sabre
The Rook: Great Soloship, or Greatest Soloship?
My recent experiences reminded me that the Rook was substantially rebalanced in QR, and by all reports is pretty badass now. So I poked around with EFT and came up with the following:
[Rook, Solo]
Ballistic Control System II
Signal Distortion Amplifier II
Ballistic Control System II
Invulnerability Field II
Invulnerability Field II
Large Shield Extender II
10MN Afterburner II
Warp Disruptor II
ECM – Multispectral Jammer II
ECM – Multispectral Jammer II
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile
Particle Dispersion Augmentor I
Bay Loading Accelerator I
Hobgoblin II x5
22k ehp and 431 dps with all skills at V – but the real key to the beauty of this ship as a solo roamer is those two multispecs. With good skills and a bit of luck you can jam any one other recon, or multiple frigate or cruiser sized ships, while dishing out a suprisingly good deal of damage. This insulates you from the “PPPPPvP” aspect of PVP in EVE to some degree, and vastly increases the ability of the ship to extricate itself from difficult situations.
So with my fancy new hac-recon hybrid, I headed for the Drone Regions with every intention of this really, truly, finally being the time when I would actually manage to gank a ratter. Just one Raven pilot not watching local, that’s all I ask.
But it was not to be. After several hours of roaming, I headed for a station system in northwestern Malpais in the hopes that there would at least be *something* there. And something there was – at the station I found a Stiletto and a Sacrilege. I jammed both and fled, not wanting to play docking games with nasty ships like those. However, the Rook’s ECM performed nicely and got me away from the unfavorable confrontation.
A few systems later, I came upon another station system, this one under the sovreignty of Flame Bridge, an alliance whose name was new to me. This time, the residents had evidently heard I was in the area, and I found two SBs, a Crusader and a Sabre waiting for me. Finally, here was a fight that looked like it might be really fun!
As the blood rose and thundered in my ears I decloaked and activated my hardeners. Priority one was cutting down the incoming DPS, which meant jamming the stealth bombers. One multispec on each bomber did the job, and I turned my attention to the Sabre, who had just dropped a bubble on me. Even though he was moving at high speed my missiles tore into him and he just narrowly escaped in deep structure, warping out and leaving the field. By this time the Crusader had a point on me, and an Ishkur had joined him on the field. I turned my attention to the stealth bombers, glass cannons that would be easy to kill and eliminate their DPS so I could turn my ECM on the Crusader and Ishkur. I pointed one bomber, a Nemesis, and took him down fast. The other bomber I also put into deep structure before he managed to MWD out of my scram range and left the field.
Now I just had the Crusader and the Ishkur to contend with. I put a jammer on each, and pointed the Ishkur. As my missiles began to chew through his tank I thought to myself, “Well! Successful test, winning a 5v1 is not bad.”
And then, the reinforcements arrived.
My jammers went dark. I lost point on the Ishkur. My AB went dead as well. My invul fields shut down. A Curse had entered the field, and I was fucked.
The coup de grace, administered by an Armageddon, was mercifully quick. With no implants in the clone, and a “gf” in local, I sat by my wreck and waited for the medical clone jump express to take me home.
Back in TVN, I reflected on my adventure. The Rook proved the most successful of my solo roaming experiments overall, and despite both the cost of the ship and the fact that I have already lost one in battle, I think Part 7 of this series will be written with one as well. 
