I just want to make few questions to understand everything a bit more.
why are battleships barely used?
Unless it ‘s a huge fight like the one I just had where there were severla capitals in smaller fights most you’ll see is 80% cruisers and usually it will be 2 types with 2 fits only( that kinda screams imbalance to me) 15% logi and few tackle. I thought it was that battleships countered cruisers yet people prefer to go cruiser vs cruiser
what arw triglavian ships role? I don’t see them being used often not sure if they’re good bad or whatever
in a fight of 700 vs 700 or more what should I do as a tackle/frigate?
has it always been the way to play to link to your fc with 0 manual piloting? I feel people should be rewarded for manually piloting and engaging rather than 2 snakes hitting at each other .
is there any hopes for a balance? I see a ■■■■ ton of ships in the game yet in the end 8 are used, and that for me screams of imbalance and OP stuff, it’s like going to an FPS and everyone runs the m4… or you’re playing a medieval game and everyone uses the mace because the blunt dmg is the best kinda the same
Take all of this with a pintch of salt as I’m a noob
BS lack of mobility is their biggest flaw. They are important for wormholes due to a convenient mass for rolling [collapsing/destroying] wormholes. They have niche fleet combat uses but I’ve not flown one in PVP.
in a big fight as tackle you should obey FC instructions. Assuming they call “spread points” or “free tackle” or “get anything” or similar, I’d default my tackle priorities to:
Countertackling the tackle that’s on your own logi
Enemy ewar (careful, they will try to be positioned somewhere they can’t get hit)
Enemy logi (ditto)
If you have overview presets prepared to show only your preferred tackle targets it’ll save you key seconds.
Tackle is expected to be competent manual pilots. You should send a polite mail to your FC explaining that you don’t feel that you’re getting useful tackle practice because you’re in the blob.
Trig ships are just a different flavor of expensive omega only ships
In big fleet fights, there is a thing called a doctrine, pretty much means that everyone flys the same thing so that the FC(fleet commander) knows what everyone can and can’t do, and what damage, speed(what everyone can catch up to, and outrun), and survival time to expect, it also helps them get logi so they can rep everyone the same.
There will never be a fair fight and frigates can be a pain if you are flying a bigger ship cuz you can’t really do damage to them, and they slowly eat through your tank.
Tackles are really important to hold down targets for the big guns to wreck.
But i feel CCP shouldn’t reward that type of gameplay where everyone can go with 1 type of ship and perform better than people going with different stuff, i get that it allows for better coordination/ ease of command but at the same time i feel ccp should encourage using severa different layouts more difficulty= more performance,
One key tip that will save a lot of confusing deaths, you should be aware of the “signature radius” mechanic, a bigger signature radius causes increased damage received. With T1 MWD on [edit: activated and onlined; not onlined and deactivated] your sig is 6x the normal size and almost anything can place full damage shots. Some tackle fits “dual prop” so they can close in with MWD but then turn it off and switch to afterburner to avoid that signature radius penalty and reduce their incoming damage.
As tackle I’m good as I just wrap tackle orbit and wait while dealing 100 damage, but as an assault frigate or whatever they’re called how u play something that is supposed to do dps but it won’t against anything bigger? And i thought battleships/capitals could barely hit frigates yet I got dunked by either a battleship or dreadnought
So aproach with it and once in wrap/scramble range turn it off to reduce incoming damage? By the way doesnit decrease the dmg or make the enemy miss the shoot completlly having the lower signature?
Big sig radius = big target
Small sig radius = small target
It is hard for battleships to hit frigates because (battleships) have big turrets that track slowly, and frigs are fast, and have small sig radius
Because frigs are small and fast, it is possible to speed tank, and sig tank them, which is using your speed and sig radius to decrease incoming damage, it is harder to speed/sig tank the bigger your ship, and on Battlecruisers and bigger, it is pretty much impossible to do it
CCP shouldn’t reward that type of gameplay where everyone can go with 1 type of ship and perform better than people going with different stuff
I don’t see anything CCP should change, either the best fleet won or the best fleet made bad choices
I’m curious how much of the current doctrine meta is FC’s and pilots being too risk averse to experiment with strange compositions and how much is actual effectiveness. It’s also a lot easier on large scale corp logistics when there are only a dozen hulls and fits to make available. Cost is also a factor, you can run maybe 8 cruiser roams for the cost of one BS roam.
