Combat Recon Ships

So earlier tonight i was exploring in a wormhole.
I’m very good at keeping my D-Scan up so when a Curse showed up ontop me it definitely caught me by surprise. So I scrambled to get off the site but i was disrupted, and then he had a gang jump in and i was killed.

Soooo…then I read the description
* Can not be detected by directional scanners

Am I missing something here? Can someone explain how this doesn’t completely break wormhole space? What exactly is the counter to this?

Combat probes. Also they’re not that strong on their own and are more support/force multiplier ships that specialize in ewar.

Don’t take this one incident out of context and assume that everyone is only using Combat Recons in wormhole space.

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Combat recons are rare in wormhole space, Stratios or any T3C are better choices anyway. You see it landing on grid so if you are aware of your surroundings you can easily GTFO before it locks you.

As has been pointed out, combat probes. If he has friends, they still show up on d-scan. If he doesn’t have friends, well then it’s not the strongest solo PvP ship.

This is no worse than a cloak, really.

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Aaaarghh!!! Don’t say that or we’ll end up with another 6,000 post mega-thread ! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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It looks extremely powerful, but it’s really not. In the last week, Curses have appeared on 706 killmails. The Rook is on 140. Lachesis has appeared on 1918. And the Huginn has appeared on 2361. Combined the Combat Recon ships (those that do not appear on D-scan) have destroyed 5125 killmails.

Sabres are above 10k; Lokis are at 5910. Stratios (by itself) is at 2065. Jawkdaws are at 5128.

While that ability appears powerful, it probably isn’t since you don’t see them fielded as much as the ships listed above.

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Normally I wouldn’t care that much but in WH space I have one defense, and that’s the DScan.

This guy just appeared on the site with me so I had no chance, I’m assuming he had the site prescanned? I was mashing the dscan the whole time.

Anyways it left a sour taste in my mouth, enough to where I’ll probably just abandon the WH side of things which is unfortunate cause I wanted to check out different loot there.

As has been pointed out, combat probes. If he has friends, they still show up on d-scan. If he doesn’t have friends, well then it’s not the strongest solo PvP ship.

This is no worse than a cloak, really.

Ya he had others warping in to, well after I was neuted and disrupted…

stay in high sec. leave the WH’s to the big bois

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come on, man, learn and improve instead of complaining and deciding to “abandon the wh side of things”.
you do explo? fit your explo ship for fast align and warp, and watch your overivew: curse will appear before landing and then you warp out
or fit a ship to fight back and kill the curse?
or bring friends, be the bait, and let your friends kill the curse
etc

HTFU…

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It has been shown in this thread that you have multiple defenses for this situation besides Dscan. Combat probes for one. You can also listen for the sound of another pilot entering your wormhole. There is also the defense of having more defense or offense than a combat recon can attack and survive.

There are numerous things you can do besides complain on the forums. Have you tried doing those?

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As a recon pilot, I can answer your question. Recons don’t completely break the balance of J-space because they’re not the worst offender when it comes to being undetected and tackling people. They’re also weak solo ships that have bad DPS and tank, meaning they’ll get popped easily and don’t do very much other than EWAR. They’re scary for sure, especially certain fits (heavy neut curse comes to mind) and when properly-flown, but they’re far from broken.

If you think a Curse dropping on you is bad, just wait until an Astero decloaks at 2km and rams into you full speed. Recons you can get away from because they have to get on-grid, get in range, and lock you. Assuming a worst-case scenario where the recon drops directly on top of you, he still has to finish arriving on-grid and lock onto you with his cruiser-sized scan resolution. That’s at least 5-6 seconds before you’re pointed, which is ample time to leave assuming your ship is properly fit.

As an explorer myself, the Asteros I fly have a sub-2s align time and two stabs just in case. I sort my overview by velocity and have neutral ships highlighted in yellow so that anyone landing on grid or decloaking is immediately obvious. I haven’t lost a single one of these ships except to my own stupidity or lack of reaction (my most recent loss was to me forgetting that I had stabs).

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I live in wormhole space too.

Yeah, and a stealth bomber fitted with a MSE (for tank) can uncloak without sensor recalibration delay (perk of stealth bombers) to scram you. MSE will give enough tank for other ships to arrive and kill you. You would have less chance there than you would against a Curse because the Curse has to finish warping in.

I can tell you that my corp scans every sig when we scan down a wormhole for this reason. Some of our pilots even take the time to put perches in data and relic sites if they plan on hunting explorers in that system.

I’m not going to tell you that wormhole space isn’t for you; that’s something you need to decide for yourself. What I will tell you is that wormhole space is high reward for high risk. If you want high reward (easy ISK) for low risk, you might want to try null space (no offense to people in null).

Wormhole space isn’t safe; its dangerous. That’s what many of us, wormholers, like about it.

Someone else already explained this, but I do want to address something. If Combat Recons ‘broke’ wormhole space, wormhole corps would fly them en masse… and we don’t. As I already pointed out, there are ships that get a lot more kills. I just checked the Astero; it has 2618 appearance on killmails this week; 28% were solo. Curse’s current solo kill rate: 10%. Stratios solo kill rate: 19% solo.

Look, I know you just got killed and you’re upset. But if the Curse was as brutal as you are trying to make it out to be, wormholers would be flying a lot more of them… and they’d be getting more solo kills.

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Huh? Then a good insta lock insta pop sniping Loki would leave you with funny sensations in another cavity…

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Use a cheaper ship. I use an Imicus, 7 million isk - last time I did a Relic site (Sansha) it gave me 78 million in loot, enough to fund 11 replacement ships.

As pointed out already combat probes are really helpful. If you are running exploration sites, you are likely using a ship that can fit an expanded probe launcher. Keep combat probes out all the time. It can even catch ships off dscan. Often if a gang is not all covert ships they will try and just huddle out of dscan range for example.

Exploration sites are the toughest as you have to be someone still. That being said you should always be moving orbit cans, don’t just sit on top of them. Be diligent. A frigate aligns fast enough that you should be able to warp off as soon as you see a non-covert ship warping in on grid.

If you are running combat sites, stay off the warp in point, Stay away from wrecks, and stay ALIGNED. That makes it much harder without combat probes for someone to get a clean warp in. And you can punch out instantly.

Yea probably. WH space is the most dangerous to do roaming exploration. At least in LS or even NS you can see when someone enters the system. They also may have sites pre-scanned, but you get the local warning. In WH space you both don’t know who has pre-scanned and who is currently in system.

You shouldn’t orbit the cans if your plan is to move away. It will only delay your warp-out. You can sit at 2000-2500m and be ready to recloak however, or you can fit an AB to tackle and orbit the ganker until your ECs jam your enemy.

Or you can use an astero and gank the cloaky whatever that isn’t a stratios with neuts.

Fair enough. I don’t do that much exploration anymore. I just usually see people parked right smack on top of the can so that they couldn’t cloak and warp attempts often bump the can instead. Getting someone to orbit the can at least teaches them to keep some distance from it.

This is very true. This goes both ways, the hunter can quickly become hunted in wh space if the intended victim is bait. Makes for a great game.

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I like the Rook. It has very generous cpu/pg due to the high needs of ecm modules. Makes for some interesting alternative fittings.