Incursions - Armageddon Navy Issue

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A few years ago i flew HQ sites with TVP and mostly used my Armageddon navy using pulse lasers and sentry drones. I consistently took aggro from Vindis in about every site, every fleet. Though sometimes less than others. This was usually dependent on the skill of particular Vindi pilots and their ships. The best pilots - with near perfect management of their MWD’s and ammo switching. Combined with frequent overheating of their modules were difficult to take aggro from when they got in range, and on the TCRC tower. However!! - very few pilots can fly this well for many hours at a time.(!!!)

I just returned to EVE after a break and i find that my pwnboat is no longer allowed in the largest incursion communities. Even worse - other pulse boats that werent used before and has clearly worse performance than the Armageddon navy (Navy Apoc, Paladin) are allowed and used in relatively great numbers(wtf).:weary:

You may doubt my claim so far. But let me show you numbers and points to prove the superiority of pulse lasers and Armageddon navy issue in incursion HQ-sites once and for all.
I made some simple fits in EFT. I wont link them here because they are simple: they all use 4x navy damage mods, 2x6% damage implants, T2 DPS rigs (except the Mach, which kinda needs PG rig for 1400’s.)Vindicator and Armageddon navy use 2x T2 DDU.

  • Armageddon Navy Issue
    917 DPS (Scorch).
    1267 DPS (Scorch) to 60km with Curator II’s.
    1628 DPS (Conflagration) below 35 km w/Curator II’s.

  • Vindicator
    1325 DPS (Null) to 30 km.
    1854 DPS (Void) to 14 km, + 317 with Ogre II’s.

  • Machariel
    961 DPS (Quake), + 158 with Hammerhead II’s.

  • Nightmare
    1187 DPS (Gleam), + 158 with Hammerhead II’s.

The turret ranges will vary slightly from this depending on how many tracking computers or tracking enhancers are used. But this is roughly accurate.

So lets make a double fleet comparison with 31 turret ships in both fleets for the total numbers:

Fleet 1:

  • 3 Machariel 2883 turret DPS + 475 Hammerhead II DPS
  • 6 Nightmare 7122 turret DPS + 948 Hammerhead II DPS
  • 22 Vindicator 40,788 turret DPS + 6974 Ogre II DPS
    = Total 10005 long range DPS
    = Max DPS: 59,190 (to 14km)

Fleet 2:

  • 31 Armageddon navy issue
  • 28427 DPS long range (no drones)
  • 39227 DPS to 60km
  • 50,468 Max DPS (to 35km)

(This is all for illustrative purposes. A couple of webbing Vindis are probably needed.)

Anyways, allready on paper we see the superiority of the Armageddon navy issue. Still, maybe you are thinking: “Idiot, the Vindi fleet has higher max DPS!” Or that i am wrong in some other way. Anyways, there is more.

First, it is the ability to field 5 sentry drones that puts the Armageddon navy ahead of the Nightmare and the Paladin here. Notice how this wonderful fleet above can put nearly 40k dps to 60km. That is the definition of blapping - and only sentry drones can be used for blapping. (You dont blap with medium drones.)
I have tested all three of these ships. With pulse lasers - one tracking computer or enhancer really is enough for HQ’s. Only unwebbed frigates are difficult to track - The bonus of the NM will not fix this. In other words the tracking bonus of the NM is not enough to compensate for no sentry drones.

The next part is probably the most important part of this post and sort of a TL;DR:

  • All the Armageddons will be firing constantly at either close or long range targets in whatever HQ-site they are in. Instant application, no reload time. This means the paper DPS above will be more consistent in the Armageddon fleet than the other.
  • Pulse lasers dont have to fly nearly as far, or make turns, or anchor up, like the Vindis. They fly straight, stop when the Vindis have to burn twice as long, deploy sentrys.
  • The fleets using medium and heavy drones only apply that DPS on the towers. The Armageddon applies it reliably on most of the rats too. Even more total DPS loss for the other fleet.
  • No other HQ fleet comp can both snipe and do close range DPS as good as the Armageddon Navy.
  • No split fleet Sniper/DPS roles means the fleet dont have to wait for snipers to clear the area.
  • Keeping it simple is a huge advantage when setting up a fleet for a lot of people. You need too many Vindicators (who can precision fly and are somewhat skilled, and not sleeping). You need enough snipers. One ship cannot do what the other can. Armageddon navy can bring consistency to these things that arent always consistent. This is perhaps even more important now than before due to the seemingly shrinking community.
  • The number of Vindicators i used in the example rarely happens. (If ever). However, when you only need one ship type, you could get 31 easily.

IF IT IS SO GOOD WHY HAVE NO ONE USED IT BEFORE??: I believe the current (and long time) incursion HQ shiny doctrines are NOT something that came from actual testing of diffrent doctrines, but something natural that evolved as a result of early incursion fleets being slow and bad - Then players that were willing to invest more in their ships (including buying more expensive pirate ships) naturally outperformed the bad ones. It was then assumed that those ships combined, were the most effective.
As “proof” of this - we have the shitty Machariel. A speedboat that is good at level 4 mission blitzing. And thats pretty much it. It could never beat the Nightmare, or lasers in general, yet it is still accepted and even applauded in fleets. Because it is “shiny” and looks cool.

