A Loveletter to the Stratios

The Stratios is one of my eternal favourites. Weren't it for my eternally empty wallets and it's eternally high price, I'd probably fly around in it a lot.

It looks good, it can warp cloaked and it has decent DPS. The ability to tank more than a couple wet blankets lazily drifting towards you is a nice bonus.

There aren't many ships like the Stratios in EVE. For me, it's mostly either form or function, never both. The Stratios is one of the few ships were good looks and abilities I actually need meet.

Thanks to having a cruise-missile Raven lying around when the Stratios and her little sister, the Astero-frigate, was added to the game, I was able to grind down loyalty points and lay my hands on a Stratios-BPC. That blueprint copy was then transformed into the real deal.

For a while, I went mad and simply flew around everywhere with my Stratios.

My love for the ship even temporarily neutralized my hate for the strange loot spew system and I went around looking for interesting stuff. Which in EVE-terms means I collected a lot of garbage.

Since back in loot-spew days exploration was a horrid mess, I went into W-Space again. With decent DPS I thought "What's the worst that can happen?"

Something not immediately obvious if aren't experienced enough, the laser-bonus the Stratios has is utterly useless. 50% more range sounds like a lot, but even if you cram everything full with modules trying to get the damage-output higher, it still falls flat on it's face.

If you want to fly the Stratios, better que up some drone skills. Drones are the main weapon the Stratios has. If you want to use the ship in PVP, you can either try energy-neutralizer or blaster weapons to give you an edge. A PVP-fit isn't even preventing you from doing exploration-content on the side, since you can refit with a mobile depot.

The ship after my first warp-out. Lasers alone didn't help, fancy that.

At the time I still was stubbornly refusing to use the Stratios as a drone ship. A combination of lasers and T2-medium drones was what I was going with. Even in a C1-wormhole system, using only medium drones and three medium lasers without damage bonus was a chore. Sleeper-drones are quite hardy.

After a while, this thing showed up and my badly fit Stratios couldn't do anything about it.

Some fancy usage of my covert-cloak and creative warping around allowed me to collect some sleeper-loot under the nose of that sleeper-battleship. All in all, this little day trip wasn't that bad.

So I went home. Which in turn gives me today the excuse to post this picture. I just can't get enough from screenshotting the Stratios! (This one ended somewhere close to the border of Stain. Running gatecamps at 3am in the morning is not recommended.)

For some reason I could never get into the Astero, by the way. I really tried to love this little frigate, but writing this post made me realize I love cruisers far too much, so that Astero I lost a while ago is probably the last one I'll ever fly. Sad, isn't it?