[FLEET] Armor Nano Cruisers - IV

[Budda Sereda]

The plan was to fly Armor Nano cruisers with Omen as a main DPS ship, https://spectrefleet.com/doctrine/fleet/459

Roam members (9)

Spoiler

Analiese Aubernet - Garmur
Budda Sereda - Omen
Calder Ormand - Confessor
Gemma Solett - Malediction
Tazhazhii Ryder - Omen
Xafen Katapi - Omen
Z0X Ambrye - Stiletto
Zako Maken - Omen
jammer Atruin - Hyena, Thrasher

Kills and Losses

It was an ok start content wise, we got Caracal

(00:29:03) Dastryns
Caracal +43.4m

After that it was boring for quite awhile, we took few kills Condor was caught by Z0X. I wanted to land 1 shot and wait for the fleet to arrive, but apparently pretty much alphaed it. Sorry guys.

After that we killed to cyno ships sitting on citadels:

(00:38:31) Annancale
Condor +0.31m

(00:51:12) Eha
Bantam +1.47m
(01:05:56) Akidagi
Bantam +1.43m

Here I'd like to pause for a second and speak a bit about some nuance of citadel mechanic I'm not 100% completely sure about. Please validate if what I wrote is correct or if I've missed anything.

Quite a few months ago citadels mechanic was changed so they are always vulnerable and can always aggress anything which lands on them. With that, pretty much whatever land on a citadels grid, even if it is a freeport can be agressed by the citadel. From one side, you are relatively safe. Why? Because: 1) you are supposed to warp to only friendly citadels (those that are displayed in pop-up menu if you 'right click' in space); 2) you can always dock; 3) if you are going to agress something, pre-align out and warp away as soon as you are agressed.

Am I right here?

And what I just learned from Analiese (if I got it right) is if you are in a small ship, and if citadel is manned (controlled by a player), and it is equipped by Standup Point Defense Battery, then this citadel can SHOOT you. T2 SPDB has 2500 omni damage and shoots each 12s. With higher skills it can probably do more. Its basic radius is 3km AROUND the whole citadel.

I feel this is still quite safe for cruisers, but can be very devastating to frigates if they don't pay much attention.

Does anybody have more specific numbers on the amount of actual damage that can be applied by SPDB? And how many of them are typically fit to the citadels?

In Pyne we found Incursus, Gemma went for it, it was joined by the Comet. We dispatched both, but Gemma relaxed, fall into a scram range and was killed too:
(01:05:56) Pynekastoh
Federation Navy Comet +35.28m
Malediction -45.85m
Incursus +9.17m

We had some back-and-force around Kedama. Noticed Macharial gang, run away from it (though they did not bother to follow), lost chance to catch flashy Machariel who was lagging behind, till some extend my fault. Though, he had a travel fit.

Tried to catch few ships on gates but instead lost Hyena:
(01:38:26) Kedama
Hyena -49.63m

Due to RL issues I needed to drop fleet for few minutes and guys caught Confessor which they hunted in Tama.
(01:45:55) Tama
Confessor +59.23m

I was back in time to bait Stiletto. But I did not realized it is not really flashy to the fleet, only to me (I was permaflashy and aggressed by Stiletto). While my fleet landed that guy get reinforcements. They split fleet on both sides of the gate. I could try bouncing between both sides, but did not really want to drag it and tried to OH MWD and run. But their tackles were on the ball:

Omen -51.79m
Thrasher -5.34m

Stats
ISK Destroyed: 150,312,539.76
ISK Lost: 152,609,046.74
ISK Delta: -2,296,506.98
Efficiency: 49.621%

Overall evaluation

• ✘ (Negative stuff)
  * 0:00 is not the best start time for me due to RL, I was distracted quite a lot at home...
  * I was not on the ball quite a few times
  * Engagement level was quite low, hard to explain why. Both scouts where a bit quiet (in terms of voice level), I did fly with both Gemma and Z0X in the past, but somehow today I did not hear them well. I guess it is time to fix mumble and install a beta version that allows controlling voice per player. Maybe that had some impact.
  * Xafen was coming from Kamela and needed to fly 20 jumps to catch up with the fleet. He was joking in fleet: why don't we wait for him? I hope he was really joking... and not seriously asking us to wait.
  * I should not be lazy and fix my security status to not be permaflashy (this is getting boring already).
  ✔ (Positive stuff)
  * Not much positive, TBH, only good thing we got some kills
  * I do want to finish on a positive tone and say that I do believe there was a value in the fleet: it was still educational and ... what is another way to learn if you don't try? Not sure who was that (either Decklin or Kora) who told today: fake it until make it... Will keep working.

