This battle didn't go well for Ev0ke + V.e.G.A. + allies. No, it wasn't a gank, as attacking a CFC tower is clearly an act of war and CFC showing up is expected. However it was a pretty dumb fleet composition and I'd like to offer a much better alternative.
Dreadnoughts and supercarriers are the ships designed for destroying structures. They can dish out 10K DPS. The major weakness of dreads is being immobile for the 5 minutes long siege timer, making their escape impossible. Supercarriers can stay aligned and warp but their price is 10x higher, they can't be insured and they can't dock. Insurance is a significant part of dreadnought doctrine planning, as dreads can be very well insured. Losing a fully insured dread is about 1.5B ISK loss:
To avoid losing dreads, several entities developed an obnoxious strategy: bombless bombers. They do about 1/15 DPS of a dread, but they can get away very fast due to their small size and covops cloak. I despise this strategy not because of lack of "beauty" but its lack of regard for opportunity cost. If 14 pilots would be doing 50M/hour ratting and one is shooting structures in a dread, the dread just have to live 2 hours to be cheaper than the bombless bombers. The bombless bomber doctrine is a living monument of the "my time is free" idiocy.
However putting dreads to a tower can end up like the mentioned Ev0ke welp, while no one makes a complicated trap to kill bombless bombers. If the objective is important, a bunch of assault frigs might show up to scare them off, but that's all. On the other hands "capital fleet bubbled" make people log in en masse.
The Odd Phoenix doctrine is a middle way between bashing structures in subcaps and putting a capital fleet to risk. Its core ship is obviously:
It can tank any doomsday (if the pilot overheats) and dishes out 10K DPS in any flavor within 59km with the +5% rapid launch implant. No meta repper or launchers, only one faction item, so losing it costs about 1.4B after insurance. If its repper is not running, it can be on jump capacity by the time it exits siege. Obviously, it's unable to hit anything but a standing capital ship.
The doctrine is called odd Phoenix because of its low number. Like 1 for every 20 subcaps. Why? Because this forces the enemy to form up with a serious fleet, but rewards them with only minimal kill value. I mean if they could annihilate the subcaps, it would cost more (20 T2 cruisers = 5B). They can't just come with a random gang because the support fleet exterminates them. They can't come with small armor gang + triage support, because the triage would be popped by the Phoenixes. Still, against the structure that one Phoenix will damage as much as the 20 subcaps (assuming they use long range guns), halving the grinding time.
If the enemy comes with a serious hotdrop, then the support fleet scatters and all they killed are a few odd Phoenixes. Since it will happen sometime, the Odd Phoenix must always be max-insured, unlike ordinary dreads that operate under the assumption of not being caught. This doctrine:
PS: Moron of the day right here!
Dreadnoughts and supercarriers are the ships designed for destroying structures. They can dish out 10K DPS. The major weakness of dreads is being immobile for the 5 minutes long siege timer, making their escape impossible. Supercarriers can stay aligned and warp but their price is 10x higher, they can't be insured and they can't dock. Insurance is a significant part of dreadnought doctrine planning, as dreads can be very well insured. Losing a fully insured dread is about 1.5B ISK loss:
To avoid losing dreads, several entities developed an obnoxious strategy: bombless bombers. They do about 1/15 DPS of a dread, but they can get away very fast due to their small size and covops cloak. I despise this strategy not because of lack of "beauty" but its lack of regard for opportunity cost. If 14 pilots would be doing 50M/hour ratting and one is shooting structures in a dread, the dread just have to live 2 hours to be cheaper than the bombless bombers. The bombless bomber doctrine is a living monument of the "my time is free" idiocy.
However putting dreads to a tower can end up like the mentioned Ev0ke welp, while no one makes a complicated trap to kill bombless bombers. If the objective is important, a bunch of assault frigs might show up to scare them off, but that's all. On the other hands "capital fleet bubbled" make people log in en masse.
The Odd Phoenix doctrine is a middle way between bashing structures in subcaps and putting a capital fleet to risk. Its core ship is obviously:
[Phoenix, Odd Phoenix]
Damage Control II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System
EM Ward Field II
Capital Shield Booster I
Thermic Dissipation Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Heavy Capacitor Booster II, Cap Booster 800
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution Script
Citadel Torpedo Launcher I, Guristas Mjolnir Citadel Torpedo
Citadel Torpedo Launcher I, Guristas Mjolnir Citadel Torpedo
Citadel Torpedo Launcher I, Guristas Mjolnir Citadel Torpedo
Siege Module II
Capital Processor Overclocking Unit I
Capital Core Defense Field Extender I
Capital Core Defense Field Extender I
Damage Control II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System
EM Ward Field II
Capital Shield Booster I
Thermic Dissipation Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Heavy Capacitor Booster II, Cap Booster 800
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution Script
Citadel Torpedo Launcher I, Guristas Mjolnir Citadel Torpedo
Citadel Torpedo Launcher I, Guristas Mjolnir Citadel Torpedo
Citadel Torpedo Launcher I, Guristas Mjolnir Citadel Torpedo
Siege Module II
Capital Processor Overclocking Unit I
Capital Core Defense Field Extender I
Capital Core Defense Field Extender I
It can tank any doomsday (if the pilot overheats) and dishes out 10K DPS in any flavor within 59km with the +5% rapid launch implant. No meta repper or launchers, only one faction item, so losing it costs about 1.4B after insurance. If its repper is not running, it can be on jump capacity by the time it exits siege. Obviously, it's unable to hit anything but a standing capital ship.
