Do you see what I'm seeing in fleet comps?

[Quesa]

Yeah, I've been gone for a while. I decided to come back to see what was goin on and found that some of the pilots that I played with prior were coming back as well. Additionally, I remember the glory days of flying different fleet comps to counter one or another, one type sometimes forcing the other off the field - swapping out to another comp because of hostile movements and actions.

I was quite excited, I absolutely LOVED aHacs and not just because we owned alot of fleets with them; more because I just love that up close slugfest between two or more fleets. When I was in ATLAS , I begged, pleaded and pushed for RRBS ops because of that desire to get up close and stop the snipe-gay-fest of warping to a ping for 30 seconds until something got a warpin or someone got pop'd leaving a warpable wreck on the field - or even using doubleDD proof snipe fits and GETTING THE FUCK OUT, TITAN ON FIELD. When the change to Titans came about, I was juiced - I knew that available fleet comps would open up as the EFT warriors got to work theorycrafting the newest and best comps and strats to use against the hordes.

Well, to put it bluntly, I have been disappointing. I found that in place of my beloved aHac, RRBS and sHac fleets, the myriad of fleet comps had been reduced to super expensive and pilot dependant (Moonins or Tengus) or some ship with 1400's equiped. It seems that everything has been reduced down to the alpha capabilities of the fleet, which most can deduce ends up reducing alot of fleet battles down to who has more people.

Before you start in with the 'you're just winging about losing ships and fleets' it's not...no truely. Sure, nobody likes to be the loser in an engagement or war and to be in the type of Alliance that I'm in, you need to have a certain level of competitiveness but that doesn't mean I can't handle a ship loss and for anyone who looks at my history, they'll find many losses. It's more about wanting to see more diverse fleet comps. I absolutely detested the Super-Era where whichever entity had the most Supers, won. While I also wanted a change to the AoE DD mechanic (limiting DD's per grid for a period of time) I thought it allowed a smaller, and maybe smarter, entity could use them strategically to overcome overwhelming odds (which we saw many times).

So, I asked the question on our internal forums, "What happened to aHacs"? And while there wasn't too much rocket science that went into finding out the generic reasons (at least what I believe) I didn't get much further than "Huggins and 1400's happened". Some of the things that I feel might be the issue is that arties can track and do far to much damage to ships with much smaller signature radii than the gun should be doing. We all see how missiles like torpedoes do fuck-all damage on something like an inty even if it's sitting still 2km from a Raven but that's not the case with turrets because there is no signature radii calculation in the equation, right?

I don't quite have the answers I'm looking for. While everything I think that is wrong could be the reason, I usually miss something. Even if I do 'pretty much' have everything, what needs to be changed to make it better? I really didn't like 50 supers being the i win vs. any fleet unless someone had more, it made fighting certain entities pointless and static while simultaneously removing the requirement for the vast majority of pilots and ship types.

So, while I know that in a game like this there is no silver bullet, what would be the best way to bring us back to a more diverse Eve universe or are things not as bad as I feel they are and thus my avatar would be more correct than just a quirky pic to use?

[Letters]

Any half decent Perma MWD Drake fleet will tear apart an aHAC fleet, and even if does not manage to do this, it will only lose a handful of ships due to keeping range (50k+). AHACS were good against kitchen sink battleship fleets, but they simply do not have enough speed or range to compete with any tight setup being flown nowadays, Loki's can web out to maybe 50k, thats about it. Anythying beyond the range with an MWD (which basically every other ship has) is able to keep its range while happily firing at ahacs, even for guns the low sig-radius doesn't mean much at that range.

IMO aHACS had their glory post-DD nerf, but people have moved on, and its a simple fact that being able to hit out from far away is always an advantage, especially when there is only a minimal damage difference.

[Quesa]

You are essentially agreeing with me with a good example. Drakes, used right, countered aHacs pretty efficiently but aHacs neutered BS fleets. However, sHacs countered Drakes pretty solidly while mid-ranged BS were used to counter sHacs. You could use the smaller sigs of Hacs to offset the weaker tank to stand up to BS but it seems that 1400's track too well to use ABHacs even at max transversal.

It was pretty common knowledge that artillary cannons were very high alpha with horrible tracking. Is it the new availability of tracking ammo that pushed it too far? Combined with the fact that the sigRad of the target isn't used in the damage calculation, it just seems like LR guns are hitting for more than they should and thus the reduction in available counters which exploit the sigRad advantage.

