Warfare & Tactics

With recent session change timer updates, fleet timers are mostly transparent (<10 seconds). I've taken a fleet invite as I landed on a gate, thought "****, should have waited" and jumped without delay. CCP has done a great job with session change timers of which fleet timers are included!

Also I extend great compliments to you for your posts, they very accurately describe hi-sec PvP in its current state!

Killing a guy while he is surrounded by his corp mates that can't shoot is a very productive Tear gland trigger. Especially when they set the trap and the tables are turned on just one poor bastard that shot you last.

Unfortunately, changes to Crimewatch are on the horizon, and nobody knows exactly how this will be implemented. Lots of rumors which if true will change Hi-Sec in a very interesting way. IE, Corp agro may be a thing of the past.

--Vile

Follow up edit, I knew I knew you from somewhere, this was from a little over a year ago! :)



Prior to this ad-hoc kill, we played a station game where I burned out my reppers, you burned out your guns and it was a draw. Then a few minutes later you assisted with neutral logi against the Rattle which I took forever to kill..

Lesson 8 - ECM

Ok, fine. I'm reaching. You shouldn't use ECM all that often in high sec, but it took me a while to really figure out how it works. I figured I'd put the explanation out for those who are interested.

The first thing you need to know about ECM is that it "FORCES" deagression. If you think you're going to win station games with ECM equipment, you're going to find that in the majority of instances, you're not going to be able to close the kill.

In high sec space, most fights happen on stations or gates. Those are the locations where people usually meet. So when you force deagression on those locations, you're naturally helping your target manage his "gate/station" timer so that he'll just dock/jump through.

Because of that, I don't recommend anyone who's out for killmails spends a lot of time in ECM boats (though there is an exception to every rule... ECM boats can be used very well).

Now, with that disclaimer out of the way, I recommend that everyone who is out for killmails keeps an ECM boat or two on standby at all times. They have some valuable applications.

Here is how ECM works:
Your probability of being successful for any given 20 second jam cycle is equal to the "jam strength of the ECM Module" / "sensor strength of the target".

So Imagine that I have a single ECM module with 7 points of gravimetric jam strength and my target has a sensor strength of 10 gravimetric points. In this case, I have a 70% chance of success with each jam cycle.

Most folks have no trouble figuring that out, but figuring out how that relates to multiple jammers is slightly more complex. Imagine you have 3 such jammers and you're trying to perma-jam the same target. For each consecutive jammer you're going to use, you apply it's probability of success(against the target) to the remaining percentage chance of failure (after the last jammer probability was applied.

So, in example. In this example, 1 Jammer gives me 70% chance of success. Adding a second jammer means that I can add 70% of the 30% chance the first jammer couldn't cover. That means with the addition of a second jammer, i now have a 91% chance. That is the 70% chance of success I had with 1 jammer, and 70% of the 30% chance of failure.

When I add the third jammer, I take the scenario I had with 2 jammers (91% chance of success), and I add 70% of the 9% chance of failure. (which means I get an additional 6.3% chance of success).

That means my overall chance of success is 97.3% per 20 second cycle. I consider anything in the 95% area to be truly perma-jammed. The assumption here is that you'll fail one jam cycle every 20 cycles(which is what 95% chance should equate to).

Always have a back-up plan in an ECM ship. You will drop jam cycles. Be ready for it.

Here is an aside that'll probably get me ridiculed, but I used to love to fly the Griffin. It's such a goofy ship, anyone will fight it. It's also a fun and volatile way to play (I've still got one, they're neat as hell).

Since pretty much everyone on the planet loves Rifters, I want to mention that Minmatar ships are typically weak in the sensor strength area. Because you can kill a Rifter in under a minute with a griffin, you can win GOBS of frigate fights with a Griffin (without typically losing kills by forcing deagression).

In addition, you can (though hard) use ECM to stall in multiple enemy scenarios. I once won a fight against a thorax and a cormorant (not skilled opponents) at the same time in a griffin. Here is the KM. In this case I used maneuver to protect myself from the thorax and ECM to protect from the cormorant. No, they're not great fits... but I was flying a griffin.

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/engagement.php?id=10607371#involvedPilots

If you have any questions, please let me know.
Mo

Lesson 9 - Special Techniques

There is no way for this lesson to ever be complete. However, I figured I'd give you an overview of some of my favorite "special techniques."

Nano Ships - Nano ships are a lot of fun. The idea is that you take a large ship (I like battlecruisers, some people use battleships) and you make it very fast and give it good range. Then, because you're faster than anything that can hope to catch it, you can "hold the field" against even large fleets and continue to harry your enemy.

So, here is the idea. Suppose I had a nano-hurricane. I fit it with a couple "tracking enhancers" to give me a lot of extra range and a couple nano mods to give me good speed. Lets say it'll do 1600m/s, Optimal + Falloff is 40k, and it's pushing about 750 dps.

Then I go fight a fleet. Suppose I jump through a gate and there is a well balanced fleet on the other side. There are some battleships, some battlecruisers, a few cruisers, and some frigs.

When I land on the other side, I'm cloaked. They're camping, but none of them are exactly on top of me. If these ships are pvp fit, most will be guns and there won't be a lot of range on them. My immediate reaction would be to align away from them and run as fast as I can (I don't want anyone turning off my MWD with a scram or putting a web on me).

