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Fit Kitchen: Transport Ships

Everyone needs a hauler – there comes a point sooner or later in EVE where you get tired of moving ships one by one and you don’t want to pester your corpmates anymore. Enter: Deep Space Transports and Blockade Runners. The DST is a tanky as hell hauler that can fit a Micro Jump Drive and is naturally resistant to two points or one scram. Blockade Runners, on other hand, are fast and can fit a Covert Ops Cloak. I’ve got fits for all of them, so if you need to haul some stuff then this is the right place!

Now, there’s something you need to know about Transport Ships these days. Both DSTs and Blockade Runners can use Interdiction Nullifier Modules. HOWEVER, you should not use a Burst Jammer if you plan to make use of them. This is because if you have a Burst Jammer fitted it will actually disable your nullifier. You won’t realise this until you’re deep in the trap of a Sabre.

And talking generally about the fits you’ll find below, I’ve gone for good all-round haulers which will do well in and out of Highsec. If you know that you need more tank or a faster align time then go ahead, but you won’t get a better balance than these fits without throwing bling at the problem. Remember that the best way to haul safely is to have a decent fit and simply haul less stuff. Don’t walk around with 10k EHP and 5b ISK of loot or you’ll be picked off by the first Tornado out of Jita.

In traditional Fit Kitchen fashion, here are some example stat blocks from my favourite two haulers: The Mastodon and the Prowler (because they’re Minmatar!) In case you didn’t know this, too, you can expect to get about 67,000m³ in a DST and 13,000m³ in a Blockade Runner.

Mastodon

Minmatar Industrial bonuses (per skill level):
7.5% bonus to Shield Booster amount
5% bonus to ship max velocity


Transport Ships bonuses (per skill level):
5% bonus to fleet hangar capacity
4% bonus to all shield resistances


Role Bonus:
2+ bonus to ship warp core strength
100% bonus to the benefits of overheating Afterburners, Microwarpdrives, Local Repair Modules, and Resistance Modules
90% reduction to effective distance traveled for jump fatigue

Prowler

Minmatar Industrial bonuses (per skill level):
5% bonus to ship cargo capacity
5% bonus to ship max velocity


Transport Ships bonuses (per skill level):
5% bonus to warp speed and warp acceleration
20% reduction in Cloaking Devices CPU requiremen
t

Role Bonus:
• Can fit Covert Ops Cloaking Device and Covert Cynosural Field Generator
• Cloak reactivation delay reduced to 5 seconds
• Immune to all Cargo Scanners
90% reduction to effective distance traveled for jump fatigue


Deep Space Transports (DSTs)

If you’re just now getting into transport ships then you might now be wondering which race to go for. In truth, it doesn’t matter – and for that reason I’ve divided this into ship types rather than races. I personally use Minmatar because I’m a Minmatar fangirl and I like the designs. I’d say that Gallente is probably your next best choice after this but pick whichever you like the look of or whatever your friends fly. Sharing ships can be handy.

You should be able to perform the cloak MWD trick with any of these. If you don’t know what that is then you need to align to the next gate, immediately hit MWD and cloak, disable them as the MWD cycle comes to an end and spam warp. This will let you travel through most systems being nearly uncatchable. If you end up in wormhole space then make good use of your Interdiction Nullifier Module. I have intentionally provided the T1 variant on as many of these as I can. The T1 version has the fastest cooldown which is the only stat you care about, letting you escape another bubble sooner!

Now in terms of design philosophy here, I’ve tried to give each DST 60K EHP at least, an MJD, a Warp Core Stabilizer, and good align time. You might also notice my use of the ‘Aura’ Warp Core Stabilizer. This particular storyline module has the longest activation time for the best price while remaining low CPU. Definitely worth the money if you intend to make good use of your hauler. If you can’t get it for some reason then maybe try the ‘Halcyon’ version.

