Breacher pod banned in HS

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
41

I could accept short range as a way to balance beacher pods, but we would have to compare them with other short range options. Considering this is a battlecruiser-size hull with a strong tanking potential (unlike attack battlecruisers, which are balanced by their paper thin tank), we should compare it to medium blasters, autocannons, pulse lasers and heavy assault missiles.

12km makes them comparable to HAMs and pulse lasers. HAMs are balanced by relatively weak damage and poor application; pulse lasers by relatively weak damage and poor tracking at closer ranges. A Cenotaph has perfect application and a damage potential far in excess of a blaster Brutix shooting void, but a Brutix can do that at 1-2 km, not 12. Clearly, in order to be balanced, a Cenotaph would need a lot less range than 12km. To scale reasonably well with everything else, 1500m maximum would probably be about right.

42

Has it?

I honestly don’t know the ‘potential’ at first glance, due to the conditional damage of the breacher pods.

So I’ll open Pyfa and let’s compare the damage.
On one hand, a common Brutix dps setup with 6 Heavy Neutron Blasters shooting void and 3 Magnetic Field Stabilizers deals 972 dps.
On the other, a Cenotaph with 3 425mm Autocannons and 3 Heavy Assault Missiles shooting Hail and Rage deals 660 dps, plus whatever damage the breacher pod does. (I skipped weapon upgrades due to the multiple weapon systems and few low slots, it’s rarely used.)

This means the Breacher pod has to deal 312 dps or more for the Cenotaph to deal more damage than a Brutix.

With a breacher pod dps value of 1% of the target’s raw hitpoints this requires the target to have 31k hitpoints or more, which is more than most subcapital ships have.

Only some passive-fit battlecruisers and battleships reach those values, for most other ships the Cenotaph is going to tick for a lot less damage. Against a large subcap like an active battleship like a Vargur it’s going to tick for only 280 dps, and deal less raw damage than a Brutix.

This however neglects a big aspect of the breacher pod, which is that it bypasses resistances. Even if the dps is low against most subcaps, this raw damage becomes relatively stronger compared to other damage the more resistances the target has. If it has 80% resistance other damage sources like that Brutix’ void are cut in 5, but not so for the 280 dps of the Cenotaph’s breacher pod.

This makes the Cenotaph relatively strong against blinged ships.

And it’s also great against capital ships where the breacher pod can deal a lot more than 280 raw damage, all the way to the 1000 raw damage you see in your Pyfa. Don’t let that confuse you though - against subcapital ships you’re never going to reach that number.

So, the Cenotaph deals more damage against capital ships and also can deal more damage than the Brutix against large subcapitals if they have high enough resistances.

Does that make the Cenotaph better than the Brutix?

Well… I can add 5 more Brutixes in a fleet and increase the fleet’s damage five-fold to 4860 dps, but if you add more Cenotaphs you’re only getting 3300 dps and one ticking breacher pod effect. The effect doesn’t stack, so it’s a ‘one of a kind’ ship you bring only one of to your fleet.

I’m seeing some clear advantages of the Cenotaph, but also advantages of the Brutix in:

  • you can effectively bring more of them
  • deals more damage against most but the biggest subcaps
  • cheaper

Yes, the Cenotaph is strong, but it doesn’t seem overbearingly strong to me.

Now if you’re still afraid of a Cenotaph, why not take a look at ECM?

Besides short range the Cenotaph has a second weakness as of the latest nerf: the Cenotaph has the lowest sensor strength of all battlecruisers at 15. As comparison a Brutix has 20% more sensor strength at 18.

This means a Falcon which can easily hit 15.8 jam strength is guaranteed to disable a Cenotaph out of an entire fight with a single jam, and even if the Cenotaph uses countermeasures like sensor boosters it’s going to suffer from ECM a lot more often than other battlecruisers.

And strongest counter against ECM is that you can shoot back the jamming ship - which the Cenotaph isn’t able to do due to it’s short range. That Falcon I mentioned has an optimal ECM range of 48km, four times the range of the breacher pod.

Sounds like a good counter to me!

3 Likes
43

I appreciate that you put out some numbers, because it gives us something to talk about, but I disagree with your conclusion.

