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@Rise: Ishtars, what are you going to do with them?
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Arya Regnar
Darwins Right Hand
#41 - 2015-02-12 13:58:44 UTC
Mina Sebiestar wrote:
Minmatar need more nerfs and than blatantly buff everything else at the same time that will fix things for years to come.

You mean gallente right? Minmatar need more nerfs? The fk are you smoking, they are the most underpowered race at the moment.

EvE-Mail me if you need anything.
afkalt
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#42 - 2015-02-12 14:26:38 UTC
Tabyll Altol wrote:
There are several tactics.


None of which you ever seem to share with the community every time you post this drivel.
Amyclas Amatin
SUNDERING
Goonswarm Federation
#43 - 2015-02-13 00:41:19 UTC  |  Edited by: Amyclas Amatin
Fleet warfare is more complex than simply a blobbing dps ship. If there are drawbacks to a dps ship, we design supporting ships to make up for it. If there are drawbacks to a fleet, we design support fleets to make up for it.

The drake was a decent all-purpose fleet ship because it could run a mwd indefinitely, it had a good tank, it had good range, and missiles are not affected by tracking. Solving tactical problems by simply bringing 500 more drakes worked to an extent, and then only at the subcap level.

Sentry drones on the other hand have to compensate for having poor tracking, and weapon sig radius at the scale of battleships. Long range points and webs are the backbone of damage projection in such fleets, anyone used to fighting against ishtar fleets will kill these ships first, and then the damage projection of the ishtar becomes not so dangerous.

Ishtar fleets are also more difficult to wield than other blob fleets, positioning of drones and ships relative to each other is not an easy dimension to think about. The ishtar itself, when unsupported is very vulnerable to tackle. Sometimes entire anti-tackle fleets are needed to support ishtars.

Every ship has a counter, but fleets are more than the sum of its parts. Blobs can be a swarm of mindless F1 monkeys, but they can also be a well-run machine with each component designed to work together. When a group like Goonswarm or its major enemies adopts the Ishtar fleet, it is designed to work with anti-tackle fleets, tackle fleets, bomber fleets, other dps fleets and even capital fleets. It is futile to merely think along the lines of "how do I beat Ishtars" when you are going against blobs.

In small gang warfare however, there has been much documentation on how to counter ishtars. Apothne wrote a 5 part series on crossing Zebras called F*ck Ishtars.

The latest post is here: http://crossingzebras.com/fck-ishtars-vol-v/

For more information on the New Order of High-Sec, please visit: http://www.minerbumping.com/

Remember that whenever you have a bad day in EVE, the correct reponse is "Thank you CCP, may I please have another?"
Donnachadh
United Allegiance of Undesirables
#44 - 2015-02-13 02:39:04 UTC
afkalt wrote:
Donnachadh wrote:
Helios Panala wrote:
It's not the Ishtar (well it is a little bit) but the blobs.

Fix sov, break null into a hundred different little kingdoms and suddenly huge fleets of Tengus, Ishtars, whatever, the current FOTM, isn't a problem anymore.

I think we have a winner here. In the smaller fleet sizes we face in low the Ishtar is no worse to fight than many of the other fleets we face. This also leads into my response to this post.


Unfortunately, anything after about 15 and they start getting disproportionately difficult to try and combat with approximately even numbers, if you're not using them yourself.

Ishtars being massive pains are far from limited to TiDi fights. Sadly.

Then I respectfully suggest that you go back and rethink your tactics, fleet make up and expectations for the out come of these fights. Our primary enemies used to bring fleets as large as 30 Ishtars plus supporting ships, now they do not bring Ishtar based fleets at all. Would the Ishtar be more problematic in larger numbers? maybe I have no way of knowing we have never faced one much larger. Based on the ease that fleets in the 15-20 Ishtars range can be defeated I would think the even in larger numbers they would be just as easy to defeat given the use of the proper ships, tactics and expectations.

As I continue to read everything I can find about the "Ishtar / sentry" problem a thought begins to form.
Perhaps CCP has placed the Ishtar / sentry combination where it is to challenge the players of New Eden?
Challenge them by making a ship combination that thumbs it's nose at the conventional wisdom of how to fight a fleet battle.
Challenges players to start thinking of victory in terms other than kills or ISK on the board.

