Wednesday 28 October 2015

Capital Escalations are dead. Long live Capital Escalations.

This post is made from 100% tin foil hats, and has a large dose of speculation. 

I have been looking at C5 capital escalations, using Jack Miton's 'Like a Baws' guide. https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=144954

Jack also has a Carrier + Battleship guide at https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1808468#post1808468

I have run some sites on singularity with a corp member on the other side of the world, and really need to get organised to run them on live.  Sometimes real life gets in the way, and I am currently the junior partner (skillwise) in the C5 sites.


To run the sites, as I understand it:
  • Roll open wormholes.
  • Set up your booster ships (x2)
  • Triage Archon warps in (escalation 1)
  • Webbing, target painting Loki warps in, calls targets.
  • Siege armor dread warps in (escalation 2), blaps sleeper battleships for roughly 10K DPS, using anti structure guns (hence the need for webbing and target painting).  Things get hairy.
  • Once most battleships are down, warp in armor dread #2 (escalation 3) (and maybe a second webbing loki).  Blap stuff easily.
  • Warp in Carrier #2 (escalation 4).  Rush to kill something before the dreads do.
  • Maybe a ECM boat to keep a trigger alive but harmless. This allows a full site respawn (or so I have read - not confirmed yet).
  • Salvage and loot with Noctis and Mobile Tractor Unit, while the DPS wing goes to the next site.


If you fail, you will lose your fleet.  If your triage Archon disconnects, say good by to billions of ISK.  Sleepers remote repair each other, so high applied DPS matters.  The tricky point I found in the above method was the second escalation.  We want to get the number of sleepers down before the logi runs out of capacitor.


Assuming you want to keep the site alive, salvage this site while the DPS squad does the next site, then 5 pilots in a DPS squad, 3 ignored alts (Boosters and ECM), and a salvager.  Lets call it initially 10K DPS for dread #1, ramping up to 23K DPS by the time second dread and carrier land.  Including concurrent salvaging, this is moderately comfortable for 3 players with alts.




With the new capitals, there are some changes.

Firstly, it wont be a triage Archon landing, but one of the new Force Auxiliary capitals.  As a guess, it will be the Amarr one for increased armor resists.

The next question is what will be the preferred DPS platform vs battleships?  I have read that CCP want dreads to be the 'in your face' DPS ship, doing 2-3 times what a battleship does.  Different bloggers are suggesting 2k or maybe 3k DPS vs battleships.  In comparison, I am reading about (but do not yet fly) 1.5k DPS Vindicators.

However, another ratting carrier pilot I know claims 3k DPS with 13 fighters (and he doesn't have full skills yet).  So one of the following will happen.  Carriers will remain the preferred anti battleship platform, or dreads will do more than 3k, or carriers will be nerfed.

The siege armor dread won't be able to use an anti-cap gun, but will need to use a battleship gun.  Guesses suggest DPS in the 2-3k range, but ... will carriers do more?

Assuming that there will still be capital escalations, and that a force auxiliary escalates the site (neither a forgone conclusion), and that once I get 10K DPS on field with only 2 capitals, I can then smash the site out no problems, I still see something for the new capital escalation site running.


As a rough idea:
  • Roll open wormholes (no change).
  • Set up boosters (plural, no change).
  • Triage Force Auxillery warps in (little change). Will this escalate?
  • Probably the webbing Loki (webbing range still helps)
  • 3 Bling battleships to clear most of the first escalation.
  • Highest DPS vs battleship of armor carrier (probably Thanatos) or Dread
  • Capitals to complete escalations in turn.  (possibly by BS pilots swapping to capitals)
  • Maybe an ECM to keep the site alive (assuming this still works - I heard that CCP wanted to stop this)
  • Salvage and loot with a Noctis and MTU.
Assuming you can keep the site alive, salvage this site while the DPS squad does the next site, and swap 2 battleship pilots for capitals as the site progresses;  then it is 6 pilots for the DPS squad, 3 ignored alts (Boosters and ECM), and a salvager.  Lets call it initially 4K DPS, slowly rising to 9K DPS (swapping BS for Caps).  That is, I see it taking 2-3 times as long to run a site. I also see potentially a 4th real life player on field, as juggling battleships for dreads will take extra attention.

I have chosen armor, it is what I am most familiar.  Given the setup and not automatically triggering escalations, then maybe shield might also be OK.

I have some experience with what I am talking about, but not enough.  There will be holes in the above speculation.  Feel free to poke holes in it.