Now, of all those ships, only the cruisers and frigates stand a solid chance of chasing me. And, because I'm so fast, they're going to have to fly up my tail (zero angular velocity, decreasing range as they approach) into 750 dps from medium sized guns. You'll find if you try this that even the tankiest frigates can't take more than a few shots. Additionally (one reason the cane is so well fitted for this activity), I've got 2 medium neuts so if a frigate does scram me, I can cap him out to try to get my MWD back online.

I recall a fleet fight I got into when I was in CEVL where I was the last CEVL ship on the field against a very large fleet of well fit (and spendy) ships. They sent two crows and two dramiels after me... and I killed both crows and knocked both dramiels into hull (both dramiels got away). I had the luxury of leaving when I felt like it... because nothing in the fleet that could catch me was able to fly into my bullets long enough to get it done.

I have seen quite a few nano-drakes as well and they're nice ships. However, the nano-drake (because of the missile mechanics I discussed in lesson 1) is weak against fast ships. Those dramiels and crows can substantially reduce inbound missile damage from the Drake long enough to catch it. However, the long range on the heavy missile nano-drake is fantastic for holding the field and engaging the whole time.

For nano teams, I strongly recommend mixing your weapons types. A gun boat is exceptionally strong against stuff that's trying to chase you. A missile boat has better range and is stronger against stuff that's slow moving but long ranged. Because of this, if you fly these together you'll make a great team.

Here is an example of a fight me and a buddy got into. We used pretty ordinary nano-tactics... He was using a 100MN tengu and I had a standard nano-cane. I think we counted 17 total ships in the enemy fleet, but here is what we came out with (after about a 2 hour fight)
http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/engagement.php?id=13774272#involvedPilots
note - If you check our killboard at that time frame, you'll see that not everything was on the battle report. We actually got 12 kills in Osvest within 2 hours of that fight.

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This is some great information for a Green player. Thanks

Lesson 10 - Looking like an idiot

Once you know how to fight, the hard part becomes finding fights. The trick to this is to look like a numbnuts.

Don't sit outside station in a faction fit dramiel or vindicator. Nobody wants to fight those things. When you do get a fight and your opponent can see what you've got, you can bet he's got a plan to take it away from you if it's high end. However, for low end stuff nobody makes real advanced plans (usually).

You'll get more fights and have more fun if you just practice looking like a numbnuts. If you know your mechanics cold, you'll be able to find fights you can win with a wide variety of ships.

Tip 1: Use crap ships

Rifters, Ruptures, Canes, and Megathrons don't typically make folks want to fight. They're scary. Everyone thinks they're good. Pick ships nobody likes and examine the possibilities with them. Here are a couple examples:

Battle Badger - Nobody is intimidated by a badger. However, with 2 webs and a scram... you can control range very effectively against even very fast frigates. If you dedicate the rest of your badger's slots to fitting 1 long range gun, a neut, and loads of tank... you may find that you can use your knowlegde of mechanics to kill most frigates... with a silly hauler ship. Added advantage... lots of people are willing to fight a badger!

Vexor - Yes, it looks like a mining ship. In fact, it is a mining ship. When you look at it and it's got 4 mining lasers and 5 mining drones, it looks like a seriously legitimate mining operation. However, even with 5 mining drones and mining lasers in every gun spot, it'll still produce 300 DPS (assuming you have good drone skills in the remaining spots and a full set of 2 heavies, 2 meds and a light drone) and tank nearly 40k EHP (with web, scram, and small neut). No frigate (and few cruisers) would enjoy that engagement. The best part... you can keep mining while you're ganking the poor bastard!

Tip 2: Don't act like a tough guy. If you talk in local but keep it cheeky and fun, more people will want to fight you. Remember, everyone out there wants to have fun too. Once the fight is over, no need to create hard feelings. Teach your opponent something and maybe he'll stick with pvp.

Remember, you don't want to drive people away from pvp.

Tip 3: Act like a moron. Misidentify ships in local, tell people you're out to learn PvP. State things as fact that are clearly and obviously wrong. Overall, act like you're kind of an idiot. More people are willing to fight idiots. If you declare war on someone, act as though you think they declared war on you. There are gobs of ways to have fun with this.

Overall, to me, this is fun. This is griefing. It's chaotic, it's interesting, it's high sec pvp.

Thank Coolsmoke, but I reduced the range on purpose.

The actual gun equation is:
ChanceToHit = 0.5 ^ ((((Transversal speed/(Range to target * Turret Tracking))*(Turret Signature Resolution / Target Signature Radius))^2) + ((max(0, Range To Target - Turret Optimal Range))/Turret Falloff)^2)

If you look at this equation, you'll realize that you're squaring the "range above optimal" divided by "falloff." That means you've got a non-linear situation. That entire component needs to be as small as possible to create the highest probability of a hit. Additionally, because the range component is growing exponentially (and you want it to be small), that means that you actually have a higher damage dropoff than I modeled linearly (instead of lower, as you hypothesized). I didn't want to try to think through a parabolic reduction while I was fighting, so I created my silly little linear model, and to rectify it so that it was useful, I reduced the range of it to half of the gun model.

Does that make sense? I could post a graph if you need one. Or you could just take my word for it.

You can approximate it however you like. You can do the whole equation in your head if you prefer. I like my approximation. I haven't regressed it or anything... but I like to think it represents pretty well what I've observed in the years I've played this game.
Happy trails,
Mo

Thanks for sharing your knowledge Mobadder.

@Mobadder Thworst,
Thx for enlightenment with my questions. The explanations were very helpful and exactly what is was looking for to understand the aggro a bit better now :)