Know your limits. Know where you can control aggro and know what will kill you. FC is the most difficult class to fight multiple AI. People go "ZOMG needz nerfzorz" when my slaves kill some solo AI in one pass. Nothing a seer, sniper or MF can't do, but when it comes to mobs other classes still excel, SDs especially whereas FCs have a really hard time just to be half on par with what you can do with any other class. It all looks very deceptive, it's really hard work, lots of multitasking and not even close to what it may look like "on paper" or whatever. Just so you know, most slave setups that seem "good" on paper actually fail horribly. Found that out the hard way.

-Going with a group When in group, choose carefully who you play with. Most people are completely incompetent, Especially SDs. There are very few good SDs in the game, those that actually got a clue, a very rare breed. Most people are muppets that will ruin all your aggro control and not pay for any GG you loose.

-Details, details... So, be smart. Good multitasking and piloting is required. Always keep an eye on every AI and slave, know who is shooting who and how far they are. Very very very deep pockets are required, the money you will spend on GG is going to be astronomical. And the gear you need to even compete with other classes is times the number of slaves squared ( effectiveness = numberOfSlave ^ 2 * costOfGear ). Not for people with short tension spans or IQ of a toilet seat.

-The end, my 2 ISK (pun intended)

Reason why I don't give out my setup is cause... because... just because. Figure it out yourself, don't just copy stuff. Odds are if you just do my setup you will not learn anything on the way and then that will result in EPIC FAIL. Also I know my setup is the best there is in game at this time. It doesn't mean that you can't come up with something more effective. To be perfectly honest I already have, but it's way way too expensive at this time. For me anyway.

I can give some details into my setup.

It's 4x mzungu liquids as most know 2k to 10k damage per shot from one liquid depending on what weapon is used (I have a very large arsenal that will even make some MFs jealous). About 150k-250k damage total from 4 slaves depending on weapons used before elec drops to regen and DPS effectively disappears, enough to take out most things (not talking about bosses here), but not all. 70k shield bank, about 160 speed (not sure 100%)

-Can't be arsed to fix bad spelling. Probably lots of points I missed but hey, think you can do it better go right ahead.

-Qu4NtuM