The Vedmak has been gaining in popularity ever since it has gotten a range bonus, and has become an interesting choice in smallgang warfare. There seems to be an interesting division going on about how to properly fit a Vedmak, spearheaded by one question:
“Do you fit a 800mm Plate?”
For anyone that is not dead set on Yes or No I would like to compare and contrast the two starting points with Vedmak fitting, and hopefully also come up with a middle-ground solution. I will be looking at medium bling fits as these seem to be prevalent whenever someone that thinks of his Vedmak as good talks about it, they also open up more options with CN points/webs while all being somewhat close in price, making comparison easier.
Fits
Pro Plate
[Vedmak, Amelia Duskspace]
Shadow Serpentis Multispectrum Energized Membrane
Damage Control II
Entropic Radiation Sink II
Entropic Radiation Sink II
800mm Rolled Tungsten Compact Plates
Medium Ancillary Armor Repairer, Nanite Repair Paste
Warp Disruptor II
Federation Navy Stasis Webifier
Medium F-RX Compact Capacitor Booster, Navy Cap Booster 800
50MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive
Heavy Entropic Disintegrator II
Medium Gremlin Compact Energy Neutralizer
Medium Infectious Scoped Energy Neutralizer
Medium Energy Neutralizer II
Medium Ancillary Current Router II
Medium Ancillary Current Router II
Medium Polycarbon Engine Housing I
Acolyte II x5
Vespa EC-600 x5
Mystic M x1250
Occult M x750
Navy Cap Booster 800 x20
Baryon Exotic Plasma M x750
Meson Exotic Plasma M x750
Tetryon Exotic Plasma M x750
Nanite Repair Paste x64
This first fit is from a commentary Video by Amelia Duskspace and the middle bling one of 3 that he presents. Most notably he talks about the Vedmak not only as a damage platform but also having a lot of utility. He specifically mentions the following key points to his fitting decisions
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The utility of long-range Neuts
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The utility of a full set of EC-600s
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Speed being of lesser importance in the current meta (He runs a Snake Set in personal use tho)
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Not fearing fitting rigs
Contra Plate
[Vedmak, Ashy in Space]
Damage Control II
Multispectrum Energized Membrane II
Multispectrum Energized Membrane II
Entropic Radiation Sink II
Entropic Radiation Sink II
Medium Ancillary Armor Repairer, Nanite Repair Paste
50MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive
Caldari Navy Stasis Webifier
Medium F-RX Compact Capacitor Booster, Navy Cap Booster 800
Warp Disruptor II
Heavy Entropic Disintegrator II
Small Gremlin Compact Energy Neutralizer
Small Energy Neutralizer II
Medium Energy Neutralizer II
Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Medium Polycarbon Engine Housing II
Medium Polycarbon Engine Housing II
Acolyte II x5
Hornet EC-300 x5
Warrior II x5
Mystic M x1250
Occult M x750
Navy Cap Booster 800 x20
Baryon Exotic Plasma M x750
Meson Exotic Plasma M x750
Tetryon Exotic Plasma M x750
Nanite Repair Paste x64
This second fit is from an Article from Ashy Traynor’s Fit Kitchen Series on her Blog. She doesn’t like the idea of fitting a plate, as an unplated fit can be just as tanky in an all-out scenario, but making this Vedmak 300m/s faster. This Vedmak doesn’t have any fitting rigs and fits only 1 medium and 2 small neuts. Other than that the Vedmaks are pretty comparable, the same DPS and tracking, Ashy’s Vedmak does fit a more compact defensive web, reducing its range by 1300m, which might make a small difference as well.
Since the plate fit is about 60m more expensive, I will for a good comparison upgrade the T2 EANM’s to IN EANM’s, making these fits less than 10m apart in price.
Comparison
There is 3 interesting stats that really differentiate those two Vedmaks:
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Tank
-
Neuts
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Speed
Tank
All out Tank Scenario
First, let’s look at the scenario where incoming DPS is constant and manageable. This means that you can use all your MAAR charges and you walk away with the maximum possible EHP that you could have tanked. In this case, the plate fit gives you 33.4k EHP, while the no-plate fit gives you 35.4k EHP- a small advantage for the no-plate fit.
If you calculate how much DPS is manageable to actually get all charges of, then you get 520 DPS for the plate fit and 550 DPS for the no-plate fit - probably not a significant difference. So in an all-out scenario, the no-plate fit wins in tank.