1 Like
2

Try an armour based group?

3

Everything i wrote goes for both armor and shield fleets.

4

Are you sure?

5

I am :smiley:

6

i like the navy geddon , but i don’t think there’s a fit that can do what you claim . 4 heat sinks and 2 DDA leave two low slots for tank … a shield tank with no tracking computers won’t hit out to 60 km for full damage , nor do curators with an optimal of 53 km … it would be interesting to see the fit you have .

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[Armageddon Navy Issue]
Imperial Navy Heat Sink
Imperial Navy Heat Sink
Imperial Navy Heat Sink
Imperial Navy Heat Sink
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Tracking Enhancer II
[empty low slot]

Tracking Computer II, Optimal Range Script
[empty med slot]
[empty med slot]
[empty med slot]

Mega Pulse Laser II, Conflagration L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Conflagration L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Conflagration L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Conflagration L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Conflagration L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Conflagration L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Conflagration L
[empty high slot]

Large Energy Burst Aerator II
[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]

Curator II x5

With this and 2x6% implants i get 1652 DPS in EFT. I used the same number of damage mods for the Vindicator. The DPS will scale about the same up or down for both ships depending on if you are using armor or shield tank and how shiny it is.
For the range, yes it is not 100% accurate. I added something like 50% of falloff range to the optimal range to both the Vindicator and the Armageddon Navy Issue(+Curators) in this example to indicate the point of where they can start applying somewhat effective damage. With this fit you get 55+19 with Scorch.

8

So you have no prop mod (how do you do a tpph?) and no cap mods (how long can you shoot for?) and are using sentry drones (which means you are doing zero drone damage whenever you move).

You also claim it can be either armor or shield tanked, with how much ehp?

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This fitting is not complete and is only to show the damage potential/projection. As i already explained, the fitting is pretty much the same as i used for the Vindicator, Machariel and Nightmare, shown above.

I do not want to start putting other modules on here as that will not add much relevance to the points I am trying to make and/or derail the discussion. All battleships in the game can fit a tank for incursions to the same cost to DPS/etc as just about any other battleship.
It has no more cap issues than the Nightmare or the Vindicator has. At Amarr BS V it has a 50% cap bonus to turrets.
As mentioned above I used it in TVP shield fleets. I can tell you that shield fitted Armageddon Navy Issue will be more cap intensive as the invulns use cap and they have no room for a cap battery. They can however fit a cap transfer or a NOS (which i used) I managed just fine and rarely had to broadcast for cap.

One of the major advantages of pulse boats is that they have to move less than other DPS ships(in HQ’s). This opens up the possibility to use sentries effectively. Armageddon navy issue is the only pulse boat that can field 5 sentries. There are spots in TPPH(last room) and NRF where it can remain still and hit all close range targets as they spawn with conflagration and sentry drones.
At warp-in, and while using the MWD in these sites at start it will apply DPS instantly, reaching all of the initial spawn. Which is still more DPS than the Vindicator (Around 0) at the start.

And this is one of my major points. Can the Vindicators catch up with this initial DPS, and the sniper DPS combined with the later close range DPS shown above? Maybe a select few. The best pilots overloading the most shiny fits and consuming absurd amounts of cap. But most of them will not (by my experience/estimate).

10

So I don’t know about shield fleets but for armor fleets I’ve not really seen Navy Geddons show up, but it also seems like pulse botes aren’t super popular in TDF (then again I haven’t checked most of the fits that weren’t either blaster botes moving on the Mega->Vindi track or Leshaks so I might be wrong).

Navy Geddons probably would be interesting but the main thing is that at some point the investment into a Navy Geddon is going to prompt the question of… why not just run a Leshak instead? For Vanguard (and probably some Assault) sites this question is much more variable, but HQs AFAIK often have one or two big-HP targets that you need to kill, so the potential instant-on DPS loss from the Leshak’s spool requirement is not as great of a burden.

Notional Armor HQ Navy Geddon

[Armageddon Navy Issue, Incursion HQ testrig]

Damage Control II
Corpum C-Type Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Corpum C-Type Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Imperial Navy Drone Damage Amplifier
Imperial Navy Heat Sink
Imperial Navy Heat Sink
Imperial Navy Heat Sink
Imperial Navy Heat Sink

500MN Microwarpdrive II
Sentient Sensor Booster, Scan Resolution Script
Tracking Computer II, Optimal Range Script
Tracking Computer II, Optimal Range Script

Mega Pulse Laser II, Scorch L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Scorch L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Scorch L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Scorch L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Scorch L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Scorch L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Scorch L
Imperial Navy Large Remote Capacitor Transmitter

Large Trimark Armor Pump II
Large Trimark Armor Pump II
Large Trimark Armor Pump II

Curator II x5

Inherent Implants ‘Lancer’ Gunnery RF-906
Inherent Implants ‘Lancer’ Large Energy Turret LE-1006

This is basically what I got from cloning the current non-Slaved Leshak fit (the Slaved version mostly just differs in that it runs dual Hyperspatials+single Trimark; the inference I gather is that the non-Slaved triple Trimark variant is running Ascendancy warp speed implants instead of Slaves).

