Crime & Punishment

Bit of theorycrafting with EFT. A Hound (ideally in a mix with Purifiers), t2 fit, appropriate racial Rage torps and 2x small calefraction catalyst Is, pilot with TD-603 has an alpha of 5937 and DPS of 783 using the 'all Vs' guy. About 25M from buy orders. This is half of the 12000 alpha Tornados, which are nearly 3x the cost fitted and way higher skill reqs.

This locks faster, can cloak for maximum SURPRISE! and a ~4000-5000 alpha meta t1 with faction ammo version looks to be skillable-for in two weeks or so. Trial restrictions being relaxed could very well come with some unintended consequences.

Because there's no optimal to worry about (effective 0 to 40+ km!!) and no real reason to perfectly coordinate the gank it seems to me the bar to splorking freighters and orcas *should* be much, much lower than it currently is. Can you get 20 random schlubs (or isboxer alts) to warp in and hit F1? Congrats, you can gank for 25M*20 = 500M worst case cost. You get a 80000-110000 alpha with a short enough cycle to get 3 cycles off in .5 with the t2 version with seconds to spare. Logistics are a breeze too, and with some luck you can salvage a few tens of M worth of juicy t2 salvage droppings afterward.

A bomber pilot can ninja rat for sec status if needed.

Like I said pure theory. What am I missing re: why this isn't a FoTM and Talos and Tornadoes are? Mr. Google is of no help here. I understand the unbeatable cost advantage of a Catalyst gank, but that requires a ton more people and way better coordination.

Motivation: I've got a few days left on CCP's gift of 10 days, figure I might as well do a bit of damage on my way out the door.

Excellent point about sentries. This may be more suited to voilencing mission boats.

The problem I'm trying to solve is the need for player skill. I'm a solo player, so on the odd fortnight that I'm in a fleet there's always some yahoo that's had a beer or thirty and can't hear or understand the FC because of the resulting ringing in my ears. Or forgetting English and only speaking Russian. In other words, get enough drunk people and odds of mess-up approach certainty. I'm trying to optimize for a more foolproof, lower effort approach. With bumping off the gate seems like blaster optimal wouldn't be an issue -- except for the -10s dodging faction navies.

I must be doing things wrong. I'm pretty close to the the "all Vs guy" when it comes to hybrids and drones, but I'm looking at maybe 1500 alpha in a thorax, 730ish DPS. Vexor isn't any better with 1150 alpha and maybe 10 more DPS. That's not a whole lot better than catalysts for a ton more ISK. Total cost weighs in at 6M for heavy ion IIs, 2M for magstabs, another 2M for the gardes and 11M for the Thorax, not much less for the Vexor. Only a few M less for a *way* smaller alpha than the suicide bomber which has comparable if not higher DPS. Also, just T1 salvage from the resulting mess and medium rigs are too pricey to use to suicide.

Obviously I didn't research the optimal gank cruiser, but I really don't see how the cost/benefit (and more importantly in and out of game skill reqs) are anywhere close.

When you have a defined time period before concord arrives "DPS" is much less significant than how many volleys I can get off and land. The delay between volleys and the fact you are paper thin leaves a lot of things that can go wrong.

I guess the correct answer largely depends on the stated target and location.

+1

Twenty of these decloaking 30km from a shiny incursion fleet sitting on a site gate, and primarying something shiny without hardeners on, would be hilarious. It might not even take that many. Certainly not for shiny logi.

One success would pay for quite a few failures.

If you're a dedicated criminal, you'll also find yourself unable to cloak in high sec systems. Makes sneaking up in bombers problematic, that.

An 11 million ISK T2 Gankcat is a much better investment than a 50 million ISK bomber in all but some vanishingly rare edge case.

Also, you can add flair to your Gankcat by using the cheap Serpentis Issue version, the still-affordable and smartly stylish Intaki version, or the YOLO Quafe version if expense just doesn't matter.

You don't *need* t2 launchers (9M) to do this. Even Arbalests with faction ammo (and a TD-603 and RL-1003) will bust out the 5049 alpha, and you'll easily get a second shot in anything <= .7 with a second or so to spare -- without overheating it's a hair under 8.2 sec cycle, but once hot you're good to go. Not viable in .8 or higher. EFT says sustained 618 DPS unheated -- but another way to look at it is 10k delivered in ~8 seconds for 19M hull, 2M for BCUs and 300K for 3x 'Arbalest' torp launchers. You can shave another mil or two off by building yourself or using Jita buy orders.

I can't pull this off (since I have all of MLO 2/Rockets 3 that Achura Inventors started with way back when) but 2 of my alts can do both Hounds and Purifiers.

Sec status for cloaking is also not a showstopper, a bomber alt is capable of ninja ratting up sec status in appropriate nullsec easily enough. It's a complete a cakewalk if you have Netflix and access to blue 0.0, I've done THAT trip several times.

I regularly make that word up also.

got a point though.