EFT: Sharing is Caring

Past two weeks or so have been interesting, a smattering of various low sec roams, a good fight, a Carrier gank, a total welp, and a heart pounding solo drop. Nothing particularly blog worthy though, in my opinion, there was not much that was special in any of those engagements. So instead I'm just going to vomit out ideas and share some thoughts and a video.

First up we have the video that inspired me to do solo droping with my Black Ops and launched me on an EFT project to build solo drop fits.

I came to the conclusion that the Widow and Redeemer are not suitable to be solo droping in comparison to the Sin and Panther. They can do it, just need to be careful with target selection. It is near impossible to active tank a Redeemer well enough to withstand punishment from multiple targets or in longer fights, so you are forced to buffer fit it, which means you have to kill the target in a set time frame. This limits target selection greatly. You have a similar issue with the Widow, except it is not the tank that's the issue its the damage application you get with Torpedoes is awful, even with Standard Crash and 2 TP's. You can kill Cruisers yes, but not near as effective as the others. It is also limited by fitting and can only fit a medium neut.

The Sin is good, but unfortunately my main character has mediocre drone skills at best, so once my Intel/Mem remap training is done I will train for a Panther instead. Ideally I would use the below fit, but there have been hints at a Black Ops rebalance soon™, so it is subject to change.

Sexy.

I have a feeling that overall though, no major changes will be happening to Blops. It is almost certain that the agility bonus of the Sin and the velocity bonus of the Panther will be rolled into the hull itself, just as they did to the old Stabber and Vagabond a few years ago. What bonuses they will be replaced with is uncertain. Perhaps an application bonus similar to the Redeemer's tracking speed, or just more raw damage. The major complaint of the player base has been two things though: Blops can't warp cloaked, and they are squishy.

Lets just say if they gave it a Covert Ops cloak my dick would be so hard it might explode. I would probably fly nothing else but that. I imagine this is what went through CCP's mind as well when they were designing the Nestor, as they could have followed the racial trend easily and given it a Covert cloak just like the Astero and Stratios, but they didn't. I imagine that we will have to be satisfied with the regular cloak on all our Black Ops. As for the squishy tank: first off, they are the only sub capital that has its own jump drive and can bridge, I will gladly trade some EHP for that; second, with mid grade slaves and crystals you can get very good armor buffer/active shield respectively. No you are not going to bring it to a fleet fight, but it is not designed to be in that environment anyway, no cloaky ships are. The tank you get is just enough for what it needs to do: get in, slaughter people, get out.

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Speaking of Battleship hulls, I've spent the last couple days thinking of how to use them effectively in a fleet doctrine in wormhole space. Now, in an environment that is dominated by mass limitations, Battleships tend to get shafted into a support role (ie. full neut Bhaalgorn or refit bitch Nestor). It does not help that they are easily countered by Dreadnoughts either, which is why when I lived in a C5 we never had a Battleship doctrine, where Dreads are easily on hand for almost any C5 organization. Perhaps things are different in lower class space and we can have some room to breath with them.

First we have to see what kind of hulls are popular and for what reasons. The most popular Battleships in wormhole space I would say are the Armageddon, Scorpion, Dominix, Nestor, Vindicator, Bhaalgorn, Rattlesnake, in no particular order. The Dominix and Rattlesnakes are mostly used for ratting, although both can hit extremely hard and bring a good amount of utility in a fleet fight. The Armageddon and Bhaalgorn are both neuting boats, excellent for killing Capitals and disrupting Laser/Hybrid DPS. The Scorpion fills a similar role, but uses ECM instead of neuts. Then we have the Vindicator, which is basically a battering ram in space, dishing out insane damage with near perfect application potential. Finally we come to the Nestor which is basically a big boy Guardian that lets near by ships refit off it.

Now for a doctrine, we need a ship that can hit hard, but flexible in multiple situations. This is why I like the Longbow doctrine so much, it had the DPS to fight in brawl range but also the range to engage kiters and force sniping EWar ships off grid (damn you Falcons!). Except the issue with a Battleship doctrine in wormhole space, is that you need to be able to fight out numbered, because you can't fit 20 Battleships plus support through a hole and expect to come back home. So, what are good force multipliers that you can fit on Battleships? The biggest one is obviously energy neutralizers, they can reduce incoming DPS from Hybrids and Lasers, break cap chains, turn off tackle and EWar mods, and turn off enemy tanks.

So, what ships have at least two utility high slots or main source of damage comes from drones? Armageddon, Dominix, Navy Dominix, Fleet Tempest, Fleet Typhoon, and Rattlesnake. Now lets add some parameters: must do at least 800 DPS. The Armageddon, Dominix, Navy Dominix, and Rattlesnake are all just shy of 800. Now you could easily fit Faction damage mods, but that gets expensive of T1 Battleships. The Navy Domi and Rattle also get a dual damage bonus, so we can just set aside two high slots for neuts and let the rest be guns/missiles, easily getting the 800+ DPS without pimp. So lets throw out the Armageddon and Dominix.

DPS means nothing if you do not have the means to apply it effectively, which is why Vindicators are so popular in wormholes, because they can apply their damage nearly perfectly to the numerous Cruisers you see in this space. If there is one weapon system in the game that is known for how terrible their application is to smaller targets, its Torpedoes. Yes, I can get near a 1000 paper DPS off of a Fleet Typhoon with Torps, but that doesn't mean I will actually get 1000 DPS. I could fit Cruise Missiles, but then I am sub 800 DPS now. You run into numerous fitting issues on the Typhoon as well, which brings up the cost a lot in order to compensate.

It works, but there are better options.

On the Rattlesnake though, we can switch to Cruise Missiles just fine, as most the DPS comes from drones, so we are breaking 1000 DPS with missiles and drones combined. Good application as well between Cruises and your Heavy Drone of choice.

It is cheap too

The Navy Dominix is basically an armor version of the Rattlesnake. It is more expensive and using Blasters significantly lowers its damage projection in comparison to Cruises, which have insane range.

Replace the RECCM with any utility EWar/Tackle needed.

Now finally we come to the Fleet Tempest, which is actually essentially identical to the one I lost a few weeks ago. Just has a slight upgrade to the Gyro's which are very cheap in comparison to other damage mods. Does just over a 1000 DPS with drones added (that is with Faction ammo, so as to have better tracking in comparison to Hail).

So much falloff, so little optimal :(

So for a Shield Battleship doctrine in wormhole space, I would almost definitely go with the Rattlesnake, it out performs the armor ones in multiple ways and is cheaper as well. Be thankful that Goons and Co. are so good at farming them. As for the Armor doctrine, I'd say its a fair tie between the Navy Dominix and Fleet Tempest. They both have the potential of over a 1000 DPS and one has extra utility mid slots and the other has slightly better projection.

Now this is not to say that Battleships are a practical doctrine in wormhole space. There are still many limitations and liabilities to the concept thanks to the environment of wormholes, but that can still hold their own I would say in lower class space. If I am lucky I might get the corp to buy a few of these so we can test them out.

This post has gone on longer than I expected, so I'll just end it here before I get off on another tangent about 10mn Worms. :)

All stats and values calculated in Pyfa.

Blöd