Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Talons of the Talos

After more than a month of training, my first ganker, Botslayer Goblin learned to fly a Talos and used it to destroy a Mackinaw. While I couldn’t fit T2 blasters, the 1250DPS of the Talos was impressive. By the time this post goes up, I’ll be able to fly an 1500 DPS T2 Talos.

There are two questions about Talos ganking: when and how?

A T2 fit Talos costs about 100M, 10x more than a T2 Catalyst and its DPS is only 2x higher. Therefore Talos isn’t a cost-effective ganking method. There are two reasons to use it. The first is near stations or gates. Gateguns can pop a Catalysts way before Concord would arrive while a Talos with DCII can fire all the way. The same applies when there are gun-based (and not ECM) white knights protect the target. The other is when you simply don’t have enough pilots in your fleet to fly enough Catas.

However just because a Talos can do it while a Catalyst can’t, it doesn’t mean it should. You should only if the target worth it. It means either 200M+ fitting, or a hull+pod expectation that worth the trade of 100M ISK for a killboard value. In my Talos gank, the T2 rig fooled me. T2 rigged miners usually fly hilarious pods. If I knew that it’s just a lame 170M pod, I let him be.

While Catalyst ganks usually pay for themselves from random target drops, Talos ganks usually don’t. My main ganker has 813 kills for October. About 1/3 of them are pods. If I’d casually throw Taloses to every ship I meet, I’d be burning about 50B ISK a month, which is impossible even to my budget. This is there the “you only need to tank that much” hits. Gankers simply can’t force a kill with Taloses regularly. Not even I can.

Now to the execution. I suggest the following fit:

[Talos, Suicide]
Damage Control II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

Alumel-Wired Sensor Augmentation, Scan Resolution Script
Tracking Computer II, Tracking speed script
Initiated Harmonic Warp Scrambler I
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I

Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L

Medium Hybrid Burst Aerator I
Medium Hybrid Collision Accelerator I

Acolyte II x5

Its DPS with perfect skills is above 1600. The Acolytes are chosen for their EM damage, which is typically the weakest of the targets.

Upon landing, lock, release drones, fire, scram, engage drones and wait a second before web. If the server processes web before scram, you might get unwanted results. Don’t approach or move any way, the gun tracking isn’t stellar, even with the computer. You should be able to lock a mining barge or hauler in 3 sec with the Sebo, a second sebo would give you another second, I’m not sure it worth giving up the tracking computer.

Taloses shouldn’t gank alone, since they can’t lock up pods in time and even if they could, they shouldn’t. Since a Talos is 100M and lives 25 seconds in 0.5, every second costs 4M. Do you really want to spend 6 seconds locking up a pod? They should be escorted by at least one dual-seboed Catalyst that lands after them, making sure that the Cata lives 5+ seconds after the Talos is concorded. To minimize costs, a looter should also arrive to grab what’s left after the mighty battlecruiser.

Don’t fleetwarp Taloses! They align much slower than Catas. They are best started under gatecloak, but if you undock from a station, always use instawarp. Just warp the Talos instantly as it arrives and wait with the Cata(s) until you see it warping off. Good luck, bring death and destruction to blinged, untanked fools, fill the morons of the week posts!



The anti-tear of the day was recorded in Nakugard. It seems voice populi says "if you get yourself killed, it's your fault":

While I haven't been in Nakugard for two months, the ice field is still clean:


The moron of the day is me! I warped my pod to the station with weapons timer is still on and switched to other client. Switched back for the shield sound, which is usually a bad thing for a pod. Someone so dumb deserves to lose his pod, but luck had other plans:

8 comments:

IO said...

Don't you think Talos is overkill for exhumers? You should be sufficient with Thorax or Brutix.

Here is comparison chart:

DPS Price, m DPS/ISK
Catalyst 686 10 68.6
Thorax 845 21 40.2
Brutix 1,166 57 20.5
Talos 1,630 106 15.4

Raziel Walker said...

I liked that Nakugard local comment about walking down the street without a bulletproof vest.

If you spent all day on the streets in some lawless place parading your bling with drive-by shootings every day then a bulletproof vest might not be a bad idea.

Lucas Kell said...

It seems strange to me that you would point out the efficiency of the Talos vs the T2 cata, while you were so adamant that the use of a T1 cata by miniluv was a waste. The T2 cata is 5x the cost of a T1 cata so surely you are already being inefficient when you gank with a T2 rather than just using 2 T1s?
By the way, how many Taloses did it take to get it right? I know you got at least 1 failed Talos gank.
Also, are you expecting your corp members to follow suit? You realise most of them probably don't have the volume of isk you do right? The majority of people wanting to go for your corp appear to be... well newer for one.