First, comparing a ship with 3 damage mods to a ship with 0 is not very informative when talking about balance, but let’s go with it anyway for argument’s sake.

In this scenario, let’s say the target has pretty mundane 50% resists. The Brutix’s 972 DPS is now 486, and the Cenotaph’s 660 is 330. The difference is 156 DPS, so the Cenotaph does more DPS as long as the target has > 15,600 raw HP, which isn’t massive. Already, we have a balance problem because the Cenotaph can do equal damage at superior range and with better application. At 65k raw hp and 75% resists, which I think is typical for armor brawl battleships, we’re looking at a Cenotaph dealing 815 DPS (165 + 650), more than 3 times the Brutix’s 243 after resists. I haven’t run the numbers, but I don’t think even a triple damage mod Vindicator shooting void can beat that.

Of course, this is with the Cenotaph only shooting 1 ship. At max skills, the Cenotaph’s DOT effect lasts 75 seconds and it can apply an effect to a new ship every 10 seconds, so in theory, you could have 8 DOT effects ticking away at the same time. I realize this is unrealistic, considering lag in the game, so I’ll say 6 is a more realistic maximum. That gives the Cenotaph 4065 DPS, a bit under 17 Brutixes worth of damage. Against capitals, that goes up to 6165 DPS, just over 25 Brutixes.

Cenotaphs have more than an order of magnitude more damage potential than their competitors. A handful of them can obliterate a fleet in a matter of minutes. This fundamentally breaks the long-standing meta of masses of DPS smashing against each other, supported by small wings of specialists. In some ways, this is an exciting change. If damage dealers are absolutely lethal, fights shift in favor of tactics over mass, and the the importance of individual players doing their jobs is amplified. As you said, ECM is a counter to Cenotaphs, but remote sensor boosters are a counter to ECM, and a Cenotaph + a remote sebo ship has a lot more potential than 2 Brutixes. Of course the remote sebo ship can be damped or neuted out, and there are counters to those ships in turn.

Fundamentally, I don’t have a problem with a massive increase in damage, which forces a meta shift and emphasizes other aspects of the game. What I don’t like seeing is a huge portion of the game being left behind and all the interesting nuances of different ship types being replaced by a single hull.

2 Likes
44

You are wasting your time. He has no clue how Cenotaphs are used and all his “numbers” are completely irrelevant under a practical perspective. :man_shrugging:

It is really like a bunch of eunuchs talking about sex. They know everything but understand nothing.
I am not really sure he understands why Cenotaphs are hugely on top of all damagedealers in the fleets they participate, often way above Marauders, BlackOps or Leshaks.
I mean, I even linked a Battlereport where you can see it: The Cenotaph entered LATE into the fight (after the Loki of the same pilot died) and still managed to deal top damage to the enemy ships by a huuuuuuge margin. The next best ship is a Faction Battleship that barely did half of the Cenotaphs damage. He absolutely has no idea how wrecking these ships are to smallscale fleetfights.

Their little Missile- or Autocannon DPS is completely irrelevant, all that matters is the DOT, which ingores any resists, skills, fleetboosts, factionplates… even worse, increase it’s DPS if people skill and invest into their fits.

And all those “counters” like “uh just bring a falcon!!!” just shows he has no idea what is going on in these fights (ProTip: A falcon is damped out, forced off or killed in under a minute in those fights).

2 Likes
45

Open zkillboard and show how many Cenotaphs use damage modules when they have only two low slots and split their damage between two systems so that damage modules are only half as effective as on other ships, and don’t even affect their main weapon system.

I think it was a very good assumption to use zero damage modules for the Cenotaph and three for the Brutix, unless you can convince me otherwise.

Of course 6 capital ships within 12 km that you can freely shoot at is a dream scenario for a Cenotaph, but how many battle reports show that this is a realistic scenario?

It certainly is a unique ship with a huge damage potential.

But is it bad for the game if a fleet has one unique high priority target that has most of the killing power?

To me it just shows a unique dynamic that we didn’t have before. A meta shift. I don’t necessarily see it as bad.

I see we largely agree. I too don’t have problems with meta shifts.

