I originally posted this in the WTM forums, but figured I’d share with everyone.
Ran foothold roaming fleets and conduits with 2 basi’s today (started w/ 4 dps and ended with 6). Efficiency was about 67 mil/hour + LP, but we also started in adjacent and worked up to footholds. 8 conduits spawned in that time, and we were able to do about 6 of them (iirc). New ore spawns in conduits, and they remain closed for about an hour. Mining alts should increase isk efficiency (45% mining laser cycle time and new fancy ores). Ty said that he never saw rats warp back into conduit after it was closed, but I can’t say for certain. Also, Triax brought a polarized BS, and I was able to keep it alive relatively easily. I don’t know if straight glass cannons are the best idea, but we could probably scale back on tank. My only concern is that those rats have most definitely been nerfed once already, and now no leshaks are spawning. Thus, I’m wondering if CCP permanently adjusted the difficulty, temporarily did so, or if it has something to do the invasion stage (in which case we need to figure it out so that we don’t waltz into something that we aren’t prepared for). [Ugh, I forgot to check the stage].
Oh and it’s probably better to roll with local tanks for the time being (although I can’t tell you exactly how strong they need to be). I’m ballparking here, but you probably need 8 DPS in fleet to offset the dps loss of having two pilots fly a pair of basi’s. And yes, this is contrary to my initial assessment where I said that rat damage was too strong for local tanks to handle and that logi was required.
Conduits are similar to FW Plexes in that they only show up on the probe scanner until someone warps to them. After which, they’ll show up on overviews. 3 waves. Kill all rats to trigger the next wave. Mostly frigs and dessies. Recommend killing [Fleet Safety] (1) Anchoring and (2) Starving, then [Fleet Efficiency] (3) Renewing, (4) Tangling, (5) Ghosting, and then free fire on whatever is in optimal as the wave is no longer poses any sort of risk and has lost most of it’s repping power so they melt fast. Isk & LP payout, plus salvage. We were able to tear through the rats in short order, but you can’t farm them like incursion sites as no new conduits will spawn for about an hour.
Of course it will depend on the prices that loot and salvage settles at, and it will certainly require more effort (spreadsheeting, hauling, mining, scanning, salvaging, traveling, etcetera), but I’d imagine that a better FC than me can get efficiency up to 100/mil an hour with what’s currently spawning, and hopefully even higher with major conduits and whatnot. So… I’m not exactly happy with CCP for nerfing the incursion spawn rate. I mean, I would rather be running this content because I wanted to, and not because I had to, but I think we can do okay with these. So, we’ll see what happens as the content escalates.
[And for those that don’t know, HAC’s and T3’s are currently good choices (good tank, dps, damage application, and travel speed), but I’ve seen people out in everything from a solo kiting Orthrus to small kitchen sink gangs with t1 battleships and battlecruisers. Also, prior to the rat nerf, I used spreadsheet wizardry (first through scanning rat fleets, and then through my damage log) to derive the trig rat fleets’ damage profile. Of course, I don’t know if that still holds true because the liminals were changed, and rat fleet compositions have apparently been adjusted.]
