Missions & Complexes

How many total characters do you plan on fielding?

Planning on about 5 - 8 at a time

smell like bears
you better off go mission in empire....

Me? Sarcastic? Never!

Well, mebbe a little sometimes ;-)

As you know we have just added another C3 to our stable of w-systems. Not J16 in the end though. We have also just dropped our nice little C4.

We could cope with all the C4 sites, but never found them easy as you describe. The clincher with the C4 was, however, that our income was actually less. This was because there were considerably less sites spawning over time than in any of our C3s. The fact that they took a little (or lot) longer to clear wasn't a problem, it's just that we never got as many of them.

Of course we could have gotten moar by setting ourselves up to run as static-connection raiders ... but that's not so attractive to us.

Like you, we toyed with the idea of heading to a C5 but decided not to for the time being.

Firstly I wasn't convinced the actual (per person) income would be better. Sure the sites yield a lot more, but then they're not at all likely to be soloable. Secondly I didn;t want to get gobbled up in a larger group operating on other TZs ... and most everyone operates at *other* TZs to us.

All our systems, C2 / C3 / C4, are solo owner-operator. We help each other out for bigger jobs, like recently clearing all the interbus customs offices, but generally run a small w-space group and some hisec / nullsec alts. In the C4 we ran two-ship local tanking sleeper clearing fleets ... usually a tengu and a rattlesnake. We had very good fleet boost support from the POS and a covops always on watch with a deep space probe deployed. Our guys are variously cross-trained so we also cleared the gas sites and picked the jewels out of the grav sites. Of course we also ran fairly intensive PI ... much as I hate PI it dd contribute a fair bit of income (especially when wetware mainframe prices recently doubled) and more PI POS-fuels than we could ever use.

For a C6, I wouldn't recommend it unless you can easily get those 6-8 people online on a regular basis. I was living in one for a while (mostly raiding the C4 static) and the only thing that we could consistantly do was the mining/gas sites because it was that difficult to get everyone on and running (small group, 4 actual players, about 10 characters between us capable of going in the sites). Ended up that we only ran a few during the month of time living in there, and that was with full cap support.

C5's on the other hand can technically be run with just 3 characters on the field (requires good skills, a fleet booster, and rattlesnakes to work). Once you can regularly stick 4-5 people on the field, you can go back to spamming tengu's. When doing full capital escalations you can work them a few ways:

method 1: clear almost all the site first
Here, take your tengu's in, kill everything till there is just 1 non-scramming ship left, then bring in the capitals
Method 2: First wave
Here, take your tengu's in, clear the first wave except for the trigger, then start bringing in the capitals
Method 3: oh screw it all
Toss all the carriers on the field to start, start bringing in dreads once escalation has been worn down some

Method 1 tends to take a while, and a good part of the reason why you want capitals on the field is to clear the site faster. Method 2 allows you to focus your capitals solely on the escalation to start, then worry about the rest of the site once you're done escalating - it tends to make the sites go by faster, and keeps fighters from getting shot at as much. Method 3 works when you have a few capital pilots on but not enough regular pilots to run the site regularly. This is also another way to run sites with only 3 characters on the field - drop 3 carriers, clear escalation/first wave, then have a carrier go back for a dread. Dread doesn't need to be fit really, or have good skills, dread pilot leaves and gets back in carrier as soon as he can warp off the field. Good way to roll if either you have ****** dread skills or you can only use a pheonix.

If you are actually trying to use dreads for combat, you are going to need a webber - either a loki, bhaalghorn, or a rapier/huggin, depending upon how you want to roll. I prefer the loki, and have both shield and armor fits for it with 90%+ resists across the board and a good buffer, while fitting a minimum of 3 webs. Cruisers will need to have cap transfer capable of going to them though if they get neuted (and they will), and need to web out to at least 38km. A single carrier cannot effectively solo a site, but if you can triage one then you can keep just about any subcap setup alive for up to triple escalation (quad is... tough), but you have to watch out for neuting. A dread needs at least triple 60% webs on target at 35+km to hit the sleepers effectively (if you can toss 1-2 90% webs on target though, all dreads will love you forever).

Overall, I recommend using method 2 to start (that or toss 1 triage carrier and then dps subcaps on the field, slowly swapping out for caps), and unless you really know what you are doing don't get a quad escalation.

POS info found in next post

-Arazel

I think she was ribbing you a bit on the moving up bit when you don't know the general WH dynamics.

Pretty much C4 and higher never have a static to K-space, only to other W space. So it is very doubtful you will find a C5 or C6 to HS LS or 0.0

Now I could be wrong, but I have read that fact numerous places, and in all the WH's I've seen it seems to be true.

C4s, C5s, and C6s only have w-space statics.
A large tower is almost neccesary in C5-6s because other ppl can bring caps into kill you.
6+ rr tengus should be great for a c5 and okay for a c6.
In turn you could use a chimera to escalate while also providing reps.