Whilst replying to one topic and referencing another topic, I came to realizing that “a little of this and a little of that” might be the overall ideal solution.
Specifically the topic was supercarrier ratting, supercarrier proliferation, and that the ability of a large group to counter-drop makes supercarriers effectively safe while ratting.
On one hand, working as a team should warrant rewards. On the other… Eve isn’t safe.
So then I got to thinking about a suggestion someone made about blops BBs being able to fit a cyno inhib module. It was a good start, I had a few thoughts on the matter, but it certainly would help and as a concept I like the idea. In practice however, if I were in a tanky anything and a cyno lit, I’d just immediately light my own cyno before they could inhib (if this became a thing).
A potential solution dawned on me, and I didn’t want to hijack either thread as it’s MUCH more encompassing than either thread.
What if transit to a COVERT (only a covert, and either by bridge or by jump) cyno were to trigger a regular cyno inhib effect within 20 km for 60 seconds
Why this?
It would be able to jam a cyno a LOT faster than waiting for a blops BB to jump into system, the game to load, etc. This would mean it would be more effective at accomplishing its goal, which was my main concern.
The short range means it really wouldn’t be effective in a fleet battle of any size
Lighting a cyno immobilizes a ship - it’s easy to pop a ship with a cyno lit, offering counterplay against abuse.
hmm, can’t said I am against this because normally those ships which can use covert cyno usually don’t have great buffer hp (only T3C would have but they recently get nerf in this area) which mean it don’t take a much to kill them off.
I feel like this would get abused pretty quickly and not just against ratting supers. Like, a Mobile Cyno Inhib costs around 60m, it takes two minutes to anchor one, and a Covert Ops Frigate can light a Covert Cyno. So assuming you’re willing to spend about twice the cost you can get cyno inhib coverage up until the thing is anchored at which point you’re fine.
The idea being you have a Cov Ops light the Cyno, then you just feed Covert Ops frigs through it at 1m intervals. They warp and cloak as soon as they’re through and one can light another cyno if the first one dies.
Total cost, worst case scenario, is roughly three times what a Mobile Cyno Inhib costs now, and the likely case is less than twice to completely deny any ability to drop reinforcements on you before you pull out after securing your kill(s).
There’s a reason CCP have made stopping Cynos fairly difficult and expensive, often times it’s the only way a defender has to respond quickly and effective to an attack, since the attacker has all the initiative in determining where and when an attack happens and it’s neither practical nor fun to have everyone on high alert all the time.
I would argue that cynos make it TOO easy to respond. Capital blobs are worse than they have ever been. It’s almost irrelevant to drop 100 caps on things. If said pilots were in a position to jump to a cyno, they should be in a position to fly a ship over.
A capital blob will still work against a traditional roam, it would only fail against a blops gang… the so-called “messing with the enemy in their backyard” aspect that blops is supposed to be.
If they want to do that, I think that is a good and valid tactic actually. It’s much more active gameplay than dropping an inhib (not that either is overly active, but just the same). I see it as 100% the same as a dictor bubbling supers… they bubble and warp off. Bubble, warp off. You can’t kill it like you can a hictor, unless you’re really johnny on the spot. The mechanic change would defeat the cyno blob at the outset of the engagement, if the response fleet wanted to wait in their caps and hope that the cyno jamming effect goes down, that’s a strategic mistake on their part. As soon as the blops cyno jam goes up, they should be reshipping and gating over or getting bridged to a beacon (either in system or nearby).
The area of effect is small enough that it’s still not a valid tactic for any sizeable fleet battle, where a sustained cyno jam would not be more easily met by a mobile inhib. All you need to do is fit a cyno on a fast ship, undock and warp to the fight at 50km, then light your own vanilla cyno.
100% intentional. This is meant to really ■■■■ up the capital umbrella. It only applies to blops however, as your traditional roam has no way to do this unless they start bringing covops, and have a group of bombers, and have a BB in bridge range.
Sure there are plenty of aspects that should be considered before implementation (like the “just feed covops frigs” one), but I hope some version of the general idea will eventually get implemented.
Except the way capitals are balanced it can easily take 5 minutes to move a Carrier or Dread 2 jumps. Not even joking check the math here:
30 second align time and you’ll need to align twice so a minute there. Plus an average of 90AU gate to gate warps isn’t unreasonable in Null, so 60 seconds each there. Plus like 10-15 seconds each in acceleration on each end of the warp so another minute there. Plus erroneous time for loading and you’ve easily hit 5 minutes response time for a capital ship.