And if you’re curious about the unique benefits of each hauler fit:

  • The Mastodon can travel at a crazy 1.8k m/s.
  • The Occator gets a 10MN Afterburner in case it is stuck scrammed on a Highsec wormhole.
  • The Impel has the strongest armour tank with balanced resists.
  • The Bustard has the best tank vs the common Void ammo used by gank Catalysts

Minmatar – Mastodon

[Mastodon, 2021 WH Mastodon]

Damage Control II
'Aura' Warp Core Stabilizer I
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Type-D Restrained Inertial Stabilizers

Compact Multispectrum Shield Hardener
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Caldari Navy Medium Shield Extender
Medium Micro Jump Drive
50MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive

Improved Cloaking Device II
Compact Interdiction Nullifier

Medium Core Defense Field Extender II
Medium Ancillary Current Router II

Caldari – Bustard

[Bustard, 2021 WH Bustard]

Damage Control II
'Portcullis' Reactor Control Unit I
'Aura' Warp Core Stabilizer I

Compact Multispectrum Shield Hardener
Compact Multispectrum Shield Hardener
Compact EM Shield Hardener
Caldari Navy Medium Shield Extender
Medium Micro Jump Drive
50MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive

Improved Cloaking Device II
Compact Interdiction Nullifier

Medium Low Friction Nozzle Joints II
Medium Ancillary Current Router II

Gallente – Occator

[Occator, 2021 WH Occator]

Damage Control II
Dark Blood Explosive Armor Hardener
Multispectrum Coating II
Multispectrum Energized Membrane II
'Aura' Warp Core Stabilizer I
Inertial Stabilizers II

Medium Micro Jump Drive
10MN Afterburner II
50MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive

Improved Cloaking Device II
Interdiction Nullifier I

Medium Trimark Armor Pump II
Medium EM Armor Reinforcer II

Amarr – Impel

[Impel, 2021 WH Impel]

'Aura' Warp Core Stabilizer I
Type-D Restrained Nanofiber Structure
Inertial Stabilizers II
Shadow Serpentis EM Armor Hardener
Shadow Serpentis Thermal Armor Hardener
Shadow Serpentis Kinetic Armor Hardener
Damage Control II

50MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive
Medium Micro Jump Drive

Improved Cloaking Device II
Compact Interdiction Nullifier

Medium Trimark Armor Pump II
Medium Trimark Armor Pump II

Blockade Runners

Moving on to cloaky haulers you’ll find that they’re not nearly as complex. All you need to know about them is that people tend to haul expensive stuff. The result of this is that sometimes a Tornado will just take a shot at you to kill you. Given that Tornadoes will alpha for 10-11k damage in one shot before dying to CONCORD, we need to aim to tank about 20-22k EHP just in case. No, this might not save you from a 1% chance wrecking shot or great skills, but it’s the best I can do while keeping the fit well-rounded.

Once again the best strategy to staying alive in haulers is to simply haul less. Don’t think you’re invincible because you can cloak. Keep your potential losses small and take that one extra trip or ask a friend to help you out. Gankers can and will catch you on a station and you might end up being unable to cloak due to a cloud of CONCORD/wrecks on a Highsec gate. On that topic, make some instaundocks (a few hundred km away in a line from the undock) and instadocks (a bookmark within the docking radius).

Again on the general design of my fits here, I have tried to give each fit a pair of Cargohold Optimization rigs to maximise your hauling capabilities (DST’s do not need these as they have a Fleet Hangar). When I fly these I will typically change the low slots as I need to, swapping between various levels of align/having a warp core stab/more cargo space. For that reason, they don’t really matter too much. I just suggest that if you have lots of space free then take some Expanded Cargoholds off and use some of the mods you see in my fits here.

Looking at what is unique about each of these Blockade Runners:

  • The Prowler is relatively balanced with a nice shield tank and good speed if you need it.
  • The Prorator has a super quick align if you fit for it but really struggles on tank. Fitting an armour tank is not worth it.
  • The Crane is slow and needs an AB instead of an MWD. This is so that you can still have tank and fit for full cargo, allowing you to haul a cruiser plus fit (as all my fits here can).
  • The Viator is good all-round. The Shadow Serpentis Inertial Stabilizer shaves a full second off the align, but drop to Restrained if you’d rather not spend that money.