The point was, there were fleet comp counters but it seems like 1 or 2 comps rule over everything now.

[anzoxe]

they should just make sig radius affect tracking more than it does

this is a thread on fhc about it(fhc i know but sweet thread)

http://failheap-challenge.com/showth...king-Nerf-v0-1

[Grim]

There are still other fleet comps out there, its just that most alliances are too lazy to do the work to incorprate them. Nulli ha their naga fleets, AAA have been doing oracles, BL Munnins, etc. It is true that fleets are tighter now than they once were. People want only 1 ship type for each role, so there is no more racial options like there used to. A tighter fleet comp is more effective, and because of the additional training time some alliances are wary of having too many requirements.

[Quesa]

There are still other fleet comps out there, its just that most alliances are too lazy to do the work to incorprate them. Nulli ha their naga fleets, AAA have been doing oracles, BL Munnins, etc. It is true that fleets are tighter now than they once were. People want only 1 ship type for each role, so there is no more racial options like there used to. A tighter fleet comp is more effective, and because of the additional training time some alliances are wary of having too many requirements.

It's true that the game, strats and fleet comps all evolve but is this iteration premature due to some gun mechanics? I remember when missiles started taking into account the sigRad of it's target and being of Caldari descent, I was not happy. However, as my education in the world of Eve grew, I began to see the ultimate benefits to such a factor in the damage calculation.

First, it has a positive effect on the differences between hull and weapon sizes. It means that a fleet of Ravens can't sit out at 200k and lob damage at anything for full damage (of course this is assuming perfect circumstances). How many people would be outraged if a max skilled ratter was so easily able to snuff out a Vagabond pilot because sigRad had no meaning?

Second, as stated above, it highlights the advantages of flying a certain hull size against a fleet composed of ships using a certain weapon setup. I believe this opens up the various hulls and ships in the game for use in fleets thus in increase in available fleet compositions.

Now, I do understand enough about the differences in missile and turret based weapon systems, especially that the sigRad change to missile damage was to offset the tracking calculation of turrets.

[Quesa]

they should just make sig radius affect tracking more than it does

this is a thread on fhc about it(fhc i know but sweet thread)

http://failheap-challenge.com/showth...king-Nerf-v0-1

That's a pretty good thread and educational to boot. There are alot of great points in there - something to marinate on overnight.

[Arrador]

And before people complain about alpha being broken. Maelstroms where being flown due to the prevalence of 200k EHP abaddons being supported by 20+ guardians, and triage archons.

[Grim]

And before people complain about alpha being broken. Maelstroms where being flown due to the prevalence of 200k EHP abaddons being supported by 20+ guardians, and triage archons.

This is true. The increased use of logistics, brick tanked ships, and lag led to the obvious counter of massive alpha. Its just a matter of waiting for a counter to become popular enough and the cycle will continue, although a slight nerf to arties might help it along.

[StevieTopSiders]

Don't Tengus counter Alpha Fleet? Or if not counter, at least not die horribly?

Also, I agree with the OP. More diversity so that it was worth flying something not currently FOTM would be cool.

[Checkbox Poll]

Ahacs aren't dead, TEST has been pretty much the only nullsec group to run them seriously in the last 6 months.

[Arrador]

Ahacs aren't dead, TEST has been pretty much the only nullsec group to run them seriously in the last 6 months.

Ahacs outside of brick tanked t3 ships are pretty much dead in any serious 0.0 conflict given the widespread use of huggins and lokis

[Grim]

For those of you who have fought with/in an an alpha fleet how many huggins are usually there, and how difficult is it to remove them from the fight early on?

[Arrador]

For those of you who have fought with/in an an alpha fleet how many huggins are usually there, and how difficult is it to remove them from the fight early on?

Given the speed of ahacs, almost 0 warp scramblers being used the use of faction webs, and mwd's on huggins/lokis, good luck catching them even if you do land at 0.

[StevieTopSiders]

Say your AHAC fleet was rolling with a handful of armor Lokis running webs. If you landed on an Alpha Fleet at 0, could you grab the Huggins before they got out of Scorch range?

Or what about some armor Proteuses rolling bonused Scrams?