Burst Tank Scenario
The second thing you might want to consider is how long it takes for the no-plate Vedmak to out tank the plate Vedmak. Here is where things get interesting:
The plate Vedmak gains 1.48k EHP per charge and can start to tank at 18.46k EHP (When its shield have been depleted and there is enough “Space” in armor for the first charge)
The no-plate Vedmak gains 2.17k EHP per charge and can start to tank at 14.47k EHP. From there on, we can calculate the EHP after every cycle with ease:
| Plate | No-Plate | Percent Differnce | |
| 0 Cycles | 18,46 | 14,47 | 78,4% |
| 1 cycle | 19,94 | 16,64 | 83,5% |
| 2 Cycles | 21,42 | 18,81 | 87,8% |
| 3 Cycles | 22,9 | 20,98 | 91,6% |
| 4 Cycles | 24,38 | 23,15 | 95,0% |
| 5 Cycles | 25,86 | 25,32 | 97,9% |
| 6 Cycles | 27,34 | 27,49 | 100,5% |
| 7 Cycles | 28,82 | 29,66 | 102,9% |
| 8 Cycles | 30,3 | 31,83 | 105,0% |
As you can see the no-plate Vedmak wins after cycle 6 is done, this is after
38.25 seconds (With cycle 1 landing at 0 seconds)
Because I don’t expect myself to tank perfectly, you would probably have to add the reaction time, and time that you need to verify your first cycle does have “Space” on top of this, putting you around 40-45 seconds until the no-plate Vedmak is better. For comparison, a typical RLML clip lasts about 70 seconds.
Neuts
This one is a lot harder to quantify and might depend a lot on the enemy ships, for example, a typical ONI (XLASB + cap booster) will hardly care at all about your Neut’s, while a typical Cynabal (No cap booster) will suddenly be really slow. I made a little spreadsheet here with how many cycles it takes to neut out some common ships.
| 1 Neut | 2 Neuts | 3 Neuts | |
| Stiletto | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Malediction | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Caldari Navy Hookbill | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Dramiel | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Federation Navy Comet | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Harpy | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Jaguar | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Punisher | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Retribution | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Vengeance | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Cynabal | 8 | 4 | 3 |
| Osprey Navy Issue | 9 | 5 | 3 |
| Phantasm | 10 | 5 | 4 |
These are all from full cap, with no cap batteries or injectors, so this might not be the wisest spreadsheet xD. You can however see that 2-3 medium neuts allow you to immediately cap out a lot of frigates, while the time to neut out cruisers also drastically goes down. Given that most ships are not at 100% cap anyway when you start neuting them, fitting 2 or 3 medium neuts doesn’t really make a difference against frigates. Only if you need to pressure a cruiser having a third one might be helpfull.
The other important thing not shown here is that neuts depend a lot on their range, for that reason Amelia also uses expensive Neuts on her 900m+ Vedmak.
Speed
This one is probably the hardest to find out and might be dependant on the players you fight. I will just put the classic distance over time graph from pyfa here
I think the most notable difference is that it takes the no-plate fit needs 1 second less to align to something or burn out of scram range (10km).
Compromise Fit
I wanted to build a fit that is more well rounded than those two, specifically with the following things:
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The middle ground of buffer and speed
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2 medium neuts (with T2 range at least)
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Federation Navy Web (why not)
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EC-600s
And the answer is interestingly something completely different. plate or no-plate? The answer is a bulkhead rig. It gives you buffer but doesn’t affect your speed, who would have thought…
Anyway. Here is the fit, it costs another 10m more at the time of writing, but I think that is within the natural fluctuation of Jita prices.
[Vedmak, Mine]
Damage Control II
Imperial Navy Multispectrum Energized Membrane
Shadow Serpentis Multispectrum Energized Membrane
Entropic Radiation Sink II
Entropic Radiation Sink II
Medium Ancillary Armor Repairer, Nanite Repair Paste
50MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive
Federation Navy Stasis Webifier
Medium F-RX Compact Capacitor Booster, Navy Cap Booster 800
Warp Disruptor II
Heavy Entropic Disintegrator II
[Empty High slot]
Medium Energy Neutralizer II
Medium Energy Neutralizer II
Medium Transverse Bulkhead II
Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Polycarbon Engine Housing II
Acolyte II x5
Vespa EC-600 x5
Mystic M x1250
Occult M x750
Navy Cap Booster 800 x19
Baryon Exotic Plasma M x750
Meson Exotic Plasma M x750
Tetryon Exotic Plasma M x750
Nanite Repair Paste x64
And here are the relevant graphs and spreadsheets. In the all out tank scenario it will tank 34.9k EHP.
| Plate | No-Plate | Mine | |
| 0 Cycles | 18,46 | 14,47 | 16,61 |
| 1 Cycle | 19,94 | 16,64 | 18,47 |
| 2 Cycles | 21,42 | 18,81 | 20,33 |
| 3 Cycles | 22,9 | 20,98 | 22,19 |
| 4 Cycles | 24,38 | 23,15 | 24,05 |
| 5 Cycles | 25,86 | 25,32 | 25,91 |
| 6 Cycles | 27,34 | 27,49 | 27,77 |
| 7 Cycles | 28,82 | 29,66 | 29,63 |
| 8 Cycles | 30,3 | 31,83 | 31,49 |
Conclusion
There is certainly merit to both kinds of Vedmak fits, and it is hard to find good middle ground, having more buffer in hull might save you, but it will definitely only do it once. I hope Ashy sees that plate fits have some merit, and not every nanoganger ever just always puts a plate on because that’s the way it is meant to be done. Finally, I don’t quite like the idea of a bulkhead for personal use yet, guess I am just sticking to my ONI and HM Loki for now.