If a small gang fleet wanted a ship to get rid of capacitors of a cruiser class ship, would a Dragoon be a reasonable option? The in-universe description calls it focusing on sending out mass of drones and draining enemy energy. The in-game bonuses are towards drone fighting and range of Energy Nosferatu and Energy Neutralizers, so that matches.
However the Cormorant has better maximum velocity, so it can get in range faster and both have the same 600 GJ base capacitor cap. The Dragoon’s bonuses to cap warfare is range, not amount drained. The Dragoon is tankier even with base stats and can tank even better if it uses those extra slots for armor instead of drone upgrades, however the Cormorant can try to use its speed to partially make up for less HP. The Cormorant has superior DPS to the Dragoon, but that’s not important here because I was specifically asking for a situation where the fleet wanted some ships to drain a cruiser dry.
Well, I honestly have no idea. The Dragoon’s bonuses aren’t like the Curse which gets a huge bonus to capacitor warfare. I’m not asking if the Dragoon is as good as the Curse or Prophesy at cap warfare, it obviously isn’t. I’m just asking if it is good at draining a cruiser.
it can drain a cruiser, and would do it better than a corm however its geared more at draining and keeping several frigates drained. We used them largely to keep frigates and DD off our logistics if we couldn’t get an arbitrator.
dragoons are very good at punching down, im not so sure how well they work against cruisers. particularly any cruiser that has tracking bonuses. honestly if i was in a small gang of frigs and DD (im assuming thats what you are doing as your looking at a destroyer for this) I would use damps rather than nuets a single maulus can put a cruisers lock range down well under 20km even under 10km with heat.
if your in a kite gang your safe if your in a brawl gang then just swap between scan res and range scripts to constantly break his locks.
It was taken off the table when we realized 3 of us could fly the thing, those 3 needed a 7 day’s notice to do anything with us really, and most importantly the CEO of the group coordinating us (not the CEO of my corp) mentioned the drone bandwidth was 5 Mbit/sec. I checked in the simulation and this most important bit turns out to be false, so maybe when some of our other pilots are free we can do this.
I’m not questioning the balance of this. I’m just saying “well, I know the Dragoon isn’t as good as cap warfare as those other choices, but is it good?”
Yes, and I’m pointing that the comparison don’t makes much sense to begin with since they are very different ship. Comparing with the cruor, the sentinel or/and the arbitrator is more reasonable.
I think it was more a preemptive attempt to avoid people suggesting the platform. Showing he was already aware of it as an option for cap warfare but had ruled it out for what he needed.
There was a new player here some time back that started solo PvP in a Dragoon with a fair bit of success - fully filled the high slots for cap warfare.
I suspect there was a nasty surprise moment for any attacker that was “where the heck has my cap gone!?” when that smacked him in the face. Combat Dragoons are commonly fitted for maximum DPS rather than maximum neuting.
I’ve always viewed the Dragoon as a good support ship for an Amarr frigate fleet - cheap, and you can carry a range of options in the drone bay.
I suspect that even with a maximum nos/neut fit it’ll take a fair effort and more importantly a lot of your capacitor, to tap out a cruiser - and even then some opponents won’t be as cap-dependant as the typical Amarrian ship.
Huh… I never really thought to go “full” dps I have gone pretty glass and used most of my lows for damage amps. But the ability to pretty much alpha a small ships cap and blast with drones always seemed like a better option than adding a few lasers or missiles.
Yeah, it’s a balance between dps - full missiles and turrets in the high slots, Drone Damage amps in the lows with a plate to give some survivability. But the idea of destroying the ability of the opponent to act while your drones chew through them always appealed to me - I never said I was nice.
A lot of Minmatar ships don’t have much armor but shields need cap to regen. Now you might argue “well, 1,600 HP of shields is better than 1,600 of armor since it regens, so all the neuts do is make my shields as good as armor instead of better” but given this advantage, presumably for balence there is a benefit to armor tanking even ignoring ships like the Pontifex (which get bonuses to them) so a shield tanked ship with no regen must be at a disadvantage.
You don’t need cap for regen on shields. It’s the hardeners turning off that kills the passive ehp/s but yeah.
Benefits to armor is they have better passive resist model options. Better base resists. Better resists from dcu and their reps require less cap.
Shields have passive recharge stronger active hardeners and more powerful active reps. There is also no delay in the rep as its at the start not the end of the cycle.
Well, you can argue which one is generally best, but there is hardly any question of which is better in a given context. Things like hull bonuses, fleet support available, slot layout and intended role will quickly become decisive factors.