[Grim]

For these big fights with 1000 dudes in system you all dont have to fly the exact same ship. It would make sense to me that if you had the people make an close range fleet that can get under the enemies guns, and a longer range fleet that can kill the neccesary support. Sure, it would require coordinating closely between fleets and some pro warpins, but it doesnt sound too challenging for the more competent groups out there. I think there is at least 1 group who has tried this setup already.

[Checkbox Poll]

Say your AHAC fleet was rolling with a handful of armor Lokis running webs. If you landed on an Alpha Fleet at 0, could you grab the Huggins before they got out of Scorch range?

Or what about some armor Proteuses rolling bonused Scrams?

yes you can. huginns have a fairly weak tank and get zapped unless they were pre-locked by logi. ahacs aren't a solo blob to success though, you need to be working with something at range to deal damage while you put the pain on up close (alpha, tornados, tengus, nagas, etc).

[Gyncognito]

For these big fights with 1000 dudes in system you all dont have to fly the exact same ship.

This is being done in the north. I mean when you can field 6 full fleets, it obviously gets alot easier to achieve. It's common to see multiple bs fleets, bomber fleets, and bc support fleets (read drakes/cr caines) all working one angle or another while large cap fleets are doing their thing in the background. The fleet comps are rigidly uniform, but you still do see mid to CR fleets running in concert with LR fleets. The problem is that there seems to be so many ways the 'get under enemy guns' part just doesn't pan out these days. So many counters and it's alot easier to welp a fleet at 0km then 100. Also, it just doesn't seem worth it when the other side can out logi you since you sacrificed your alpha for raw dps.

Alpha is unquestioned king atm. That is a product of the rise in logi in light of other changes already mentioned. To nerf alpha is to further buff logi, and it's already way to fn common for junior fcs to simply refuse to undock without a 1:3/1:4 ratio of logi. Personally, I'm happy with alpha centric fleets if it means more of any type of support ship on the field.

[Securitas]

I think it's just that we've got to the point in eve where everyone has realized that logi is of the utmost importance and that alpha is the only way to counter it. Not only that but the game has been going on so long that the vast majority of people now have the SP to fly what was previously an "elite-pvp" ship class.

Back when I was dicking around in PB in ~2008 or even during the Drone Wars I don't really remember most fleets even having logi, the one exception being Triumvirate gangs that would roam through.

[Arrador]

That and most logi's where either at a pos or in a safe spot to rep up ships that had just tanked a DD, it was rare for them to be on the grid of engagement.

[Securitas]

That and most logi's where either at a pos or in a safe spot to rep up ships that had just tanked a DD, it was rare for them to be on the grid of engagement.

Also true, thank you for reminding me! God how things have changed haha. I feel old.

[Helios Black]

yes you can. huginns have a fairly weak tank and get zapped unless they were pre-locked by logi. ahacs aren't a solo blob to success though, you need to be working with something at range to deal damage while you put the pain on up close (alpha, tornados, tengus, nagas, etc).

But that's the thing. Every competent logi will pre-lock the recons. They're always primaried first in fights and thus the reason for it. Also, A recon V Huginn with Fed Navy Webs and Web range links is gonna web at 90km. Good luck hitting that with AHACs or even Abaddons/Drakes/Muninns really. Need a good warp in for sure and the ability to keep up with the Huginns.

[Quesa]

And before people complain about alpha being broken. Maelstroms where being flown due to the prevalence of 200k EHP abaddons being supported by 20+ guardians, and triage archons.

I don't feel that the general idea of alpha is bad but maybe how the turret damage calculation seems to be universally applied to all sizes of ships. A catch all if you will - which doesn't fit well in the idea of Eve (for me anyway).

Don't Tengus counter Alpha Fleet? Or if not counter, at least not die horribly?
Also, I agree with the OP. More diversity so that it was worth flying something not currently FOTM would be cool.

I've been a part of one Tengu fleet fighting Alpha-fleet and there was some grid desync that was severely affecting our combat. I personally wasn't able to web someone 18k from me in a Rapier as well as being the wing commander with wc5, I was not receiving boni but people under me were - others reported the same type of thing. So I don't have a basis to really answer this with anything more than I think it's a little over the top to a counter to 200m battleships be a 900m ship but :isk:.

For those of you who have fought with/in an an alpha fleet how many huggins are usually there, and how difficult is it to remove them from the fight early on?

I've seen anywhere from 3 to 10 Huginns in a fleet ranging from 100-250 total hostile pilots.

