Ships & Modules

5% instead of 3% bonus. It can't fit as many links as CS (5 instead of 7), but it's usually not a big issue for fleets that aren't large or mixed/diverse.

I believe also it's because they give a 5% bonus instead of 3%

Also, keep in mind that it's much easier to max out the T3's defensive skill (a tier 1 skill) rather than maxing Command Ships to max their bonus (a tier 8 skill). It's another month longer to train CS 5 than Defensive Sub 5 to max out the potential bonus of the ship (besides the fact that T3s max out at 25% bonus and CSes max out at 15% bonus).

That's not really true, I've yet to see someone claim the legion was superior to the pilgrim or curse. Ditto when talking about a loki vs rapier or a tengu vs falcon. The issue pops up in the HAC configuration, in that case they really are better as a rule (ignoring cost effectiveness).

As for links, they are better at off grid boosting due to a variety of reasons. The small increase in boost amount is one but isn't the main draw. There are three things that make t3's the ideal off grid boosting ship and they work together in tandem. These are: cov ops cloak, bonused expanded prob launcher and bubble immunity. With the cov ops cloak and bubble immunity, they can travel freely between systems. The probe launcher allows the booster alt to also take the role of prober alt without making any sacrifices in the effectiveness of either role.

All this said, off grid boosting does have some very serious limitations. It maybe great when operating in just one or two systems but the instant we start talking about a roaming fleet or even one fighting on two sides of a gate, the t3's fall seriously short. They have absolutely no tank and cannot be tanked while still providing links. As such, they have to be off grid which means they have to know where the fight will be in advance so they can get in and get to a SS or a friendly POS. The training side isn't a big issue. Ignoring the BC5 requirement (since everyone has that anyways), it takes about the same amount of time to max a CS as it does to max a t3.

Yeah, in my own distinguished spacing club we used to fly a fair number of Lokis in our standard Mewninn gangs, until we realized that the lack of a RoF bonus on the arty sub meant that it was a net loss of killing power to take Lokis over Mewninns. 1K scan res was cool for blapping dictors instantly though, I miss that. And for shield webs, you still take a Huginn, because it can more easily fit web(s) plus tank equal or better than the Loki.

There are armor Prots used to pointing, mostly because getting a good (100K EHP) armor tank out of the Lach or Arazu is pretty much impossible. But logi T3s do suck incredible amounts of penis, need a range and cap reduction bonus to do their job effectively.

T3s also let you go for the “uncatchable” setup (which, admittedly, is slightly more catchable these days) that was all the rage up until recently.

Load the T3 up with interdiction nullifiers, covops cloak, and slap it full of ECCM to make it (near) impossible to probe down. It used to be possible to make it entirely impossible to probe, but they fixed that a while ago. Still, set up properly, the enemy prober needs to have pretty much every last toy at his disposal, including specialised ship, probes, launchers and implants, to find you. You will be absolutely useless in the field if enemies are present, but you also have absolutely no reason — and no excuse — to ever be in the field with enemies present.

What you end up with is a ship that provides the maybe 3 bonuses at higher-than-CS levels (since you need to sacrifice some fitting space for the whole nigh-unprobeable setup), that slips through bubbles and less alert camps, that warps cloaked, that will take a little while to find (if you can find it at all) during which you can just cloak up and/or warp off to a new safe. It's basically the classic POS-parked fleet CS without the POS. Just keep the scanner up and checking for probes, and you'll be fine.

5% plus when they could be made unprobable, you could usually run maxed out links off grid, risk free. Not sure how it's changed since the probing change.

has it changed that much? It seemed post patch that people said you still basically needed a maxed out player with implants to get a 100% hit on an unprobable ship. So while it could be probed it was still exceedingly hard.