Warfare & Tactics

Exactly, so there is no reason not to up your game a little and reward those that are willing too.

Up my game in what way? I've been attempting to get better at flying a variety of Algos fits and having a blast!

If you meant gal mil in general, in what way would you like us to up our game? Switch from system control to a cap/super focused entity? That isn't "upping" our game its switching our play style entirely. There have been groups in the past in FW who have done it, but they don't seem to last.

Alternatively, why doesn't SNUFF up their game and join the Caldari?

Competition breeds improvements. If you want people to compete with in the cap/super arena why don't you scout around and find a group of similar size and setup a timer fight with them? I hear SC is nearby.

Nothing wrong with doing DED sites. I quite enjoy the RNG drop feeling when you don't get screwed.

Crosi joins the conversation and the trash talking commences, surprise surprise.

I almost believe him/Perunga/Dumbmar are the same person with split personalities.

Things kind of got sidetracked once the conversation turned to shipping up to counter your guys.

At the moment, we already field comps that CalMil generally cannot counter. Moving to BC/BS size plexes wouldn't give them any advantages on that front, and given that we're already willing to field BS / HICs / drop caps to try and beat your folks I doubt there'd be much consternation doing that to flip a system.

The biggest problems are a) accessibility, b) sustainability, and c) "apex force" issues.

A new player can get into T2 fit cruisers within about 3 months, and be able to compete within fleets by that point. He can essentially contribute to every single level of conflict in FW. If there's a new plex that "requires" the use of BS, that's another couple months to be able to fly well.

The next issue is cost. Most PvP oriented FW players (the ones who would need to ship up since non-PvP will avoid contested plexes) are used to flying ships in the 5-40 mil range, and most often in the 2-20 range. This range gives you T1/T2 fitted frigates, destroyers, and faction frigates which can access and succeed at 95%+ of FW content. Most folks don't roam the WZs in T2 kitted Cruisers unless they're in a fleet.

Moving that bar up to the 200-300mil / hull level is an order of magnitude increase, and something a lot of folks will balk at. Lowsec logistics for small ships (on the individual level) is difficult enough; moving to BS level logistics is even harder. Most general militia wouldn't be able to cope with the logistical burden having to keep 5-10 fully fitted BS on hand in lowsec, and a good number of PvP corps wouldn't either.

In addition, PvP oriented FW corps are out flying and losing ships 24/7. Lowsec pirate groups have no systems to maintain, nothing to push, no need to fight unless they want to. They can freely spend their weekdays running DED sites and incursions, while the rest of us fight to keep our homes. That ability to run PvE the majority of the time gives you a lot larger war chest on average, with a lot lower burn rate.

Finally, the "apex force" issue. If larger plexes are worth more, system (and warzone) control goes to the side that is willing and able to ship up the highest and sustain that the longest. We took the WZ last time because we were able and willing to run armor HAC fleets when needed - not even all the time, just when needed. That was enough to create a situation where CalMil was simply unable to counter a comp, which meant that we could essentially take systems at will. The same would be true at the BS level - we're already flying BS against your crew in open field engagements where we don't dictate the terms of engagement. Flying BS fleets against CalMil in plexes would be a cakewalk in comparison - no offense to CalMil, they've got excellent pilots, but it'd be a brutal learning curve for them.

That would essentially turn FW into nullsec - whoever had the biggest fleet of the largest ships and was willing to deploy them the most often would own the WZ, and their opponents wouldn't be able to do a damn thing.

That, I think, would be a very sorry state of affairs indeed.

FW lowsec is a unique animal, and CCP made some very savvy design decisions when creating it. We've got a plex available to do what the OP and others want - encourage larger ships such as BS/BC, without the risk of Hotdrops'r'Us. The fact that the FW corporations who are most active in occupancy warfare haven't made that move doesn't have anything to do with "not stepping up". It's that as FW corporations who do FW occupancy warfare, we understand far better the stresses that it would impose and the difficulty of having two sides who would be able to compete on that level. We've dealt with the months of stagnation that resulted from the last time we chose to up the occupancy warfare meta (by moving to armor HACs), and I don't think anyone really wants to go back to that anytime soon.

BC/BS plexing comps will happen, if it makes sense to do so. It'll happen with both sides in a WZ decide that they can both competently field such comps and sustain them during a major grind. It'll happen when one side decides that doing it will let them compete against unfavorable odds.

No need to force the issue before it's time.

It's as if somebody figured out that it's just as efficient to buy 30 cruisers as it is buying one cruiser at one time.

Then somebody said "Hey, I bet I can help the team out by purchasing 30 cruisers at a time and hand them out rather than have 30 guys all buy one cruiser each."

Then somebody said "You won't go broke if you sell those ships to people in the fleet at a slight profit. Win/win. You make some isk, and everybody has more time for pew!"

And then some other dude said "AND everybody will be in the right ship! No downside!"

This increased efficiency/productivity thing is embarrassing indeed!

Got yah. With regards to larges and using ships with a larger tank than HACs, it isn't currently necessary because Cal Mil can't compete at that ship size.

If Cal mil starts bringing comps where we need to have Battleship sized tanks, then battleships we shall bring.

Regarding upshipping to counter larger numbers...

There is definitely some valid concerns brought up by Julius Foederatus and others about assaulting or holding plexes against significantly superior numbers. Given roughly equal fleet sizes, the side with the best comp and best logi / ewar pilots will generally come out on top. Past a certain point, however, the numbers disparity means that either you won't be able to break their logi or they will be able to simply blow through whatever logi you bring along.

