Ship Class Tactical Overview: Difference between revisions

[[Category:PvP]]

=== T1 Frigates ===  

Notable exceptions: Rifter

Theese are the primary tacklers in anything but 0.0 (where dictors and hics take over). They have the highest scan res of any class, and only vigils (minmatar EW frig) can match their speed. Their main purpose is tackling, and that's what they do best, but many interceptors can also be refit to be effective combat ships in an interceptor only gang. Their firepower and tank will be low compared to other types of ships, but they have the advantage of very high speed (even when tank+gank fitted) and awesome agility.

High tank, usually high dps frigates. If you get tackled by one of theese, you're generally not going anywhere, they're a pain to get rid of when properly fitted. The disadvantage compared to interceptors is that they're slower, and usually sacrifice their MWD and fit an AB instead to be able to survive longer after getting the target tackled.

=== T1 Destroyers ===  

Theese are useless in high and low sec, however, when they get into 0.0, they become one of the most important ships available. Their role is launching warp disruption probes, usually called bubbles. Those probes create a warp disruption field in a 20km radius from the probe, and inside that field, nothing can warp, nomatter how many stabs they fit. Anyone trying to warp to a spot withing 150 (iirc) km of the edge of the bubble will be pulled to the edge of it, although only if the bubble is in line between the 2 objects that the ship is warping between. Interdictors and HICs (heavy interdictor) are the only ships that can tackle titans and motherships.  

=== T1 Cruisers ===

Each race do it a bit differently here, but overall, theese ships are supposed to increase the survivability of the fleet in 1 way or another.  

Scimitar (minmatar) and oneiros (gallente) doesn't have this weakness since they rely on CCC rigs and cap power relays/cap rechargers to keep themselves running with their extra lows and mids, however, that is not enough to run as many reppers as the cap transfering ones. Scimitar/oneiros can usually run 3 reppers with logi 4, and 4 reppers with logi 5, while basilisk/guardian can run 4 reppers with logistics 5 and 5 reppers with logistics 5, while also keeping a stronger tank.

You can't get more versatile then this. Depending on what subsystems you put on it, it can basically do anything except for bubbling. With the right sub system, you can even become immune to bubbles (but you can still e tackled by hics with the script in and normal disruptors/scrams, which is a unique ability that no other ship has. They can be fitted to use their racial warfare links with an even stronger bonus then fleet command ships (described below), but it can only fit 1 link by default. However, by fitting 2 command processors, that can be increased to 3.

=== T1 Battlecruiser (BC) ===

HACs are way better for that role though, with better dps and range, so experience pilots usually do not have a reason to use a LR fit on it since most of them can also fly hacs, and therefore only use the BCs for close range stuff. They also have the ability to fit a single warfare link, which can give extra bonuses to your gang. I'll describe this more closely in the next section.

Theese come in 2 classes, field command ships, which are basically just a stronger version of the T1 BC with a bit more dps and tank and better resists, and fleet command ships. Fleet command ships get a bonus to their racial warfare links, and in general have extremely good tanks with great resists. The racial links are: Armour for amarr, shield for caldari, skirmish for minmatar and information for gallente, and there are 3 types of links in each class. If the command ship is in a leadership position in the fleet, everyone below him in the command chain (including normal members) get the following bonus, assuming the command chain is  complete (for example, if the CS is wing commander, and there are no squad commanders, or more squads then the CS can handle with its current wing commander level, no bonuses will be applied.

# Armour/shield resist bonus (stacking penalized with resist mods on the ship)

# Armour/shield repper (both local and remote) cycle time reduction

The links themselves only give a 2 or 3% boost, but that can be increased ALOT by training relevant skills, fitting it on the fleet command ship (or a T3 ship with the proper subs, as described above, or to a titan, described below), and by using the racial mind link implant. With all that taken into account, a 2% bonus is increased to 26%, and a 3% bonus become a 39% bonus. That probably make it obvious why fleet command ships can have such a huge impact on the outcome of the battle, despite doing very low dps.

=== T1 Battleship (BS) ===  

Capital ships, aka dreads, carriers, motherships, titans and rorquals (although the last one isn't a combat ship) can't use gates, and the motherships+titans can't even dock. Instead they use their own jump drive to travel around, but in order to do that, they require fuel (racial isotopes, helium for amarr, oxygen for gallente and the rorqual, nitrogen for caldari and hydrogen for minmatar) and a cynosural field to jump to. Those cyno fields can be created in 2 ways, either by anchoring and onlining a cyno gen pos mod which will always be online and available for use for the corp/alliance the POS belongs to, however it requires the corp/alliance to have sov 3 there before it can be used, and it's impossible to have both that and a cyno jammer, which also require sov 3, online in the same system. Jump freighters and black ops also require a cyno field to use their jump drive, but they have the ability to use gates aswell, and black ops can lock on to a covert cyno field too, which is an unique ability for them.

