Warfare & Tactics

There has been a part of Eve and combat that has been bothering me for quite some time and I believe after ten years its about time we fixed it. CCP got this partly right when they first introduced signature resolution on guns in its first year (because bigger is not always better) BUT it doesn't go far enough. Small ships are just not viable enough and it is about time we make a change which effectively puts them back as an option.

As a fleets size increases, the viability for small craft survivability decreases for their opponent no matter the class of ship they are flying. A 10 man frigate fleet can take on a single battleship very well and have no trouble. Add a single battleship, some turrets and a bit of range and now even two battleships become a problem. That second battleship at range merely needs to get lucky on a transversal that has been reduced to near zero and the frigate he is firing at is usually insta-popped. Add a third or fourth battleship all with a bit of range and that 10 man frigate fleet has almost no chance of surviving and has zero chance of winning.

You may be saying, well that is how it is suppose to be. A single battleship should probably lose and one or two or more battleships should probably win. I say, not so fast. The problem is not that the single battleship should lose, it is that when we add more ships to the field at range and with high damage (even at low probabilities) we have a situation where the battle is tilted very quickly.

As a fleet (any fleet) reaches a critical mass, it is no longer viable to bring these small ships as they have effectively (by mechanics) become useless for a fight. This seems blatantly wrong to me. I believe it should not be the sheer numbers which dictate what ships are most viable for a fleet composition but the composition of an enemy fleet in which you engage.

Solution:

To solve this I think it is time that we actually start seeing some damage mitigation against smaller type vessels with large weapons. I am not saying that cruiser sized guns versus a frigate should not do good damage, they should still be effective. What I am saying is that extremely large weapons versus a smaller ship should do little damage. Right now they occasionally get just lucky enough to make the smaller ship platforms unviable for an option under almost all circumstances. This needs to be changed so that large weapons do at max some type of deflective damage but don't allow for full damage on a single target unless that target is completely stopped (or has exactly 0 transversal). Small transversals need to account for higher deflections than we currently do.

I think it was time we reversed this thought process and force people to create fleets from the ground up. Supporting fleets that do not want to get over ruined by frigate sized squads should have the proper cruiser classes set to defend them.

Running around with battlecruiser classed ships has become the norm because they are maneuverable enough and can do some very good damage at the same time against all class of ships. If battlecruiser weren't so easily abled to dispatch quick ships as well as do great damage to large sized vessels, we might just see the return of true support fleets complete with frigate/cruiser support.

In order to do this correctly, gun mechanics should probably be changed so that small transversals do not hit smaller ships as hard as they do currently or at least not as often. Destroyers could get a new class of weapon somewhere between our current small/medium that do "well" versus frigates. Battlecruisers could get a new class of weapon between our current medium/large where they do "well" versus cruisers but gradually get worse against destroyers and worse yet against frigates.

This change is needed in order to bring back the true support fleet. Otherwise, I'm afraid that our fleet fights beyond that critical mass are always going to be about who can bring the most bodies while filling in the rest with a bit of logistic support. I think we can do better and the Eve player base needs more ways to strategize, not less. I myself would like to use these ships in something other than a frig fleet.

It's like someone has taken the blap titan thread and shrunk it down to 5% of its size.

I can smell tears of cheap friate pilot between lines.

Battle ships are already dead. Even when they were good you still needed to be in a sizeble fleet to cover their obvious limitations.

Avg well fit BS costs some 300+ mil.

Around 15mil SP to fly it very well (to the point its better than using a bc or full skilled cruiser)


This can be killed by 8/10 3mil sp players in M4 frigates at cost 5-8mil or so each. If it cant be killed.. what BS wants to be stuck in low sec with a few frigates 20k orbiting keeping it locked down?. Only a matter of time before a bigger threat drops in that can finish the bs.

That same bs can be ganked very quick by 3-5 cruisers of similar skill and total isk cost as frigates

BC's, 2 decent buffer canes pump out 1200 dps between them, combined those piolits still won't need to total the cost in sp or isk as the single BS piolit.

If we then assume all the players are actual high SP players with good fits.. the bs looks even worse.


Please nerf BS's MORE!!!

