Hydra Principle
Frigates & Hydra Principle
Draft Syllabus and Class Notes. Under review & development.
One of the most important aspects of EVE is the degree to which your success depends on your tactics and strategies, rather than your skills and how expensive your ships are. For almost every situation you can create an almost infinite number of possible tactics and strategies. Some tactics will work better than others in a given situation, and worse in another. As with most things in EVE, there is rarely a definitive 'best'. There are however some concepts that if executed properly, will work in many different situations. One such tactic is Frigate Fleets using the Hydra Principle. This tactic was originally developed by Agony Unleashed, who continue to use it in many of their fleet with success. It is being observed that with sufficient numbers you can engage even capitals with Hydra Frigate Fleets.
Concept of the Hydra Principle
"Strength of Many ... Power of One" is where effectiveness of the Hydra principle lies. The Hydra name came from the mythical beast of ancient times. The Hydra was assumed to be a reptilian creature with multiple heads, each with different properties. Legend also states that if you chop off one of its head than two heads will grow back in its place, which means cutting one offensive part, rather than limiting its offensive power, increases it. Hydra Frigate fleets work in a similar way - by never resting any one aspect of the fleet on a single ship, any 'head' which is cut off always has two more to replace it. Although this principle is legitimate for other ship types, it works especially well with frigates due to their innate strengths and weaknesses.
Assessment of Frigates in PVP & Hydra Principle
Frigates, especially Tech 1 frigates, are extremely cost effective, easy to fit with low skill levels, and extremely effective if used in a proper organization and structure. There are very strong properties; with that many weaknesses come with the frigates. The Hydra Principle is used to utilize their collective power while overcoming their weakness.
Banner created by Aroc SyllinBeh
Strengths of Frigates
- Are fast and agile
- Are cheap
- Are easy to fly and fit with low skills
- Have small signature radius
- Have short lock time
- Could fit multiple E-war modules easily
Their ratios of offensive strength to their price and skill requirements, with support of e-war, is much better than many of ship types in EVE.
Weaknesses of Frigates
- Have almost no HP
- Are weak against smart bombs
- Have limited amount of DPS
Despite their offensive strengths, they are extremely lacking in defense and could not stand a chance alone in extended fights against bigger ship types.
Utilizing Frigates for Execution of Hydra Principle
The concept is to overwhelm with numbers to increase total offensive power, while making up for the lack of defense with speed, agility, low signature radius and e-war support, even from the combat boats. Speed and agility keeps you mobile and makes various maneuvers easier. Fast moving fleets are not so easily ambushed while on a gate or another tactical location. Additional fast frigates can utilize their speed to tank the incoming fire. E-war support even from the combat DPS boats will create an edge to avoid enemy fire. Reduction of optimal range or disruption of tracking will make many enemy pilots go crazy over their helpless situation. The number of ships both make it possible to deal with multiple targets and to distribute the chance of being targeted by enemy. In a hydra fleet, if you are being targeted and taking serious damage, it is expected that you can disengage and bounce to combat field. Be advised that, your low signature radius and heavy e-war support, including your 10-12 km range, after the initial encounter following the maintaining the control of the engagement (?), will reduce the risk to minimum, even almost zero. The one of the most important weaknesses, DPS will be solved with the number of ships and focus fire. Assuming average frigates DPS is around 50, times 20 frigates, equals’ 1000 DPS, which is almost sufficient to take on most of the average sub-cap ships. When the number of frigates goes up, the offensive and defensive power will increase exponentially. Although the method may seem like blobbing, the whole group consists of well organized and fitted frigates. The self-awareness of each pilot and proper execution of their role and the tactic in structure will bring tremendous results.
How to fit your frigates for Hydra Fleets
Fits for Hydra fleets depends on some basic rules and fleet structure. There are some absolute things that you shouldn’t fit and others that you should fit. Here is the list:
Avoid fitting:
Armor tanks because they will slow you down and will only keep you alive for few more seconds but you lose the most important thing, namely your speed.
Shield tanks because their protection will only keep you alive for few more second. If you use e-war module rather than shield tank modules, your collective fleet e-war strength will paralyze almost all of your enemies. Utilizing e-war in mid slots will provide a fleet wide defense and your collective e-war power is much better than your personal shield tanks.