P.S. Gemma and Jammer received extended SRP for their loses.

P.P.S. Small Gang competition is coming, so for the next 2 weeks I won't have public fleets, and afterwards will continue. Hope to see you in space guys!

[Budda Sereda]

Haha, received nice feedback via in-game email:

From: {classified}
Sent: 2018.05.30 03:32
To: Budda Sereda,

Was clicking around Dotlan in the region that I was traveling through, noticed the cyno field as I was passing through, then your kill a few mins later, was in Akidagi, not a fan of cyno gankers, so any time I see one get shut down I have to give props to the guy who took it down. Have a great day, and good hunting!

[Xafen Katapi]

* Xafen was coming from Kamela and needed to fly 20 jumps to catch up with the fleet. He was joking in fleet: why don't we wait for him? I hope he was really joking... and not seriously asking us to wait.

I was only asking you to actually wait when you were 1-2 jumps ahead of me. A 30 second pause would have allowed me to join the group instead of shadow it for several systems nearly getting caught 2j behind you by the Crow. I never asked you to wait when I was far away, I wanted you to wait 30 seconds to let me at least get within the same system or <1j away so if I was caught you could get to me in time.

* I should not be lazy and fix my security status to not be permaflashy (this is getting boring already).

It's not just you lol... Permaflashy people have caused numerous confusions in multiple fleets. I've gotten used to it, and you'll note none of us died this time. We saw what was going on and left you to it (death). People who are permaflashy though need to take care when calling targets as flashy. New bro's will quickly shoot at anything called without any idea the consequences. You went afk on the Tama gate in Kedama. I think the general feeling was, RIP, don't afk permaflashy on a gate. Noone said it at the time but we didn't have much sympathy or desire to try and save you. Warp off to a safe next time if you need to afk =)

We had some back-and-force around Kedama. Noticed Macharial gang, run away from it (though they did not bother to follow), lost chance to catch flashy Machariel who was lagging behind, till some extend my fault. Though, he had a travel fit.

I don't think we lost any chance. I think it was a great chase and fun! There was a little confusion over where he was coming from and going to, but we had opportunities to tackle him on 2 different gates, he was just competent at MWD+cloak and rejoined his 140+ person fleet without incident.

[Budda Sereda]

No, I was not sitting afk on a gate, I'm not that bad . And I did warp to safe. And came back to the gate on my will.
I was on a gate for at least a minute before Stiletto landed and had chance to run when he agressed me. You guys were busy and it was looking like you will get free soon, so I decided to take a risk. I was sure Stiletto will have friends and decided to bait expecting we can kill some, but they got too strong reinforcement, and were non flashy.
Clearly, attempts to save me would be a mistake, that's why I called to run as soon as they got Gila, HFI, and the rest of the stuff landing.
In fact, what I could do better is pay more attention to dscan and run before they had more stuff landing.

Regarding waiting: I rarely watch the fleet chat, usually just busy and when i saw you wrote to wait I was not sure was that a joke or not. If you just speak it would help I think?

[Analiese Aubernet]

A point defense system can be fit on Large (or perhaps bigger) citadels, and does a significant amount of omni damage over a large radius. It will 2 cycle most frigs, and kill low ehp ships in a few moments.

See for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whlne3-TBGQ

[Glasi Vookto]

Here I'd like to pause for a second and speak a bit about some nuance of citadel mechanic I'm not 100% completely sure about. Please validate if what I wrote is correct or if I've missed anything.

Quite a few months ago citadels mechanic was changed so they are always vulnerable and can always aggress anything which lands on them. With that, pretty much whatever land on a citadels grid, even if it is a freeport can be agressed by the citadel. From one side, you are relatively safe. Why? Because: 1) you are supposed to warp to only friendly citadels (those that are displayed in pop-up menu if you 'right click' in space); 2) you can always dock; 3) if you are going to agress something, pre-align out and warp away as soon as you are agressed.

Am I right here?

And what I just learned from Analiese (if I got it right) is if you are in a small ship, and if citadel is manned (controlled by a player), and it is equipped by Standup Point Defense Battery, then this citadel can SHOOT you. T2 SPDB has 2500 omni damage and shoots each 12s. With higher skills it can probably do more. Its basic radius is 3km AROUND the whole citadel.

