Because in practical terms the risk isn’t zero, there’s a small mountain of zKill losses that show that it’s not zero. Saying that the risk is zero unless you screw up is only applicable if no one ever screws up, which is demonstrably not the case.
Plus you seem to be under the impression that subcaps are under some significant amount more risk than a Carrier is to other players when that’s not the case. You can fit out a subcap to fight aligned and basically only die if a Dread spawns and you’re slow on the warp button or unlucky.
On top of that it runs counter to CCP’s design philosophy for an upgraded ship to be a downgrade in the most important metric for PvE, which is income. It also doesn’t feel particularly good as a player, which makes it a questionable design choice at best.
Not really, Carriers have been the end-game ratting ship in Null for years. Thousands of players trained into them before they were ridiculous, thousands more did so after they became ridiculous. If I were to guess more people have trained into Carriers before they needed a nerf than since, though currently more are almost certainly active.
Except it’s not one site every five minutes, it’s like one site every seven or twelve minutes (I honestly forget how long sites take in a Dread) followed by between one and four minutes of sitting around doing not much except watching a timer tick down and hoping no one sites a Cyno under you.
IIRC Dread Ratting income is somewhere between efficient L4 missions and so-so Incursion running in terms of payout. Not at a level players are likely to be happy with for end-game Null content, especially with all the problems it has.
Once again, I said anyone who isn’t an idiot will not get tackled ratting in a carrier. Eve is full of stupid people and the killboards reflect intelligence in that regard. It has never catered to stupidity before, and it should not. Ratting aligned, unless you’re in a WH, the moment you see local go up you should warp to a tether citadel; then recall your fighters, then dock. Neuts have exactly zero opportunity to tackle you. If you screw up and don’t pay attention… meh. You deserve to lose your ship regardless of what it is. The “risk” in even that case is minimal because you should be ratting with a cyno. Someone in standing fleet drops a fax on you and it’s GG for the roamers once the rest of the response fleet jumps in.
Give an idiot a chance to lose a ship, any ship, and they will. Stupid people deserve to die. The RISK however, does not change.
Right… and if you fit out that subcap to run aligned, your ticks will be… what…? Shitty. As is always the case, sniper fit subcaps have terrible dps for obvious reasons. Because your top speed in even a BS is high enough that remaining aligned will get you too far from a site to finish it quickly, you will need a very long range sniper fit in a subcap. Hence the trade-off for perfect safety… shitty ticks. Except a carrier does not get reduced ticks while being fully aligned out.
Carriers were defined as anti-subcap. Not ratting ships. The only “dedicated” ratting ship I know of is the marauder, because it is completely pisspoor at anything else, and killboard usage would support that claim.
I’ve not tried it, corp restrictions against ratting in something so easily tackled, but the math appears to be VERY straightforward. You can finish a site in less than 5 minutes easily with the fit I was experimenting with in pyfa. Yes, I’ve looked at damage application… it’s a max ratting fit, doesn’t even have an active rep on it. Not saying it’s smart but given how quickly it pays for itself, it’s certainly an option. Moot regardless, because this is about carriers anyways.
And again, what it takes isn’t being a “complete idiot” it just takes a minute or two of inattention or simply someone out playing you sufficiently.
Actually, fun fact, this is a myth. There’s this fun thing called a log-off trap. It’s how a lot of ratting supers and Titans get caught. There’s a small delay between when you log in and when your character shows up in Local. If you know someone’s habits or can otherwise confirm when someone has logged in (often through spies or other means) then you can drop all of your log-off trap characters onto every anom in their system. One of them will land on the right site, on top of him if you’re a little lucky, and then you’ve got him. If none of those get him the guy in the HIC 400km off his dock-up Citadel will.
At the end of the day CCP balanced for the reality of how ships get used, live, and die in Eve. Not for the 100% perfect theoretical case. In theory a T1 Frigate should never beat an AF, and an AF should probably never beat a T3D, but in reality that’s not how it works, and CCP’s balance reflects that. Because they have to balance for reality, not perfect theoretical cases.
Nah, most Battleships have a 10-ish second align time, you can just align out at 1/4th speed and be perfectly fine and both able to react to anyone showing up in local and not run out of range of anything. Plus kitey fits that pull range on the rats are how people have ratted in subcaps since forever. No one is going to use Blasters or Torps for ratting unless they’re doing it for fun or because they lost a bet. Fits use range to tank because if you try to face-tank an Anom spawn in a Battleship you either die or you have to gimp your DPS enough that it’s not really worth it.
You and I have both been around long enough to not even pretend that CCP intends clearly defined and boxed out roles for these ships when they re-balance them. Also Carriers were ratting ships before the changes and CCP pretty clearly didn’t want to kill that when they transitioned them.
CCP have also flat out stated, repeatedly, that they try to respect existing uses of a ship as much as possible when re-balancing it. They’re not going to make Carriers bad ratting ships when they’ve been used as such as one of their primary uses in-game since their inception.