With Scorch it has ~57 km optimal range and ~870 DPS with 6% RoF and 6% Large Energy damage implants, plus ~317 DPS with Curators and the faction DDA. It also meets the same minimum requirements for raw armor HPs and resists that the Leshak does (which I think are “at least 20k raw armor and no resists lower than ~63%”). It does require C-type EANMs but the equivalent Leshak uses A-type ANPs so that’s roughly breaking even on cost.

It also has a cap transfer so that a group of these can cap chain each other- and they desperately need it too, since it only has ~4.5 minutes of cap endurance with guns+TCs+sebo cycling. You can get more if you bling the MWD (to thus reduce the cap penalty the MWD imposes). Conflag T2 damage ammo gives ~1217 DPS at 20 km.

Here’s the problem though: it’s about 1.9 billion ISK plus another 1.3 in implants… just for the guns. Not including the generally preferred warp speed implants that a lot of Incursion runners like to use (and are generally recommended in TDF).

The equivalent Leshak fit however only costs ~1.6 billion ISK:

TDF HQ Leshak fit

[Leshak, *Leshak]

Damage Control II
Imperial Navy Drone Damage Amplifier
Centii A-Type Adaptive Nano Plating
Centii A-Type Adaptive Nano Plating
Entropic Radiation Sink II
Entropic Radiation Sink II
Entropic Radiation Sink II
Entropic Radiation Sink II

500MN Microwarpdrive II
Sentient Sensor Booster
Tracking Computer II, Optimal Range Script
Tracking Computer II, Optimal Range Script

Supratidal Entropic Disintegrator II, Mystic L
Large Remote Armor Repairer II
Large Remote Armor Repairer II
Large Remote Armor Repairer II
Imperial Navy Large Remote Capacitor Transmitter

Large Trimark Armor Pump II
Large Trimark Armor Pump II
Large Trimark Armor Pump II

Medium Hull Maintenance Bot II x5
Ogre II x4

It can only run four heavy/sentry drones- and with Curators it gets ~253 DPS vs the 317 of the NGeddon. However, with Occult T2 damage ammo it starts at ~1000 DPS without any implants, and spools to almost 2500. And it can shoot to ~27.5 km optimal range with the TCs scripted for range (for reference the quoted ranges for the megapulse NGeddon are with dual range-scripted TCs as well). Mystic starts at ~720 DPS with 68.7 km optimal range, and spools to 1766 DPS.

On top of this the Leshak is cap stable with guns+sebo+TCs running, has a good reserve of capacitor to pulse MWD when it has to maneuver on grid, and to share out the rep love with its bountiful utility highs allowing it to pack backup repping power on top of the cap transfer that it shares with the NGeddon.

And you can still throw a generic RoF/damage implant at it to get more DPS if you want. It’s also very slightly faster (125 m/s triple trimarked vs 116 m/s for the triple trimark NGeddon) and aligns ~3 seconds faster (9.61 sec Leshak vs 12.3 for the NGeddon).

Vindicators aren’t just DPS though; they also bring 84/90% webs (depending on L4/5 skills), which help a lot with improving application for the entire fleet.

11

Hi, and thanks for the reply Will.
For the last part you say about the Vindicators, yes i agree. A few of them are probably always good to have as i said in the OP. However, there are other webbing ships like the Loki that were used a few years back. Their speed and longer ranged webs could be better in combination with a pulse fleet. Hard to say without testing.

Your Armageddon fit seems like a good option. However i think it is unfair to say the implants for the Armageddon are expensive as this applies in the exact same way and scale to all ships. For the ship itself you can make a T2-only variant for new players. I dont think this scales better or worse up and down than any other ship used for Incursions.

T2 Armageddon Navy Issue

[Armageddon Navy Issue]
Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II
Co-Processor II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Damage Control II

Tracking Computer II, Optimal Range Script
Tracking Computer II, Optimal Range Script
500MN Microwarpdrive II
Large Cap Battery II

Mega Pulse Laser II, Scorch L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Scorch L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Scorch L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Scorch L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Scorch L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Scorch L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Scorch L
Heavy Energy Nosferatu II

Large Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer I
Large Anti-Explosive Pump I
Large Trimark Armor Pump I

Curator II x5

And a shinier alternative more to my preference. I have never used it for armour fleets though.

Requires 2% PG implant

[Armageddon Navy Issue]
Imperial Navy Heat Sink
Imperial Navy Heat Sink
Imperial Navy Heat Sink
Imperial Navy Heat Sink
Federation Navy Drone Damage Amplifier
Corpum B-Type Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Corpum B-Type Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Damage Control II

Gist C-Type 500MN Microwarpdrive
Federation Navy Tracking Computer
Federation Navy Tracking Computer
Republic Fleet Large Cap Battery

Mega Pulse Laser II, Conflagration L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Conflagration L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Conflagration L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Conflagration L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Conflagration L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Conflagration L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Conflagration L
Corpus C-Type Heavy Energy Nosferatu

Large Energy Burst Aerator II
Large Trimark Armor Pump I
Large Trimark Armor Pump I

Curator II x5

I must admit i do not know much about the Leshak. As i just returned to EVE from a break. The ship smells fishy to me tbh. There must be some downsides to this. If not i bet it will get the nerfbat sooner or later. From what i have heard though, it is not as common in shield fleets. This thread is kind of meant for both sides.