And the kicker here is that a Battleship is maybe a little over a minute faster total.
So at that point if you want to severely nerf capital response you either need to severely nerf dropping them in the first place, which no one actually wants, or you need to completely rework gate to gate travel for them, which makes the universe smaller again.
Except I can drop Blops from one system over and the advantage “no cynos” grants is huge especially if I can choose to light my Cyno first and then deny everyone else.
Except that a dictor bubble keeps things on-grid and in the ‘content’ while this keeps them off grid and out of it and in a way that offers no real counter play or options.
Someone fighting for their life on-grid or being intercepted on their way to grid is actually, you know, fighting. This is just blue-balls at a button press.
At which point your fleet is now 50km away from the fight, at least, and if it’s a capital drop they’re going to pretty much stay there. At least the ones that don’t bump off.
And I’m saying that’s not actually desirable. These people have put in the effort to protect their space, have capital ships up and on standby, and trained their members to respond, so why shouldn’t they get the benefits of that?
It’s not like it’s even actually stopped drops. Just look at the last month, we’ve lost more Supercarriers in the last month than in any other month in Eve history as well as more total Capital kills in general.
The moment a ship arrives at the cyno however (via BB bridge or BB jump) in my mind it would pulse a cyno jam effect (identical in implementation to fleet boosts… just affecting everybody).
Theoretically, in order for this to be implemented, the ship being bridged through could have a cyno inhib effect imparted upon it as well. This would not permanently stop it, but you’d have to warp off and remain off-grid for a minute while they slowly trickled ships in… which means that the ship off-grid isn’t really helping with the gank, and in my mind a fair trade.
I never said they had to gate their caps, honestly they should be reshipping to subcaps and flying those over. It’s very simple to throw a cruiser into your fleet hanger while you’re out ratting, so that you can dock up and switch into the cruiser if you can’t jump to them.
No… making it so they can still respond quickly with caps is completely neutering the idea; the idea is to force them to either gate in with capitals (very slowly) or to switch into faster smaller ships that the blops might stand a chance against.
If you’re dropping blops 1 jump over, they can gate 1 jump? The whole point is a huge advantage over capitals. They’re meant to surprise buttsex things, they can’t do that against anyone large because they’ve always got the ability to jump to each other and instantly repel attackers.
Yes, this denies content from coming onto grid… so does a mobile inhib though, are you against those? Your average covops ship can get popped a WHOLE lot faster than an inhib can (they have 150k structure iirc?) The difference is this is “SURPRISE LOLOLOL” where the inhib is more strategic.
Last I checked, carriers have significantly greater engagement ranges than 50km. Dreads and titans can also easily meet those engagement ranges as well… and in fact I would argue a dread stands a much better chance of hitting a subcap if it’s 50km away (lower transversal).
I think it’s quite desirable - and honestly, an opinion at that. Regarding the “effort” however, I would argue they’ve put very little in. Yes they’ve trained their members to respond… but said capital ships aren’t on standby, they’re out ratting.
“HELP I’M TACKLED”
–Everyone dock up, fit your caps for pvp, we jump to the cyno in 50 seconds
50 seconds later
–Okay everyone jump, primary target is…
Was that really a lot of effort? I mean, the carriers were even already aligned to their docking point.
Not sure if you heard, but there’s a war on. This would be specifically to buff whale hunting, not to buff capital fights. I haven’t seen anything here that would suggest this could be a viable tactic in a large fight. If you’re still concerned about just feeding frigates, then I would say make the ships jumping into the cyno also get inhibbed for 60s. Now they can’t light a cyno either until the enemy can as well, given that the cyno ship will get popped in seconds.
Which is flat out suicide if the guys ganking have dropped capitals, which your idea does literally nothing to prevent, and we both know that if you nerf the ability to engage with capitals offensively or make them take gates to do so you’re going to kill capital content in Null which would be massively unpopular.
Ah, you seem to have completely discounted the idea that someone might abuse this to drop something besides just Black Ops ships…
There’s nothing stopping someone from mixing in a few cheap Covert Ops ships and a Blops jumper into their fleet of Billion ISK cap-ships here, and if you actually manage to tweak the idea in a way that it can’t be abused like that then you’ve probably half killed it the other direction instead.
The mobile inhib takes two minutes to anchor, can’t be recovered, costs 60-70m per item, is 300m3, and only has 170k EHP which means that even a single Carrier can kill one before it onlines.