What I do know is that in our limited sized engagements the Ishtar / sentry combination is no more and no easier to fight than any other fleets we come up against. What they are is unique in the extreme and they do require some unique tactics to overcome and as I siad in the last paragraph above maybe that is the challenge CCP is giving all of us, can we answer that challenge and adapt?

A thought proposed by a corp mate oif this character was this. Perhaps the Ishtar / sntry combination was put into the game as a test for things that might come?
elitatwo
Zansha Expansion
#45 - 2015-02-13 05:53:38 UTC
I think the best thing to do at this point is to nerf light missile launchers again. That should help a little..

Eve Minions is recruiting.

This is the law of ship progression!

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Swanky nutjob
Holding Inc.
#46 - 2015-02-13 09:55:20 UTC
Amyclas Amatin wrote:
Fleet warfare is more complex than simply a blobbing dps ship. If there are drawbacks to a dps ship, we design supporting ships to make up for it. If there are drawbacks to a fleet, we design support fleets to make up for it.

The drake was a decent all-purpose fleet ship because it could run a mwd indefinitely, it had a good tank, it had good range, and missiles are not affected by tracking. Solving tactical problems by simply bringing 500 more drakes worked to an extent, and then only at the subcap level.

Sentry drones on the other hand have to compensate for having poor tracking, and weapon sig radius at the scale of battleships. Long range points and webs are the backbone of damage projection in such fleets, anyone used to fighting against ishtar fleets will kill these ships first, and then the damage projection of the ishtar becomes not so dangerous.

Ishtar fleets are also more difficult to wield than other blob fleets, positioning of drones and ships relative to each other is not an easy dimension to think about. The ishtar itself, when unsupported is very vulnerable to tackle. Sometimes entire anti-tackle fleets are needed to support ishtars.

Every ship has a counter, but fleets are more than the sum of its parts. Blobs can be a swarm of mindless F1 monkeys, but they can also be a well-run machine with each component designed to work together. When a group like Goonswarm or its major enemies adopts the Ishtar fleet, it is designed to work with anti-tackle fleets, tackle fleets, bomber fleets, other dps fleets and even capital fleets. It is futile to merely think along the lines of "how do I beat Ishtars" when you are going against blobs.

In small gang warfare however, there has been much documentation on how to counter ishtars. Apothne wrote a 5 part series on crossing Zebras called F*ck Ishtars.

The latest post is here: http://crossingzebras.com/fck-ishtars-vol-v/


I would disagree on a number of points - bare in mind I'm talking about fleet warfare here and not small gang.

1. The perma MWD means they're largely bubble immune and with a critical mass of 60 or so will destroy incoming interceptors. Stick a few RLML cerbs in there for good measure.

2. Ishtar fleet is easy to wield because it can relocated extremely quickly. If it was that hard why is it the go to fleet doctrine for skirmish and low level FCs as well as those at a higher level? A Laz or Vee can wipe the floor with opponents in this fleet type but it's not uncommon for beginner FCs to do well in it either.

3. Ishtar fleets do fine unsupported. Being unsupported just limits options available. Ironically bomber fleets being used in support are to kill off other Ishtar fleets drones and in turn have killed the BS doctrines of old.

4. Small gang is just that, irrelevant when it comes to Sov warfare. Even at the 60-100 man fleet size Ishtar fleet is horribly unbalanced.

5. Ishtar fleet has a few hard counters but these are single use. Look at Napoc with Triage support. It's a static defensive fleet which murders Ishtar fleet but it's utterly immobile. Tengu fleet isn't a hard counter to Ishtar fleet, in fact it's not even that well suited against it due to lack of effective range and being slower but the sheer number of hitpoints available make it attractive. But it's also harder to fit, vastly more expensive and losing one means loss of SP. They're not a solid counter like Napocs though.

BTW if you think Ishtars are not completely OP, speak to the heads of the GSF fitting team and them what they think.
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