Warfare & Tactics

Ran into a gate camp last night. There was no intel on it. No pods destroyed in the last hour showed on the map in that system. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Luckily I was in a fast ship and they didn't have proper tackle. Just a bunch of random frigs and a few destroyers. It got me thinking though, the only reason I got away is luck and I hate that. I don't like my success in a game being decided by a roll of the dice so lets see if we can turn these lemons into lemonade......

I've seen videos of solo pilots taking on gate camps in fast kitey stuff, cruisers mostly but it seems to me that relies heavily on knowing where the gate camp is ahead of time. I want to do it the other way. Jump head first right on top of them with something big and nasty. Alpha their caps with neuts, web them so they can't get away and blap them one by one.

So am I dreaming? I know it's been done before. Can it be done often with a relatively high chance of success? I figure a battlecruiser would be ideal for the typical frigate/destroyer camps most often found in FW and possibly even a battleship for small pirate gangs in their BCs. I would mostly be flying Amarr ships and I'm thinking the Prophecy would be ideal. What kind of EHP should I be shooting for? They say battleship pvp is dead and nothing over dessy size is useful in FW. Is it true?

If its Frigs and dessies, Cerbs, Caracals or Vagabonds come to mind.

A super tanky Prophecy or something could also work.

Triple rep myrmidon is probably your best bet. Can tank alot longer than a prophecy and can apply more dps to frigates and dessies. You could ttraininto it in, like, a week, save the t2 blasters, which arnt terribly important anyways, since most of your dps is from drones, and you will be shooting faction antimatter 90% of the time.

Sigh...

I honestly wouldn't fly the Nomen for this, its frig defence is relatively bad so if you get caught you are probably ******.

The Myrm is a good suggestion too, also if I was fitting a prophecy to go for frig gangs I would probably go neuts RLMLs and dual webs or something similar, another option is an injector and add an MAAR/MAR for some sustained tank.

The old pvp videos that showed gatebusting were really good.

The ones I remember are dual rep dominix with medium blasters (I dont think this would work anymore), triple plated or buffer/plate combo megathrons or abbadons, pure active maelstroms, hyperions with no prop mods, etc. All with boosts in system, cans/haulers at the gate with extra cap boosters, and the appropriate drugs and HG Slaves, Crystals, etc. Bait tanking usually played a key role in luring more and more lambs to the slaughter.

It was really cool to watch. In practice, it required a huge investment in skill, resources and planning.

That being said - its still fun to try.

Last time I tried was against a gang of frigates that were camping a gate. I brought a smartbombing dominix. This is how I learned the hard way that you cannot activate smartbombs within a certain distance of a gate. Its a lolworthy lossmail, to be sure.

Post-Rubicon, Marauders will be fantastic for solo dunking gatecamps of larger ships. For small frigate/Dessy camps, the Myrm can do well, as can an Exequror Navy Issue if you want to go down the brawling route. To be honest, however, it's only a matter of time until they brig in enough to kill you. Kiting the gang around is a better choice, as you can disengage as needed. For said style, the Caracal, ScyFI, NOsprey, and to a lesser extent, the Cerb will do this well.

The most affordable are certainly t1 hulls.
I would suggest either Brutix, Myrmidon, Tornado, Talos or if its a really big camp a dualrep Hyperion.
I you have a very large camp with mixed ship sizes a Machariel either armor or shield tanked comes to mind.

A good alternative is to not fit HAMs, since anything smaller than a BC and you might as well not use it. Go with RLML's or 220mm Autocannons - they're quite effective against cruisers down. To add to it, stick with Warrior II's....small sig radii, better tracking/speed for smaller targets, and you can fit multiple flights. Be concerned if they take shield damage and right-click return to drone bay the minute you see it taking the damage. If you have your opponents focusing on your drones and the 3 to 8 seconds it takes to lock them in frigs/dessies you are buying yourself valuable time to rip into them.

Prophecy is very strong despite Starbuck's insight (which he is telling the truth). Most deploy drones, primary what they want, and hope they can outlive the frigs. With some micromanagement the Prophecy could easily have taken down the derptrons. Unless it was HM/HAM fit...then it'd struggle a lot.

Hyperion

After Rubicon hits a RLM prophecy might be just the thing for this. With the latest change to how the RML works you might be able to blast several frigs out of the sky before reload kicks in. Then just deagress and jump back through.

Would take some practice and either brick buffer or AAR fit maybe to waddle back to the gate. Mean while the reload finishes up and you can pop a couple more who cross jump with you.

Assuming that you time it right (reloading aar and rmls while letting agro drop) then a proph might be able to take several frigs out going back and forth.