In short they’re stupidly difficult to use and all but completely useless in any sort of large fight. The only place I’ve heard of them being used with any consistency at all is by PL when they absolutely don’t want to have any meaningful response, and that’s when they’re dropping caps, supers, and titans. Even then they’re far from foolproof. What you’re proposing is so close to foolproof it’s at best a hair’s breath harder than timing Dictor bubbles without all the frantic burning in and out.
It’s mostly not an issue for Carriers, though they still prefer to be on top of things so their Fighters don’t die burning back to them.
For a Dread or Titan though that’s on the edge of effective range for a lot of their weapons, and that means in any normal blob you’re going to be out of range of half or more of the fight, and that’s without taking into account that half your fleet is going to bump.
A Dread isn’t going to be shooting sub-caps in any realistic cap engagement. That’s left to subcaps or Carriers if they don’t have anything better to do.
Actually most of the groups with anything significant on field do have standing fleets of people sitting in FAXes or similar ready to drop, because if you’re out ratting in a Carrier it’ll take at least two minutes to dock up and refit realistically.
By that point most ratting Carriers will be dead and anyone dropping anything bigger can have a mobile inhib up.
Not sure if you’ve heard but things rarely get used the way you actually intend them to. They get used in the way that’s most effective and abusable, and in this case that’s “anywhere stopping someone from dropping via Cyno is useful” which is pretty much anywhere.
There’s no buff to whaling needed. If you missed it this month has had more Super Carrier kills than any other month in Eve’s history, ever, as well as more Cap kills total.
What part of that sounds like we need a buff here?
Oh and making them need to warp in a ship instead of using the one that cyno’d through isn’t much of a penalty, especially in any fight involving TiDi, since the jumping ship probably won’t be under Tidi and your cyno ships can sit on-grid at range cloaked.
In short here, what in New Eden makes you think that people are only going to use this the way you intend it? This would be incredibly easy to combine with a cap drop or any other form of offensive Cyno and since you control the timing you can either make brief windows to light your own normal cyno to bring in reinforcements.
And how exactly are you planning on dropping capitals through a covert cyno? Go ahead, I’ll wait for that one… forgive me if I don’t hold my breath.
If you’re talking about them bridging in something with a regular cyno, I’ve already answered that prospect by providing the same inhib effect on the ships bridging in as on the ships being dropped on. If they wait it out and then bring in capitals, that sounds like a wonderful strategic move… which could EASILY be duplicated by the side getting dropped on. Odds are someone has a cyno alt nearby if they want to gate over and bring their own cap fleet in.
There’s also nothing to stop the other side from doing the same thing. What advantage does one side have that the other does not? Again, 20km effective radius, on something which has literally zero sig tank, and slightly less than zero actual tank. They light the cyno and inhib a few of your ships, big deal… you light a cyno on a ship that isn’t inhibbed.
No, they’re useless in any sort of fight, for exactly the reasons you suggest. This isn’t useless is it, you are already coming up with interesting ways to use it (incorrect ways, but never the less, it already has more potential than a mobile inhib).
Yes, the range is a disadvantage as it gives the blops gang time to ECM their fighters, and time to snipe their fighters. 50 carriers however will facerape a blops gang, with or without ECM. A 50 carrier counter-drop is not unrealistic.
Show me a capital that can blops drop and I’ll ask the mods to delete this thread. If the dreads/titans have nothing to shoot at, why would they want to jump in? I brought them up because you can fit them with high angle weapons. If you aren’t planning on using HAWs, they don’t really matter when you’re fighting a subcap gang do they?
No, they have FAX alts logged in. It’s not like they’re a dog sitting at the door waiting for dearest human to come home, doing nothing but staring at the door intently waiting for something to happen. The actual people are busy doing other things until the shtf. It’s still zero effort, and thus worth zero reward.
Something I personally partake in every chance I get.
Once again… there’s a war on. (Super)caps getting whelped to dread balls has exactly nothing in common with whaling. Surely you can see the difference between the two?
So… you’re worried about people abusing it in big fights to block reinforcements, yet… you specifically counter that argument here? I agree, with you here, it’s not much of a penalty in a big fight.
The way I see it, there are a few possible scenarios where you’re using this offensively:
Against a big fleet
Against a small gang
Against a solo ship
In the case of 1, you already refuted the usefulness of this yourself. It’s easy to circumvent.
In the case of 2, the small gang stands a decent chance without cap support, with losing to the blops drop being an acceptable and understandable outcome. They should be able to kill some stuff on their way down.
