Long time no see friends. Alpha clones are upon us, so I figured it’s time to get into shape and actually start writing the last two articles in my series on Alpha clones and the ships they can fly. So far I have covered Minmatar here and Caldari here.

If you’re a new player with a fresh Alpha clone, or a returning one testing the waters with an Alpha, these are the guides for you. Efficient ship fits that will have you kicking ass in no time.

In this article I will focus on the Gallente race and ship lineup available for Alpha clones to (ab)use. As always, you can read more about Alpha clones in this devblog and see what the skillset is for the Gallente.

Their ships tend to be high on DPS and very in-your-face

The Gallente are a race with a somewhat flexible ship lineup. While not as versatile as the Minmatar, they instead have a number of powerful options. Their ships tend to be high on DPS and very in-your-face, but can also kite very well. The main weapons platform that Gallente use is blasters, but they also have a lot of ships that depend heavily on drones to do damage.

Not having T2 blaster ammo isn’t the end of the world. Caldari Navy Antimatter charges are OK most of the time. Losing the increased range from Null is of course not optimal but it isn’t as bad as Amarr losing Scorch for example.

T1 drones most obvious weakness is very low EHP. You do however have access to faction drones. While Augmented drones might be a bit expensive for Alphas (and require Light Drone Operation V) you still have Integrated at about 100k ISK for small ones and 300k for medium ones. Regular faction ones might also be too expensive at 1 million ISK for a small and 2-3m for a medium one, considering they are generally considered throwaway weapons, likely to be lost. But a dedicated krab might be able to invest in this.

Gallente ships are traditionally armor tanked, leaning towards active tanks. But recently with the introduction of structure rigs there has been a lot of Gallente ships fully utilizing their high base structure HP. While a bit more rare, shield tanks are still doable, most notably on ships such as the Tristan and Vexor. With shields, they essentially compromise on their EHP for massive DPS. Something that has hurt Gallente greatly recently is the increased price for Small Ancillary Armor Repairers. Because of their insane price at the moment I will not use these for T1 frigates.

So let’s go through some fits that will be possible with the Alpha skillset for Gallente!

Frigates

Starting with a highly annoying support ship we have the Maulus. This ship is bonused to sensor dampeners that reduce enemy lock range and/or scan resolution.

I would fit it up something like this:

It’s important to notice the super short capacitor life. You can not perma-run the microwarpdrive or the small armor repairer. You will however not need to as the damps will mitigate most damage coming in.

Then we have the Atron. This super fast hull is already popular with brave rookies. Having extremely high speed and decent DPS, this ship is good at tackling. It does however lack hitpoints and I would not expect to survive long after catching something or screening another tackler off your kite fleet.

If you wish to fully ignore guns you can slap another bulkhead on, increasing your EHP to 4.3k. Speed is however what this ship does best; Having 3.7 km/s base (with the MWD) and being able to heat up to 5.3 km/s is really good. However, as I mentioned earlier, the HP of this ship isn’t that high and you can expect to feed a lot of these to get tackle on something. Good thing they are cheap.

The reason I went with a Overdrive Injector instead of a nanofiber is because I didn’t want to reduce the already low structure tank.

While the Atron can work for solo PvP in the hands of very skilled solo players, you should probably look towards other frigates when you are limited to the Alpha skillset.

Next up is the Incursus. This blaster frigate is very popular due to it’s armor repair bonus. Many people fall for the dual rep version, and while this is probably the most popular fit out there, people fail to understand the extreme weaknesses of all tank and no control. This weakness made worse by the lack of Null ammo for Alpha clones. Do not try to run this fit solo, instead, bring some friends and alternate between fitting scrams and webs. Done right, it’s quite the dangerous little fleet.

This is a very standard fit. Notice that the ‘Refugee’ plate actually has the same stats as a T2 adaptive plate, making it better than an energized meta 4 plate. This could change with a potential tiericide on the plates, but you have enough CPU to fit an energized if they should suddenly turn out to be better after a balance pass.

This fit is more focused towards lowsec and Factional Warfare space with the afterburner, but you can easily make small modifications in order to fit a microwarpdrive such as downgrading the guns.

For something different that actually works better for solo PvP we can do a scram-kiting Incursus, using railguns to reach out to scram range.

The idea here is pretty simple. Just try to keep at the edge of heated scram range, reducing the incoming damage while hitting them with railguns. Hopefully your bonused small reps will be able to keep you up long enough to win the fight!

And then we have the Tristan. This ship is considered one of, if not the top tier frigate in EVE at the moment. It’s a drone frigate that is highly flexible, being able to both brawl and kite very well with interesting fits utilizing energy neutralizers.

Let’s start with a simple kite fit. Swarms of these can be seen in Factional Warfare space terrorizing the plexes.

