Of the four major empires, the Gallente Federation is the only one whose battleships I have never flown so far. Though that is more due to personal preference of weapon types and enemy factions, rather than their performance in L4 missions. Compared to the Caldari Battleships I looked at in the last instalment, there is no outright non-functioning Gallente battleship, though I also do not think that any of them quite reach the overall performance of the Raven. Though then again this is less the fault of the hulls themselves, and more the problems with large Railguns I have explained while discussing the Rokh. Still, all of them deserve a serious review.
The Dominix
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Gallente Battleship Bonuses per Skill Level:
10% bonus to Drone hitpoints and damage
7.5% bonus to Drone optimal range and tracking speed
Slots: 6H/5M/7L
Hardpoints: 6T
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The Dominix is easily the most popular Gallente battleship for PvE applications, and certainly for good reason. It's strength does not come from its 6 turret hardpoints, but from it's large 375m³ drone bay and 125 mbit bandwidth, allowing it to deploy a full flight of sentry or heavy drones. This gives the Dominix similar damage flexibility to the Raven, however since Drone DPS varies between the various races - Gallente over Amarr over Minmatar over Caldari - it generally prefers to fight against enemies weak to Thermal or EM damage. More often than not Dominixes do not invest into any serious on-board weaponry at all, instead opting for a single civilian autocannon to pull aggro while using their remaining five highslots for a variety of utility options like tractor beams, drone links augmentors, remote armor repairers or nosferatus. Its seven lowslots are more than enough to run a solid armor tank alongside some Drone Damage Amplifiers. Another upside is that unlike most other battleships the Dominix does not have issues with applying damage to small, fast targets. She simply recalls her Sentry Drones and deploys a flight of Light Drones which quickly chew trough even the tankiest frigate-sized targets.
All these qualities make the Dominix an excellent ship for beginners and somewhat more experienced pilots alike. Only once entering the very top-end of mission running does she begin to falter, as least as a solo ship.
The Megathron
Gallente Battleship Bonuses per Skill Level:
5% bonus to Large Hybrid Turret rate of fire
7.5% bonus to Large Hybrid turret tracking speed
Slots: 7H/4M/8L
Hardpoints: 7T
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The Megathron is the more offensively oriented of the two turret-based Gallente battleships. Unfortunately, it is significantly held back by being a hybrid boat. Blasters are simply not realistic for T1 battleships in L4 missions, and I've already talked about the problems of Large Railguns. And it doesn't even get a full rack of them - even with the 5% RoF bonus Gallente Battleships needs to be trained to 3 to beat out a Rokh.
The Hyperion
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Gallente Battleship Bonuses per Skill Level:
10% bonus to Large Hybrid Turret damage
7.5% bonus to Armor Repairer amount
Slots: 7H/5M/7L
Hardpoints: 6T/1L
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The Hyperion rounds out the trio of basic Gallente battleships and at first looks like a very solid hull. It can mount a massive armor tank, has a generous amount of midslots and that 10% damage bonus seems insane.
Unfortunately it suffers from lack of damage output even more than the Megathron does, as it is never able to quite catch the older design when it comes to inflicting pain. Now it won't die while slowly works its way through a mission, but something like a Raven or Dominix will already sit in the next mission by the time the Hyperion warps back to station. It's strong skill bonuses also make it a very bad ships for beginners.
People that want to fly a Hyperion in PvE should look at shield Incursions instead.
The Dominix Navy Issue
Gallente Battleship Bonuses per Skill Level:
10% bonus to Drone hitpoints and damage
5% bonus to Large Hybrid Turret damage
Slots: 6H/6M/7L
Hardpoints: 6T
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The Dominix Navy Issue holds the dubious honor of being one of the two Navy battleships that is worse at its role than its T1 variant. It retains the strong drone damage of the standard Dominix, but trades out the bonus to Drone optimal range and tracking for increased Large Hybrid turret damage. Not only should I no longer need to explain while the second bonus is mediocre - especially if applying to only 6 turrets - but the increased range of the normal Dominix is rather important to keep Gardes (and to a lesser extend Curators) effective at range.
Now considering the 6 midslots the Navy Dominix could in theory go for a shield tank and fully commit its lowslots to damage mods and drone tracking enhancers ... but with only 660 tf base CPU it needs to spend hundreds of millions on faction mods just to make such a loadout fit.
If you can make the Navy Dominix work more power to you, but even then is it really worth the 600 million ISK price tag?
The Megathron Navy Issue
Gallente Battleship Bonuses per Skill Level:
5% bonus to Large Hybrid Turret rate of fire
7.5% bonus to Large Hybrid Turret tracking speed
Slots: 8H/4M/8L
Hardpoints: 7T/1L
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So far, the three navy battleships I discussed all modified their base hull in some significant way. The Megathron Navy Issue is not like that. It simply is a Megathron with more fitting space, more HP and an extra slot, in this case an additional high slot. No extra weapon slots, no increased bonuses. Since the Megathron is a middling hull for L4 missions, and the Megathron Navy Issue fixes none of its issues, it is not worth its price.
Wow, this review certainly ended more negatively than I initially fought. Just shows that even decent hulls can't help when their weapons systems are bad.
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