Minmatar – Prowler

[Prowler, 2021 Simple Prowler]

Warp Core Stabilizer II
Type-D Restrained Nanofiber Structure
Damage Control II

Republic Fleet Medium Shield Extender
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
50MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Interdiction Nullifier I

Medium Cargohold Optimization II
Medium Cargohold Optimization II

Caldari – Crane

[Crane, 2021 Simple Crane]

Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Damage Control II

Large 'Sheriff' Shield Extender
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
EM Shield Amplifier II
10MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Interdiction Nullifier I

Medium Cargohold Optimization II
Medium Cargohold Optimization II

Gallente – Viator

[Viator, 2021 Simple Viator]

Damage Control II
Shadow Serpentis Inertial Stabilizers
Warp Core Stabilizer II

Republic Fleet Medium Shield Extender
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
50MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Interdiction Nullifier I

Medium Cargohold Optimization II
Medium Cargohold Optimization II

Amarr – Prorator

[Prorator, 2021 Simple Prorator]

Type-D Restrained Nanofiber Structure
Type-D Restrained Nanofiber Structure
Warp Core Stabilizer II
Damage Control II

50MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive
Medium Shield Extender II

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Interdiction Nullifier I

Medium Cargohold Optimization II
Medium Cargohold Optimization II

The Other Hauler Fits

While I’m not going to go all-out and make full tank, max align versions of every fit, I do have a nice selection of other fits which will serve this article well. Just note that if you are after T1 industrials then you are better off checking out EVE Uni. T1 industrials just aren’t suited to any level of real hauling. Fit them however you like as long as you have a 50MN MWD and a T2 cloak. My version on EVE Academy will also work, I designed that one to survive a single shot from a Tornado while being simple enough for a day one character.

Looking at these strange extra fits anyway we can start with the hauling Sunesis. This little destroyer fills a nice gap by being the only instawarp ship that can carry a huge amount of cargo. It fits 1.79k m³ in the instawarp configuration and 2.63k m³ when fully cargo expanded. This can be useful if you need to get large amounts of goods through a frig hole. I’d also argue that it is better than many industrials for a newbro! Turrets, probes, and drones are obviously optional here.

Now moving on to my favourite bait ship ever, the passive Wreathe. Everyone knows a Sigil can passive tank over 1k DPS, but did you know a bloody Wreathe does it just as well if not better? This fit tanks about 915 EHP/s while remaining super inconspicuous, having a cyno, and fitting a scram. Hilariously, the blinged 152m ISK version with Nirvana implants will tank 1.77k DPS. Pithum C Type Multispectrums will take that to 2.2k. With links and a pulsar wormhole it will tank over 6,000 DPS. It’s crazy what a passive tank can do!

And finally I have a suggestion here for a bait Occator. They’re not so obviously bait since Occators are a very common hauler. Fitting a simple dual rep tank rather than align will let you tank fleets surprisingly well while your friends come over. The other DSTs don’t really do this as well. It all comes down to the awful PG and CPU on Deep Space Transports.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this anyway. I’ve got some more fits that I could share but I’ll leave it there for now. If anything it’s more effort to create their own section to write about them and properly format them. I’m going to try and make an effort to get more articles out soon if I can, I’m just so damn busy and FFXIV is hella fun too.

Hauling Sunesis

[Sunesis, Highsec hauler]

Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II
Inertial Stabilizers II

Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Medium Shield Extender II
Medium Shield Extender II
5MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive

Improved Cloaking Device II
Core Probe Launcher I
125mm Gatling AutoCannon II
125mm Gatling AutoCannon II

Small Cargohold Optimization II
Small Cargohold Optimization II
Small Low Friction Nozzle Joints II


Hornet EC-300 x4
Warrior II x4

Bait Passive Wreathe

[Wreathe, Speedy]

Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II

Large F-S9 Regolith Compact Shield Extender
Large Shield Extender II
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Warp Scrambler II

Small Ghoul Compact Energy Nosferatu
Industrial Cynosural Field Generator

Medium Core Defense Field Purger I
Medium Core Defense Field Purger I
Medium Core Defense Field Purger I


Zainou 'Gnome' Shield Upgrades SU-603
Zainou 'Gnome' Shield Management SM-701
Zainou 'Gnome' Shield Operation SP-901


Liquid Ozone x4000

Dual Rep Occator

[Occator, 2021 Bait Occator]