Upgrading to Integrated drones gives you about 11 DPS more but is it worth the increased price? That’s up to you.

Then we have the energy neutralizing Tristan. While it does lack full control like the dual rep Incursus, it isn’t equally crippled by it in solo PvP. Drones will still be able to hit your target regardless of if you are at 0m or at 9km. That doesn’t mean that this ship isn’t weak to scram kiting, in fact, that’s the best way to fight it since you will be sucked dry pretty fast if you happen to decide to orbit 500m on this fit. And that’s a easy way to instantly lose a fight.

That’s the problem with engaging Tristans. You do not know if it is a brawling energy neutralizing Tristan, in which case you want to keep out of brawl range, or a kite Tristan, where you want to get on top of it as fast as possible. And by the time you figure out what type you are dealing with, the fight could already be over.

Next up are the faction frigates for the Gallente. The Navy Comet and Maulus Navy.

Let’s start with the Comet. This police ship is pretty much like an Atron except extremely good. It is one of the ships that went from mid tier to borderline cancer tier with the introduction of structure tank rigs.

I mean look at this fit:

Even as a fully maxed Omega pilot I would be somewhat afraid of this fit. It has high DPS, speed and tank. If you enjoy even more damage it’s very easy to just swap out into blasters giving you 174 DPS at close range. If you enjoy speed more or are a fan of 0.0, it’s very easy to just swap out the afterburner to a microwarp drive with blasters as well.

I feel like this is where it’s beginning to pay off to invest in T2 rigs and the Ancillary Armor Repairer, but if you are poor I don’t blame you for T1 fitting it with a T2 rep. It is still going to be a strong ship.

Then we have the Navy Maulus. This ship has a bonus to scram range that is very helpful but I would never brawl with this ship. It’s better used defensively to prevent getting caught yourself. This ship is like a bigger, better kite Tristan. It is however very rare for some reason despite being very good.

Another interesting thing is the increased scram point bonus. I think this was made as some kind of joke counter to stabbed farmers. Trust me, this bonus is useless in 99% of all cases and about as effective for catching stabbed farmers as probes are for catching (former) off-grid boosters on a deathstar. It could theoretically be useful for catching supers/titans, but good luck surviving long on grid with this ship.

Anyway, variations of this fit will be the best thing Alpha clones will be able to do with the Navy Maulus

This ship you basically just keep at long point range and try to defensively scram off people approaching you while killing shit. The guns are really trash and mostly used for killing drones defensively. Now go out there!

Destroyers

The Gallente have a strong destroyer lineup with the highsec jihadist choice of the Catalyst and the very flexible and strong Algos.

Let’s start with the Catalyst. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that this ship is all DPS, no brains. What is severely lacks in control, it compensates with sheer DPS.

There is however nothing wrong with actually either skipping the scram for a web, hoping you kill them before they realize that they are not actually pointed, or just skipping the propulsion module for scram and web and sitting at 0 on a beacon or some other place where the fight is guaranteed to start at close range.

If you have space OCD you can replace the ion blaster for another neutron blaster with a 1% power grid implant!

Lastly for the destroyers we have the Algos. A drone focused destroyer that’s probably one of the strongest destroyers in the game at the moment. It’s very flexible like the Tristan by relying more on drones for DPS than guns, leaving the high slots free for energy neutralizers for example. I am going to start with one of the more fun fits for the Algos

The 10MN Algos utilizes an oversized afterburner to make sure you are always able to disengage and scram kite at the most optimal range. Do note however that this is not an easy ship to fly and you will require micromanagement of your propulsion module.

For something a bit more standard both of these fits work very well.

For the neut version of the Algos you have to remember that after completely neuting your target out you do not need to keep all neuts active on him to keep him capped out. Instead, use all your neuts to alpha the cap. A good way to notice that he has a cap problem is to check if tackle mods are cycling on and off or if he stops shooting (if it’s a ship that relies on cap to fire), both of these are really good signs that the fight is about to tip in your favour.

Cruisers

It’s time for the ship class where Gallente in my opinion outshine all the other races, with the exception of maybe the Caldari for Alpha clones. Gallente cruisers are strong, versatile and able to put out a lot of DPS. Their faction cruisers are even viable endgame 0.0 krabbers for Alphas.

The Celestis is the cruiser version of the Maulus. It is an EWAR-focused cruiser using sensor dampeners to keep targets under control. The choices here are between a shield tank and armor tank. The armor tank will have more effective hitpoints and damps to provide support but lack the speed of the shield tanked one.

One cool fit you can do to go with a shield tank but using a XL-ASB. I have to admit I did run out of things to put in the low slots, but I am sure you guys can figure something out. The guns are mainly for drone/shitty frigate defence.

