Info on this site is out of date due to balance changes.
I'm adding this page based off an excellent discussion that happened in this thread here(dreddit board) as to why we don't use Brutixes and Feroxes(Feroxi?) as I don't want it to be lost if we lose access to the Dreddit forums. The OP was a writeup of why Battlecruisers are awesome and how to fly them which has already been added to the Battlecruiser page.
[BORT] Revisal - So I see a lack of Gallente battlecruisers being mentioned, and I'm curious why this is. I know it's possible to fit a pretty brutal brutix sniper doing 700dps, but is it more worthwhile to be in a megathron as Gallente? [GEWNS] Hratli Smirks - I'm glad you asked.
Sniping Brutixes have been discussed and there is even a proposed reimbursement fit for such a beast on our wiki. There are a couple reasons that the Brutix has been skipped, however.
The first is a historical matter of fitting issues: the Brutix simply cannot fit a full rack of top-tier railguns with one fitting mod. This is an issue that affects several hybrid-using cruisers. Now, using one fitting module in a low-slot is generally seen as an acceptable compromise, but two is unacceptable. You simply give up too much in terms of tank, damage mods, etc.
That said, since the introduction of cheap medium-size rigs, you can use a combination of a medium ACR rig and a Reactor Control Unit to cheat the system and shoehorn a full rack of 250MM Railgun IIs on without using a second valuable lowslot. This “Captain Mutiny Memorial Brutix” fit is comparable to the Harbinger and the Hurricane, though it has much weaker scan resolution. In the end it's felt by the reimbursement crew that the Brutix doesn't offer anything that the Harbinger & Hurricane doesn't do better. The only reason to offer a reimbursement sniping Brutix is to give Gallente (and perhaps Caldari) pilots a antisupport battlecruiser of their own to fly, which isn't seen as strictly necessary. If we were space rich again we'd probably do it, though.
The second issue is actually that Hybrid turrets aren't especially well thought of in LODRA. The basic complaint is that railguns lack the DPS and superior tracking of lasers and the awesome volley damage of artillery. What rails do have is range, but since standardized sniping fits and fleet battles means you are generally warping in at the shorter ranges of lasers and artillery, that advantage gets wasted.
A lot of the moaning and groaning about railguns is Goons being Goons since an older standard Rokh sniping fit required a cap booster, so Rokh pilots found themselves with cargo holds stuffed with ammo and boosters to the point where they couldn't carry enough Liquid Ozone to travel through jump bridges on the way to a fight. A lot of these Rokh pilots then trained for an Apoc since despite using lasers it had much better capacitor use, negating the need for a cap booster. Coupled with the weakness of Gallente in the 0.0 PvP arena and you get a significant bias against both rails and Gallente which hit the Brutix twice over.
With all that said, once you get to the battleship range all the standard sniping fits are within 30 DPS of each other and the Rokh is seen as excellent and the Megathron, for all the complaints about Gallente, is still a capable sniper with a tracking bonus the other snipers can't touch.
[B0RT] FinalShowdown - I would like to ask a similar question, but concerning the Ferox. Is it skipped over for similar reasons as the Brutix, such as hybrid guns and fitting mods? Does it have a place in the fleet? Its range bonus coupled with sensor and optimal range scripts can provide for a very long range Battlecruiser.
[GEWNS] Hratli Smirks - Yeah, the Ferox.
Here's what the goon wiki says about the Ferox:
Quote Can shoot out to longer ranges than any other battlecruiser, but does really unremarkable damage. It doesn't have the slots to utilize its shield resist bonus effectively or fit tackling mods, making it worse than the Brutix, Drake, Hurricane, and Harbinger just about anywhere under 70km, and past there, your damage is going to be terrible anyway.
Nobody likes this ship and you probably shouldn't fly it.
The Ferox is a whole bag of horrible. In addition to the above stated problems, it lacks the lowslots to fit damage mods, tracking enhancers, and/or any sort of tank (PDS or DCII) and has similar fitting problems as the Brutix. While based on the ship bonuses you'd think the Ferox would be an ideal sniper, it simply lacks acceptable damage levels without a damage bonus on the hull. A Harbinger shooting Imperial Microwave at 60+km outdamages a Ferox firing CN Lead at 50KM+ by like 40DPS while having much better tracking, which is like 25-30% more damage.
I mean you can say, “the Ferox outdamages the Hurricane/Harbinger/etc at 100km by 100%” but it does so little damage with bad tracking out there that its ultimate effectiveness is basically the same as not shooting at all.
I find the Ferox's terribleness really frustrating, because I have a pet theory that having newbees train a cross Minmatar/Caldari skillplan is the way to go. Because cruiser-level railgun platforms are so bad, though, a newbee would be encouraged to skip railgun training entirely and go missiles and projectiles. If the Ferox was at least an acceptable ship it'd serve the same training purpose as a Hurricane, giving the lil dudes a place to try out anti-support work/ introductory sniping with racial turrets.
Goddamn you, Ferox.
EDIT: I should probably clarify something here: You can absolutely fly a Ferox in fleet (some goons do fly them in fleets ironically) and play at being anti-support or as a baby sniper. It does hit out very far and the bad tracking won't matter if you are shooting battleships. It just won't do anti-support anywhere near well as well as a Harbinger, Hurricane, or I guess even a Sniper Brutix and will obviously be inferior to the 'real' sniper battleships.
My gripe is that there isn't a medium-sized rail platform that leads to the Rokh the way that Beam Harbingers lead to Apocs, Artillery Hurricanes lead to Maelstroms, and theoretically Sniper Brutixes lead to Sniper Megathrons. It is a huge pain in the ass because instead you get a Caracal→ Drake→ Raven Caldari progression and that screws up the whole sniper skillpathing.
My bitterness regarding the Ferox doesn't in any way change the fact that it is a bad battlecruiser.