I’m wondering how you calculated that and what dread you were using, because if you’re just comparing raw site HP to DPS you’re going to be off by quite a bit. For example this guy: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP0E7TEzorM ) goes through three and a half full siege cycles for a Guristas Hidden Hub. This guy running a Phoenix takes two cycles for the site he’s doing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QE5JukFBnA
[Phoenix, Phoenix SubCap]
Damage Control II
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System
True Sansha Capital Shield Extender
Pithum C-Type Adaptive Invulnerability Field
Domination Heavy Stasis Grappler
Republic Fleet Target Painter
Missile Guidance Computer II, Missile Precision Script
Missile Guidance Computer II, Missile Precision Script
Missile Guidance Computer II, Missile Precision Script
Rapid Torpedo Launcher II, Mjolnir Rage Torpedo
Rapid Torpedo Launcher II, Mjolnir Rage Torpedo
Rapid Torpedo Launcher II, Mjolnir Rage Torpedo
Siege Module II
Imperial Navy Large EMP Smartbomb
Capital Warhead Flare Catalyst II
Capital Warhead Rigor Catalyst II
Capital Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer II
With rage torpedos the expl radius is 344m and the expl vel is 144m/s. The volley is 13226, every 2.6 seconds with perfect application.
In the Phoenix video linked, buddy was taking 3 volleys to kill a BB. Between the grappler and the painter, battleships get very nearly perfect application, which means that it takes 2 volleys. Which means that over the course of a full magazine, I kill in concept 50% (edit: math is hard ) more BBs (his 10 to my 15). BC and CR are of course not going to see anywhere near perfect application, but they also have significantly less tank. One could also improve application by leaving cruisers for last, then just reloading to standard torps for the cruisers. Phoenix has a 20 second reload timer for RTLs so reloading doesn’t severely gimp overall output.
Again… this is NOT a smart ratting fit. If you get tackled, you’re probably screwed unless a standing fleet can push them off. If an NPC cap warps in you’ll likely need a buddy to come in with an XL dread to deal with it before it deals with you. But… it would certainly make mincemeat of rats.
If you wanted to make it a bit smarter, take one of the computers off and throw a repper on. Plenty of space to fit one.
You’re also assuming that you’re going to be able to apply that grappler to everything you’re shooting at, which is a pipe dream at best. Almost everything in a Drone Horde starts and orbits out beyond Grappler range, including the Matriarch Alvus/Alvus Queen spawns, both of which try to orbit out at around 36-38km per Chruker ( EVE - Inventory )
Realistically you’re only really going to get one maybe two Battleships with that grappler, if even that. Note that the second guy in the Phoenix went full MGC fit for his mids, and the first guy had a grappler and it pretty much stayed off for the entire 20 minutes he was in that site.
The Target Painter would probably be an improvement over the second guy’s fit, but the only thing the Grappler is going to work on is any close-orbiting Frigates and Cruisers.
That means you’re still taking 10 minutes per site, plus probably another 2 for warp/align, so 12 minutes per about 28m. That puts you at, ideally, 140m an hour. Not bad for solo, but not at all worth the risk of having something as vulnerable as a dread sitting in space when you can go to High Sec and make a fairly consistent 120m an hour with a similarly priced Incursion ship before LP gets counted into things.
Very true, however they’re also going to be orbiting at 175m/s at that point, so it’s not really needed. If I were to use said fit, I’d get a warp-in at the center of the site (non-tower hordes), so that the smarbomb was trashing everything right as it spawns. Would help, especially with the cruisers. The initial spawn has them spread out quite a bit, but at that point they’ll be orbiting at a nice lazy speed. With the amount of overkill on that second volley, the grappler would not be needed.
The initial wave would be the hardest part. After that they’d be spawning at zero on you, and with a BS dying every 6 seconds, they’d have but 30 seconds to get away from you. Make it 40 seconds for lock time. The grappler definitely helps, I use it frequently with a nightmare to keep them within conflag optimal longer on those very sites.
Pretty much everything else orbits either nice and close or within 20km, which means that the grappler will at least help.
The guy with full MGCs was stupid, diminishing returns would have been insane - even with 3 the gain is minimal at best on that third MGC. I debated a second painter, but decided that explosion speed would be the bigger issue.
Makes up for the fact that it’s useless everywhere else
But by your own point they’re going to spend most of the time you spend killing them burning out to orbit range, so you’re still going to be spending a lot of time shooting at targets that take 3 volleys to kill on average.
Also a quick check of the effective health on an Alvus Queen and Matriarch Alvus says that you still take 3 volleys to kill one, even with perfect application, though smartbombs would certainly fix that that’s still perfect application only, and means you take three per on the initial wave guaranteed.
I’d say your dream of one-cycle sites here is pretty dead and testing this on Sisi or similar would have shown that.
He probably had a 2/3 scripted setup or something. Either way though, yes, he should have swapped one for a painter.
With perfect application, your first volley would do 6811 raw damage. The second volley would need to do 3168 damage to break their armor buffer. 3189 is 46% of the second volley, which means the other 54% of the volley will hit the structure at 0% resist. 54% of the raw volley is 7142… which is of course less than the total structure of the ship. You are correct that the posted fit would take 3 volleys.
