Warfare & Tactics

I saw a thread on the forums where someone asked about how to catch kiting ships. It reminded me of the trouble we had catching sniper ships in EUNI. The answer, at least the one presented in the thread and in answers I got to questions asked in fleets, was go faster to catch up to the target (the tactic that resulted in dead frigates or uncatchable targets), use book marks and to try to get into range of the target, or use a tactic that involved trying to move the fight to another location.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. Here's the solution I came up with. This may be something entirely obvious or well known. It may already be being used in whole or part by others, but I can't seem to find anything about it, so forgive me if I'm repeating something. At least you can tell me where I'm off or how a more refined version works. This method is just the basic concept, so no need to get hung up on particulars.

For the sake of argument and demonstation, let's assume:
* You have a squad of pilots (preferably in covops and/or interceptors). As many as needed to solve the problem. It can be done solo with book marks but would take longer probably than doing it the conventional way with a cloaked ship trying to navigate for a warp in.
* Visibility on the grid is infinite in every direction.
* The target ship is sitting still at a random point within 700km of the origin point

1. Imagine an X, Y, Z axis, where the origin point is a gate or station; the X and Y axes are aligned with the range markers on your tactical overlay; and the Z axis is directly up/down. (for clarity, we'll use -X, -Y, and -Z for the opposite points on the lines).

2. Send ships to a point 1000km in each direction along the axes. Put one at the origin point.

If you were to draw lines between the ships, you would have an octahedron in which the X, Y, Z axes divide the interior of the octahedron into tetrahedrons. The origin point is directly across from the flat plane of each of the equilateral triangles formed by the end points of the X, Y, Z axes. The tetrahedron is the fundamental unit for this demonstration.

The target ship lies within a tetrahedron. It will always lie in one of the tetrahedrons formed in this model if each of the sides is long enough. In this demonstration, the maximum distance between the origin and the plane of the triangle is ~707km in the 1000km model, thus our chosen limit of "within 700km" in our assumptions.

The point A where the ray from the origin point through the Target intersects the plane is necessarily either the exact intersection of the lines that bisect each angle of the equilateral triangle X, Y, Z or it is closer to one of the sides of the triangles than the others. This is only relevant when deciding which points to use for the next steps in the process. For demonstration's sake, let's say it's the exact intersection, which means that the bisectors exactly split the length of each side of the triangle. In our model, that's 500km. This means it doesn't matter which points we use for the next steps.

3. Warp 5 ships to point X.

4. Warp one of the 5 ships to point Y at 100km. Warp the second ship to the first ship at 100 and so on until the last ship is sitting at point Q at 500km between X and Y.

5. Warp 5 ships to point Z. Warp one of the ships at 100km to point Q. Warp the second ship to the first ship at 100km and so on until the last ship warps in at whatever distance will put it closest to point A.

You now have a warp in point that can be calibrated using the same method depending on the exact distance of the Target from the plane and the origin point.

EDIT: Here's a simplified drawing using paint. Excuse its crappiness.

Obviously you can setup the axes with bookmarks ahead of time. 6 interceptors can get the 1000km model setup in about 2 minutes. A moving target is a different thing altogether. If the target were an interceptor already moving away from the gate when the 6 interceptors came in, they'd never be able to setup around him unless he stopped or changed his direction in a manner that took him back into the space of the octahedron. However, the grid only goes so far without deliberate stretching, so if the target is trying to stay on grid with the central object at the origin point, the 1000km setup should work most of the time. Preset spots would be better still though.

This is the basic concept. It's enough to have a tetrahedron around a target, so, depending on the relative speeds, this can be done by a fleet moving around on grid. Exact dimensions and alignments are also relative. The only key point is having the plane of the triangle beyond the target to act as the triangulation grid for locating point A. It's also possible that the ships at the origin point and the x, y, z points could each record their distance from the target into an app of some sort to break down the fastest way to setup warp ins. Please keep in mind that I'm not a math guy, so there's probably some simple formula that gets you where you need to go faster.

horribly overcomplicated but I'm shure it would work. easiest is just find a celestial he's in line with and have someone warp off to that, move yourself to within 100km of the target and then have your tackler warp to you at the appropriate range to land on it.

drop combat probes. By the time you have done what you propose, the target will have moved on.

I don't think it will work well in the real world, if you are trying to use this to discover safe spots, it's a time consuming method that will work if someone has their safe relatively close to say, a customs office. Experienced pilots may have several safe spots to bounce around, rendering your efforts meaningless, which is where your probes come in. If you are in a combat situation, and your tackle squad are on Grid, then you gotta go fast. Otherwise try a achieve a good angle for a warp in.

I've gone to great lengths to catch snipers before. It's quite satisfying, primarily because the sniper can be downright smug in thinking they are untouchable.

As for the OP: In the time it takes to set up any sort of triangulation, your sniper(s) would simply leave the battlefield or reposition. It would take them much less time to establish a new sniping point in another of your tetrahedrons, utterly wasting all of your hard work.

Here's something that would have a better chance of success: put a covert ops off grid and deploy probes. Warp them to 200 km off your own fleet (either using two ships, or making a quick bookmark and warping twice) so that they are at a range your fleet can warp to them and then to the snipers. Do that: everyone warps to 10 km from the covops (so they don't break its cloak) and then it warps the fleet to the snipers. They'll have much less time to react and you might actually kill something.

Or you could just start burning away from them and deploying combat probes so they know what's up and go away.

Move on...5-10 ships wasting what seems to be 30 minutes is a waste of time. Unless he "has" to die. Then proceed.

You're complicating it.

Simply get one of your fast inties to fly 50-100km past the target, rest of gang warps at range to fast tackle. If you warp when tackler is 50km past then you can warp onto the target or up to 50km either side.

You don't need to approach directly, in fact if you do you're going to die.

Your method isn't going to work for single targets - its too slow. Its inventive but its way too slow.

Edit - for gangs then the method I described to you works as they're unlikely to warp off at the first approach of an intie.

The same method, but faster: Have one interceptor go up 100km or so, the other just get on the other side of the target. Warp to them in series (or at least have your heavy tackle do so), bam, you're on top of your target.

Still probably slower than combat probes, though.

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