The doctrine is called odd Phoenix because of its low number. Like 1 for every 20 subcaps. Why? Because this forces the enemy to form up with a serious fleet, but rewards them with only minimal kill value. I mean if they could annihilate the subcaps, it would cost more (20 T2 cruisers = 5B). They can't just come with a random gang because the support fleet exterminates them. They can't come with small armor gang + triage support, because the triage would be popped by the Phoenixes. Still, against the structure that one Phoenix will damage as much as the 20 subcaps (assuming they use long range guns), halving the grinding time.
If the enemy comes with a serious hotdrop, then the support fleet scatters and all they killed are a few odd Phoenixes. Since it will happen sometime, the Odd Phoenix must always be max-insured, unlike ordinary dreads that operate under the assumption of not being caught. This doctrine:
- can't be scared off by a few assault frigates like bombless bombers
- finishes the structures 2x faster than a combat subcap gang
- much cheaper than a dread fleet
PS: Moron of the day right here!
10 comments:
You do realize that the "bombless bomber" became pretty much obsolete in the CFC? It mostly uses dreads to kill structures.
MoA on the other hand, appears to have taken a liking to this tactic.
"1 for every 20" this means a 100 man fleet is supporting 5 dreads. That's a low amount of dreads, and it'll only mean they will stay in siege longer - exposed and vulnerable.
It's better to get a big quantity of them and finish the job quickly, before the enemy can mobilize and drop on you.
The optimal number of dreads is the number it takes to pop the target in exactly 5 minutes.
Any more and they're wasted. Any less and you need a second siege cycle.
Simple.
Btw, why do you use "Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System" - at least according to EFT BCSII seems to fit too nicely.
Dreads can be caught (and was recently caught) in one cycle. The idea behind the Odd Phoenix doctrine isn't that they evade capture, but the price of capture is too high compared to the damage of capture that they simply won't bother to rageping a large fleet.
One faction BCS increases DPS significantly. More than one are suffering from diminishing returns.
"The idea behind the Odd Phoenix doctrine isn't that they evade capture, but the price of capture is too high compared to the damage of capture that they simply won't bother to rageping a large fleet."
they will allways rageping for this to kill, as it will get a fight and get killmails.
One of the major advantages of bombless bombers is the ease of travelling. You can immediately jump to another system if a hostile fleet is getting close, and you can start on a new tower when you want, without the risk of getting pipe bombed or stuck in a drag bubble as you move from system to system. You can also just cloak if you get jumped on, suffering minimum of losses. The whole point of the concept is making it boring/hard to catch you, so the enemy won't even bother forming up.
Your concept loses all these advantages. Just the chance of getting on a capital killmail will makes hostiles form up and chase you. And what will your dreads do while the subcap fleet moves to a new system?
The Siegefleet doctrine was not created out of an disregard for opportunity costs, rather a healthy regard for the requirements of war for which it was created.
Sure, EFT warrioring quickly shows you that dreads and supers are the more effective structure pounding implements, but the risk of massed capital escalation was too high. That, combined with a desire to frustrate enemies by having a highly mobile structure grinding force that could jump in and out, warp cloaked, wait for a defence fleet to arrive on a perch then just head to some other structure lead to it's design.
There is more to the game than opportunity cost and your opportunity cost equations always assume best case scenarios - it just simply isn't realistic. You seem to believe that because it was used an there was in your mind a massive opportunity cost loss that somehow siegefleet lost the war when in fact it greatly assisted with winning the war against TEST. TEST might have publicly derided the Siegefleet doctrine but they never achieved an effective counter for it.
They rageping, get a bunch of people ready (overwhelming force is needed to fight off the subcaps), they spend half an hour or more forming up and all they got is 2-3 dread kills with 100+ dudes on it. They lose the opportunity cost (they could be ratting instead of forming to kill those dreads).
The war against TEST was won despite the ridiculous bombless bombers, simply because CFC had 3-4x more people.
They rageping, get a bunch of people ready (overwhelming force is needed to fight off the subcaps), they spend half an hour or more forming up and all they got is 2-3 dread kills with 100+ dudes on it. They lose the opportunity cost (they could be ratting instead of forming to kill those dreads).
That would be enough for most of them. Don't forget they'd also be defending a tower, and might get in on subcap kills too. They would know from the start that all they have to do is form up and they can push away the group trying to reinforce their tower. The attacking group would be throwing away a couple of dreads for no strategic gain.
Against a bomber fleet though, they can't counter. At best they can make the bomber fleet move to another tower (which is easy for a blops group) and they'll have to chase a bunch of cheap ships all over the universe.
But if you're so sure your strategy is flawless, then go do it. Form a coalition and start throwing dreads into the mix and see how far you get before you get blapped into oblivion.
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