[WHC] Still chasing that Rorqual kill

[Titus Tallang]

UPDATE: Not chasing anymore



WHC always knows how to get me interested. I log on and somehow end up taking charge. The guy we're hunting is known to do silly things with supercapitals, so I decide to form more, rather than less. We leave Innuendo with three Guardians, a Devoter, a Bhaalgorn, two Falcons and seven assorted DD. I would've preferred a second Devoter, but alas, no such luck. We'd just have to make do.

We land on .Bacon, and send our eyes back in to figure out where the Revelation we saw doing sites earlier went. To our great disappointment, .2B1N is fully devoid of any sentient life. There's also no pilots in there, either. However, since we're already formed up, Gatt the Generally-Always-Happy-To-Tackle-Things is more than happy to try and tackle things for us to catch.

He checks the nearby ratting hub. Two Dominixes, but they're quick and bail before he lands, leaving just wrecks behind. As we're about to call the whole thing off, Gatt pipes up again. "I might have a Rorqual. Two Rorquals. OK, landing. Confirmed, two Rorquals. Point."

Well - as has been established previously, I'm still looking after that magical first Rorqual kill of my own. We jump into Y-0HVF and head the two jumps over to Y-0HVF, which luckily aren't bubbled. Gatt's Malediction, of course, is still happily running circles around the mighty capital ship a hundred times its size, a gnat that cannot be shaken. We enter system and land on grid, as dscan spikes with a Thanatos, a Nidhoggur and a Phoenix. Luckily, you will recall we brought two Falcons for this eventuality, which are excellent at rendering a carrier's fighters utterly useless.

The Thanatos and Nidhoggur land 750km away, while the Phoenix sits 40km from us. I decide that he's no immediate threat to us and we start working on the Rorqual, on the assumption that it might be undertanked. Alas, Ulrik's ship scanner in the Bhaalgorn quickly tells us this is not the case - not only is it tank fit, but it's fit with triple CASBs. In other words, unless we run it out of cap booster charges, we won't be killing it anytime soon. I decide to try our luck at the Phoenix instead, but it warps out without ever entering Siege mode. We shrug and go back to the Rorqual, pausing intermittently to force some fighters that had trekked the way down to us to be recalled. The minutes pass, and another Thanatos lands with the two existing carriers.

This is adding some further pressure to the grid, but our two Falcons are still doing just fine keeping the incoming damage under control. DScan moves again, and a Nemesis pokes its head around the grid. I fear a cyno escalation and order our bubble down to allow quick extraction should the eventuality arise. Alas, it merely bounces around at range, then heads off again. The locals choose to add a Revelation to the grid. Since the Rorqual is fully CASB fit and thus mostly independent of its capacitor, I tell Ulrik to instead direct his neuts toward the new arrival. He reports a capacitor booster in the Revelation's mid slot, but also relays to us that he doesn't see any local repairers on the dreadnought - only armor plates.

As this provides us with a target we can actually take down without waiting for a 40,000 m³ cargo hold to deplete of cap boosters, we switch to the Revelation instead. The enemies also add a Gila to the grid. As Ulrik has informed us that the Rorqual does not have any remote repair modules, we call the bluff and force it off grid in deep structure, then resume grinding the Revelation. A Sabre pokes its head into the grid, but is also forced off before it is able to do much of anything. (In retrospect, this Sabre was likely carrying a cynosural field - it hadn't noticed, or hadn't been told of, the Cynosural Field Inhibitor that we'd anchored on the Rorqual, and was thus forced to warp off without achieving anything.)

Minutes pass, and the Revelation grinds into structure. Its 20 seconds of grace invulnerability from the emergency energizer finally also run out, and it explodes, swiftly followed by its pod, as we had put the Devoter's bubble back up just prior to the ship's destruction. We sent Gatt off to try and tackle the carriers sitting 750km away - while I don't expect this to succeed, if it did, we could then move our entire fleet from an unlikely-to-die Rorqual to a likely undertanked carrier target instead. However, this only results in the carriers warping off in a huff, which is fine by me. We go back to wailing on the main prize, expecting its reserves to be depleting. We also keep the bubble active, predicting the next step.

Indeed, directional scan suddenly flares up with a new ship - an Iteron Mark V industrial, which we expect to be chock full of Cap Booster charges. We don't really want any of that, and since the bubble forces the Iteron to exit warp well ahead of its destination, it is easily dispatched, along with its wreck. We go back to more grinding.

Alas, a few minutes later, the eventuality that I'd been expecting to occur significantly sooner finally happens - the inevitable Sovnull Timer Of Doom™ expires, as a Proteus decloaks 200km away and lights a cynosural field, which brings in one Nyx-class and three Hel-class supercarriers. While I had been prepared to fight a single such target, I'm not prepared to linger and fight out what else waits behind the escalation hole until we're well and truly locked down. Instead, we simply drop the bubble and evacuate ourselves off of the battlefield. In the process, one pilot is explosively educated about the negative effects of activating propulsion modules on align time, as he is barely caught by the incoming fighter swarm and torn to pieces.