Adding more BS to the equasion doesn't help so much. You can simply add more cruisers or more BC's. Again.. they will not require the same isk or sp cost as the BS's in total. This is why you see mass blobs of frigs/cruisers/bc's. Not many people can field a well skilled BS.. and those who can, don't want to risk 3x the cost when they can take a well fitted bc/cruiser with far less engagement limitation anyway.

If anything your idea needs reversed, their should be more reason to use a bs. I think a tactical bs is needed, that has web bonus and plays with medium to small guns instead of large.. a BS sized anti small vessel. OFc, that in turn means pepole will field bigger ships to take out the BS that can take out small ships. With less small ships on the field you as a small ship piolit actualy have less to worry about. If you think about why that may be.

I'd say that any anti-web module should use midslots as it is essentially another EWAR module. It would also stop frigs with more than 3 mids from using EWAR as well as having a counter to being webbed, for the sake of balance.

- Cable

I'd like to see more "typical" fleet compositions in Eve, but with Battlecruisers being such a comfortable middle ground, it will probably never happen until class roles are more clearly defined with the appropriate buffs and fittings. I've never seen anything like this:

• 5 Frigates
• 2 Destroyers
• 3 Cruisers
• 2 Battlecruisers
• 1 Battleship

It's usually just a single tackle Frigate, maybe an ECM or Logi Cruiser (but usually T3), and the rest are Battlecruisers and Battleships. There's really no point in bringing smaller ships in fleet battles from what I've seen.

BS suck because of the sig radius/tracking allgorithm and the poor signature resolution and tracking of large guns. Max skilled BS pilots going up against armour T3's or AHACs can have the most TE's possible, use the smalllest available large guns, and still miss at low transversal. I've had it that dual 450 AC's and warriors can't hit a legion which is webbed nine ways to Sunday. Sounds reasonable to me!

Most interceptor frigates are either damp, double-damp or TD fit these days. Add one unbonused TD versus a BS (and here we all admit, no one flies missile BS in PVP) and the frigate is untouchable. Even while webbed. if you were PVEing and you're in a Raven or CNR, you die the instant you are tackled, even by a Velator.

BS's pack drones. However only the Domi or maybe phoon can field enough lights with enough DDA's to make them a threat against frigates and cruisers. If those frigates and cruisers have loki boosts, or are Dramiels, Cynabals or similar, you have almost no chance of using your drones to drive them off. Often, an Incursus can out-tank your drone DPS anyway. Plenty of frigs, AFs and faction frigs can DPS down drones fast enough that they can't even be deployed to drive these frigates off.

Your heavy neuts are effective at capping cruisers and BC's but frigs will just circle you at 500 with a nos running 5 cycles for every heavy neut cycle, and you're boned.

Smartbombs are too cap intensive and self-defeating to rely on them except in massed formations with firewalls, etc. let allone you get into a fight in hisec and get concordokkened because of using a 'smart' weapon which is so ******* dumb it attacks everything.

The only thing BS's have going for them right now is dual XLASB and AAR-LAR(x2?) setups stationcamping market hubs, missioning, and maybe being a Machariel with loki boosts. Unless you deploy dozens. Likely with cap support. As long as PL or Shadow Cartel are snoozing.

I was popping pod cherries before you were even born son.

Why do you think the hellcat fleet was so popular (pulse fitted Amarr battleships)? They have tremendous tracking and range (if required) which can hit smaller vessels easier. Factional warfare is a different animal altogether than most of the combat you see. This is partly due to the fact that certain classes of ships are excluded from capturing systems. These fleets are totally different than your typical 0.0 fleet in which this original post was intended to address.

I'd just like to chime in that this is already true of missile combat. A torpedo isn't going to do any more good against a speedy little no-sig frigate than a rocket launcher would. So in a sense this is already implemented in game... just for one weapon system.

This makes me wonder about Caldari fleet compositions. In order to keep from getting over-run by frigates I'm assuming that they need to actually mix their weapons up more than average, as chucking cruise missiles at Rifters is both silly and needlessly expensive (the Caldari may not be religious but wasting ISK is still their highest sin). Compare that to the OP's theoretical all BC/BB fleet that needs only space themselves apart far enough to put any frigates into a crossfire and they don't need to change their weapons layout in the slightest.

It's interesting to think about, at least, regardless of what the trolls thus far think.