Missions & Complexes

Hi Folks,

Baalkon here, I am a director and Capital Czar of Imperial Dreams. It seems only fitting that a member of Imperial Dreams, and CVA continues to push forward with drifter combat techniques since it was our 10th decade celebration that the drifters first appeared and and engaged in full force. Much testing has been conducted on sisi by CVA and some of our allies since then, once the minimum solution was reached parties involved discontinued testing / soultioning. I continued the work on my own since.

I have seen much talk of people utilizing kiting setup's that are expensive and cost prohibitive to the average player, suicide caracals where they accept the risk that someone will get DD'd off the field every single time a drifter fires its doomsday. However I am here to tell you, and show you that it is completely possible to fight multiple drifters with minimal isk risked and survive, I will not be providing a TL;DR and I would recommend that if you are taking the time to read this, that you read it thoroughly. I will attempt to break this down as logically as possible.

Base assumptions at the offset (based on early community feedback vs. a BS class hull):
1) Drifters do 6,500 omni damage each volley (so 5 drifters = 32,500 alpha every 5 seconds)
2) Drifter DD does 300,000 omni alpha once (break their blue over-shield)
3) Drifter top speed: 3,200m/s
4) All drifters web, disrupt and neut
5) All drifters in a site focus fire on a single target
6) Target change cycle time for drifters in an incursion site = 30 sec
7) 80dps is all that is required to break a drifter's tank

Requirements of a single ship:
1) Do damage greater than 80dps
2) Don't die to drifters (taking damage is fine, dying to them is not)
3) Be cost effective
4) Solve for neuting pressure from drifters (required for future iterations on base solution principles to follow)

Base solution principles:
1) Forget big ships, drifters will stomp them
2) Sig radius must be below 25m with maximum drifter drawbacks in effect. The lower, the better
3) Speed must be 580m/s+ (before drifter drawbacks) - when webbed by all drifters speed wants to stay above 55m/s, any lower increases risk of death.
4) ideally the ship should have 1,000+ raw armor or shield hp (which ever is its primary tank)
5) Single ship DPS output should be greater than 80dps (although anything less than 100 is painfully slow to kill a drifter with, 260dps per ship if possible makes very short work of drifters)
6) an optimal range of 17,000m (17km) is most ideal as that is the drifter orbit range
7) Drifters cannot be more than 40km away from the ship they are shooting

Initial Solution (derived from sisi testing):
1x Claymore with Republic Fleet warfare Mindlink
- Shield harmonization II
- Evasive maneuvers II
(we ran all siege & skirmish but these are the only 2 that matter)

8x arty svipul with mid-grade halo set (or standard x-instinct) - full passive shield tank in prop mode (all other modes you will insta-pop in. speed is needed) dealt 260dps each

The fit was successfully able to complete drifter sites on sisi (even solo, albeit slowly), although upon bringing the fit to TQ I was blapped off field in short order. The root cause of this was determined to be that drifter penalties were not applying properly on sisi when compared to TQ. However I determined the base principles to still be valid.

Solution derived from continued testing on TQ:
1x Claymore with Republic Fleet warfare Mindlink
- Shield harmonization II
- Evasive maneuvers II
(I continued to run all siege & skirmish but these are the only 2 that matter)

Passive fit arty Jaguar. (the fit is provided in the video below)

Now here is the video that proves this all works. It is running at 1x speed to demo kill speed utilizing 2 jaguar's
pilots involved in the video below:
Baalkannon (Jaguar)
Coria Sertan (Jaguar)
Baalkon (Claymore)

https://youtu.be/ynkt7F9SXlY

Please note, in this video I had set 'orbit' on the drifter I am shooting. By changing to pointing myself in a straight line and letting them orbit naturally, i have reduced hit frequency to 'zero' with subsequent testing

recommendation for scale out:
1x command ship booster
6x jaguar (mid-grade halo recommended)
2x bantam or burst (frig logi) (mid-grade halo mandatory) - mainly to combat pilot error


Some notes to end with:

1) Drifter neuting pressure can be canceled out using small remote capacitor transfers, 1 in, 0 out is usually enough, more is obviously nice to have
2) A Rifter can do the same thing as the jaguar, but is more fragile with a higher risk of death should a shot land.
3) Onerios & Scimitar's seems capable of survive an initial hit on sisi and tank the damage between each other, further testing on TQ has not been conducted yet. It is assumed at this time than an AHAC style fleet may be capable of combating drifters. Further testing is still required before putting this into practice on TQ.