True Sansha Medium Armor Repairer
Damage Control II
Core B-Type Explosive Armor Hardener
Multispectrum Energized Membrane II
Core C-Type EM Armor Hardener
Medium Ancillary Armor Repairer

Small Capacitor Booster II
Warp Scrambler II
10MN Afterburner II

Small Energy Nosferatu II
Small Energy Nosferatu II

Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump II
Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump II


Standard Exile Booster
Agency 'Hardshell' TB5 Dose II
I’ve been listening to this a lot while writing, it’s good.
Published inEVE OnlineTheorycrafting

17 Comments

  1. Ratwerke Actual Ratwerke Actual

    Interesting article. Nowadays, if it won’t fit in my Sunesis or I’m uncomfortable dragging the Orca out, I just hire it out.

    I really wish they would release Triglavian industrials, simply for the aesthetics. A bonus would be a Trig answer to the Sunesis.

  2. Great article, gave me some things to think about with my own Impel and Prorator fits. Do you have anything in the pipe for a sub-1s T3D hauling fit?

    • Sub one second isn’t really a thing, you can do sub 2 second which is instawarp though. If you want to make a Hecate/Jackdaw for hauling then just do it I guess. Put Expanded Cargoholds on and undock, it’s just a bad idea

  3. Claudio Guerriero Gil Claudio Guerriero Gil

    Hi Ashy, I didn’t got through all the post but I want to tell you about the MWD trick. When you cloak, you have a 5 seconds window to use active modules. If you use the MWD before the cloak, you will be locked faster as your signature will go 5x . I always cloak before the MWD. Cheers.

    • Fair enough, I didn’t look into that too much. What I will say, however, is that you likely won’t be locked if you only leave it one tick since there isn’t enough time to register a lock before you disappear

  4. Zazz Razzamatazz Zazz Razzamatazz

    “HOWEVER, you should not use a Burst Jammer if you plan to make use of them. This is because if you have a Burst Jammer fitted it will actually disable your nullifier”

    You can thank Globby for that one, lol.

  5. Djinnistorm Djinnistorm

    I’m a bit confused, why bother with align time mods when you’ll be using the MWD trick to warp in 10 seconds anyway? Couldn’t those low slots be used for more tank or something?

    • Apologies for the slow reply. This is because even with an MWD you will not complete the cloak MWD trick if you align time is too poor.

      Align time doubles as your acceleration value and if this is too high then your MWD is simply unable to speed you up enough to reach that 75% mark once you disable the cloak and attempt a warp. This will leave you with several seconds of being lockable.

      Align time is also a “nice to have” feature for if you are being lazy or running 5 accounts at once.

  6. Alexander Wong Alexander Wong

    I don’t get what the MJD is for, but people keep using them on DSTs, so I assume there is some reasoning behind it. Is it just a get out of bubble free card, because I don’t see any reason to use them in high or low sec to do hauling. Maybe it’d be useful for getting stuff out of a structure or MTU when you’ve waited until attackers were on the overview before getting your stuff to another system, but I’d rather move my stuff before hostiles appear.

    • Primarily for bubbles if your DST gets caught in one. Or.. if you just get pointed and not scrammed by multiple things

      • Alexander Wong Alexander Wong

        Ah thanks. So do you think for someone who doesn’t poke into wormhole space and sticks to Empire space, an Impel which ditches the MJD for an afterburner (which frees up some PG to change out the warp stab for a tanking module or maybe another inertia stab) makes sense? Often in Empire Space, at a gate you get pointed or scramed if you misclick the cloak, you lag on the cloak, or you get dumped so close to a baddie the trick doesn’t work and in all these cases you’re in warp scrambler range and nearly always someone in a camp has one.

        • Then in that case going for the extra tank may well be worth it 🙂

  7. Marti Marti

    Is there any other real benfit beside the 6s activation time for the “Aura” WCS? 140M is hefty for just 6s.

    • They were super cheap before I published the article 🙂

      Use the Halycon one instead

  8. Info-Nerd Info-Nerd

    Cheers ashy,
    Just wanted to let ya know i enjoy reading your stuff immensely.
    Well thought of input and entertainingly written.
    Thank you 🙂

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