I hear wormholers use these things in wormholes to farm sleeper sites. I have two questions:
1 - How does this work? Isn’t tracking so bad against subcaps that they couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn?
2 - Is there some reason why carriers aren’t used?
There is a good number of videos how it worked.
I watched one. It seemed to not work very well. The dread took a long, long time to kill things because it couldn’t get good hits.
I live in a C1 wormhole, so Dreadnaught ratting would be way too much for me. But I have some knowledge in wormhole ratting, so I’ll try to help you as best as I can.
Yes, XL weapons have the worst tracking, and it’s logical. But, fits with two Tracking Computers II and Tracking Speed scripts are generally enough to solve the problem.
Concerning carriers : you’re going to be less efficient if you use a Thanatos or Nidhoggur compared to any dreadnoughts, because sleepers love to shoot drones, and fighters are bigger versions of drones.
Example : you bring your Thanatos in a Core Garrison C5 site, and deploy three squadrons of Firebolg light fighters. Since you’re going to need special warp in bookmarks, you’re going to sit quite far away from sleeper drones and propably going to use the Networked Sensor Arrays, which mean you have no EWAR capabilities, so the sleepers will never target you first compared to your fighters dealing massive damage.
As you can see, each wave in the Core Garrison have warp scramblers and Stasis Webifier, even more, the second wave have RR frigates, which mean if the rats lock your drones, they will shut down their MWD (with the scrambler) and slow the fighter down to a point where even battleship sleepers will track them. You’re going to lose squadron after squadron, and fighters cost a lot, plus are hard to move in a wormhole if you don’t have an Azbel with capital shipyards.
To conclude : fighters and thus, carriers, aren’t viable in high tier wormholes.
Also, if you’re using a good fit, you can finish the site in two siege cycles, and the Revelation dreadnought do not consume ammo if you stay with T1 crystals, which is a lesser cost.
There’s the web Loki method, and another one is warping the dread straight into the center of a spawn group. As the sleepers burn straight outward, tracking and damage is nearly perfect.
Interesting explanation. Now I get how carriers don’t do well in these sites. I’m still surprised that a couple of tracking computers will solve the dread’s tracking problems enough to run these sites well, and surprised that the rats burn straight away. But I have my answers now - thanks.
Rats have quite a bad AI, even if sleepers improve it a bit when they try to focus logistics or EWAR ships. And a lot of sleepers tend to orbit at longer ranges, making it a little bit easier to track.
If the sleepers burn away from you in the straight line, then tracking does not matter, because they don’t move as seen from the barrel of your turret. When they reach their preferred orbiting distance - which is quite far for many sleepers, and start moving sideways, you can still web them down with a dedicated webber and make them not move again.
Tracking computers webs and paints. problem mostly solved
Haw guns prob. Track them perfectly and capital guns are only used for last drifter bs … not done it myself but that’s prob. How it works
How far can a dread project webs? Webs are short range. Paints have a longer range, but not that long.
Note that the assumption here is a single dread. I wouldn’t ask the question if multiple ships are allowed - you can literally do anything with multiple ships.
You use other ships to paint and web. It wasn’t a solo activity
Is that a scary nothing?..
I run C5 sites with 3 dreadnoughts. There are different ways to do it. One way is certain dreads have HAW guns, some have Capital guns. They clear the site real quick, kill the drifter, and make about 600mil per site. A other way is have 3 dreads all cap fit, bookmark the site so you land in a good spot, and smartbomb so all the battleships spawn, kill the battleships, kill the drifter, and make much more isk/hour.
Carriers are not used cause sleepers shoot drones, and also carriers are going to have trouble tanks 3-5k dps during the site. Dreads are basically used just for its seige cycle.
Now that HAWs have been introduced, its not as bad. Its like using a battleship that has 3 times the damage.
Easier to manage a dread than a carrier and 3 fighter wings. The fact that the aggro keeps switching to your fighters and you will lose some, will impact negatively on your isk income.
I would like to see triglavian dread with capital desintegrator with extra damage but only towards capital ships, not subcaps.
You mean not a HAW?
That would be interesting. They’d certainly give faxes a run for their money. 15-20 of those, ramp up damage would get really hard to tank.
Unfortunately, they’d be way too expensive to justify in a cap fight, which would be the only place you’d be able to use them.
They would be faction dreads of course, I think their tank would have to be really good, and adding reppers to them… Hmmm… 
Anti cap ships that can be farmed from abyssal sites everywhere. Whole fleets of triglavian origin. Triglavian empire offshot building in New Eden?