If the Cenotaph’s power is indeed leaving behind a lot of interesting nuances of different ship types then I agree it’s bad and I’d love to hear which ships and strategies are affected. It would be a shame if certain ships become irrelevant because of the Cenotaph.

But usually when it’s about the Cenotaph I don’t hear nuanced opinions, but usually exaggerated numbers. And what appears to be simple hate of the Cenotaph that seemingly cannot be reasoned with, like Syzygium below you. (You often have good takes, Syzygium, but for some topics I don’t get the feeling we can just have a reasoned discussion.)

46

They are only “exaggerated” from the perspective of someone who has no experience with the ship.

cenodmg
cenodmg478×247 40.6 KB

these are the top3 damagedealers of the fight linked above. Just look at the numbers and try to understand.

The Cenotaph arrived LATER, because the pilot was in the Loki first. Then the Loki died, the pilot reshipped and came back in the Cenotaph. Still the Cenotaph outperformed the #2 on the Report, a Tempest Fleet Issue which is already a damage monster (note: it is part of a shield-fleet, so you can assume it had 4 damage mods, probably faction), by almost TWICE the damage dealt.

What you see from me is far from being blind hate. It is knowledge and experience. What you show is ignorance.

47

Yes, and a Bomber deals more damage than an Assault frigate.

I don’t see the problem with it that the Cenotaph deals a lot of damage?

Try to convince me why it’s wrong that it deals a lot of damage?

Edit: And didn’t that battle report combine the damage dealt by the Loki and Cenotaph into that 19%? Funny things can happen when players reship.

48

Bombs fly for more than 10 seconds, you have a reaction window to either

  • get out of the way,
  • jump,
  • fire a defender missile
  • or bring a smartbomber close enough to destroy them before detonation.
  • You can tank agains their damage,
  • skilling and invest in tough but expensive fits
  • deactivate your propmod to lower your signature to reduce their impact,
  • overheat your hardener to lower their damage.
  • If you survive and can warp off, you don’t die mid warp.
  • Your fleet members can starburst to significantly lower impact damage to your fleet. And against very few targets their damage simply sucks.
  • Bombers don’t survive long, they are basically glass cannons.
  • postioning yourself for an successful bombrun is pretty hard, especially with bubbles on grid that prevent ranged warps

Contrary to:

  • A cenotaph can be ridculously brick-tanked and is almost unkillable (at least quickly) if logistics keep them up.
  • You can almost never prevent the DOT from applying because the Cenotaph can declaok right next to your fleet and then “hug” you with it’s AB running. The reaction time between pod launch and impact is way too short
  • You cannot stop the damage when applied nor can you negate it by maneuvers, fits, overheating or skills. You can only have logis counterrep it, which becomes impossible once the Ceno has hit several ships at once.

Seriously, stop making a fool of yourself. That was a Heavy Missile Loki. Their DPS is a joke. Do you really believe a second that damage comes from the Loki? Really, if it wasn’t so sad, I would begin laughing. It is insane what straws you try to draw at this point. Please accept that you have no idea about this matter. It it’s no shame not to know everything. And about Cenotaphs and the damage they do to high-skilled smallscale fleets you simply know nothing.

I don’t even say there aren’t any countermeasures. You CAN bring a bricktankblinged Scorpion or Widow for like 5B (because you’d need an Amulet Set to make their tank even remotely viable for an Armor Fleet) and then pray your Jams hit. And that the opponents don’t have enough EWAR to disable it, because else you are screwed even with it. And that countermeasure is completely imbalanced expensive and luck-based compared to the incredibly easy use of the Cenotaph.

1 Like
49

I didn’t say all damage came from the Loki, nor even that half the damage came from the Loki, just that some damage came from the Loki.

It’s similar to when someone ‘killed a ship while flying a pod’. Reshipping results in weird damage graphs.

In this case the Cenotaph may have arrived late, but already did some damage in that Loki.

I still believe you that it dealt a lot of damage though.

I wasn’t even talking about bomb bombers, just torpedo bombers already deal more damage than Assault frigates in some situations, like when the target is large enough for Torpedos to apply well.

I simply wish for you to tell me why it is bad that the Cenotaph does a lot of damage.