In the case of 3, this change provides BLOPS (not conventional pvp ships, which make up the bulk of eve pvp) with a significant advantage over a group whose response plan is to blob with caps. Which is 100% the intent.
You… light a normal cyno right next to it? It’s not like there’s any restrictions on this. At worst you need a second ship, but even if you assume the second ship has to jump a gate and warp to grid the timing between the cynos is still going to be in the 10-20 second range at worst.
Honestly for a cap drop you’re probably lighting the normal cyno first and then the covert one, since what you’re effectively doing is dropping a quick and cheap cyno inhib.
The initiative. If one side engages and then stops reinforcements they’re probably pretty sure they have the advantage on the grid and are going to win if nothing else jumps in.
That’s why cyno inhibition in general is so heavily restricted, because it’s so easy to set up a boringly easy engagement if the only things you need to worry about is what you can visibly see on grid and what you jump in.
Yes, more potential to restrict fights and stop them from escalating. That’s not desirable, that’s exactly the reason Cyno Inhibs are worthless in any sort of moderate sized fight that might escalate to large.
Except you seem to be assuming, still, that this is only going to get used with a BLOPS gang vs other things, as opposed to someone dropping Carriers and then using this to setup a cyno block.
It’s not zero effort, even if you assume that every single person in a standing fleet is an alt you still need someone to organize the thing, setup the communications channels, and often set up the system that rewards those players. Several alliances have a pay system for their standing fleet members so they don’t just take those cap alts and either stuff them into Carriers or Rorquals.
If this was as quick and easy to setup as you seem to think it is everyone would do it. Except most groups don’t, even the ones with more than enough members to support it.
Then you should be less blind to the abuses this would be put to. Honestly this isn’t even hard to abuse.
Go check the kills. Most of those Supers are dying well away from the front lines, and functionally there’s little difference between dropping a ton of Blops on a target and dropping a bunch of Dreads, except the Dreads are probably more effective.
So the way this would actually end up getting used is someone drops dreads and then drops a Cov Ops to block cynos after their dreads are on grid so the Super can’t cyno in any backup.
Not hugely, I strayed off topic there with the TiDi thing honestly. Mostly I’m figuring this is going to get used as a better and cheaper cyno-inhib to prevent fights from escalating on the aggressors.
Again, you seem to be stuck on the idea that this can only be used by Blops in a Blops-centric setting. There is literally nothing you can do to stop me from dropping a normal cyno to bring in my Caps followed by a Covert one to stop the enemy counter-dropping.
If you want to stop the enemy counter dropping then bring a Cyno Inhib with all of the downsides that come with it, instead of lobbying for something that would see about 1% of use in the way you intend and 99% of use as a way to make stuff like dread bombs even safer to execute…
i mean, if i follow the path directly, capital guns should be able to reach from that distance, right? i remember some battleship size gun being able to hit at 50.
it sounds like he’s trying to suggest buffs for covops in null. What’s the deal with everyone wanting to make covops the meta guys?
“The new meta” is hardly what I’d call it, however yes I am suggesting buffs for covops.
The reason for this is capital proliferation. They’ve become the new meta (not for everyone, but for large groups it’s really the only doctrine that high level FCs care about), and the simple counter is to bring in the back door buttsex, because I feel opposites best counter each other. What better than the “behind enemy lines” niche to be able to use utility to isolate ships from their capital reinforcements?
Okay, so you’re dropping an entire fleet on some small group which will beat said something if they don’t reinforce. And then because you block reinforcements and it dies… this is a problem? “Blocking content” I believe was how you described it - please correct me if I’ve misunderstood.
“Content” is still happening. “Escalation” isn’t happening. It’s just not as big as it would have been.
I’m not sure how much your FCs and leadership talk to you, or what your involvement is in this war, but I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard “they have capitals in the area and ours are staged too far south of here to counter-escalate”. So rather than go and take a fight we know we’ll lose, we blue ball. “Content” is not happening at all. There’s nothing at all.
If it’s two large fleets facing off against each other, unless they’re going to somehow light 4-5 cynos on everything at once, bridge something into all of the cynos all at once, and literally cyno jam an entire fleet (good luck?) the scenario you’re describing is relegated only to “a big fleet beating a little fleet with both numbers and tactics”. Which I say is the expected result.
No, I totally see the scenario you’re describing. I can definitely see it working. But ONLY when you outnumber them. Only when you’ve got the reasonable belief of victory, only when you’ve got bridge pilots at the ready, only when you’re ready to start feeding them frigates. In all cases, if they have remotely comparable numbers, they’ll simply spread out and the cynos won’t be able to cover them all.