I think it's just that we've got to the point in eve where everyone has realized that logi is of the utmost importance and that alpha is the only way to counter it. Not only that but the game has been going on so long that the vast majority of people now have the SP to fly what was previously an "elite-pvp" ship class.

Back when I was dicking around in PB in ~2008 or even during the Drone Wars I don't really remember most fleets even having logi, the one exception being Triumvirate gangs that would roam through.

I seem to remember that wasn't because of DD's but because the sigs on ships didn't matter at all and could take full damage from nearly anything. Wasn't there some big changes to things like missile explRad and the like that opened up fleet comps to sig tanking?

[Hilmar Keller]

I don't really see a lot of merits to these complaints. When you've got 300+ people on grid at one time, all that really matters is that they can all lock and press F1 on a single target, and that said target will die before it can get reps. If you want some variety, small gangs are great.

[Mfume]

Well, to put it bluntly, I have been disappointing. I found that in place of my beloved aHac, RRBS and sHac fleets, the myriad of fleet comps had been reduced to super expensive and pilot dependant (Moonins or Tengus) or some ship with 1400's equiped. It seems that everything has been reduced down to the alpha capabilities of the fleet, which most can deduce ends up reducing alot of fleet battles down to who has more people.

Muninns are roughly the same cost as Zealots. And cost is a non-issue anyway.

So, I asked the question on our internal forums, "What happened to aHacs"? And while there wasn't too much rocket science that went into finding out the generic reasons (at least what I believe) I didn't get much further than "Huggins and 1400's happened". Some of the things that I feel might be the issue is that arties can track and do far to much damage to ships with much smaller signature radii than the gun should be doing. We all see how missiles like torpedoes do fuck-all damage on something like an inty even if it's sitting still 2km from a Raven but that's not the case with turrets because there is no signature radii calculation in the equation, right?

Close-fit BS backed by webs shred AHACs even faster and more one-sidedly than any kind of Drakes or Alphafleet. I haven't seen how Tengus would do against AHACs, but I suspect it's pretty well. 35km optimal is pretty bad dmg projection for most fleet fights.

So, while I know that in a game like this there is no silver bullet, what would be the best way to bring us back to a more diverse Eve universe or are things not as bad as I feel they are and thus my avatar would be more correct than just a quirky pic to use?

There are other viable comps out there, just no one wants to use them because something like a 5% decrease in effectiveness is "TOTAL SHIT, OMFG FAIL!!!" to most EVE dudes; everyone is pretty ruthless with the min-maxing. And there is a limit on how whacky you can get, since the supporting cast is the same recons, logis, T3s, etc.

[Quesa]

Muninns are roughly the same cost as Zealots. And cost is a non-issue anyway.

I didn't differentiate the two for brevity but the super expensive comment was referring to Tengus or other T3 and pilot dependent was referring to hacs since they are truly paper thin.

Close-fit BS backed by webs shred AHACs even faster and more one-sidedly than any kind of Drakes or Alphafleet. I haven't seen how Tengus would do against AHACs, but I suspect it's pretty well. 35km optimal is pretty bad dmg projection for most fleet fights.

There are other viable comps out there, just no one wants to use them because something like a 5% decrease in effectiveness is "TOTAL SHIT, OMFG FAIL!!!" to most EVE dudes; everyone is pretty ruthless with the min-maxing. And there is a limit on how whacky you can get, since the supporting cast is the same recons, logis, T3s, etc.

The point wasn't really to complain that there weren't viable comps out there but that the list of viable comps seem to have been reduced to only a few and that maybe an iteration on the turret tracking formula would increase the effectiveness disparity between gun tiers and sizes to push for move comprehensive fleet comps and more possible fleet comps for counters. Nobody likes to hear the words Rock, Paper, Scissors but it's better than every effect being caused by a single ship type/comp. (No, it's never that black or white)

[Mfume]

The point wasn't really to complain that there weren't viable comps out there but that the list of viable comps seem to have been reduced to only a few and that maybe an iteration on the turret tracking formula would increase the effectiveness disparity between gun tiers and sizes to push for move comprehensive fleet comps and more possible fleet comps for counters. Nobody likes to hear the words Rock, Paper, Scissors but it's better than every effect being caused by a single ship type/comp. (No, it's never that black or white)

The list of viable comps hasn't been reduced at all. The reason you're not seeing them run is because there are only a few big powerblocks.