Those interested in helping conduct further testing are welcome to join the following in-game channel:

IG Drifter Testers

Technically decade. but thanks.

I should have clarified that statement better. drifters were around before our 10th birthday celebration, however it was on that day that their first major offensive took place.

Since there is a drift incursion in Kamela, and I'm a huge nerd, I'm extremely interested in fighting these guys. I'll buy a mig-grade Halo set tonight. Hit me up in game if you need bodies to fill ranks

Hello there! Always glad to see a newcomer to the Drifter fighting game. :)

First, some small clarifications. Drifter volley is 6400, 1600 per for each of the four damage types. Refire rate is five seconds, so raw DPS is 1280. They actually out-track themselves at their normal orbit, with a natural tracking of .082 rad/second, but an orbit transversal of about .11 rad/second. Their optimal sig radius is indeed 20m.

The doomsday, as last known, was 750k EHP raw, 187500 EHP each of the four damage types. Prior to a few weeks ago, the Drifter Doomsday did not have tracking and signature elements; it would always apply the full 750k EHP raw to its target. Sacrificial T1 cruisers were, as such, the most economical way to both survive a decent amount of weaponsfire and also get solid application on a target given the numbers of pilots we'd usually see on a Drifter hive raid. T1 frigates and destroyers aren't really up to the task, and T2 ships are generally more expensive than T1 cruisers.

We first saw Drifter Doomsdays missing targets on our hive raid 14th November, I believe. At that point, Consortium's testing has focused on using a brick Maller and TDs to deal with Drifter Incursions.

Needless to say, it works, though trying to catch a DD with TDs requires a fast lock time, and exposes us to pilot error. We've gotten down to two cruisers lost in an engagement, but the DPS is weak when using Arbitrators as the primary hull.

However, you might find a couple Sentinels spreading TDs enough to completely eliminate Drifter DPS.

Two Sentinels can spread a bonused TD to all six Drifters in a Moderate Influx with -67% tracking at 5 with appropriate links. It's not inconsequential.

What I'd recommend is something like four Confessors, two Sentinels, two Thalias once they hit TQ. The lasers hit into the Drifters EM and thermal resist holes, and defensive mode/HG halos get the sig down to 20.8m. It's also plenty of DPS.

Also, how are you avoiding the initial aggression before the Drifters settle into orbit? The initial approach can be a bit beastly, before TDs or transversal come into effect. With our TD/cruiser comp, we use a brick Maller to initiate aggro, take the first few volleys, as otherwise Drifters' initial volley of 38.4k EHP raw can have some unfortunate effects.

You are correct, at ranges greater than 40km you stand a high probability of being alpha'd off field.

In future iterations I want prop mods on the frigs to get them up to speed and inside the 'safe' zone ahead of taking damage. Once the command destroyers are introduced, if they are let into the drifter sites they will make life easy. currently on sisi they are denied access (or at least were on last test attempt of them).

I am glad to see a group already experimenting with an AHAC style fleet with promising results so far, however if you recall; one of the original requirements is no one dies. I take it your tests currently are 100% on sisi? I have not seen drifter sites being actively cleared on TQ.

There's an interesting trick for stealth bombers to get in range safely as well (warp in cloaked and fly to the drifters with cloak active) - sadly, stealth bombers apply damage horribly to drifters so they aren't a recommended option when everything else about them is solid.

In the video it looks like the local navy has engaged the drifters. So maybe wait till they are fighting before engaging?

Estella; drones have difficulty applying DPS to Drifters, as the Drifters' orbit speed is usually below the drones' pursuit speed, but well above the drones' orbit speed. You have to constantly re-aggress.

Baalkon; we've done periodic testing on TQ, mostly in the Pelkia and its environs. We cleared seven Moderates, I believe? Nothing too ridiculous, but enough to figure out the flaws in our method and work out solutions.

That said, without TDs, AHACs or cruisers are simply too large reliably dodge fire or doomsdays. We're still trying to work out reliably whether the DDs themselves can be tracking disrupted, or whether what we're seeing with our DD-catching Crucifiers is a placebo effect.

That said, a lossless method is ideal, but the number of Drifters and random wrecking shots will still have an impact, especially with smaller ships.

I notice in your video you're fighting three Drifters on a gate, one of the patrols that wanders around incursion areas. Have you been testing your methods in Moderate Influxes as well?

How important is the Mindlinked booster to the Jaquar composition?
Obviously it's included for a reason but could a couple of the new logi frigs make up for a booster once boosters are forced on grid?

Command Destroyers will be helpful with these.