I also heard someone say that the Leshak is only good for the tower. If that is true i suspect it kinda falls in the same position as the Vindicator in this case. That you would have a few, not a full fleet of them. Or maybe webbing Lokis instead. A test fleet of 24 Armageddon navy issue, 5 Leshaks and 2 webbing Lokis would be very interesting. :slight_smile:

12

So if your goal is to run in HQ fleets (in TDF at least if they’re running Assault sites they just use the HQ fits outside of a small handful of exceptions; definitely join their in-game channel TDF-Official (IIRC) and check out the mailing lists they have for their preferred fits), then neither of those is going to actually work out unfortunately, as they aren’t going to meet the minimum raw armor HP requirement.

I was actually rather surprised that the NGeddon could skate by on resists in the lows and just Trimarks for raw buffer but this is perhaps bias on my part since the equivalent Vindicator fit runs a 1600 plate and then uses a T2 RoF rig and a T1 explosive resist rig instead, leaving one rig slot empty if you’re looking at the dedicated HQ fit. However go for just a single trimark means that it isn’t going to have the raw buffer needed.

Further cap stability is great- and is a definite advantage of the Leshak compared to the NGeddon- however I would argue that just cap chaining would be a more efficient method of handling it. Given that, I do think that running a battery might be workable since at present for TDF (the only open armor Incursion community I am aware of at least) the NGeddon is sort of offmeta anyways so they might be fine with it but would probably express preference that you eventually sidegrade/upgrade to something else.

I’m also not entirely sure why you slapped in a Hyperspatial rather than a second Trimark, since the general procedure insofar as I am aware is that the preferred general implant set(s) are Ascendancies; the Leshak itself is only run with Hyperspatials if you use Slaves instead.

I’d also argue that a cap transfer is a much more useful way to use the utility high rather than a nos, however much of that is driven by the fact that you can probably get a cap chain buddy from a Guardian instead to feed you cap- and that’s probably a lot more worthwhile than nos’ing the NPCs.

It takes ~2 minutes to hit full spool. Production is tied to the pretty risky process of the (recently introduced) Abyssal sites. These sites require the player to complete them within 20 minutes or else their ship- and their pod- is destroyed, and no wreckage is spawned (the most visceral ISK sink in the game, that). Leshaks are also pretty poor for shield fleets- there’s a post on the WarpToMe forums that’s publicly viewable regarding possible inclusion of the Leshak into their doctrine fits but they’re a shield group and so far they seem to be pretty turned off of it.

Leshaks themselves also do require 4 damage mods to hit those numbers, and it’s only due to the fact that the “doctrine” fit for TDF is either triple-trimarked or Slaved (and still with a single Trimark IIRC) combined with its high base armor value- and the lack of weapon rigs for Triglavian weapons- means that it can actually use its ample low slots entirely for damage+resists.

On a brief note for the PvP side, Leshaks don’t scale well to very large fleets of several hundred players; they’re at their best in smaller groups of around 20 (though I’ve heard they do well up to 50); given that the current premiere use of the PvP Leshak tends to be whaling expeditions going after ratting capitals and supercapitals, I am inclined to think that the Leshak- and other Triglavian ships- are well tuned and optimized towards the task of being premiere small gang ships, particularly given how spool damage does not help much in large-scale fleet actions.

Anyways,

Leshaks are more optimal in Assault/HQ sites because there’s more targets that don’t just instantly vaporize the moment a few Vindis spread webs and start blapping. They’re… usable, in Vanguard sites (IE I’m pretty sure that you won’t get thrown out of fleet and told to never return if you bring a Leshak to a TDF Vanguard fleet), but if the fleets are up and running and ‘competition’ for spots is high (and the goal is to blitz VG sites) then you might get passed over if both ‘your’ Leshak and another person’s Vindi X up.

There is also still the issue that Vindicators possess better tracking by default due to both role bonuses and the fundamentally superior tracking of blasters over pulse lasers, and the frequent inclusion of TCs on the fit (allowing the option to script for tracking speed) means that this just goes into a feedback loop of “if it’s in web range it dies superfast” once Vindicators hit the field.

I don’t think that NGeddons would be a good pure DPS option, and the niche they seem to occupy is as the “range flexible DPS”, neither a pure sniper like Tach Nightmares or 1400 arty Machs nor pure CQC DPS like the Mega->Vindi/Kronos train, but something in between.

In armor fleets at least Leshaks also occupy this niche, but the have the added quirk of also being superb structure killers, providing greater incentive to include in the fleet.

Overall it comes down to the structure of the fleet; Vindicators can achieve enormous paper DPS, and compared to an NGeddon have decent opportunity to apply it thanks to their 90% webs.

Maybe shield fleets would go for this, but armor fleets have pretty well settled on being battleship-heavy (to the point that most non-BS fits are either cruiser Logi, command ship links- generally the Astarte or more often the Eos- or very rare site calling HACs that are making use of the (relatively) recent Assault Damage Control to have a few hundred thousand EHP for ~15 seconds due to stupendous resists).