[Jean Leaner]

S2N was whelping dudes in omist with AHACs less than 3 months ago, and again yesterday in delve. AHAC's arent dead, only more situational than before.

[Hilmar Keller]

It wouldn't hurt if 1/4 of the HACs that are currently useless or close to it (see: Cerb/Eagle) got seriously reworked to address the fact that they do fuckall at range and even less in brawls. I know technically they're not AHACs, but Muninn doesn't have to be 'the' SHAC.

[Mfume]

The only thing "wrong" with HACs right now is that the close-range HACs (Sacrilege especially) get shit on by the Talos in the solo/small gang environment. HACs (even shield ones) can fight under tracking titans fine, even with a bit of MWDing thrown in. You might lose a few extracting, but that's it.

[jeffraider]

And there is a limit on how whacky you can get, since the supporting cast is the same recons, logis, T3s, etc.

That's so true. Every concept I've thought about in the last little while has come to the same point of the support needed making it kind of boring.

[Helios Black]

That's so true. Every concept I've thought about in the last little while has come to the same point of the support needed making it kind of boring.

I can only think of one fleet right now that doesn't really fall into this category and I only know of two groups using it at all. I love the idea and want to try it out myself pretty badly, the Deimos/Ashimmu/Onieros gangs.

[StevieTopSiders]

I can only think of one fleet right now that doesn't really fall into this category and I only know of two groups using it at all. I love the idea and want to try it out myself pretty badly, the Deimos/Ashimmu/Onieros gangs.

It's a fun gang to fly. IT has flown (and lost) two of them without killing much. The gang really depends on Links. It's unworkable without a Loki (as we've found out the hard way, as we can't get any bittervets to log in and boost for us), and it really shines with the Legion.

You can find the original Trans Solar Works video here, and you can find the EVOL BR's here and there, first and second tries, respectively.

Flying the gang takes some getting used to, especially for the Ashimmus. It was my first time flying a neut ship, and I was neuting the primary.

One issue we've is that the fleet as a whole does not-awesome DPS (and since your main target is Drakes, it's not as if you're targeting ships with paper-thin tanks). TSW recommended SFI's for dudes unable to fly Deimoses, but they're almost worthless to bring. Another problem is the sensor strength of the gang. As you can see the second time around, what might have been an engageable gang (with plenty of Drakes, against which Deimoses have high resists) turned into a supper-jammed gang, even though we modified our Oneiroses to roll with ECCM.

tl;dr- Don't fly against Syndicate Falconigger users.

[Bitter Newb]

It's a fun gang to fly. IT has flown (and lost) two of them without killing much. The gang really depends on Links. It's unworkable without a Loki (as we've found out the hard way, as we can't get any bittervets to log in and boost for us), and it really shines with the Legion. One issue we've is that the fleet as a whole does not-awesome DPS (and since your main target is Drakes, it's not as if you're targeting ships with paper-thin tanks). TSW recommended SFI's for dudes unable to fly Deimoses, but they're almost worthless to bring. Another problem is the sensor strength of the gang. As you can see the second time around, what might have been an engageable gang (with plenty of Drakes, against which Deimoses have high resists) turned into a supper-jammed gang, even though we modified our Oneiroses to roll with ECCM.

If you dual-prop the Deimos, it becomes a lot more viable because you can catch more stuff and then brawl it down. Agony has been having a lot of fun with TWEED (TWin EnginE Deimos) fleets in the past few months. As stated, you do need both Skirmish and Armor links. The gang's DPS is really high...on anything it can catch. SFI's are good for heavy tackle. And this is definitely for small gangs only. Here are some BRs; note that because Agony didn't take many losses the entirety of the enemy gangs is not shown:

http://www.agony-unleashed.com/killb...related/75348/

http://www.agony-unleashed.com/killb...related/75324/

http://www.agony-unleashed.com/killb...related/75100/

http://www.agony-unleashed.com/killb...related/75079/

[Grath]

Don't Tengus counter Alpha Fleet?

No its a fucking wretched counter, especially with the number of huggins present in most alpha fleets currently. Even Nulli, an alliance singularly standing by itself can put 11 huggins in a fleet.


11 hugins and 2 stacks of 1400s means that you have a Tengu dying about every 9 seconds or so. Meanwhile you're trying to alpha through the reps of 15-20 scimmies with a fleet comp who's DPS has travel time, giving the victim ample chance to broadcast and get reps.

