Warfare & Tactics

OK – the situation. First, I generally suck at PVP, you’ll probably think I’m dumb and fail at EvE. But I’ve heard other people fail at EvE so I don’t feel too bad. Second, I’ve joined FW on the Amarr side for a bit to see what all the fuss is about. Having been continually warped in on when trying to orbit beacons for 10-20 minutes, I decided to see what FW missions were like.

I had a “spare” Retribution set up that I’ve flown L3 missions with before, so I flew it out to Kamela to try out a L3 FW mission. The agent sent me a number of jumps, and I successfully completed the mission. I only learned later how vulnerable I actually was, because I didn’t know everyone could see the mission beacon once you started (I know this now after someone warped in on me later and I jumped out just in time).

Anyway, I decided to try another mission and kept getting chased around by a Cynabal. Then this morning before work, I noticed nobody was in the system and decided to try orbiting a minor beacon. I see the same guy in a Cynabal (he’s neutral, not in any FW corp either on the Minnie or Amarr sides). Setting my scanner to closer range, it is clear he is coming for me. Here I decide to try to engage to “see what happens” by trying to “orbit inside his guns.” Mistake as you can probably guess. I have no capacitor left after like 10 seconds so I’m guessing he completely neuted me. So no AB and no armor repper – I am quickly shot through armor and destroyed.

So this brings me to my question(s). I was rather fond of that Retribution and would like to plot revenge theoretically even if it never gets carried out...


Suppose one was to assemble a T1 frigate gang. The frigates can have TII guns/modules if needed but nothing too fancy. Given that this Cynabal guy probably knows what he’s doing (and my subsequent reading on forums indicates that solo Cynabals are pretty deadly ships), is there a way that a small number of frigates could take on something like that and win? OK if all but one of the frigs die, as long as his ship dies – I figure the ISK efficiency would be pretty good.

QUESTIONS:
How many frigates would you need (the lower the better – I’m curious people's thoughts on pushing the limits but still with reasonable confidence), which race/model would you pick, how would you fit across the fleet, and how would you bait someone like Mr Cynabal? I’m guessing if you could jam and/or tracking disrupt him, a couple of other frigates might be able to apply enough dps to do it. But again, I know nothing.

All depends on the cyns fit. It has really good dps,decent tank and speed plus it can neut too. The key is tracking as stated above.
scram and web to hold it long enough to kill it after initial point. My cyn can pop frigs easily. So a jam on it be nice. a blackbird be good option. 3 dps frigs should be able to take out after. be careful he may have freinds one system over too.
If the pilot is good and you are at 50mm orbit, he can pull at right moment to get a good shot off, plus neut the veng out.

OK, thanks everyone for your responses. Has been an education for me because – not having flown them – I had to look up the details on what a Vengeance, Hawk, and Malediction are.

These are all assault frigates, so somewhat above (in ISK) my criteria for a fleet of T1 frigates (ie Rifter, Punisher, Merlin). I note Lugalzagezi666’s comment: “Single frig with nos and some tank will kill it if you can land scram fast (and it is cookie cutter fit)”.

I would find it hard to believe that something like a single frigate Rifter could be expected to break a PVP Cynabal’s tank. But it sounds like if all of a 3 person fleet of Rifter, Merlin and Punisher could land at the same time (or one could point & orbit at 500m and then the other 2 could be there fast enough) then the deed could be done. What kind of fits would we want – how about:
Punisher: TII pulse lasers, Nos, plate fit
Rifter: ACs? And shield or armor tank?
Merlin – no clue about this guy but sounds like a good ship for ewar like tracking disrupting

Thanks for any wisdom…

Any frigate really, AF's are good for it, you dont even need a nos to be fair.

you might not get every single Cynabal kill but a Harpy has enough cap to take 2 salvos from a cynabal med neut, so you can always test to see if he has one and just overload and mwd away if he does.

Not many frigs have that kind of cap however, fyi a vengeance does not need a nos to hold him, its recharge is enough to keep a scram going lol.

Two can work, provided both have nos, scram, decent buffer (or ASB) and at least one web and TD between them. And get a very good initial tackle, the cynabal is very good at clearing tackle off it, so you'll need to get it tackled without taking too much damage, TD'd and drones popped very, very quickly. Three or four would be much better.

One thing you'll need to watch out for is the cynabal being dual prop, when it switches to AB, even after the web, it'll be going almost as fast as an ABing assault frig or t1 frig.. which will wreck your traversal on it. Need to keep the TD on it to survive that.

If I were doing it, and were constrained to a handful of t1 frigs, I think I'd use something like this. The DPS isn't great but the tackle, tank, and sustain are all there, and all three are necessary for the task. Swap the TD for a web on one or two of the frigs.

[Merlin, ASB]

Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Damage Control II

1MN Afterburner II
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Balmer Series Tracking Disruptor I, Optimal Range Disruption Script
Medium Ancillary Shield Booster, Cap Booster 50

Light Ion Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Light Ion Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Small Diminishing Power System Drain I

Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Small Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I

It is indeed that easy - land scram, set orbit at 500, time nos to finish its cycle before scram/web cycle starts, shoot drones, kill cyna (5-6k ehp buffer and capless weapons that can hit drones well help alot). With landing scram being the hard part as cyna is as fast and agile as most frigs. Or even faster.

But if cyna pilot is underestimating you and chasing you inside the mission plex, it should be trivial (if it is cookie cutter fit) - stay on beacon, scram/web him right away, orbit at 500, pop his drones and then pop him.

Yeah, just Falcon it.

OP said cyna pilot is overconfident and is following him into plexes. So 2nd post basically says everything op wants to know - warp into a plex, sit at 0, scram, web, finish him.