This is exacerbated in FW by two phenomenon: ship restrictions based on plex size, and the fact that the attacker will always start the fight at zero on the warp-in. This means that a defender will almost always be able to dictate the initial engagement range, which is why high damage brawling comps are so common in system assaults. Once you reach a certain fleet size, however, you easily cross the "alpha wall" and logi can become almost irrelevant.

In 2013-14, GalMil was generally at a significant numbers disadvantage. Having to defend Eha against TEST blobs day in and day out forced us to adapt to that reality, which we did via long range harassment comps. Sniper Kestrels and Sniper Cormorants allowed our pilots to murder the relatively lower-skilled TEST pilots from beyond their ability to counter, which forced them to mass up on the beacons and simply eat the losses to capture the plex. This tended to significantly decrease the rate at which they could increase the system contested percentage, which bought us time to even the odds.

When we went on the offensive, we had to face those numbers the other way around - having to assault into greater numbers with logi support we wouldn't be able to DPS through. Thus, we adopted attrition alpha doctrines to breach the plex, blast away enough more expensive ships, then quickly reship to force the remaining fleet out with a more conventional fleet comp. This worked well enough for a long time.

Eventually, CalMIl adapted, and we started facing fleets with greater numbers than we could hold with conventional comps. There's a natural limit to how much EHP and logi power you can put into each plex due to ship restrictions. At the time, ungated and unrestricted Large plexes weren't in the regular rotation, and thus weren't a factor.

We developed doctrines for the Novices that worked very well - our Armor Tristans were the bane of CalMIl during several system assaults. Smalls oscillated between Armor Algos / Dragoons, to Sniper Cormorants, to Derp Cats, to Breaching Coraxes as the situation demanded. Mediums, though, became a big issue - our Armor Vexors were good, but CalMil was able to field large enough Blaster Moa fleets that our logi wasn't holding.

That's when we started the shift to Armor Ishtars. The additional EHP and resistances bought our logi the time they'd need to stabilize, and we were able to compete against the larger CalMil fleets.

Right now, CalMil has doctrines that are competitive with ours for most plexes. They've started bringing Harpy fleets that make Smalls very difficult to contest, they have plenty of Sniper Kestrel / Cormorant pilots to compete with our kiting doctrines. Mediums are still a bit of a toss-up, though the Hasmijaala push saw them start to field Basilisks to support their Moas and Harpies, which significantly increases their engagement envelope.

As Novices are limited to T1 frigates, and it's difficult to tank a T1 frigate past about 9k EHP without boosts, those plexes will always be a charnal house. There's simply no real option to ship up into that would be survivable enough. 20 Kestrels gives you about a 14k alpha using T1 launchers, which can potentially reach out to 80+km if you want it to. That fleet size is very easy to reach, when the Hasmijaala fleets regularly hit 40+.

Smalls seem to be a bit better proposition, but the issue is that there hasn't really been a survivable platform for that either. Dessies can get 10-12k EHP pretty easily, but even double MSE Harpies only hit about 16k EHP before boosts. Since Smalls open up the potential for Coraxes and Talwars, you have to deal with alphas of about 1100 per ship - meaning your 20 man fleet is now throwing about 22k alpha, more than enough to erase pretty much anything you can put into a Small plex. There's few new kiting options - Sniper Corms up your engagement range to about 90km+, but everything else is pretty limited. Once again, defending against a larger fleet means trying to kite at extreme range while they sit on the warpin.

Mediums are where things change. It takes a much larger fleet to alpha a 40k EHP cruiser, and there's a much larger delta between basic T1 - Navy - T2 cruisers. T2 Logistics Cruisers are miles ahead of T1 cruiser logi, and far more survivable. HACs are at least 2x as tough as T1 cruisers. This is where a smaller group could conceivably overship to take on long odds - below this size, it's very very difficult indeed.

Adding Larges in the mix does offer some interesting possibilities, of course. Combat BCs can potentially offer HAC levels of DPS and tank for roughly half the cost - and the fact that there's no gate gives kiting comps a lot more freedom to choose the initial engagement range. At the moment, however, neither side has been inclined to add yet another class of plex doctrines to take advantage of this, as the high end comps for Smalls and Mediums seem to be working fine so far. That said, we've already seen instances where Carriers, Dreads and Faction BS have been fielded in Larges, and there's nothing preventing a defender from warping in Triage Carriers to support his cruiser fleet if he starts to lose.

Should CCP rebalance AFs to be significantly tankier, that could potentially offer new options for Smalls, but the Talwar/Corax alpha is tough to balance around. Until someone really starts to push the Large meta, however, I don't think we'll see shiny new doctrines...

Shield Svipuls get even brickier, though they don't have the same projection as the beam Confessor does. However, that basically just moves the "alpha wall" from 20 dudes in Talwars / Coraxes up to around 25-30 dudes in Talwars / Coraxes. Since the difficulty is finding something survivable enough to counter large numbers of baddies, that doesn't really help things much.

They are, without a doubt, hands down far better than AFs in every way at a fairly minimal increase in cost. Find a way to break up alpha fleets and you've got a potential solution.

Being able to sustain flying 70-80mil Tactical Dessies is another issue of course, especially in the context of system invasions where 1500-2000 ships per day go boom. The two week long Hasmijaala push saw almost 100 billion isk of ships destroyed for example.

Guess that's a roundabout way of saying T3 Dessies are a possible solution, but the counter is already widely fielded, and sustainability over a full push would be difficult given attrition rates.

I'm pretty sure the new caldari t3d is going to be the snarpy replacment, can't wait to see it.