Any tengus that die, no longer threaten that victim because 5 seconds after you die your missiles stop tracking their target.

The price of the Mael is coming up, last I checked they were up to around 250 million for the hull, plus mods, the Tengus start at around 450million for the stripped hull, PLUS you lose skill points.

So a fight that lasts 1 minute, you're looking at the loss of about 6 tengus, trading maybe 2 maels, 3 if you're really lucky.



The cost and skill point loss means that the properly supported conventional fleet of tengus loses in most metrics most of the time. There are ways to pick it up but they involve timing and its something we haven't really even bothered with since the first trials of the tengus.

[Lorren Canada]

Aren't there some changes to sig radii and how it relates to tracking in the works? Boat dragged us on to SiSi to test the tracking of titans against ab hics but I never got around to asking exactly what's changing.

[Grath]

Aren't there some changes to sig radii and how it relates to tracking in the works? Boat dragged us on to SiSi to test the tracking of titans against ab hics but I never got around to asking exactly what's changing.

They're adding a modifier that, to be honest should be on EVERY gun, that lets the opposing ship size affect the damage.


Only they're not adding it to every gun, they're only adding this tracking adjustment to Titans, so instead of actually doing something that will change combat game wide (in a good way), they're just putting a bandage on Titans til they figure out what they want to do with them.

[Viribus]

They're adding a modifier that, to be honest should be on EVERY gun, that lets the opposing ship size affect the damage.

Does this work in a similar way to explosion radius for missiles, IE a persistent effect that disregards transversal?

Because that would be gay as all fuck

[Mfume]

Does this work in a similar way to explosion radius for missiles, IE a persistent effect that disregards transversal?

Because that would be gay as all fuck

Yeah, but just XL guns on titans, so like 98% of EVE won't feel anything change. I haven't run numbers on shit to see how m

One issue we've is that the fleet as a whole does not-awesome DPS (and since your main target is Drakes, it's not as if you're targeting ships with paper-thin tanks). TSW recommended SFI's for dudes unable to fly Deimoses, but they're almost worthless to bring. Another problem is the sensor strength of the gang. As you can see the second time around, what might have been an engageable gang (with plenty of Drakes, against which Deimoses have high resists) turned into a supper-jammed gang, even though we modified our Oneiroses to roll with ECCM.

yeah one of the corps in black legion likes to run it and swears up and down it's good, but it can't break through logi or ECM very well, so im really skeptical.

[anzoxe]

for the deimos fleet the deimos all have free mids so you can use eccm if you expect a lot of ecm. btw you really need links or it's just a shitty GALLENTE PRIDE fleet.

[Richter Belmont]

I like how I can mention Rokhs in a semi-serious fashion and not be laughed off of the edge of the universe.

[tgr]

They're adding a modifier that, to be honest should be on EVERY gun, that lets the opposing ship size affect the damage.

Only they're not adding it to every gun, they're only adding this tracking adjustment to Titans, so instead of actually doing something that will change combat game wide (in a good way), they're just putting a bandage on Titans til they figure out what they want to do with them.

Well, everyone should've pushed CCP harder on making a proper change to the tracking formula, instead of dogpiling on those who did advocate the changes. vOv

[John Caffeine]

They're adding a modifier that, to be honest should be on EVERY gun, that lets the opposing ship size affect the damage.


Only they're not adding it to every gun, they're only adding this tracking adjustment to Titans, so instead of actually doing something that will change combat game wide (in a good way), they're just putting a bandage on Titans til they figure out what they want to do with them.

Although I wouldn't be against them increasing the importance of sig radius a bit, I don't think it should be seperate from transversal on any ship. Being able to keep up transversal at all times should be necessary to stay alive in small ships, and catching small and fast ships at times of low transversal should be a way for bigger ships to kill them. It's like that right now, it works great and I don't see any reason they should change it. They should add ship orientation to the formula, so you don't suffer as heavy penalties to your own tracking when you're orbiting someone, but beyond that I think the formula is pretty good.

They should give long-range weapons higher signature resolution though, at the moment all large guns have 400 m resolution. Maybe make that 800 m or even 1200 m on all long range guns, to increase the impact of a ship's signature against them. They could also increase the stacking penatly of target painters.

Either way I don't think this is the way to balance titans.