Further, due to the fundamentally poor(er) application of battleship weaponry, the shorter-ranged but higher strength 90% Vindicator webs are generally considered much more preferable than the much longer ranged Loki webs. Combined with the fact that Vindicators are an often preferred CQC DPS option, and it has a significant effect on the application of the fleet as a whole.

Ultimately you need some kind of application support craft, and if most of your fleet is already battleships then you may as well have the battleships due the webbing (particularly in armor fleets where you have a good amount of mid slots available for utility options like TCs and webs). And then you run into the Vindicator which has both high DPS and incredible webs due to the strength bonus… at which point you kind of wonder “well why not optimize towards CQC/sniper DPS roles”.

Leshaks hitting the scene mostly meant that armor fleets got even better, and mostly it was due to their great ability to win site competition in tower bash sites due to the high DPS ceiling the Leshak can offer, rather than because they can provide both close-in high DPS and high projection similar to the notional NGeddon doctrine.

1 Like
13

I do not have a spesific goal with this. If anything i think the NGeddon should be included in armour and shield doctrines. However i am also pointing out that i believe the idea of a split DPS/sniper fleet is a mistake in the OP.

In the case of blasters, pulses and webbing the keyword is transversal. Vindicators have to get up close to apply their webs and DPS. If they didnt have the 90% webs, they would not be able to track small ships at close range. The shorter the weapon range the more tracking it needs. In other words the tracking of the Vindicator is something it needs . It is not an advantage against a longer range weapon system as long as it remains at that range.
When you are in a pulse boat shooting from 30-40-50+km, the transversal will be very low. You do not need 90% webs on the target in this case to track them. A single 50% web will probably do the trick. This is why thought of the Loki for the fleet i suggested.

I agree that NGeddons is a range flexible DPS. However as i describe in the OP there are many advantages to this too other than pure paper DPS. Even so, i do not think the total fleet paper DPS of the NGeddons can be ignored when compared to even an unrealistic amount of Vindicators. The weakness of the Vindicator fleet is their short range, requiring snipers with low max DPS to fill spots in the fleet. This drags down the total DPS of the fleet. As you can see the NGeddons are not far behind the 22 Vindis and 9 snipers. But has a much greater ability to pop things from afar. That is a huge advantage as these spawns are triggers for example in TPPH last room. If you clear them faster you can start shooting the others faster. Vindis have to to wait for the snipers to clear faraway targets now and then. So again, it is a split fleet issue that is totally ignored in the face of paper DPS.

14

So I’m not really part of the group that decided on all this, but I do think that there is probably some kind of logic to it beyond “nobody thought of an all large pulse laser fleet”.

The VG fleets I’ve been in with TDF for example we pretty much took gate and then whatever the warpin from the acceleration gate was… we just sat there. Didn’t move until the site was nearly done and we were aligning out to the next one.

In those conditions- and with the significant amount of targets that present themselves at such short ranges (as in, most things will spawn or end up within linked FedNavy web range; ~18-20 km)- then Vindicators are incredibly potent- though I think NGeddons would be a decent option to fulfill ranged DPS in such conditions because it offers the flexibility of shooting further while CQC DPS cleans up in close and then supplementing CQC DPS if they happen to finish quickly.

For Assault/HQ sites… I think it would depend very heavily on the sites involved and the trigger ships, as well as where the waves spawn. I recall that the few times I was able to run on AS/HQ fleets the CQC ships would MWD between an initial anchor point and then to a subsequent position so that they would be in their preferred optimal for remaining waves (and once positions thusly the subsequent waves would spawn right on top of the CQC DPS, and promptly suffer critical existence failures).

If you wanted to run much more mid-range with web Lokis for support… I don’t really know how well that would work out, and it seems like if you try to include Vindicators for support- as either a high DPS towerbash platform or for further web support- then the fleet would naturally stratify into CQC/sniper DPS roles anyways, with the snipers simply having reduced range but better applied DPS (since as poor as Large Pulse tracking is, particularly with the tracking penalty of Scorch, it’s still much better than Tach/425 rail/1400 arty tracking).

Whether or not this is desirable is something I couldn’t really say. NGeddons seem like they’re an interesting choice for flexible ranged DPS but the main issue is that organizationally- TDF at least- seems to have already stratified towards split CQC/sniper DPS, and the only option that doesn’t really fit into that box is the Leshak, due to equal parts extreme sustained DPS potential against high-HP targets (like towers) and the significant support utility it can bring with its bevy of utility highs.

For TDF Leshaks fit in as sort of the anti-structure version of the logi Nestors that they already used; which is to say that they acted as a utility-heavy battleship platform that could provide a fairly unique capability (mainly high-scaling anti-structure DPS with high utility support, much like how Nestors act as a logi battleship and as the anchor for cruiser logi).

NGeddons… seem more like you’d have to structure an entire doctrine around them. And part of what makes public Incursions like TDF and WarpToMe work is that while you have to fly “doctrine” you have a lot of variety for that and a lot of different skilltrain paths. It’s not really locked in like “if you fly DPS it must be a Navy Geddon”, but rather “for CQC DPS these are the ones we like, for sniper DPS this is what we prefer, and there’s also logi/boosts/other stuff that needs doing and here’s what we like for that”.

