Warfare & Tactics

If you've been paying attention, you've heard about the current meta between remote reps and alpha-strike. Let's look at a hypothetical battle between a remote-repping carrier fleet (the defenders) and a battleship fleet (the attackers). Once the defending fleet gets above a certain size, the attackers effectively need to be able to alpha-strike their targets off of the field, or the defenders' remote reps will quickly outpace any reasonable amount of DPS they can apply to it. The main reason this works is resists: they work against incoming damage, while they work with the remote reps, so the defenders have an inherent advantage.

Of course, this scenario assumes that the defenders can quickly lock the attackers' primary and apply all, or at least a majority, of their reps to it. If the attacking force could somehow disrupt the remote reps of the defending force, they would no longer need to worry about alpha-striking targets off of the field. It has been shown over numerous battles that EWar doesn't do the job. To be effective, you need EWar in bonused hulls, which cuts into the attackers' DPS. This means that interfering with the "locking" part most likely wont' work.

So, let's look at the other part of the equation with is the attackers' primary target. Good FCs have always directed their fleets to apply all of their damage to a primary target. From a tactical standpoint, this makes perfect sense: reduce the enemy's numbers through focused fire so they can apply less damage to you. This has been fleet doctrine, both in real naval battles and in EvE, for as long as there has been accurate, long-range gunnery. It works. It's proven. You would have to be crazy to question this doctrine.

Call me crazy, but I'm questioning it.

Let's go back to my original scenario. The defenders are in remote-repping, sentry-spewing carriers, and the attackers are in subcaps. Let's assume, in particular, that the attackers are in Baltec Megas with all of their guns grouped together for maximum volley damage. Under current doctrine, the FC calls primary and all ships shoot at that primary. This focuses all of the DPS of the attacking fleet to (hopefully) bring a carrier down as quickly as possible. But there's a catch. In addition to focusing all DPS on a single target, it focuses all of the defenders' reps on a single target too.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Against a remote-repping carrier fleet, the age-old practice of applying all damage to the primary works in favor of the carriers.

Now, imagine a slightly different scenario. All that is different is that the Baltec Megas have two groups of guns instead of one. One group of six, and one group of one. They fire the group of six at the primary, and the group of one at a secondary. On the surface, this seems foolish. If the attackers are trying to overcome a powerful spider tank, why would they do less than maximum DPS to any given target. It's simple actually. By splitting their DPS, the attackers also split the remote reps of the defenders. However, in this case, it's the attackers that gain an advantage. The defenders no longer know how to split their reps, reducing the overall survivability of the fleet, while the attackers gain the advantage of still applying most of their DPS to one target.

I am not saying that this is a "silver bullet" to overcome the current balance issues that remote-repping sentry carriers represent; the balance issue there still needs to be addressed and isn't going to be overcome by one crackpot with a new tactic. I am also not saying with certainty that this would actually take down such a fleet; at best, I think this would prove to be an annoyance and carrier fleet FCs would quickly adapt after losing a few carriers (or, more likely, just bring more carriers). What this is is my simple attempt to think outside of the box, and if it happens to generate some interesting content, so be it.

Enjoy. Questions, comments, and criticisms are eagerly invited.

This is the most glaring flaw in your argument. It is in-fact quite trivial to split reps on a handful of targets.

Also that was assuming archon spider tank, because thats the most common

Agree on all counts. I presented this idea more to spark discussion than to claim to have fixed SlowCat fleets. Discussion of an idea is a good thing, as long as it's limitations are recognized. (And this one has plenty.) Since this was a proposed tactic instead of a proposed change, I placed it here.

The fact that carriers can field a practically limitless number of sentry drones, essentially turning them into turret battleships, while being able to field capital reps in their current state is a game breaker. I see two effective ways to fix this:

1. Deny carriers the use of sentry drones the way that supercarriers are denied the use of non-fighter and non-bomber drones. Carrier fleets above a certain size will still be essentially un-killable, but at least they won't be able to pop a battleship with every sentry drone volley.

OR

2. Boost the remote rep bonus of triage modules to be on-par with a siege module damage bonus, and nerf remote reps so that triage carriers maintain the same remote repping ability as now. This will force carriers into either logistic or damage-dealing roles, not both simultaneously.

Either option above would work, but I think implementing both would be overkill. I think #2 would be the better solution though.



Back on topic to tactics, how effective are Void Bombers against a SlowCat fleet? I'm guessing not terribly or we would have heard more about it by now.

Yeah, I knew about the disparity, I just wasn't sure how big bomber wings were these days.

The fact that carriers will bubble themselves I think is the most clear indication of just how broken they are.

"Come on ya pansies, you don't even have to tackle us. Come get yer whoopin'."

B^/

Simple fix it to have carriers land 40km off the cyno beacon when the cyno in. The larger the mass of ships then the further the carriers are randomly dropped from the beacon. So 30 carriers the spread would be over 100km radius from the beacon. This would enable the opposing force to warp to the cyno and seperate some of the carriers before they can group up.

While it is generally aknowledged that this idea sux for wh jumps (see threadnaught in wh forums for details) it would go a long way to solve many stagnation issues in k-space. Likewise, a titan bridge should also disperse it's riders over a larger radius as the mass projected through the bridge increases.

I think CCP has a great idea, they are just thinking of implementing it in the wrong part of space.

Additionally for titan bridges - just don't give the pilot the option to stay behind. The last thing a bridge does before it closes is suck the initiating ship along for the ride.

Don't work around the problem - stab it in the heart and then stomp on it.

Get rid of drone assist. It helps lazy people pve and null blocks screw everything into the dirt. No one will miss it 2 months from now. Many null guys may even come back to the game.

It's so crazy it just might work.