I also find it strange that you continue to say that the purpose of you ganking is to get miners to tank, yet when they do tank, you find a way to gank them through it. No miner, even in a maxed out procurer will ever be immune to a determined ganker, so what exactly are you teaching them? Originally this was a response to miniluv, but since they were throwing 40 gankers at retrievers, affect their their isk efficiency (or lack thereof) would seem to me to be a failed cause from the getgo. That's why I assumed the goal was to push miners to resist solo ganking, which simply isn't possible outside of a procurer/skiff.

As for "It seems voice populi says", that appears to be 2 guys, mainly just the one. A vocal minority does not the vox populi make.

Gevlon said...

@Lucas: again, in case of the T1 cata you ignore the cost of the time. L4 missioning, null ratting or any form of mindless, widely available activity will net you 40M/hour. So a GCC - even with perfect timing, 15 mins around a clock ganking which is nearly impossible, the gank costs 10M in time costs.

No, the members of my corp will likely just skip the targets that would need a Talos.

Talos gank is to break the tank of a blinged ship. Sure you wouldn't let a 3B kill pass by because 2 Catas can't make it.

And no, a determined ganker can't force a gank regularly. Sure you might meet some drunken fool who drops a faction battleship on your Retriever, but that's not a reasonable threat you should count on, rather a one-of-a-million nonsense.

@IO: Talos isn't an everyday gank ship, it's an extreme measure against extreme targets.

Lucas Kell said...

@Gevlon
"again, in case of the T1 cata you ignore the cost of the time. L4 missioning, null ratting or any form of mindless, widely available activity will net you 40M/hour. So a GCC - even with perfect timing, 15 mins around a clock ganking which is nearly impossible, the gank costs 10M in time costs."
Except you aren't missioning or ratting with your alt, so his time is utterly beside the point. I rarely see you doing 2 ganks every 15 minutes for any significant period of time either, so you can't even say you lose ganking time by double T1ing.
You can't say "oh but my time is worth 10m, because that is what I could have made, even though I didn't make that, because I was too busy ganking to mission". That makes no sense whatsoever. You have both characters on, so use them. In fact on top of it's efficiency, a double T1 halves the effectiveness of ECM white knights.


"And no, a determined ganker can't force a gank regularly."
Except they can during things like interdictions. The last one was not the best example, not being a CTA, so only consisting of about 50 people doing it for longer than a week, but efficiency means nothing.
When you look at kills like this:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=19322315&nolimit
where some people barely got a shot off before it exploded, you surely must see that these are not people driven by your desperate need for efficiency. Once it's a CTA, and there are hundreds of gankers on at all times, what level of tank do you really think will be a deterrent? Even maxed out and in a 0.8 it will take less than 20 T1 catas to nuke a procurer. That's 40m. That's pennies. I gift more than that to random noobs.

Even then, when you factor in the skiffs and other types of barges and exhumers + the orcas, it would be nearly impossible to gank and not be KB green.

If your mission is to stop solo gankers, you yourself are proving this cannot be done, and your ganks are increasing. If you are trying to stop interdiction level ganking, no amount of tank will save them. I really don't understand what it is you aim to achieve and how you aim to achieve it.

Gevlon said...

@Lucas: except my procurer and Orca, despite openly taunting Goons and being a known blogger lived trough the interdiction.

Also, exactly the last interdiction shown the need for efficiency. As soon as Goons were needed to grind Delve, the interdiction halted. They could surely leave a few men detachment behind, but their T1-Cata inefficiency meant that they need 50 to get anything done and 50 men would be missing from the bombless bombers fleet.

Lucas Kell said...

@Gevlon
"despite openly taunting Goons and being a known blogger lived trough the interdiction"
Exactly, it's knows you are not a miner, thus not a target. Do you hnestly think your Orca was made of some magic fairy dust that prevented it being killed? It's a well know fact that orca can and are killed, so it can't be that it was impossible to kill, leaving only one reason: they chose not to kill it.

"Also, exactly the last interdiction shown the need for efficiency. As soon as Goons were needed to grind Delve, the interdiction halted. They could surely leave a few men detachment behind, but their T1-Cata inefficiency meant that they need 50 to get anything done and 50 men would be missing from the bombless bombers fleet."
Not really. The interdiction was not going to go ahead, but miniluv chose to run it anyway. This mean rather than the usual CTA (this means that goons HAVE to attend) it was an optional endeavour and done in the downtime in a war.
There is a need for efficiency sure, but NOT isk efficiency. There is a need to get a sheer volume of kills and that needs participation that a non-CTA simply can't produce.
At the end of the day though, you can spout as much propoganda as you want. We try to explain as plainly and simply as we can and still you just come back with "look at me I didn't die so you suck!". Clearly you don't understand it, which means you don't understand the goal of your corporation.

Anonymous said...

Hi. You may want to use Caldari Navy Antimatter. You have tracking issues with Void from the ammo penalty, how close you will be to the target, and because you will always have some transversal in practice. I generally only shoot Void at capitals when I fly a Talos.