I think at some point I swapped out a calefaction rig to balance calibration and application rigs better, which is where my math differed from the forum posted fit.
Only for the first few km, then it drops off pretty quickly, and the max range is 20km while they orbit at almost twice that.
Your math was fine for Guristas just not for Drone Havens.
Either way I think we’ve pretty well established here that there’s no practical way to do sites within one siege cycle, at least with any consistency, and especially not well enough to make it worth the risk.
The problem is that this literally kills even active drone ratting where you manually tell your drones what to attack in order. There is just no way to apply enough reps on your own drones once they have a site attacking them.
If you want to do something about AFK ratting with drones, turn off the auto-agression of drones. No need to kill all drone ratting when you can just make the drones idle if they are not given a target by the controlling ship.
As for carrier, the aggro is a completely binary issue. If your fighter dies because of aggro ont hem, it mean you did not keep them moving. Making rats attack them all the time instead of some time would only the “are you good at fighter control” check happen all the time. If you are good at it, you still will not lose fighters.
Unless you focus your drones on the small stuff first. I did many a site in a VNI. You work your way from smallest to largest, so that if they do hit your dones, it doesn’t matter because they’re dead before they break the shield buffer. And again, if you fit ewar or remote reps, you’ll hold aggro anyways, so what’s the problem?
So ends the only real solo counter to ECM. I fly ECM every chance I get, I’m not against this change, but it certainly wouldn’t work for PVP.
I’m all in favour of rewarding skilled play. Even if it’s against something a framing hammer could compete with for intelligence. I’m guessing most carrier pilots aren’t good at it… never tried, so I haven’t a clue.
That only works because right now there’s little to no agro towards drones in general. If you increased aggro to the point that AFK drone ratting doesn’t work then you’ve probably made it so this doesn’t work either.
Practically speaking though this ends up being less of a skill check and more of a hardware and network check. Once you have the rhythm down the thing that makes you lose fighters is less anything that could be called skill with a straight face and more lag, system hangs, and network latency.
Maybe cruisers would be a threat to heavy drones, but anything larger would be irrelevant entirely. They either wouldn’t hit or would terribly apply to a heavy drone. And again, ewar or remote reps would hold aggro (in the case of rats that weren’t… what they are…), so long as your remote reps are on the drone taking damage.
You are proposing to increase the level of aggro on drones from rat. E-WAR is always trash at keeping aggro so I doubt it would work in your proposed system and going from frig and up don’t even work if you get a current “bugged” sites where drones actually get hard aggro. Even active ratting does not save your drones in such case.
Everyone who still carrier rat got good at it already since not being good mean you lose too much ISK in fighters to make it worthwhile. If your carrier gives you VNI level of income after you account for your lost fighters, you don’t stay in the carrier.
If we’re already discussing the matter of changing rat aggro mechanics, making them properly aggress the “right” targets (ie ignoring a carrier and shooting the stuff that’s actually shooting at them) is merely part of it.
As said, I’ve never tried. I don’t enjoy flying capital ships, too slow.
This would be similar to sleeper logic, just toned down a bit. Changing rat logic so that frigates and destroyers shot medium and heavy drones, and cruisers shot heavy droned would force drone flight swaps, without being annoyingly unpredictable. I like it.
That being said, I’m not sure how you’d transfer that to carrier. Maybe use the anti-fighter fighters to counter frigates and destroyers?
I’ve always found the quickest answer to a rat is to pop it lol. Some regular DPS fighters would likely be more effective… unless mechanics were changed and superiority fighters ended up being the “better” choice… which I do like a lot actually. In concept, as someone who has never flown nor desired to fly a carrier.
If your fighter get aggro, the best way to keep them alive is to keep them moving. As long as they orbit something, they are pretty much safe. It is kinda high APM gameplay as you start to kill rats faster and faster and they come to a dead stop if they have not already have been given other commands before the rat pop but it works.
For regular drones, once they get aggro, unless you can wipe it fast, there is no real solution except maybe being close so you can recall. If you orbit from afar to reduce incoming damage on your ship, the recalled drone need burn in a strait line back to you and get torn to shreds int he process if more than just a few ships switched their attack on it. That’s why aggro change can easyly kill ratting with drones even while being active at the keyboard. You can do everything “right” and they still die.
The only ship I can think of that would have that issue would be the 100MN AFK fits, as it wouldn’t have guns.
Any Ishtar, Gila, or V(NI) with guns should be able to facefuck a couple frigates or destroyers in very short order. The battlecruisers and battleships have such shitty tracking that they wouldn’t really be able to shoot even heavy drones. No need to recall your drones, just blap the stuff applying damage to them.
) more BBs (his 10 to my 15). BC and CR are of course not going to see anywhere near perfect application, but they also have significantly less tank. One could also improve application by leaving cruisers for last, then just reloading to standard torps for the cruisers. Phoenix has a 20 second reload timer for RTLs so reloading doesn’t severely gimp overall output.