More-or-less NGeddons seems like that wouldn’t work very well for the usually fairly ad hoc nature of Incursion fleets- at least the publicly run fleets in highsec, since they seem to require a much more strictly regimented fleet structure. Maybe the big alliances in null might run things differently if they find they have a local Incursion. I dunno.

That’s actually a point of consideration; perhaps platforms like the Navy Geddon are in fact superior to the current doctrine architecture, but that superiority is predicated on the willingness of a group to strictly enforce that people fly on-doctrine and nothing else. Certainly there’s fits and ships that will get you told “no don’t fly that” in TDF (and presumably WTM), but in my experience it tends to be- for example “not the Hyperion, but instead the Megathron”, rather than, well, “train Amarr Battleship and get a Navy Geddon, otherwise leave”.

I will also also note that certain assumptions you make in the OP ignore the projection of the sniper options (a NGeddon with dual optimal-scripted TC 2s will only shoot ~60 km, and that in half falloff), which may be a factor making the sniper/CQC split more optimal (that is, it may not be time efficient to motor into range of some targets compared to slapping a CQC blob onto the spawn point while the sniper blob shoots everything from close to the warpin). There’s also some… generous, shall we say… assumptions regarding the DPS (mainly the whole “Vindi/NGeddon use a pair of drone damage mods in addition to a bunch of magstabs/heat sinks” part, since not a lot of battleships will be able to do that… like the Leshak is probably the only one that can really do so because it hasn’t got much else to use for its rigs except Trimarks; a better tuned NGeddon AS/HQ fit would probably use a 1600mm plate instead of a DDA for example, and- for armor fleets especially- totally ignores the tank involved).

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As i remember it from the earlier days in incursions, the fleets used all kinds of ships. For example various T3’s, even T1 battlecruisers and T1 battleships that are no longer used. Sometime along the way the fleets started to improve their performance. It started with individuals from what i remember. No incursion community then had will or a lot of interest to force their friends to fly this or that ship, but they encouraged the use of the ships that had performed better than the rest. I think around 2015-2016 they really started “pushing” the Vindicators. Based on individual pilot performance, site aggro and paper DPS. (As far as i have seen.)

In such conditions, it is easy to think of reasons why the best “flexible range DPS” system, pulse lasers, was overlooked. For example: I dont think many looks at their incursion fleets as they look at their PVP fleets. Rather, in this aspect, i think it is the complete oposite. The PVP fleet is considered as a whole, a single unit, ten times before the individual pilot and ship is considered, if at all. I think this is important to keep in mind. For incursions, most players mind their own ship and their own business within the frame set by the commuity leaders.

Im not a commie bastard. I agree with you that it would be very unreasonable indeed to try force a new doctrine overnight. I am not entirely sure what you mean that the NGeddons require more strictly regimented fleet structure however. If you mean flight directions and anchoring spots and such then yes it would be diffrent. But not stricter than now, i am pretty sure. When i used the NGeddon in TVP i found it a very comfortable ship to fly in HQ’s. And at the same time very efficient. This is quite important. That is; consistent high performance of the ship in the hands of both veterans and new players farming sites for hours and hours. It is the perfect ship for the overworked and stressed out Vindi-pilot :smile:

Anyway, if i am correct in assuming that the current doctrine is something that “evolved” over time - It is possible to direct the evolution by opening up new possibilities. For example by looking more at the fleet as a whole rather than individual ships. And in this case to allow pulse NGeddons in shield and armour fleets as DPS. And as pulse snipers - as long as they have the things required to more or less match the common NM at long range. You are right that the pulse NGeddon will not reach every single sniper target, in a very few situations, without the MWD. However i think that is only a minor inconvenience, if any. What is important is that it is able to constantly cycle it guns effectively at something that needs to be popped, from start to finish.

For the CQC blob on the spawn point you mentioned at the end - most of the maximum DPS advantage of the Vindicator-fleet in my comparison comes from its drones. As long as these are not utilized the fleets are pretty much equal in terms of maximum DPS output. AFAIK combat drones are only used on the tower, and as i mentioned and you probably know they cannot blap like sentries.

For the last part you mention about the tank. I agree i went overboard with the number of drone damage mods for a realistic fit, at least for an armour fleet. However i dont think it matters since it was a fair comparison and it will scale down about the same for both regardless of how many damage modules are removed.

Also regarding the tank - and what i mentioned about looking at the fleet before the individual ships; I am not 100% cetain of this, but lets say a HQ fleet has 20 pulse NGeddons. There would likely be some change to the priority of targets in site as compared to the current fleets. The engagement range would change. It is not unthinkable the incoming damage would be lowered, changed or delayed, at least slightly. It is something to keep in mind.