Assault frigates are amazing and really hard to kill. Yes, if the small ship can’t break the big ship’s tank, and it’s successfully “sig tanking” the big ship’s drones and guns, it’s a stalemate. That’s when you call in some corpmates!
Yikes! If I saw all that lock me up in a 700 man fleet fight I’d turn off my MWD and abandon my current tackle plans until they dropped yellowbox and pray they miss enough. Not much chance though, at that point your job is to delay them shooting your DPS for as many seconds as possible
That’s what I would do for the deathball fights your FC has been putting you into. In a more spread out fight, you’d be spreading out and spiraling around to try and keep out of their tackle range while you get to juicy targets.
I would do my best to stay on the edge of the ball. I believe there are implants and combat boosters that reduce your signature radius but I don’t remember their names offhand. Evasive Maneuvering skill reduces sig too.
Shield extenders, shield rigs, inertial stabilizers all increase your signature radius.
They had you painted, that basically means someone pointed a flashlight at you so it is easier for the other people’s guns to see you, and therefore hit you, and they had ewar on you(the griffin), so you couldn’t lock anyone besides the person who has you jammed, and you lose any locks you had before they got a jam on you
Oh dear lord NO!
Your primary objective as light tackle in a big fight is to survive.
Secondary is to scout and make tactical perches on the battle grid, and gates in system, for the FC to warp the fleet to reposition.
Your third objective is to tackle high value targets and stragglers.
Light Tackle is something of an art as a fleet role.
This video explains it fairly well. I 100% agree with Chessur about the futility of asking newbros to fly tackle. I think ewar is a much better role for a newbro. Gal Frigate II, Sensor Linking II, grab a triple damp Maulus and maek 100m sp Battleship pilots very sad.
This is a consequence with the meta of big fleet flights. What follows is kind of how the thinking goes.
For big subcap + cap fights there’s people out there with spreadsheets estimating the enemy EHP. And EHP per ship. And maybe estimated Remote Reps per second. They have the goal of figuring out how to get rid of all the enemy DPS ships as fast as possible while keeping their DPS ships alive as long as possible. With big fleet numbers it’s usually not possible to keep them alive so it’s simply a DPS race.
Then they look at their fleet and go „I wanna min/max my DPS“ because the quicker they can either
A) volley off enemy DPS ships due to Alpha damage, hence Tempests or Tempest Fleet issues plus Arties, or
B) apply enough DPS (volley or not) to kill off enemy logi as quick as possible (so they can then move onto the DPS ships as quickly as possible)
… then the quicker they can remove DPS ships and win the race.
So how do they do this? Simple:
Any time not shooting is wasted time at best (no outgoing DPS, no incoming damage) and feeding at worst (no outgoing DPS, but taking incoming damage)
Any time maneuvering around is wasted DPS
The FC needs to quickly be able to assess if they have enough DPS (otherwise they are feeding)
The [subcap] FC in a combined subcap/cap battle is already coordinating with at least one other person — and sometimes more.
You only have so many capsuleers. If they have the choice of two competing DPS ship hulls, if one is able to do damage now and the other isn’t, you’d prefer them in the able-to-do-damage hull.
So how do you work within these constraints? It favors homogenizing the DPS hull across all subcaps:
Either they can all shoot and do DPS or they don’t. FC doesn’t have to sit and worry about a plethora of ship hulls and wondering if all their ranges can apply
They can all maneuver together, making the cost & benefit of maneuvering actions much easier to read in the heat of the moment
When the FC says „fire“ they can instantly know how well their DPS is performing, they don’t have to wait for stragglers to „get in range“ doing zero DPS
The FC doesn’t have to coordinate with squad leaders in addition to cap fleet FC. Smoothens comms significantly.
Each capsuleer is meaningfully contributing as much DPS as the fleet permits, you’re not worrying about idle chars.
Thus: you get a lot of fleet battles where everyone is in the same DPS hull, following the FC around, doing the actions when FC says.
If you want a different experience, I suggest small gang fights. It requires much more personal initiative but the fights are much more dynamic.