[Doddy]

So, I asked the question on our internal forums, "What happened to aHacs"? And while there wasn't too much rocket science that went into finding out the generic reasons (at least what I believe) I didn't get much further than "Huggins and 1400's happened". Some of the things that I feel might be the issue is that arties can track and do far to much damage to ships with much smaller signature radii than the gun should be doing. We all see how missiles like torpedoes do fuck-all damage on something like an inty even if it's sitting still 2km from a Raven but that's not the case with turrets because there is no signature radii calculation in the equation, right?

What happened to ahacs was laziness and cowardice, not huginns and 1400s. An ahac gang has enough firepower and spare med slots for miny ecm to blap any number of huginns. Of course no one has ever actually bothered to take full size ahac fleets against maelstroms to see what happens anyway, its generally 60 ahacs against 300 maelstroms/100 support -> omg how did we lose? So all the hi sp groups decided to use tengus instead as they are much better at running away from blobs.

Also even maesltroms don't use 1400s any more.

[Elise Randolph]

Maybe from the outside looking in fleets are more boring. But let me tell you one thing: Eve is on the brink of the most fascinating combat-level change that we've ever seen. Nowadays alliances are required to have a few strict doctrines; the "kitchen sink" concept died with the NC. True the doctrines that people fly are all at least a year old, but this is purely because the game has been stagnant. Of course this is changing now, and you can see that with the return of the sniper tier-3s and some crazy kids using Rokhs. Back to the point; so these old doctrines that we uses were theorycrafted at a time when a single fleet was a fucking shitload of people. The concept of having a 1000-2000 man slugfest was so outrageous that these doctrines failed to account for that - because why would you? Whether or not you think the numbers bloom is good or not is irrelevant, the point is it exists and the game is playable at that level.

It turns out that 500 Maels kill shit just about as fast as 250 Maels do. There's such a thing as too much of a good thing, and the overlap in alphastrike creates significant waste. While PL were the first to flirt with the idea of mixed doctrines with bombers and AHAC's, Team Tech were the first bloc level group to mix things up. They, too, realized that 500 Abaddons were just as effective as 250 Abaddons, so they went out on a limb and combined doctrines. Well, that implies that the idea was contrived and meticulously planned, which it wasn't by any means. It was the byproduct of shoving groups with their own style into one room and saying "make it work". Luck, skill, whatever - bringing rock, paper, and scissors to the fight proved to be hugely successful. The Goon adapted quickly and in the large fights we saw: 250 Maels, 400 Drakes, 150 AHACs, 50 bombers vs 250 Abaddons, 200 Drakes, 100 Glass-cannon snipers, 50 bombers - or at least a similar ratio. Maybe I'm flying my nerd flag too proudly here, but that is just fucking cool.

Unfortunately since each doctrine has a certain "critical mass" needed to be successful, and since organizing multiple fleets exponentially increases the complexity, you only get glimpses of this in "normal" fleet combat. Eve will figure shit out and this /is/ the direction combat is going.

As far as the whole Alpha fleet being OP argument, it's really not. It's good when you have a numbers advantage and it's at least functional against most, if not all, doctrines. Tengus are a fantastic counter, provided you have enough Tengus to volley Huggins. You will trade Tengus with Huginns, but who gives a fuck when the Huginns are dead it's time to posterize. I think Grath just has a skewed perception because he's always primary.

Also the idea that AHACs aren't seen because nobody tried taking on Maels with them is pants-on-head retarded. AHACs are like Tengus, except worse in every single way. Tengus /are/ AHACs evolved, which is why people use them. More DPS, more volley, more range, more speed, more EHP, better resists, shield reps, and similar sig. They are quite literally better in every way.

[StevieTopSiders]

Elise, that is one of the best posts I have read in a while.

[Prodnovick]

Goons are working on a tengu doctrine to replace drakes as a support for alpha fleet, it should roll out soon.

[spamB0t]

Armor BS/HAC/T3 are still widely used in lowsec, but mainly because fights happen on gates/ warpins aren't fucked up by bubbles.

We (tuskers) have run the deimos/nomen format gang a few times and it strikes me as a jack of all trades. It's not excellent at anything, but good enough at most. Kinda mulling over the thought of switching deimos guns to rails, projection with blasters is pretty bad.

edit: it also relies on logi pilots being not-retarded and tackle pilots leapfrogging as dps catches up