In small scale PVP, neutralization of capacitor can use useful. Some ships need capacitor to fire. Even if they don’t hardeners, webs, and tackle modules can be shut down.
In a low sec fleet battle with equal numbers, could a good fleet composition be Armageddons with highs filled with capacitor warfare plus some EWAR and logi? Let’s say they’re against railgun ships and logistics,
A cap chain would allow logi to keep each other with capacitor. But even if they had a bit of cap to spare which would allow them to do something like put 3 cycles on the next guy in the cap chain, 1 cycle on a railgun ship, then 3 cycles on the next guy again, they can’t give up too much to the railgun ships. On paper, a lot of heavy neutralizers can shut down a railgun fleet.
On the other hand, if a logi ship can be destroyed in a single alpha strike, that would be a lot easier than some janky thing like using neutralizers and then ripping apart the fleet with drones while the railgun fleet is unable to retaliate.
So can mass Armageddon neutralizers work against a railgun fleet? And if so, at what number does simple alpha striking (with something like… Munnins) work better?
Armageddons with capacitor warfare do bad damage, have bad tank, and have poor range. It also would not work against anything using missiles or autocannons. Since the neuts have a pretty bad range, they can be easily kited. Also, Muninns are missile ships now.
Critical neutralizing ships like Sentinels, Curses, Ashimmus, Armageddons, and Bhaalgorns are important for mid- to large-scale fleet combat, but they will usually be saparate from the main damage wing, especially if only fit with neuts. Bhaalgorns in particular have outstanding power and range, making them such deadly adversaries they have become the only banned Flagship in the Alliance Tournament.
At what number do the old Arty Muninns work against, say, equal numbers of Eagles or Feroxes? Probably between 20 and 50. Any more and you lose DPS to destroying stuff too fast, any less and your alpha strike might not finish a target, meaning DPS is all you have to go for. In huge numbers, Muninn FCs can just call out targets one by one, and the ships still die even if the fleet is splitting DPS.
Well warping to 0 with the probes and then neuting railguns worked once. Actually, I didn’t have an Armageddon that fight and was in a Dragoon (I don’t even know if I had battleship II at that time). And it was roughly 25 to 21 so I’m not really sure if it worked as a concept or if the other side just handled it really badly. I think our biggest non drone damage dealers were 3 Hurricanes, it was mostly neut and drone.
Oh yeah. What a sick joke. Now no ship offers medium projectile optimal range and damage without offering a falloff bonus. I don’t want a ship with falloff. I mean if you give a ship I like and then give me falloff on top of that, I’ll take it.
So what you’re saying is that against a competent enemy, going all in on neuts and drones is just bad. Ok fair enough. At some point when you’re just volleying away logi, 7 “spare” main damage pilots matter more than adding 7 neuting pilots since you don’t want to fall below the critical number needed for the alpha strike. Which would be between 20 and 50 under the old patches by your reckoning.
I guess ScyFIs and Cynabals can still work, but they’re not really the best for fleets. They are both best at being fast. Maybe you’d like the Omen Navy Issue, the Eagle, or the Zealot?
I do like the Omen Navy Issue and the Zealot. Well, actually I’ve seen HACs in action but didn’t fly one, so my opinion of the Zealot is second hand. To me the Stabber is exactly a picture of what is wrong with how CCP treated midsized artillery ships. It has bonuses to rate of fire and falloff. Ok, now where’s the ship that gets the opposite bonuses to Medium Projectile Turrets in the form of damage and optimal range? That used to be the Munnin. I like the ONI, but I think the Minnmetar should get a ship that does that without needing a second racial skill or T3.
ONI is Osprey Navy Issue. Only the Osprey. Omen Navy Issue is OmNI or NOmen.
I personally love the Stabber. It’s my favorite T1 cruiser. For autocannons, I usually run the Stabber, but for Arties, I usually run the Stabber. It’s not nearly as good as, say, a rail Thorax or a Vexor, but it’s fun. An optimal range bonus on a Minmatar ship is not necessarily good, as it pretty much destroys any autocannon variant and the optimal bonus has to be pretty powerful as a result, leading to very oppressive artillery platforms like the old Muninn, the old Hurricane, and the current Fleet Cane. If you want that optimal bonus, you’ll have to be sad. The T2 ships that could work well with arties are, unfortunately, only the Broadsword and Huginn, particularly the Huginn. However, these ships are slower or flimsier than HACs, and neither of them has an optimal bonus. I think that’s OK, as long as Heavy Missiles or Rails can take their place. No one ever doubted the Eagle, the new Muninn, or the Cerberus. I guess you could get yourself an arty Ishtar like those old Vertical Supremacy Arty Myrmidons.
I don’t mind the existence of it my itself and it is fast. My problem is that they don’t give the opposite in a different ship. It being there with its falloff bonus is like a big middle finger to those who like optimal.
There’s so many examples of different comps to look back on as examples of how people use energy neutralization.
As a general rule of thumb, the slower you can kill ships, and the fewer ships you’re facing, neutralizers are better. They’re devastating 1v1, and for crippling key ships you’d struggle to break with raw dps (like a fax, dread, rorqual…), but when the outcome of a fight is decided in less than 30s they’re unlikely to be a major factor.
This is also what I concluded. In low but equal numbers, you could shut down a railgun fleet and slowly pick them apart even if they have logi. But once you can alpha strike logi, it’s probably better to have N “spare” damage dealers to stay above that threshold than add on N neuting ships. I didn’t get the memo on the Munnin nerf (and since it and the HFI were the only ones with bonuses to optimal range, a nerf to 720 howitzers in general) so I used them as an example. But even if the ship itself isn’t a good example anymore, the concept of sufficient numbers to volley off ships still is valid and being above that theshold is more important than capacitor warfare.
Cruiser Arty has been dominant for so long (look at Jin’Taan’s very good “Why Medium Autocannons Suck” for a good historical perspective), they are basically being built around for the entire game. The reason falloff bonuses are everywhere and optimal bonuses are only on specialized ships like the Loki and Fleet Cane is because autocannons just don’t get as much love. Arty is so powerful because of that Alpha damage, and fleets can use it to tremebdous power. It is a challenge to make sure other ships are represented while not nerfing Autocannons into the ground as collateral damage for the dominance of Artillery. The solution? Falloff bonuses and Rate of Fire bonuses. You see them everywhere on Minmatar ships, especially (battle)cruisers, for this exact reason.
Against the stabber without the old Munnin is just a big middle finger to 720s.
Why not just make autocannons have bigger damage multiplers? That’s a better solution than having just about nothing besides T3 or pirate ships having optimal range.
No I’ve never flown a Munnin. I looked foward to one in the future. That whole nerf is awful. Fall and no optimal ship just awful
Wait… you’re complaining because of something you’ve never even flown???
You are basing this just on… nothing? You actually have never experienced these in the current fleet and solo meta? Why even complain then?
you are aware that a high number of people were bored of muninns dominance? it ,was muninns online…I find the new changes quite… interesting. And, as Nujenif said, i am amazed that you complain about nerf of things you never used…
