T1 Showcase - the Tristan

Mean and green, Gallente philosophy packed into a frigate

Welcome to the third part of the T1 showcase - today we take a look at one of the most versatile frigates in the game, the Tristan. With multiple viable fittings, you can build it to your liking, whether you like to brawl or to stay at range. Let's take a look!

Ship Overview

The Tristan comes with pretty limited slot allocation, with 3/3/3 allocation (and only 2 of the high slots can be fitted with turrets). It makes up for that with sizeable drone bay and bandwith, allowing it to use full flight of light drones. It has bonus to hybrid turret tracking (that's very rarely seeing use) and 10% bonus per level to drone tracking and hitpoints. The lack of weapon damage bonus is often reflected in the fits, with high slots filled with energy neutralizers, or completely unused on the kiting variants.

Stats-wise, the Tristan is in an awkward spot - it has generous lock range that would suggest it should play well at range but the base speed and agility make it hard to execute without committing hard into that angle with rigs and low slots. Additionally, 3 mid and 3 low slots make it hard to build a proper tank on relatively flimsy ship. As such, the most popular fits are AB brawler fitted with 3 energy neutralizers to control the fight, or full-time kiter, staying at the edge of Warp Disruptor range to mitigate incoming damage. What better way to test which one is better than to merge those fits into one!

Fitting Breakdown

Showcase Tristan Fitting (click to show)

• We fill the high slots with 3 T2 Energy Neutralizers. While they are hard on the fitting, we really need the extra reach they provide compared to meta variants

• In the mid slots, we have our usual Restrained Microwarpdrive (this time we're most interested in its reduced max capacitor penalty), T2 Warp Disruptor and Small Capacitor Booster loaded with 400 Cap Charges that keeps the entire ship running

• In the low slots, we have Auxiliary Power Core to push us to the required powergrid levels, along with Damage Control and Small Ancillary Armor Repairer to let us take few hits

• In the rig slots we put in 3x Transverse Bulkhead to give ourselves some extra raw HP without penalizing our speed

• Lastly, we fill the drone bay with a mix of Acolytes and Warriors - they are the fastest drones available and offer us both Explosive and EM damage to exploit the resist holes of our targets

The Gameplan

Let me preface this with a word of caution - the neut Tristan is skill-intensive ship, with a lot of module micro-management to get the most out of it. You have to constantly monitor your hp, cap levels AND watch your drones as they are your only source of damage. While I could extract plenty of value from the Rifter and the Condor discussed before, I had a feeling that I'd need to spend some more time with the ship to get the best out of it. But it also feels like the ship with the highest ceiling, where I attempted to fight navy / T2 frigates with a real shot at winning the fight if only I piloted it better.

Our build offers two equally viable paths to victory - stay out of harms way and plonk at our enemies from a distance, or get in real close and remove their capacitor to make it into a one-sided fight. It takes just 3 cycles of the neuts to drain a frigate from 100% cap to zero. That means you need to know your matchups and pick the right strategy and position from the get-go.

Keep in mind that your only way to deal damage is with drones - pay close attention to them and juggle them if needed - you can drag a drone that is in space back into the drone bay and launch a fresh one in its place, while the battered one recharges its shield inside your ship. Even with the Tristan's bonus to drone HP, they still explode rather easily under concentrated fire, and you only have 3 spares. I almost managed to solo a Thorax with the fit only for it to reach a stalemate when I ran out of drones when he was at 30% structure. One potential upgrade would be to replace the drones with navy variants - while they have slightly lover DPS, they have almost twice the tank of the T2 variant, making them more suitable for prolonged fights.

Entry Level Fitting

For the entry level, we're switching to full brawl fitting, with Afterburner and extra tank. With less modules to manage, it makes it easier to start with, and the drones let you fight back against kiters that manage to pull range on you.

Entry Level Tristan (click to expand)