I feel this is still quite safe for cruisers, but can be very devastating to frigates if they don't pay much attention.

Does anybody have more specific numbers on the amount of actual damage that can be applied by SPDB? And how many of them are typically fit to the citadels?

You can fit a single point defense on a large citdel and upwards (so Fortizar, Tatara, Axbel or bigger). A t2 point defense will do 2.5k omni damage per 12s, which means a bit over 200dps. It only has a range of 3km around the citadel, but it is extremely dangerous to lightly tanked frigates as a 2.5k alpha can insta-pop a lot of them. When scouting a structure it is good practice to warp at range. It also doesn't make distinction between friend or foe, so once fired it damages all targets in range, unless they're tethered.

Another very important mechanic that you may have missed when fighting on citadel grids is that you can actually get tackled by the citadel itself, which means that your idea of warping away as soon as you're aggressed may not work. Good thing about it is that it can only tackle you for 30s, then it enters a 1m cooldown period before being able to activate the tackle mod again. So the trick is to be able to tank the citadel and the grid long enough for it to drop tackle then warp off. This can be done either with logi, or by being at range so its missiles/bombs/fighters or other tackle ships can't reach you in those 30s.

Generally, fighting on citadel grids is quite prohibitive for small gangs without logi and involves a lot of pinging back and forth. Depending on what other enemy ships are around, you may be able to fight on an Athanor or Raitaru for example, but the bigger the citadel, the harder it is to fight on its grid, especially if it's properly fit/manned. To give you an idea, here's the ranges on its tackle mods:

75% web - 200km for t1, 300km for t2
warp disruptor: 200km for t1, 300km for t2
scram: 65km for t1, 90km for t2
neut: 100km optimal + 100km falloff for heavy t1, 120+120 for heavy t2 and 180+120 for XL t2

[Budda Sereda]

Another very important mechanic that you may have missed when fighting on citadel grids is that you can actually get tackled by the citadel itself, which means that your idea of warping away as soon as you're aggressed may not work.

I assume it should yellow box me for quite awhile before tackling?

[Decklin Quark Reiger]

Another very important mechanic that you may have missed when fighting on citadel grids is that you can actually get tackled by the citadel itself, which means that your idea of warping away as soon as you're aggressed may not work.

I assume it should yellow box me for quite awhile before tackling?

If its tackle mods are off cool down it could preactivate them and tackle you the moment you're locked.

[Glasi Vookto]

Another very important mechanic that you may have missed when fighting on citadel grids is that you can actually get tackled by the citadel itself, which means that your idea of warping away as soon as you're aggressed may not work.

I assume it should yellow box me for quite awhile before tackling?

It works the same as ships. The moment it locks you it can activate tackle (if not on cooldown).
As a note, a lot of people seem to have this wrong, so let me make it clear: you get the "yellow box" indicator when the target finishes its lock, not when it starts it. So if you're relying on warping off when you see the yellow box, it might be too late.

[Gilly Hakaari]

Another very important mechanic that you may have missed when fighting on citadel grids is that you can actually get tackled by the citadel itself, which means that your idea of warping away as soon as you're aggressed may not work.

I assume it should yellow box me for quite awhile before tackling?

It works the same as ships. The moment it locks you it can activate tackle (if not on cooldown).
As a note, a lot of people seem to have this wrong, so let me make it clear: you get the "yellow box" indicator when the target finishes its lock, not when it starts it. So if you're relying on warping off when you see the yellow box, it might be too late.

Flashing yellow box mean they're locking you, solid yellow means they've locked.

A frigate SHOULD have time between the start of a citadel locking them and it achieving its lock to warp off

[Ernesto Guevarti]

Flashing yellow box mean they're locking you, solid yellow means they've locked.

Sorry but you have that completely wrong, there is no indication that someone is locking you. The only flashing targeting box is when YOU start targeting someone else. The first and only indication you have that you are being targeted is the indicator that you ARE now locked by them.

[Gilly Hakaari]

Flashing yellow box mean they're locking you, solid yellow means they've locked.

Sorry but you have that completely wrong, there is no indication that someone is locking you. The only flashing targeting box is when YOU start targeting someone else. The first and only indication you have that you are being targeted is the indicator that you ARE now locked by them.

wow really? TIL, thanks for that

[Raido Kudonen]

I seem to remember the flashing yellow box from a very long time ago (an EVE trial almost a decade ago). Anyone know if it got removed at some point between then and now? It's definitely not in the game now.