We go home. Still no Rorqual kill for Unca Titus.

Killed: 4,174,711,622.93 ISK
Lost: 0,504,011,739.14 ISK
Efficiency: 89.2%
Titus status: Happy, good fight

The good:

• Form-up went relatively quick and organized
• Tackle was really on point, props to Gatt
• The power of Falcons against carriers
• Rorquals are still some of the best content bait in existance

The takeaways:

• I didn't realize this was DIVE's backyard - we could've probably had our own supercapital escalation in the back pocket.
• ...then again, they're probably blue to each other, aren't they? I mean, Sov null....
• I saw four supers and expected it to be overwhelming force. The more I think about it, we could've possibly taken them on, or at least ignored them and stayed on the Rorqual... I may be underestimating their damage potential here, though. Would appreciate input, though I don't regret the call.
• It might be worth bringing a cargo scanner refit and depot on our Bhaalgorns for future capital shenanigans... cap charges are a stupid thing.

The ugly:

• Did you notice that Revelation has a single warp core stabilizer? In what world is a Revelation, after going into Siege mode, only tackled by a single long point?
• Why would you fill your resupply Iteron Mark V with faction cap charges? Do they know that standard 3200s work just fine?
• Looting capital modules is still an impossibility :(
• Don't cycle your MWD while aligning, it makes your warp-out take way longer. ;)

[Ivika Starfury]

This sounds like a lot of fun. Can't wait to graduate to sophomore to join in!

Also question on the ugly; in my heavier ships and industrials (Iteron V, Orca etc.) I cycle one MWD pulse during warp align whilst traveling as it seems to reduce time to warp by bringing me up to the correct speed by the time my ship is aligned. Am I doing it wrong?

[Titus Tallang]

Also question on the ugly; in my heavier ships and industrials (Iteron V, Orca etc.) I cycle one MWD pulse during warp align whilst traveling as it seems to reduce time to warp by bringing me up to the correct speed by the time my ship is aligned. Am I doing it wrong?

No, you're doing it right. There's two factors to this:

1. You enter warp if you are moving at 75% or more of your current maximum speed in the direction you want to warp in
2. All acceleration in EVE is relative to your max speed - if you double your max speed, all other factors equal, your absolute rate of acceleration (in m/s²) doubles

So, what happened to our poor Ishtar friend when he activated his MWD? Obviously, his max speed spiked (let's say by +540% for the sake of argument), but due to the first point, that also meant he needed a 540% higher speed to enter warp. The second point helps with that, so overall you might expect him to take the same amount of time to warp.

However, all other factors are not equal here. Microwarpdrives (and indeed, all propulsion modules) add a non-insignificant amount of mass to the ship when they are activated, which reduces the relative acceleration rate of the ship - instead of accelerating 540% faster, you're only accelerating, perhaps, 250% faster than normal. Since your warp threshold went up by 540%, you end up taking longer to reach it.

Now, what happens when you use the MWD trick on an Orca? You activate the microwarpdrive, and your max speed goes up by 540%. Of course, the same mass penalty applies, and you only get - let's say - 350% more acceleration*). If you kept your MWD active, you'd take longer to warp than if you had it off - but you don't keep it active. Instead, you turn it off after one cycle. What happens now?

The MWD is no longer active, so your max speed drops back down to whatever it was before. However, your current speed stays at whatever you gained during the preceding 10 seconds. This current speed (which had the benefit of 350% acceleration**)) is now higher than your regular (non-MWD) warp threshold, and you immediately enter warp.

*) The Orca is a very high mass ship - that means that the flat addition of the 500mn MWD relative to the Orca's base mass has less impact than that of the 50mn MWD relative to an Ishtar
**) Your "regular" warp threshold is also just ~20% of your MWD speed. Ships accelerate faster the lower their current relative speed is - so in reality, you're getting more than the 350%.

tl;dr: it hurts you if you would've warped before the length of a MWD cycle, it helps you if you'd have taken longer than a MWD cycle (if you turn the MWD off after one cycle)
tl;dr 2: the same thing applies to ABs

[Ivika Starfury]

Thanks for the clarification.

I have already face palmed several times when using oversized AB fits and cursing myself for the abysmal align time, although I realised on these occasions that this was the cause.

[Sin Tsukaya]

Also worth noting that just as shutting off a prop mod (or being webbed, or adjusting your maximum speed via a T3D mode change) while already moving at speed can punt you over the 70%* threshold, and straight into warp... if you have spent several seconds already accelerating and are at, say, 50% of base speed... then you *activate* a prop mod, you might then only be at 10% of your *new* max speed, and have added several seconds of extra acceleration.

(* I thought it was 70, not 75. I'm probably wrong.)

[Rose Alice]

Im not sure about the rest of the fleet but when we are fighting and we expect cap escalations we fit AB's to our ships. It helps us speed tank dread guns, even when using battleships and still gives us a bit of mobility on the field.

[Ulrik Elristan]

" [...] somehow end up taking charge"

I hear there's a word for that : to tituseize (infinitely declinable, credits to Kyle Hargrove)