Wormholes

Right. So the new Citadel dev blog is out and it seems we are going to have to supply our own KY for this brokeback cowboy ride.

In the spirit of wanting to break the game and ensure you can all indulge in an orgy of POS sieging I have deigned to release to all of you peons our hitherto super sekrit Trashcat doctrine for sieging POSs.

prepare your loins for POS siege masterclass.

Theoretical basis
Now, the rest of you are all terrible non-thinking space pumpkin types who just turn up and press F1 and broadcast for reps when you siege POSs. I am the thinking man's man, and I hae a brain which looks like a meat grnder had dirty alley sexing with a grandfather clock. So I know about how POSs work.

The way POS defences work is this:
You have a number of guns (G, because this sounds more scientific)
They are spread about the joint and loaded with ammo (yes, ammo choice is vitally important, dumbasses)
G guns times Y ammo times a POS race multiplier = Z DPS. Lets say 5500 for a pimped out facion Sansha with faction ammo.

You have F number of EWAR modules. This includes, viz. damps, ECM, webs, neuts, dissys.

The first ship on grid is alphad by basically everything. This doesn't always happen simultaneously; your POS guns have a scan resolution, so smalls shoot first then mediums, etc etc. Thereafter, the stable number of POS defence modules, split randomly between guns and EWAR, is five per target. Tried and tested.

Your challenge in attacking any POS is that you have to tank the DPS and sustain this against the EWAR embuggerance. This is where you get into a mix of guns, ECM and neuts. You only ever really have a couple of dissys and webs so your whole fleet is never at threat. But you still have to, on average, tank everything and logi through ECM lock breaking.

So, the typical equation of attacking a POS is;

A / (Z + F)/5 = 0

ie; you need to get basically one attacker per five active modules before your POS's DPS is diluted enough and the impact of ECM is diluted enough.

The problem is that to neutralise the defences, you have to grind through the guns. A typical large POS with minimum 25% resists has about 30M hitpoints to grind through. if it has 12 EWAR modules (say, 2 dissy, 2 scram, 8 ECM) and 12 medium guns, you have to grind an additional 20-25M EHP at least, just to knock it all out and begin on the stick.

Boring!
Dangerous!

But wait, TF, you said sekrit skwerl Trashcats?

Like I said, shut up and make with the popcorn, maggots! Teacher talky, you listen.

The key to Trashcat is twofold.
Number one, remember how I said that the stable number of guns on any one ship is about 5, because they cycle off you randomly? Yeah. Good.
And remember how I said the most a POS has is 5,500 DPS? Good.
And the way to tank and dilute ECM and EWAR is to spam ships onto grid? Yep.

So, you have 5,500 DPS max, and you have 5 ships. Each takes 1,100 DPS. That's Marauders, maybe.
You put 10 ships on grid. That's 550 DPS. Snakes, maybe.
You put 100 ships on grid? You are E-UNI, BRAVE, or Quaserknocks. But at this point it's irrelevant mostly, because you've got truckloads of logi and DPS.

But what if you are a small corp of say, ten people, trying to knock out a giant deathstar with maximum choppage onlined, owned by a 3 man krab farming syndicate. it's a low-class wormhole with no way to build capitals. You know they don't log in at all during the weekdays, so if you could only knock their stick out Monday-Wednesday you could online trap tower and murderface them weekend.

What's happened is, your krabs have exploited POS's by utilising faction towers and onlining wads and wads of guns, which shoot everything on grid, and basically ensure ultimate rent-seeking squatocracy because,
A) 5,500 DPS by itself deters anything less than 5 logis
B) Screw grinding 30M EHP of guns at least, just to then grind another 30M EHP of shield, to piddle in the eyes of a 3 man corp
C) A modicum of ECM batteries makes you double that minimum gang size

But but but, you splutter feebly into your gatorade and cheetos paste in your basement, we have only ten guys, how are we to siege them out? We lack friends and no one wants to come siege 3 guys out of a C4 just so more krabs can move in? Surely this is IMPOSSIBRU!

Not with Trashcats.

The Magic Happens
What is?
A Trashcat is like a Hellcat or a Foxcat, except it is the most OP as F thing for POS sieging, tractor

POSs shoot at tractor units. To a POS, a tractor is a valid target.
So you get your equation

A / ( F + Z)/5 = 0

And you basically load up A with Tractor units.

This has two effects.
Firstly, the POS dilutes its DPS across more targets.
Secondly, the ECm and all forms of EWAR including neuts, also dilute

So, you take ten attacking ships. Each drops 3 Tractors. You've gone from average DPS of 550 (5,500 / 10) to 137 (5,500 / 40).
If the POS has 8 ECM's, each ship has gone from a 10% chance per ECM battery of being jammed, to a 2.5% chance per ECM battery. This means that your logi is magically less likely to be jammed!

Additionally, your tractors have native shield regen of about 50 DPS, so your tractors can mostly tank fine anyway. They also have 60,000 hull hitpoints, so you can scoop them fine. You can rep the armour and hull using drones (say, from your Raven). Your DPS ships can also run utility highslots as remote reps and rep their tractors.

Suddenly, you have resolved the POS attack problem in one simple manoeuvre.

You can basically ignore the guns and EWAR, and concentrate on pushing a timer onto the field by going straight for the stick. You can cut the size of your attack force in half, at least.

I reveal this now only because you have maybe a year to blow up each other's POSs before Citadels hit and you have to spend 42 hours a week babysitting them from Confessors with laser pointers.

You now the recipe for making your alt's POS untouchable by 4 guys. Grab your popcorn and await the storm of krabs being evicted by 4 man alt corps who waltz through the ridiculous POS defences of the current system.

I mean, let's be honest. Defending yourself these days requires nothing more than tossing ludicrous amounts of EHP onto the field in front of your foe in the form of POS guns and hiding behind the boredom. That's, what, 750M ISK. maybe less. Depends on whether you want to lose your POS to 40 guys or 160. But either ay, a large tower, even half-arsedly set up, will successfully deter medium sized corps.

Or...it used to.

Nuff said