Mixing It Up

While blogging may have suffered due to life and work, I'm still getting in game for activities such as my industrial projects and my PvP fix with stalwart corporation Aideron Robotics.

In the past when we were facing off with multiple strong Caldari Militia fleets every night, I tended to stick to the script so to speak with our core Rogue Squadron doctrine ships. They are not flashy but the consistency of using the doctrine week in and week out built a solid foundation of expectations and actions that pilots in each of the roles could depend on intimately. Our Algos fleet was in particular feared by many and only engaged at their peril or with significant numbers or hull size advantage.

The downside of having the same fleet so often is that the enemy works to counter it with the best possible options. Caracals with Rapid Light Missile Launchers, having good mobility and an amazing alpha, range, and RoF weapon barrage became a common foil for us.

But something happened while we were tinkering with ways to counter this counter. Summer hit and took a toll on our participation and when we got back to regular flying again it seemed that our main antagonists in Caldari Militia were a lot less active at the time our fleets were out. That was not necessarily a bad thing because it gave us some room to try out new things and get a feel for some different fleet types.

We tried some Black Ops fleets which were exciting when we found targets. We played with Command Destroyers in a few fleets (still my favourite new ship), last week was a Speed Force frigate fleet wherein I tried out a Garmur for the first time (can confirm, lots of fun), and this week we broke out our Dingo fleet and roamed around in that.

The Dingo is your standard afterburner fit Rail Thorax, supported by Exequror logistics and tackle frigates. The goal of the fleet is to skirmish instead of brawl, to fight at a range and mitigate incoming damage via low signatures and reps. Its a trickier fleet to manage as opposed to the Vexor brawling fleet but has the advantage of long range with Spike ammo and an easier time disengaging should the need arise.

Unfortunately last night we didn't run into a fleet willing to stand and fight and let me test the theory against practice but we still secured some nice kills here and there, and a good time was had.

Ship Fit: Heavy Tackle Armour Thorax

Yesterday I described a battle in which I was flying a Thorax and used it to catch and dispatch a hostile fleet's Ewar and harass their logistics. Today I'm going to describe the ship I was flying in more detail.

One fleet concept you see a lot of in low sec these days (and maybe other areas, I'm ignorant of the current meta out there) is Tech 1 armour cruiser fleets. These fleets are often based around the formidable Vexor hull with short ranged blaster damage and long range drone damage, supported by a handful of Atrons for fast tackle, Maulus or Celestis for sensor dampening, and Exequror or Augor logistic support.

Its a solid fleet concept. However, as you get to larger sizes (i.e. 10+ ships) there is one hole that needs filling (innuendo intended!). A ship faster than the slow armoured Vexors but more durable than the light and vulnerable to drones Atrons, a ship that can be second-man-in and make and hold a tackle in adverse scenarios long enough for the fleet to support.

The Heavy Tackle Armour Thorax:

Click to Embiggen

Its fast at ~1800 m/s to get to a target and relieve the Atron's initial tackle and its scram and dual webs will keep anything from move very fast making them nice targets for the Thorax's blasters and the Vexor's drones. With an EHP tank of just of 24 thousand it has enough buffer to hold on til the logi get there.

If you fly in low sec, using some low grade slave  snake implant set and Zor's Hyper custom navigation implant can push this just over 2200 m/s, making it even more ideal for the role, as well as the role of forward scout/bait. Solo might be tricky as its tank is not that impressive and kiting foes with long range scrams and/or tracking disruptors can give you fits. This ship is best used in conjunction with a small fleet backup.

Crossroads

Alternate Title: "Why Low Sec Is A Great Place to Be Right Now"

Faction warfare low sec space is very interesting right now.

You got four militias, each of which are effectively like a dysfunctional alliance, battling it out in eternal war. On top of that you got the pirate groups that come rumbling through the areas every once in awhile, sometimes in small groups and sometimes in heavy battlecruiser gangs. There is always someone shooting something somewhere nearby.

Now throw on to that the recent trend of null sec fleets trundling through low sec and things have stepped up to crazy levels. There was Aryidanika's Eve Radio fleet roam from early march that I was part of, and some TEST alliance ships were buzzing Nennamaila last night in some Tech IIIs that we raised a fleet of cruisers for. Unfortunately they left before we could engage and we roamed a but before stumbling into a TEST tech 1 cruiser fleet.

It was kind of funny. We were heading towards Tama ("there's always a fight to be had in Tama") and we saw a neutral cruiser jump through a gate ahead of us. We jumped through to chase him and found ourselves smack dab in the middle of the test fleet. Primaries were called and the attack started. I don't know if we caught them as unawares as we were but we smashed them despite valiant efforts of their Scythes to keep them in the fight. Our logi were new logi pilots but performed flawlessly.

I used a bit of Veteran's Prerogative when the fight began and went after the Blackbird instead of the primary since the EWAR cruiser was within 12 km and I knew it could be bad news for our fleet if it pulled range. Their logi did a great job keeping it alive but eventually it broke and I was able to turn my attention to a Scythe that was right there while the fleet primaried the second one. It was all over by that point.

This is the second time in as many weeks that the hostiles' fleet logistics were in the midst of the fight instead of standing off at a safe distance. This time could be chalked up to "surprise!" factor.

We lost no ships (the Space Moneky Alliance Comet was not with us) and held the field. Good fight Testies!

Yet another example why Faction Warfare low sec is the place to be right now.