I certainly see the Cenotaph has the potential to deal a lot of damage, that I do not disagree on.

I just disagree that a certain ship ‘dealing a lot of damage’ is bad for the game by default.

So what if a ship deals 3 times more damage than another ship in a specific situation.

Why is it bad?

You apparently cannot tell me that, you instead just keep insulting me, seemingly out of hatred for the Cenotaph. This is why I said it seems I cannot have a reasonable discussion with you on this topic.

50

Leave the region or dock up.

1 Like
51

I try ro be quasi-scientific when comparing ships, and that involves eliminating variables. If I’m trying to compare damage, I want to make the tank and utility similar. I’ve been away from a computer for a bit, so I can’t check it on Pyfa, but I suspect a triple damage mod Brutix like you described has worse tank than a zero damage mod Cenotaph.

We were talking about damage potential, and that’s the potential. I imagine it’s extremely uncommon in practice. Hosever, I bet tagging 3 heavy armor brawl battleships at a time, putting out ~2000 DPS that ignores resists is pretty common, and that is something like 4-5 times the damage output of high damage short range battleships.

Who says there will only be one? Why limit yourself to 6 DOTs when you can put a DOT on everything and kill the entire enemy fleet in a couple of minutes? What if you get jammed, wouldn’t you rather have a backup or three? What if some random guy gets a perfect warp in, wouldn’t you rather he be able to apply to multiple ships rather than just one? In the messiness of a fight, it’s almost always going to be desirable to have as many Cenotaphs as possible.

Armor brawl cruisers, battlecruisers, and battleships will likely be most affected, since they are just out-traded in practically all circumstances, from solo to medium sized gangs. Armor buffer tank doctrines (with short range weapons) with logi will go away. Active tank battleships will disappear and and maybe active tank battlecruisers too. As Cenotaphs become more common, eventually people will tire of getting dunked on by ships that vastly outclass them.

Many battleships are used almost exclusively as PvP brawlers, and we should expect to see them virtually disappear from the game; think Tempests, Fleet Tempests, Hyperions, Leshaks, Bhallgorns, and Vindicators. Dominixes, Armageddons and Navy Armageddons will likely become highsec PvE boats only.

Battlecruisers will likely survive, but only with long range weapons.

1600mm plate cruisers will likely disappear.

Just my opinion.

52

Yeah, like 5 to 10%. MAYBE.

Stop trolling please. A bomber with Torpedos that even tries to stay on grid is dead in seconds. They are glass-cannons for a reason. You really really really have to let go your assumption that we are talking about the trash-PvP you might know from Nullsec where you might stay decloaked with a Bomber and just spam torpedoes into something. That isn’t possible against a good bunch of opponents. The really only practical use in hard smallscale fights is to decloak, throw a bomb, hope you hit many ships before they can get away and then instantly warp off before anything can hit or tackle you. And then you can come back like 2 minutes later and try again. Your overall impact on the battle is NIL.

Because it single-handedly RUINS OTHERWISE GOOD FIGHTS.

What is so hard to understand? That thing is pretty much unkillable. You probably can’t even tell me how much eHP a well-fitted Cenotaph has and how much damage a typical logi wing can rep on it. Because you simply have no idea about these things and just argue with hearsay, feelings and wild assumptions.

Other high-dps ships actually have hard downsides. Polarized fitted ships turn into null-resist glasscannons. Bombers are glasscannons. Marauders are immobile and highly vulnerable to all kind o EWAR (not chance based) like TDs, GDs, Damps AND cannot receive remote-repairs while their high-damage-bastionmode is running. BlackOps and FactionBS usually have bad application AND are not even remotely as strong as a Cenotaph.

It all comes back in circles to the same point: You have NO IDEA what we are talking about here. And the saddest part is that you are to stubborn to accept that simple fact.

1 Like
53

You keep throwing insults and yet cannot explain why it is bad that a single ship can deal a lot of damage in a specific situation.

How does it ‘ruin otherwise good fights’ by doing high damage?

What is bad about doing a lot of damage in a specific situation?

