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Blockade Runner Help
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Dominic Koskanaiken
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#1 - 2013-11-11 01:25:48 UTC
Hello,

I'm hoping to get some help with a few Blockade Runner questions - it doesn't quite make sense to me.

I've heard that the Prowler is the way to go because you can offline an Expanded Probe Launcher with the second high slot until you need it - but, since you're going to have a Covert Ops Cloak active the vast majority of the time:

(1) Why not just warp to 50km out and see what ships are on the gate with your own eyes?

It seems like the Expanded Probe Launcher would be unnecessary and save you quite a bit of skill training in Astrometrics and probing support skills.

Next, I've read a lot of posts and loadouts talking about how Blockade Runners should use Inertial Stabilizers or Nanofiber Internal Structures to make your align time as good as possible but:

(2) If you're cloaking immediately after hitting align/warp, which happens after only a 1 second delay due to server ticks, why does your align time matter?

You're going to be cloaked and untargetable. Align time doesn't seem to be a huge benefit in escaping possible gatecamps, unless you're afraid that they're going to see you blip on their overview for 1 second and start bombing the gate to de-cloak you.

What am I missing?

Thank you in advance.
Goochan derp
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#2 - 2013-11-11 02:02:07 UTC
warping to 50 if there is a bubble up will pull you into it and if the enemy gatecamp is smart they will have some ships or cargo containers around the edges of the bubble, breaking your cloak and preventing re cloaking.

2. interceptors can be very fast and there are some good pilots out there who can decloak and tackle you even if your allign time is less than 5 secs.

i also suggest using a mwd over any kind of hull bonused tank, that is the part of these ships i dont understand. because if your at a point where you need a sheild booster your in a very bad place and id rather have a module that can prevent that from happening in the first place.
Dominic Koskanaiken
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#3 - 2013-11-11 02:21:13 UTC
Goochan derp wrote:
warping to 50 if there is a bubble up will pull you into it and if the enemy gatecamp is smart they will have some ships or cargo containers around the edges of the bubble, breaking your cloak and preventing re cloaking.


I have very little experience with nullsec gatecamps, admittedly, but it seems somewhat implausible that a group would have debris and bubbles perfectly places 100 km in all directions from the stargate. That seems like an obscene amount of work and any Blockade Runner, regardless of fit, would have a difficult time getting through it alive. Does this actually happen?

Goochan derp wrote:
2. interceptors can be very fast and there are some good pilots out there who can decloak and tackle you even if your allign time is less than 5 secs.

i also suggest using a mwd over any kind of hull bonused tank, that is the part of these ships i dont understand. because if your at a point where you need a sheild booster your in a very bad place and id rather have a module that can prevent that from happening in the first place.


How can an interceptor decloak a Blockade Runner? Outside of bombing or getting extremely lucky and decloaking by manually Approaching, which sounds pretty insanely difficult, I'm not aware of any other ways.

It seems like a Blockade Runners biggest concern would be getting targeted/locked in the 1 second of vulnerability due to server ticks between when they align/warp and when they are able to re-cloak. Wouldn't you want to minimize your signature radius, as a result? Using a Microwarpdrive sounds very counteproductive.
Goochan derp
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#4 - 2013-11-11 03:39:53 UTC  |  Edited by: Goochan derp
the way bubbles work is by pulling you into them if your warp path intersects them. so if they have a bubble covering the gate even if you warp to 100km you will be pulled into that bubble, the only way to avoid this is by having a tactical a few hundred km above or below the gate, thats the only way to get on grid and see with your own eyes exactly whats there and how they have their ships positioned. i think using scan probes can get you one of these safe warp in spots and thats why people like to use them but i have very little experence with that. or they could just put a bubble 40km behind the gate and have it drag you past the gate completely, thats called a drag bubble. i just got a bunch of kills last week sitting at the edge of a bubble decloaking bombers actually lol

enemies will never lock you before you cloak, assuming you didnt get super unlucky and get placed within 2km of something when you jumped in. server lag prevents it, same as your pod should never get caught unless its in a bubble, its just too fast for the server to keep up with so thats a non-issue. the real threat is as i said, super fast interceptors being controlled by good/lucky pilots.

this is how u uncloak someone, when you see the gate flash telling you someones entered system through that gate you stare at your overview with your ship stationary and the mwd already active, in a ship purely fit for agility and speed with its only purpose to decloak and tackle. soon as you see the enemy appear in overview you doubleclick their name and immediately hit ctrl+alt+space(thats default hotkey for set full speed) and then you hope you run into him and bump his allign off long enough to lock(witch is less than a second for a interceptor). and yes people do this and some of them are VERY GOOD AT IT!!!!

the micro is only there if you jump into a bubble or someone/thing is within 2km of you when you jump. and you need to get away from it fast. you hit the micro and cloak at the same time and you will get a cycle of the micro while cloaked.

my crane alligns in 3.41 seconds, at that speed it would require a significant ammount of luck to catch me. but even at that speed it can happen.
Batelle
Federal Navy Academy
#5 - 2013-11-11 15:10:54 UTC
(1) Why not just warp to 50km out and see what ships are on the gate with your own eyes?

This could lead to your death, and then you'd still have to bounce to another celestial, or uncloak and mwd, or go 50km at base speed

(2) It seems like the Expanded Probe Launcher would be unnecessary and save you quite a bit of skill training in Astrometrics and probing support skills.

First, those are never unnecessary skills, and its not a lot of skill training either. Typically the prowler is recommended because you can fit a core probe launcher and avoid getting lost in wormhole space. If you're not using that extra highslot, the prowler less useful than the other blockade runners. The one situation where you want or need an expanded launcher is if there's a gate with no celestials from which you can d-scan it. These are fairly common, but typically you can just warp to a celestial not in line with a gate and go from there. Even if you get caught in a large bubble, they probably won't have stuff to decloak you along that vector. You might have issues with dictors/hictors and getting decloaked, but I use a viator and I've never missed it. If you're very nervous about that, you can always be patient.


(2) If you're cloaking immediately after hitting align/warp, which happens after only a 1 second delay due to server ticks, why does your align time matter?

You're going to be cloaked and untargetable. Align time doesn't seem to be a huge benefit in escaping possible gatecamps, unless you're afraid that they're going to see you blip on their overview for 1 second and start bombing the gate to de-cloak you.


agility mods increases your speed of travel overall, makes you faster if you need to mwd/cloak to avoid getting decloaked while in a bubble. For this reason i use nanofibers over istabs. They WILL come and try to decloak you, and while your base agility is high enough that its not an issue normally, it will matter if you're in a bubble and can't warp. THere's also a chance a hostile will be only a few KM from you when you enter system, which makes it very scary. For this reason, MWD on non-hisec blockade runners is MANDATORY. Lastly, there are only 3 things you should be fitting in your lowslots. Cargo expanders, agility/speed mods, and maaaaayyybe also warp core stabs (its a preference thing, they're situationally useful. I don't use them).

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