Hey guys,

I recently figured out how to solo the Besieged Covert Research Facility sites with a Tengu. They are actually pretty easy to do, if your ship is fitted accordingly and you keep on your toes. But before we get into the details of the approach, lets first look at the potential rewards and the risks of this particular site:

Rewards

The rewards seam to vary between 15M and 150M (including expected profit of a potential BPC).
Apart from Covert Research tools and some pirate ammunition, you also have a chance to get:

• 30-day SKINs for destroyers or battle cruisers (e.g. Cormorant Guristas SKIN (30 Days) )
• 10 run BPC for Limited / Experimental Hyperspatial Accelerator. The BPCs are worth quite a lot (25M / 140M). Especially if you choose to produce and sell the modules yourself.
• Low-grade Slave implant (e.g. Low-grade Slave Epsilon,worth about 150M)

Risks

However this combat site involve quite some risks:

• High NPC damage output: The NPCs put out a lot of damage across all damage types. The official page on the CCP wiki says they are adjusting their damage type to your resist profile.
• NPCs web and scram: All NPCs will web and scram you, and they have an extreme range of 40 KM.
• Dangers of Low Sec: These sites only appear in low sec, so you are always running the risk of being pointed and killed by a pirate.
• No acceleration gate: There is no acceleration gate, so any ship can instantly warp to you on grid and try to catch you, giving you very little reaction time to escape.
• Ghost timer:  At about 15-20 Minutes after first aggression the site will explode and the enemies will warp off. So if you are too slow (e.g. because you get disturbed and have to warp off) all your efforts will be for nothing.

Assessment

So that brings us to the question if the the Besieged Covert Research Facility sites are worth to run at all. Judging by how many of these sites are available in systems during the day, they seam not to be too popular. My personal opinion is: it depends. The main danger comes from other players in local and due to the missing acceleration gate they can be upon you in an instant. On the other hand, these sites can be run in less than 15 mins, which is quite a nice ISK/hour rate. So I think they are worth running, if there is no threat in local, e.g. during off hours or if your allies control the system. Otherwise the relatively moderate rewards do not justify the relatively high risk of running these site in low sec.

How to run the site

So if you decides to run the Besieged Covert Research Facility here is the approach I have used to run them successfully many time.

Fitting

In order to successful run these sites with a Tengu you need to meet three requirements with your fit:

• Tank needs to sustain high amount of damage across all damage types over a longer period of time
• You need to be able to hit the NPCs from outside their web/scram range
• You also need to be fast enough to control range to the NPC
• Finally you need enough DPS to break the tank of the battleships and clear the whole site within 15 min.

To meet these requirements I chose a kiting tengu fit (figures might vary with skills, examples with max skills:)

• Heavy Missile Launchers, using T2 fury missiles, doing 668 dps @ 70 km
• Medium deadspace shield booster, balanced resist profile + DCII -> 797 ehp/sec against uniform damage.
• Deadspace afterburner -> 675 m/s. Together with the low sig radius of the Tengu this allows you to speed tank a lot of the damage
• Cap Stable -> You need to keep the AB, boosters and hardeners running the whole time.

Please see Appendix below for full details of suggested Tengu fittings.

One remark about damage types of Mordu ships. The old CCP wiki page for this site says you need to tank against omni damage: “Mordu ships will test your tank and switch damage types to find your weakest resistance”. However some people have stated that Mordu ships only deal kinetic damage. I have tested this myself and can confirm that they switch damage types, so tanking against kinetic only will most probably get you killed.

Running the site

The actual running of the site is quite easy (assuming there is no threat in local):

1. Turn on all shield mods (booster, hardeners). Set default orbit to 60 km
2. Warp in at 70km. The NPCs should be at about 80-90 km range when you land. Turn on your AB start orbiting the nearest NPC at 60 km.
3. Start hitting and killing the nearest NPC when it comes in range until it is dead. Switch to the next NPC nearest to you. Rinse and Repeat.
4. Always check distances to the NPCs. When any of the other NPC approaches you, start orbiting that one at 60KM and continue shooting your current target.
5. I suggest killing the cruisers first, since they seam to be closing in faster and they also die a lot quicker.
6. When the 2nd wave appear they will not attack you unless you shoot first. Therefore take the time to reload and get into optimal orbit to the first ship before you attack.
7. If there is too much incoming damage, overheat your shield booster and hardeners to mitigate it. (This is also how you can tank against the full 5 Mordos’s battleship wave for a while.)
8. Be prepared to warp off if your shield is not holding (and come back after repairs).
9. Be prepared to warp off if any NPC gets too close. (If they web and scram you, you are most likely toast)
10. Be prepared to warp off if any other ship approaches you on d-scan or lands on grid (its most likely another player trying to kill you)
11. After all NPCs are dead, burn to the container (usually around 80 km away) and get your reward! Don’t forget to kill the Thukker structure for some extra loot.

Final remarks

I personally like doing the Besieged Covert Research Facility site, because they give the often provide a fair reward for just 15 minutes of work. Still the risks of getting caught in your expensive Tengu is very high. The main issue I see is the missing acceleration gate, which makes it too easy for pirates to catch you. My guess is that more people would be doing these sites if they had an acceleration gate.

I hope this guide was helpful to you. If you have any comments please let me know in the comment section.

Best regards,
Erik

---

Appendix

Please find below example fittings for soloing these sites. I am sure they are other fittings that work just as well (or even better if you put in more ISK), but these are the ones I have successfully used myself.

Example fitting

This fitting uses a deadspace medium shield booster and provides you with up to 796 EHP/s against omni damage (with max skills). It costs about 1.0B ISK, but will give you the ability to easily hold the maximum damage of five Mordus Legion battleships without breaking a sweat. And by the way: this fit also works nicely for running DEDs and other PVE sites. Just exchange the two hardeners to match the damage type of the rats.

 

[Tengu, Besieged Site NEW]

Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System

Pithum A-Type Medium Shield Booster
Shield Boost Amplifier II
Corelum C-Type 10MN Afterburner
Republic Fleet Target Painter
EM Ward Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Shield Boost Amplifier II

Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
[Empty High slot]

Medium Capacitor Control Circuit II
Medium Warhead Rigor Catalyst I
Medium Core Defense Operational Solidifier II

Tengu Core - Augmented Graviton Reactor
Tengu Defensive - Amplification Node
Tengu Offensive - Accelerated Ejection Bay
Tengu Propulsion - Fuel Catalyst



Scourge Fury Heavy Missile x5000
Scourge Precision Heavy Missile x3000

---

Note (July 17th, 2017):

The Tengu fitting as been updated to reflect the T3C changes on July 11th, 2017. The new fit is a bit more expensive, but has about the same performance and is still fully capable to solo the Besieged Covert Research Facility.