Warfare & Tactics

0/10

Protip

meta 3 dcu.

Bah!

[Incursus, Brawler - Rail]

Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Small Ancillary Armor Repairer, Nanite Repair Paste
Adaptive Nano Plating II
Adaptive Nano Plating II

1MN Afterburner II
X5 Prototype Engine Enervator
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I

150mm Railgun II, Federation Navy Antimatter Charge S
150mm Railgun II, Federation Navy Antimatter Charge S
150mm Railgun II, Federation Navy Antimatter Charge S

Small Hybrid Collision Accelerator I
Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I

Hobgoblin II x1

Screw a DCU. You rep armour not hull. Fit real guns and blap the crap out of them before they know what hit them!

160dps at 8.6km range, 175dps tank while paste loaded. Most things just die.

Ib4 someone uses that 150 fit, orbits at 8km, tracks absolutely nothing and then says the fit sucks

The difference between rails and lml's is that you actually have to pilot your ship to apply dps with railguns

Its not just press f1 and keep away like lml's

If you orbit using long range weapons other than LM you are bad and deserve to be killed!

TBH for my incursus (and beam tormentor tbh) I just keep at range at about 7km setting. Most of the time I'm faster/more agile than my opponents plated brawler and just melt them. Works against AF's as well if they are short range brawly fit. Love messing with enyo's who just fit blasters and void (cos OMG THOSE DEEPS!)

I just keep an eye on the combat logs to see what is going on. Then manually fly if I need to manage tracking etc.

I also prefer Keep at Range at 7km when using the 7km scram kite incursus. I believe it helps your tracking a small amount, but I also believe it's slightly better than orbitting for keeping the scram / web locked on as with orbiting I find there's some gaffing about where your ship tries to adjust its range first, then gets into the orbit. If you're both AB / Webbed / Scrammed then the likelihood is that you don't need to worry so much about orbiting and your rails are hitting well. Then it usually comes down to your DPS / EHP vs theirs.

Manual piloting is much more useful if you're running an MWD kiting ship with the 24km long point, especially against another kite - typically to get yourself into range (the 'spiralling' technique), and either keep at range or enable yourself to wriggle out with the 'stop start+overheat' technique if things go sour. The benefit of 'speed tanking' - orbiting at speed with the MWD on - I think is pretty much negligible compared to the sig radius increase that makes you more hittable with it on. The only exceptions is if you're in an interceptor that has reduced sig radius, or a drone kite where you've nothing to lose. I think you're not hitting anywhere near as well in an orbiting railgun kite compare to Keep At Range, although orbiting does allow you to mitigate, sometimes, the damage you get from artillery. Although artillery tends to get disproportionately more 'critical strikes', even with your orbiting. And so on and so on.

However, manual piloting isn't easy in a quick frigate fight, so in a kite vs kite scenario where I'm using the WDII with 24km range (Federation Navy Comet being an example) I also prefer keep at range. I tend to do the following:

- set keep at range at 18,000 to 18,500. Enough of a range buffer to keep the point on, but also to keep you out of range of web / scram.
- If you're winning the fight, and your opponent starts trying to wriggle out with slingshotting etc, then overheat the long point and consider dropping your keep at range to 15km. A WDII keeps overheated for quite a while and gives you another 4km range. I prefer to heat it half-way throughout a fight anyway as most times people will try and escape. But then again I tend to 100% commit to a fight to the very end and not run away. Lots of fights end deep in structure on one side or the other,

Although there will no doubt be someone along soon to advise me that I'm talking rubbish, have no idea how to fit or fight and 'manual piloting' at slow speeds is better than keep at range.

You're right. I stand corrected. I had always assumed it used more. Fleeting does generate an extra 2% of velocity reduction, but I suppose that's hardly worth sweating for the extra million the Fleeting costs above the X5.



It's cheaper, aye, but the extra 375m reach of Faint Epsilon is worth the additional cash, IMHO. Plus it uses 3GJ of cap every 5s, compared to 3.75GJ for the J5b.



Considering my original fit, and with guns overheated, the stats with either are:

Burst: 146DPS / volley 317 every 1.63 seconds / cap lasts 56s with all the relevant mods active.

Collision: 145DPS / volley 337 every 1.78 seconds / cap lasts 58s.

Alpha is nice if you're going to be one or two shotting something. With volleys of 337, though, not likely to happen.

Burst gives you 34 volleys before cap runs out = 10,788 damage

Collision gives you 32 = 10,784 damage.

Not a massive amount in it over the long haul, although burst gives you that extra volley every 10 volleys compared to Collision.

The burst also decreases your overheat time, your guns will burn out quicker than the collision guy. That can be important in a frig fight.