If you want pure dps, this is as good as it gets. Dreads do amazing damage, which can reach almost 5k dps when in siege even in a long range fit. When not sieged though, the generally just match a BS. Their tracking though is extremely bad, so they can basically only hit other caps and POSs/outposts, unless the target isn't moving at all. The exception is the moros, which get an awesome 50%/level bonus to drone damage and hitpoints, so the drones are lethal for any size of ships, but especially frigs. 5 T2 warriors with a 250% damage bonus before counting drone interfacing and stuff like that will kill any frig, except possibly for an AF (but that will die pretty fast too), in almost no time at all.  

Cycle time is 10 minutes and require 500 - (level of tactical weapon reconfiguration skill)*50 strontium clathrates (stront), during that time you can't move in any way, not even by warping/jumping out.

Theese are giant logistics platforms. They have the ability to store 1.000.000 m3 of [b]assembled[/b] ships in their ship maintenance bay so that people that loose their ship can quickly pick up a new one, and other ships from your corp (or fleet if you have configured your carrier for that) can use you to refit in space. They get a 50%/level range bonus to 2 of the following, varying depending on which racial carrier it is: Capital energy transfer, capital shield transporter or capital remote armour repairers. The amarr archon get cap transfer and armour rep, the gallente thanathos and minmatar nidhoggur get shield and armour and the caldari chimera get cap transfer and shield. In addition to that, all carriers get an additional 5%/level bonus to the following: the chimera and archon get a resist bonus (armour for archon, shield for chimera), the nidhoggur get a capital remote rep amount bonus and the thanathos get a fighter damage bonus. All carriers get the ability to control one extra drone in addition to the normal 5/level of racial carrier and the ability to use fighters. They can't fit any guns or launchers at all, so the high slots are usually used for neuts, smartbombs (drone/small ship defense) and remote reps.

However, just like dreads, carriers also get a special module that only they and their bigger brother, the motherships, can fit (10 minute cycle): the triage module.  

Carriers and motherships can also use warfare links, but just like with battlecruisers and field command ships, they don't get a ship bonus to strength.

Basically just a larger carrier with more slots and cap etc. It gets +3 drones/carrier level instead of 1, but it can't dock and it has shorter jump range. However, it's always immune to EW even when not in triage. It can also use a clone vat bay which can hold jump clones, but I'm not sure how that actually work, and it is very rarely used. They can only be tackled by dictors and HICtors (well, and anchorable bubbles I guess, but that's not practical due to the anchoring time required before they activate.

Like motherships, they are immune to EW and can only be tackled by dictors and hics. They're all able to fit and activate the largest and most lethal smartbomb in the game: a doomsday device, which does 70313 damage with max skills, but can only be fired once/hour, cost 75k racial isotopes to activate, and prevents the titan from using its jump drive for 10 minutes. Activating it takes 15 seconds, so you have some time to get out before the damage is applied, and the range of it is 250 km (aka the hard coded max lock range, nothing can do damage at longer range then that). Titans also have a jump bridge, which works in a similar way to the cov ops jump bridge described above that the black ops use, but this one can bridge any type of ship, has longer range and can only lock on to normal cynos, not cov ops ones. They have bonuses to their racial capital weapons, but no sane titan pilot actually use them. Titans are fitted with  (officer where available) neuts, smartbombs, cap rechargers, agility mods and both armour and shield resist mods (to make the reps that will be comming in from the triaged carriers that will quickly be jumped in if the titan gets tackled more effective, this is basically the only exception to "don't tank both shields and armour" rule). Some even include a 100mn MWD, but I'm not sure how common that is. However, every titan should have its racial doomsday device and a jump portal generator fitted in the highs at the very least. Atleast in PL, they are usually used for bridging people around, but when it's time to bring them into combat and doomsday someone, the general tactic is to have dictors and HICs bubble the hostile fleet so it can't escape when they see the titans land and the doomsdays start to go off, while a cyno ship set up a cyno at range from the fight (not sure if there's any prefered range for that, probably situational), but anyway, the titans jump in there and activate their doomsday while aligning out and then warp out to a safe spot immediately after the doomsday goes off and cloak up there until their 10 minute no jumping timer has expired.

== Capital Industrial Ships: Rorqual ==

This ship is primarily intended for mining support with its huge tractor beam range and speed, ability to fit bonused mining leadership links and ability to compress ore. However, it does have a 50%/level range bonus to capital shield transfers, and a 20%/level drone damage bonus, so while it's not intended as a PVP ship, some people have been known to use it for that.