That is a good attempt, but the Cenotaph too appears to have downsides:

For one, the range is a lot less than the bombers or Marauders you mention.
It also is jammed much more easily than those Marauders.

Next, unlike the BlackOps, Marauders, FactionBS and bombers you mention you can never effectively fill a fleet full of these things as their main damage system simply does not stack.

To me this seems that even if you bring a Cenotaph in your fleet for the high damage potential it still allows room for many other ships to shine, so to me it doesn’t seem to make other ships irrelevant.

Yes, some ships have the potential to deal a lot of damage.

Babarogas can deal a whole lot more than other ships it’s size if it is fully spooled up and bastioned.
Thunderchilds can deal a whole lot of damage if the enemy fleet is clustered.

Dealing a lot of damage in a specific situation isn’t necessarily bad for the game.

Now if the ship was consistently dealing a lot of damage in all situations and pushing out other strategies I would agree this is a problem, but I am waiting for you to make that argument and convince me that many strategies and alternative ships are made irrelevant by the Cenotaph.

Because to me it seems like this is just a one-of-a-kind ship that people bring to their fleets that deals a lot of damage. And I see nothing wrong with that unless I see otherwise, and I haven’t yet seen otherwise.

Instead of a good argument I get insults.

Fair, I had mostly considered the Cenotaph fit when I argued that comparison.

I didn’t consider the Brutix possibly didn’t use three damage mods, maybe one or two damage mods for the Brutix versus zero on the Cenotaph is a better comparison, if I look through common Brutix zkillboard deaths.

And yes, a Cenotaph can have a fair bit higher tank, but we were discussing damage here so I kept that out.

54

I think you can fill a fleet full of these, because while their damage doesn’t stack, almost every subcap in the game will die in 100 seconds if they start getting hit by them, unless they recieve reps. With enough Cenotaphs, there is no reason why you can’t attack every single ship at the same time, overwhelming any reasonable sized logi wing.

Even if we go to the logical extreme to counter this and dedicate one logi to every DPS ship, we still have to contend with a Cenotaph’s secondary weapons, which do stack. How do you balance repping the primary and repping another ship that needs 800 raw hp/sec?

If we don’t consider what sacfifices a ship had to make to get to a certain amount of damage, we can come up with some wild conclusions. Polarize the guns on something and its DPS is going to be way higher, but it doesn’t follow that a ship with polarized guns is better, or even a reasonable choice for many situations; it’s turning into a glass cannon to do that.

55

Maybe you can fill a fleet, but it doesn’t appear to happen.

What I do see is blops fleets with 20 Redeemers and a Cenotaph. Personally I’m of the opinion that the Redeemers need a nerf instead.

If you’re taking 800 or more raw hp/s damage you can probably heal it with the other capital ships you have on grid.

The majority of subcaps take considerably less raw damage from a Cenotaph, 800 raw hp/s requires the ship to have 80k raw hitpoints. Neither the surprisingly high tank for a subcap of a Cenotaph (about 40-50k raw hitpoints) nor the tank of one of the neuting deemers in the fleet I described above (70k raw hitpoints, dps fit is 46k) reach that number.

Again, most subcaps take a lot less raw damage than that.

This also means that if Cenotaphs were to be oppressively strong, people can change the way they fit ships to significantly reduce the damage taken from the Cenotaph by putting emphasis on high raw (remote) repaired numbers rather than buffer and high resistances.

I don’t necessarily see a change in meta as a bad thing.

Fun fact, polarizing your ship doesn’t make it any more vulnerable to breacher pods! Free dps upgrade against Cenotaphs! :stuck_out_tongue:

56

I do not want to “insult” anyone. If you feel insulted by me saying that you have very obviously no idea how the Cenotaph and it’s DOT mechanic ruin high-level smallcale fights, it is not my intention. From my point of view, it’s simply stating a fact.
I have really tried hard to explain every single aspect. Why it’s paper DPS is irrelevant. Why it’s limited range is irrelevant. Why it’s damage not stacking is irrelevant. Why it’s low Sensor strength is irrelevant.

And you simply keep ignoring it, insisting that are all weaknesses. But they are only a weakness in theory.