An armor tanked version could instead look something like this

Next up is the Thorax. This perfectly shaped ship is actually really good. It offers high DPS and speed but not as high tank as some other ships. It has its uses though. First up is a plate and Medium Ancillary Armor Repairer fit that would make Prometheus Exenthal proud.

If you are more into kitey stuff it is very possible to fit it up with railguns and a shield tank. Do note that this is much harder to fly.

Having four mid slots as a ship that generally armor brawls makes the Thorax really flexible. Most of the time you want to go with microwarpdrive, a warp scrambler, a web and a cap booster. But there is nothing stopping you from going with dual prop or dual web for example.

Off to the Vexor. The Vexor is probably the cruiser that most people who plan on being Alpha clones are excited about. It is already one of the best cruisers in the game and for Alphas it will be just as dangerous.

The general tactic here is to kite with your drones until you feel good enough to go in and deliver the final kill with your blasters. I choose to go with structure rigs over trimarks despite having a plate. You lose about 1k EHP that way but gain 200 m/s in speed and I think that’s actually worth it.

And then of course I have to point you towards the max DPS shield Vexor. It is not tanky by any means but can pack a serious punch even for an Alpha pilot.

This thing puts out 487 DPS for an Alpha clone while still having somewhat decent EHP. You could always tag along with a logistics ship or something if you feel the tank is too low.

There are a lot more more configurations that the Vexor can do somewhat competitively. Full armor buffer, dual rep and long point shield kite fits work very well. But I leave that up to the reader to figure out.

Coming up are the faction cruisers for the Gallente. They have the Exequror Navy Issue – that’s definitely not a logistics ship – and of course the infamous Vexor Navy Issue – the ship of choice for anyone who wants to not play EVE but still rat.

For the Exequror Navy you have about four good ways to fit it. Rails, shield/blasters, armor/blasters and structure tank/blasters.

I am going to start with the shield/blasters version. This is probably one of the highest DPS any Alpha clone can look to get with a ship and you shouldn’t expect to last long with one of these at 0 on you. It is a bit on the fragile side, but a small gang of four or so of these and a logistics cruiser or two will do quite well.

The rail version of this ship is extremely fragile and I would probably try to stay as far away as possible while still dealing damage. It does however have a lot of damage and could shred frigates off the field very fast.

Finally, we have the structure tanked version of this ship

As you can see the DPS is still very respectable with a structure tanked Exeq Navy while keeping EHP very high. The downside is that you can’t receive logistics reps or use self reps effectively at all. But who cares about those things when structure tank is the best tank!

Lastly we have the Vexor Navy Issue. A lot of people have been thinking that this will be the best cruiser for all Alpha races but I heavily disagree. Being locked to only medium drones and not larges/Geckos severely hurts this ship. In fact, I would probably advise against flying this ship as it just isn’t cost effective without large drones. This next example will tell you just how bad the VNI situation is:

This is a shield tanked VNI going for pretty much max DPS and it still can’t even break 400 DPS. In fact a Vexor can do more damage than this although it does have an EHP advantage. For something a bit more brawly this energy neutralizing armor tanked fit might work well

Once again, the DPS makes me cry but you are locked to mediums so….

Final thoughts

I went into EFT-ing for this article thinking Gallente would easily be the second best race after Caldari but honestly, I am not so sure anymore. The frigate lineup does have some gems but it doesn’t really shine that much. It’s not until you get to the faction frigates that you get some really strong Gallente Alpha clone ships. This trend continues on for destroyers with the Algos being the prime choice and onto cruisers. The biggest disappointment for me however is the Vexor Navy Issue. I went into writing this article and didn’t think about how Alpha clones were locked from using heavy drones at all. This means that the VNI doesn’t have much advantage other than EHP over a normal Vexor. In fact I would probably avoid the VNI at all cost if you are too poor to pay for EVE.

I was however surprised at the strength of the Exeq Navy Issue. This looks like one of those ships that could be the bigger, better brother of Moa fleets. Being high EHP and in your face with extreme DPS.

Another notable thing to think about is that the T1 frigate lineup for the Gallente is heavily affected by how expensive Small Ancillary Armor Repairers are at the moment. This is the prime reason I think T1 Gallente frigates for Alpha clones aren’t as good as Caldari ones and they might even be on par with Minmatar T1 frigates.

Their EWAR is also super strong and unlike ECM it doesn’t have a chance to miss. It does also give the illusion that the opponent has more of a chance, when in fact it’s as effective, if not more so, than ECM.

All in all Gallente is still a more solid choice than Amarr and there is no shame in picking Gallente.

As for the Gnosis, I didn’t forget about it. Just go look at my Caldari article, it will be fitted similarly.

Gorski out… don’t pick Amarr

Here is a pastebin with a maxed Gallente Alpha clone for EFT. Put it in a .chr file inside the Characters directory in EFT.

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