Microwarp drive (unless you fit warp scrambler) because frigates are fast enough with their own speed, and afterburners can provide necessary boost while keeping your signature radius sane and cap stable. Microwarp drives will increase your signature radius, which means that the enemy could lock you faster and can do more damage as a result of the sig-radius increase. The only exception is for interceptors and fast close range tacklers with a Warp scrambler.
Sensor boosters, because your locking duration is already sufficient enough to lock the enemy first. Considering the fact that most of the targets will be ships with bigger size and signature radius, utilization of sensor booster is not necessary. Additionally, sensor booster's boost levels are much smaller than Remote sensor booster. If sensor boosting is required, remote sensor boosters are almost three times more effective than local boosters.
While avoid using above mentioned modules, you fit should be in accordance with the rules written below;
Things to fit:
Long range weapons are required for Hydra Frigates fleets because the Smart bombs you face are devastating at close range, and so you may keep attacking while avoiding smart bomb risk. Defense properties of e-war support will reduce and cripple your targets' optimal, tracking speed and targeting range. As a result of this, the risk of receiving damage reduces substantially.
E-war modules user in almost all frigates because activating multiple Tracking Disruptors and Sensor Dampeners will cripple your enemy’s sensory systems and make its offensive power useless. As an example, average Drake's targeting range is around 75 km. If you activate 6 Sensor Dampeners with scripts on them (tech 1 – meta 0) you can disable the Drake's offensive power while you are at your own effective range. The new targeting range of the drake will be 13 km with the cumulative effects.
As another example, if you activate three TD on a Hurricane, you make it impossible for the Hurricane to track you with its guns. Consider the same situation with optimal scripts on an Amarr or Gallente gun boat. Only 3 Tracking Disruptors will reduce the tracking speed down to 27% of the original amount.
Afterburners should be used as speed boosting modules. Frigates are already fast enough and if additional boost is required. Afterburners are sufficient and more cap friendly than MWDs.
Damage control units are your best friend in Hydra fleet. That chunk of additional structural HP and resistance ensure that you survive a bomb run or a single smart bomb from close range. Also provides you with an edge to disengage and bounce when targeted.
Nanofiber Internal Structure is a perfect module for your low slots which both increase your speed and agility while taking no power or CPU grids. Also reactor control units and co-Processors make is possible for your to support your high and mid slots.
Generally all Hydra Fleet members have additional modules for e-war in case it is required to change for adapting a situation and balancing the fleet structure.
Structure of the Hydra Fleet
Hydra principle requires a well structured fleet for proper execution. E-war should be distributed evenly with multiple execution groups. Each group will be assigned to another target during engagement and each member should act quickly to engage its given target. Because the offensive power depends upon the unity of the fist, each pilot should be aware of his position, target and total fleet condition. These are the most important points of a Hydra fleet separating it from a standard Blob. Aside from short range tacklers (warp scramblers with webifiers), all fleet members should fit one E-war module and kept other in its cargo hold. During the fleet assembly, e-war strength, DPS and tackle is assessed by the FC and members structure into sub groups to act on specific targets. The proper structure will increase the offensive power and optimize the defensive strength to cover more targets during engagements. Different groups may engage different ships with their e-war modules but usually all fleet DPS will focus on one target. While holding other target by e-war, one by one, the fleet takes down the enemy. There could be losses but numbers keep the effectiveness on track during the engagements. Beside the frigates losses with little cost, many expensive targets could be eliminated with such as simple force.
Conclusion
Execution of Hydra tactics with frigates requires specific preparation and high level self-awareness. The top levels of these fleets are executed with Assault frigates and interceptors but even the tech 1 frigates with sufficient numbers are sufficient enough to get solid results. Hydra principle indifferently giving single orders for fleet uni-body, defines objectives for group of fleet members and expect them to properly execute its power for that objective. That is why it pushes members to think as a collective group but act impartially during engagements. Considering these points, Hydra principle requires advanced PVP experience and creates personal challenges to each member more frequently than standard fleets.
See Also
'The Hydra Principle - Frigate Fleet Tactics' by Azual Skoll/The Altruist (director of Agony Unleashed's PVP-University)