You can’t even answer very simple questions:

  • how much eHP has a well fitted Cenotaph?
  • how much DPS can a typical 4-Basi Logisquad rep on it?
    (hint: both translates how fast you can remove it by calling it primary)
  • how much Sensor strength does it have?
    (hint: that translates how high your chances are to successfully perma-jam it)

You keep asking really really silly questions like “why is it bad that a single ship deals high damage”? - Totally ignoring that we aren’t talking about just “high damage” but absurdly OP high damage, while being able to move, receiving RR, pretty much no way to keep it at a distance and having basically no chance to limit this damage via EWAR like you can with all other ships.

  • Leshaks/Ikitursas you can easily despool.
  • Marauders you can outmaneuver or break since they cannot receive RR and are immobile. You can neut them dry to stop them from tanking.
  • Polarized fits you can easily kill.
  • Bombers you can basically oneshot.
  • EDENCOM ships pretty much suck in damage application and once you brawl they are totally useless since they will always hit their own fleet too. You can also greatly reduce their effectivity by starbursting.

And so on. Nothing of all that works against a Cenotaph. You cannot break it quickly, you cannot stop it from coming close in a brawl. You cannot Jam if effectively. Tracking Disruption is useless. Neuts doesn’t stop the Breacher Pod Launcher from working. Sensor Dampening it is useless. Neither resist nor skills nor investing in the fit nor movement nor signature lower the damage.

You simply ignore all of that, insisting "yeah but it doesn’t look OP to me. And that is actually very frustrating.

57

@Syzygium

I’m curious about where you are having your experiences in fighting centaphs?

I’m guessing, from your words, you are describing wormhole fights? Is that correct?

58

Cenotaphs have high damage potential, but that damage is situational.

Like the damage of a max-spooled Babaroga in bastion, it is situational.

The situation where the Cenotaph’s damage shines is defined by the characteristics of the breacher pod:

  • against large ships with large raw hitpoint values, buffer battlecruisers and larger
  • against ships with very high resistances, better than T2 resistance modules
  • against ships in short range in a brawl

In other words, the Cenotaph’s strength lies in bling brawls.

This means I am not at all surprised when Syzygium, who does wormhole brawls as far as I know, attempts to convince me that the damage of the Cenotaph is strong.

Of course it is strong, that’s the situation where the Cenotaph is strongest.

59

Yes.

For any other space, Cenotaphs are barely a problem because fleets are so big, their few DOTs make not much of a difference and they often get alphaed like most other ships. If 100 people shoot at you, your tank is irrelevant. Well, or it’s part of a hotdropping fleet (lets not forget, it is a COVERT ship as well…), where it’s target doesn’t can muster a defense most of the time anyway.

But in WH space you basically have to outbling your fits, because everyone else is doing it as well. If you don’t bring extremely expensive and highly developed fits that basically scratch the mechanial limits the game have (talking about multibple-hundredthousand eHP per ship and resist profiles of 80+, sometimes 90+ on the key ships), your opponents will do it and wipe the floor with you. The pilots here invest huge amounts of skilltime, ISK, training and pyfa-effort into creating fits and fleet setups that can engage others even if they might have escalation support (because you cannot perfectly know what they will have as reserve). And it is insanely frustrating to see such a fleet being effectively massacred without any chance by this stupid thing.

WH Space is also an environment where you can count on the fact that most high-class PvP corps absolutely know a 100% what they are doing. And if they bring a Cenotaph, they have effectively closed all loopholes to easily disable it. It is a total illusion to believe you can “just jam it”. Or you “call it primary then..”.

60

Wrong. Where I live, it is highly effective in basically every meaningful fight situation.

Wrong. A Babaroga is a joke compared to a Cenotaph. I’d engage a Fleet of 10 Babarogas way easier than a Fleet of 9 other ships and 1 Cenotaph. Thats how OP it is.

And you have not answered a single of my questions.

- how much eHP has a well fitted Cenotaph?
- how much DPS can a typical 4-Basi Logisquad rep on it?
(hint: both translates how fast you can remove it by calling it primary)
- how much Sensor strength does it have?
(hint: that translates how high your chances are to successfully perma-jam it)

Unless you can answer that, a discussion with you is absolutely pointless.