In relation to this; i have noticed that the armor community has a lot stricter requirement for its tank than shield does. Back when i flew with TVP i used - 1 DCU, 1 passive EM hardner, 1 invuln and 2 shield rigs - With this i only had the base shield HP of the NGeddon +1 extender rig. About 12200 HP. I pulled a lot of aggro in HQ’s and i never popped with this or came close to it. Pretty sure it is close to a lot of shield fits today. I guess the larger tank requirement in the armour community has to do with the use of Nestors. I read somewhere that it is to get a couple or so more ships into the fleet since the individual Nestor has more repping power than a Logi cruiser, but a lower scan resolution. There is also a factor of diminishing returns here when the whole fleet needs a more beefy tank. (If my assumption here is correct.) Anyway, this is only semi-relevant.

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I’m referring to how participation in an activity suddenly has a much stricter barrier to entry; if NGeddons become the premiere option, then it’s harder to provide newbros looking to get into Incursions with starter options and training paths towards that goal, particularly for alpha players (especially when Incursion group PvE might be what hooks them to go to Omega status).

As an example at present TDF has starter fits- with meta 4 guns in fact- for both the Megathron and Apoc, and IIRC it also has a couple for the Tempest as well. Combined with the fact that there are also similar starter fits for the Macharial and Nightmare, and there becomes a lot of flexibility in just what ships a character may have already trained on.

Similarly this might be why Machariels were tested thoroughly- they’re already a premiere L4 blitzing battleship, so lots of mission runners who might be interested in Incursions probably have at least one laying around, so it becomes fairly straightforward to move to options that allow greater numbers of people to participate (particularly if your goal is to have multiple fleets running different sites, for which you need lots of people obviously).

The point was less “they require more competent piloting/leadership from the player(s)” and more “it requires a more stringent barrier to entry”, and the existing doctrine requirements are- while somewhat expensive- not actually that strict in terms of what hulls you fly at the start.

There is also the issue that if you’re going to be that strict for Incursion fleet doctrines and what is and is not acceptable in the fleet then you may as well fly Leshaks, particularly since Leshaks can spidertank and capchain each other to reduce the number of required logi in the fleet.

I strongly disagree with this point; the DPS comparison you presented may as well be fallacious for all the accuracy it has in live conditions, especially for armor fleets. Quite literally the only ships I recall making use of DDAs in TDF doctrine fits are the Leshak, Nestor, and maybe the Eos.

No other ship uses DDAs. Going over WarpToMe’s doctrine fits, the only non-drone battleship I could find that makes use of DDAs was the Vindicator (you can check out WTM’s fits here: WTM Fittings); however, critically the only Vindicator fits that WTM ‘approves’ that include DDAs are the “Optimal” and “Bling” variants; for all the other variants it instead uses tracking enhancers rather than DDAs.

As far as I know the tank requirements in TDF have more to do with making sure you don’t die before reps land, driven by the quirks of armor reps compared to shield reps over any other consideration.

The stricter requirements are AFAIK driven by the mechanical differences between armor and shield reps; which is to say, that armor reps actually apply their reps at the end of the module cycle, rather than at the beginning like shield reps.

So the time it takes for reps to land is thus longer because you don’t start repping the moment you’ve successfully locked the target and rolled your fingers across F1-Fwhatever (or whatever other keybind you use for your highslots). As such there needs to be a greater buffer so that you don’t dip in to structure or just outright die.

Nestors are preferred because they offer greater repping power compared to Logi cruisers, yes, since this allows the fleet to bring more DPS (Leshaks becoming more common in armor fleets also contributes to greater overall DPS potential, and more tank, since the TDF-preferred Leshak fits tend to include a few remote reps of their own to the tune of being roughly half a logi cruiser in terms of repping power).

It’s also worth noting that TDF at least runs all passive resists, and while armor does get passive omni resist mods they still aren’t going to provide as much “raw” resists per module as active hardeners would- but one of the qualities that armor fleets tend to tout as an advantage is that their individual tank is entirely capless so it doesn’t matter if you get neuted out, you won’t instantly die due to hardeners shutting off.

This actually plays into the fact that armor fleets have to balance tank and DPS mods in the lows/rigs, but trade this for having access to much better application mods in their mids.

In any case this does still go into a feedback loop that part of the reason NGeddon-heavy/-only comps have probably never been tried is because of how the existing (active) communities seem more geared toward battleship-heavy comps that themselves also have a bevy of options available to newbros; TDF has starter Megathron/Apoc options, and WTM has starter Hyperion, Maelstrom, and Rokh fits.

You can’t really have that kind of starter ‘path’ if you want all the DPS pilots to fly one thing and all the support pilots to fly just one ship/fit and so on. It restricts the options players have available and means that you can’t have drop-in/drop-out public fleets.

The big alliances could probably pull this off, but I don’t think that the public highsec communities like TDF and WTM could.

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For starter ships i think any long-range weapon system and ship that can use them reasonably well could be combined with this NGeddon fleet i put here. I dont see any problems with this in comparison to now. Its not like lets say a rail mega is going to be diffrent from a blaster mega in terms of entry level. The Apoc too of course.

As you say Incursion Vindicators that use DDA’s exist. That is why I added them mostly so that no one would complain that i didnt have them. Keep in mind that NGeddon has a lowslot more than the Vindicator so it is very likely it will have room for at least 1. Anyway, you can remove all the DDA’s on both ships and the result will be the same, percentage-wise, in the comparison in the OP.