For lesser skilled pilots trying boosting, I sometimes use Gnoboosts.  Put whatever useful links that your well skilled booster does not have.  It is replacement tanked, and I would much rather lose it than the rest of the fleet.



[Gnosis, Gnobooster]

Co-Processor II
Co-Processor II
Co-Processor II
Co-Processor II
Co-Processor II
Co-Processor II

Command Processor I
Command Processor I
Command Processor I
Command Processor I
Command Processor I
Medium F-S9 Regolith Compact Shield Extender

Skirmish Warfare Link - Evasive Maneuvers I
Information Warfare Link - Sensor Integrity I
Armored Warfare Link - Rapid Repair I
Skirmish Warfare Link - Rapid Deployment I
Armored Warfare Link - Passive Defense I
Armored Warfare Link - Damage Control I

Medium Processor Overclocking Unit I
Medium Processor Overclocking Unit I
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I

Saturday 24 October 2015

Citadel and Capital announcements during Eve-Vegas


Some notes from the Eve-Vegas announcements regarding Citadels, Capitals and Supercaps.

There will be dev blogs coming soon.

Citadels


For this document: 'Confirmed' means that I have read it elsewhere before.

All prices are subject to market movements.  Based on today's input prices, hulls costs will be :
  • Medium Citadel - cost 600M
  • Large Citadel - 7B
  • Extra Large Citadel - 70B
Modules will be available in T1 and T2, between 5M and 1B.
Rigs will be how you balance between defense and industry.
  • Medium Citadel Rigs between 7 and 70m
  • Large Citadel Rigs between 90 and 1.1B
  • Extra Large Citadel Rigs between 1B and 23B.

Confirmed: You can have an alliance based wormhole market hub.

Confirmed: Citadels will be vulnerable per week 3 hours/6 hours/21 hours per week for the 3 sizes.

Confirmed : Citadels can be blown up by doing DPS, but there is a DPS cap so that they will still take at least 30 minutes on field.  (Other places have said that there will be reinforcement timers.)

Confirmed: A destroyed wormhole Citadel has a standard loot fairy.

Confirmed: You will be able to recover the majority of stuff in known space POS, with the exception of components to build the Citadels, and whatever is currently being built.

We will be getting an improved UI for controlling Citadels.  (Thank Bob). All anchored structures on overview. UI to say if you have docking rights, access to services.  We will be able to share corporation/alliance lists etc.  (My take is that blue lists will be easier to maintain).

You will be able to charge the public a fee for docking, but discounts for friends.

You will be able to have player owned tradehubs with lower taxes.

Capital Notes

Dreads are to be the 'in your face' weapons platform. 

Carriers are to project damage across the battlefield , with a revamped 'fighter squadron' mechanism.  Fighters for different roles: Structures, or subcaps or other fighter.  No shields/armor/hull per se, more a 'group of small ships that get exploded'.  Carriers lose their remote rep role.

New Force Auxiliary capitals to take on the remote repair/triage role.

Damage capitals can be fit to hit subcaps or other capitals/damage structures.

Capital fittings in Meta, Tech2, and faction variations, with new skills to match.

Capitals will all have fleet/ship/refitting services.  You will no longer be able to refit mid fight (weapons timer based).


Supercaps will be able to break up large opposing fleets in various new (and some probably over/under powered) ways.  I dont fly supercaps so ... less notes from me.

Other notes


A new minigame rewards ISK and sisters loyalty points for 'crowdsourcing' first world protein sequencing.

Sources

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8K9b7CEWOE&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNGQ_Rjhr6g
Thanks to Trinket's Friend for blogging the first link I found.

P.S. http://pastebin.com/A7zvp7Z3 is another set of notes

Tuesday 13 October 2015

Multiple account launcher in Beta

For those who have not yet seen it, there is a multiple account launcher in beta at https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=449738&_ga=1.174225634.1175545162.1444213707

Whether you are an alt-a-lot for various forms of industry, or merely someone who loves to set logoff traps on a bazillion pilots, I find this launcher a wonderful improvement.

If you want to play with singularity (the test server), that is also a bonus, and available as a pull down optoin.

There are some caveats, and it is worth reading the known issues/  frequent requests faq on the post.


You will need to re setup your client settings though apparently for those that come later there are plans for an export/import option. As with all plans, a google search for soon (tm) might be illuminating, though I am quietly optimistic.

I also don't entirely understand how to drive the different 'settings' per account, but seem to be working fine.

For anyone with 2 or more accounts, or if you want to play with singularity, I recommend the new launcher.