The only time that scenario works is when you would have won anyways. The force getting dropped on and cyno jammed by the sheer nature of the conflict, would have to be quite a bit smaller. If the attacking force pre-stages their resources for the victory, that’s stratergy at work, and it deserves reward.
It’s zero effort. I’m in standing fleet 100% of the time I’m logged in, with all of my accounts including my logistics alt. If I’m out ratting and we get activated, I dock up, grab the prescribed doctrine ship, and rally. That’s 5x more work than a capital ship needs to do, and it’s still brain dead simple.
Comms channels, rewards, those are all pre-staged resources. You don’t stage them when one of your ratters gets dropped on, you stage them once when you form your policies, and it stays staged for the entire life of that policy. Again, brain dead simple.
If they want to pay their line members to sit quietly and do nothing, that’s their prerogative. Their reward is whatever the payment system is. For those who are out ratting, their reward is their ratting ticks. Sitting in standing fleet doing nothing does not inherently deserve reward.
I remain convinced that a standing fleet is a zero-effort initiative, and thus undeserving of the benefits a capital umbrella offers.
What? Are you serious? You have 50 pilots, you know where the enemy fleet is staging, you know they’ve got carriers, faxes, titans out. Are you going to stick them in blops or dreads?
Same 50 pilots, you know where someone is out super ratting. Are you going to stick them in blops or dreads?
They are functionally opposite of each other.
Dread bombs are all suicide attacks. You WANT them to cyno in reinforcements, so that after the super gets blapped, you can start blapping other things until you die. If you’re cyno jamming on a dread bomb, you’re doing it wrong. There’s almost no way a properly flown dread bomb isn’t isk-efficient.
Oh okay, take fatigue off dreads. Problem solved, they can move around quickly, blap ratters, and then disappear again. No, not being serious.
You ultimately make the same argument about it being abused, I’ll say it myself so you can confirm I understand where you’re headed with it.
I light a conventional cyno, and a covops cyno (or 10 covops cynos to cover their whole fleet). As soon as the conventional cyno is up, I bridge a frigate through to each of the covert cynos, effectively blocking their resources. My capital ships jump in, make short work of the group that got cut off. Please, if I’ve misunderstood, tell me.
As I mentioned, there are 3 styles of engagements that you’ll see. Your fleet vs a big fleet, your fleet vs a small fleet, your fleet vs a solo player.
You vs a big fleet:
How many covert cynos do you have? How many bridges do you have? How spread out is the enemy fleet? Are their subcaps in fast ships? Are their capitals balled up or did they bounce off each other?
The odds of successfully pulling this off against a big fleet are so infinitesimally small that if you actually do pull it off, you kind of deserve it at that point.
You vs a smaller fleet:
Okay, you cut off their reinforcements. This is a case of many pilots outmanoeuvring a smaller number of pilots. And remember, you only took that fight because you knew you could block their reinforcements. If you couldn’t block their reinforcements, you would not have taken the fight (because you know that once they escalate, you stand to lose a lot more than you want to lose). So in this case, jamming their cynos generates content, one could argue.
You vs solo:
Aww… your bait didn’t work. Sucks for you. Or, aww, you were out ratting and now you got blopsed. ■■■■ happens, rat closer to your standing fleet, pay attention to your intel. Your counter-play started the moment they entered local.
Sorry, one other thing that came to mind pretty much right after I pressed send. Given that it directly refutes what seems to be the biggest point of contention, I’ll leave it as my third post in a row (forgive me mods, I do it out of love).
You talk about the attacking force taking initiative. When was the last time a defensive force, which by its very nature formed to defend something (and are thus expecting an attack) were surprised that they got a defensive fight?
If you’ve got a defensive timer and you’ve got caps on standby, what are the odds that you don’t have scouts or cloaked cynos in safes in the very system?
If they form for a defensive objective, knowing full well that they’re on the defensive, why wouldn’t they stage some cloaked cynos? That 100% subverts the abuse you’re talking about.
Yes, most cap guns in most configurations can hit at 50, but caps more than any other ship class tend to bounce when warping or jumping, meaning you’re only at 50 if you’re lucky, and that’s still 50 from where your enemy has blocked your Cyno, not 50 from whatever may need to die right that minute. The near-stationary nature of cap combat means that you more or less sit where you drop so you want to be pretty close to the action unless you’re up for spending 5+ minutes bouncing in warp and repositioning.