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It’s more the ship skill train rather than the weapon systems; locking into NGeddons means that people are forced to crosstrain from other options like rail Megas for example, and could easily stratify to the point that low-end alternatives that aren’t immediate stepping stones to the NGeddon simply aren’t allowed.

You misunderstand; Incursion Vindicators that use DDAs are restricted to high-end shield fleet fits. No other practical option- to include lower end (and thus likely more common/practical) shield Vindicators- make use of DDAs on Vindicators.

It’s simply not a practical solution.

For an armor fit this is… debatable. While I did lay out a fit for the NGeddon that includes a DDA this was also modelled off of the existing Leshak fit that runs triple trimarked largely because there’s just no other real options for the rigs on an Incursion Leshak.

For an NGeddon it’s entirely possible that it would instead run plated, use cheaper base resists and nudge up the explosive resist with a rig while using some DPS/application/projection rigs (in fact this would probably be much more optimal given the stated intent/goal for an NGeddon comp, to use a pair of T2 locus coordinators and then a tank rig in addition to running with a 1600 plate in the low slots).

Put bluntly, on an armor fit NGeddon that’s optimized for a flexible ranged DPS role with Large Pulses you’re probably looking at 3x damage mods, a DC, dual EANMs (or EANM+ANP depending on CPU), a plate, and then a “flex” slot that would probably go to either more resists or another heat sink.

Mids would be dual TCs, a sebo, and an MWD (the sebo is useful primarily to cut down on lock times so you have reduced downtime if/when you have sufficient firepower on grid to blap targets; doesn’t do much good to be able to shoot anything on grid if CQC DPS is still able to clear faster by virtue of a “soft” factor like lock time). Then a full rack of guns and probably a cap transfer (between Nestors, Guardians, and probable inclusion of a Leshak or two you have a lot of options to cap chain).

More specifically I would argue that the main reason that nobody has ever really tried something so strictly delineated like this is because it probably isn’t practical to fly it in the highsec public fleets; there’s a degree of variation that’s sufficient to denote that while some restrictions are enforced, there is still some freedom about what you can fly.

Given that it’s also PvE, which has historically… not been particularly engaging… there’s some meta factors that probably play into the fact that the Incursion communities can’t really get too restrictive and narrow in the types of fleets that they run, otherwise they’ll end up struggling to attract new blood and retain enough people to viably run sites and, you know, make money (while also not considering an alternative of driving an icepick into one’s ear due to how dull EVE PvE tends to be).

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“As i remember it from the earlier days in incursions, the fleets used all kinds of ships.”

***yep we didnt know ■■■■ bck then, we didnt bring boosters…or ts3… i omg… right?

“For example various T3’s, even T1 battlecruisers and T1 battleships that are no longer used. Sometime along the way the fleets started to improve their performance.”

***well at least you know yourself why… progress :slight_smile:

" It started with individuals from what i remember. No incursion community then had will or a lot of interest to force their friends to fly this or that ship, but they encouraged the use of the ships that had performed better than the rest. "

reason: we evolved :slight_smile:

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I think you are grasping at straws here at some points. Saying that a pirate BS doctrine is more entry level friendly than a navy BS doctrine is just not right no matter how you look at it. I can help you out with more arguments against myself here. Like more new players roll Minmatar than Amarr. (Maybe?) Even if this is the case, should this control how you choose your main endgame-doctrine to be most efficient? No.

I find it difficult to see your fitting arguments. I have used this ship for an extended time in shield fleets to great success as described above. Of course, it is difficult to convince anyone of this by just typing. As any ship, you need to fly it for an extended period before you decide on what is the optimal fit. Especially in this case where we are talking about an almost entirely new way of doing things. You are literally trying to argue that an 8-lowslot Amarr BS with guns that are not particularly dependent on mid slots to be successful, is at a disadvantage against other ships with less lowslots in an armor fleet.

I already linked a fit that has the tank you need with B-types. It has 19k armor HP, which is 1k away from the minimum requirement of the armor community. If that is unacceptable because of some principle, i think some priorities should be reconsidered.

So for the performance VS the fleet with 22 Vindicators (Which happens never AFAIK). I think i have already proved that the DPS is pretty much 50/50 VS close range rats, about 10k more DPS for the Vindicator fleet on the tower, and 19k or 29k more long range DPS for the NGeddons. On top of that i have mentioned the issue of a split fleet. For this you get a random number of DPS and Sniper ships x-ing up for every fleet. We all know how this goes up and down over the course of the day. That is where having one main ship instead of two or three gives you a relatively large advantage in consistency. For this reason, i am pretty certain that in a alternative reality where EVE online incursion players fly only Armageddon Navy Issue, they have more average ISK/HR because of this consistency, than we do in our reality today. You can say that not having a choice is boring and that it is an argument against what i have said, ok. Still, you will have the option of Logistics, and of webbing role. (I would try the Loki here. But the Vindi will work, of course.)

So this choice of two or three endgame ships is probably why incursion fleets never have 22 Vindicators. It could get them if only the Vindicator was allowed. But we know that would not work. In the end the community leaders must do as they like. But i think they should at least accept the NGeddon into fleets, if having a choice is so important.