Just how much do combined arms actually work in practice?

[Kitsune]

I've been looking up and down the skill tree in search of a comfortable niche, and since I have basic cruiser and drone skills already, I picked up an Arbitrator on the cheap on the market, stuck in some guns and drones with an eye towards fitting it out for the level 2 missions.  And I was thinking, 'Okay, well, this is pretty much Amarr's only drone ship, and turret disruptors seem less than stunningly useful, but in fleets you can still jump in, jam some turret-heavy boat, and toss out your drones to contribute a bit.'  Only, to hear other Arbitrator pilots talking, the way things actually go is 'Jump in, jam some turret-heavy boat, die like a dog as some random battleship targets you.'

This got me thinking about role-heavy ships, like the new electronic warfare frigates, and I saw in my mind's eye a most admirable pilot who spent months and months to get all of his EW and frigate skills up to level 5 so as to proudly fly with his fleet in his shiny frigate, full of T2 gear and expensive rigs, only to burst into flames ten seconds into the first battle after someone on the other side says, "Huh, there's a jammer ship there.  Someone target it."

So this boils down to a question: Is there a legitimate role for all ship classes in a real PvP fight, enough to linger in a frigate or cruiser (or one of the T2 variants thereof), or are you best served by getting a battleship ASAP?

[IainC]

Battleships are bad at killing frigates. For fleet ops you want some frigates/AFs/destroyers to counter the enemy tacklers. Generally ships are good at killing vessels within one size class of their own and optimised for shooting equivalent stuff. A fleet full of nothing but battleships will get raped by a combined fleet with small fast tacklers and some ewar cruisers. Even if you fit small guns to a battleship or rely on combat drones, the lock time for a BS targetting a frigate makes it a bad prospect.

One of my best EvE experiences was dismantling a gatecamp made up of faction fitted BSs as part of an all destroyer fleet. We kept warping in, powering through the bubble then warping out. On each pass we'd kill 2-3 ships and they couldn't even lock us before we were out of there. Any one of their craft was worth more than the combined value of our entire fleet. The tears and tantrums in local were a joy to behold.

[dwindlehop]

Argh. How to explain? Fleet battles are not the only PvP. When fighting outnumbered HACs and recons are better. A handful of battleships will die to a handful of interceptors.

In a long range sniper fleet, cruisers are pretty useless. In a spider tank BS fleet, cruisers are pretty useless. So if that's how you want to play, don't concentrate on cruisers. But buying a ship and training the skills to 4 takes no time at all. So go crazy with different ship types to find what works for you.

Plus, personally, I don't think BS fleets are very fun. Lowsec piracy in T1 cruiser with a couple friends is ten times more fun.

Just train what sounds fun to you. You'll find a Corp that feels the same way.

[dwindlehop]

I forgot to answer your question.  Almost every ship has a PvP role ( /me pities the Breacher). But not every ship is useful in every situation.

Arby is a great ship for solo piracy.

[jape]

Battleships are bad at killing frigates.

Thats not always true though.

Raven equipped with precision cruises make frigate pilots life very very annoying.

[Endie]

If you are serious about wanting to fly in fleet ops - and they are fun in their own, twisted, tense way - then you want to focus on flying a battleship with T2 guns, an interdictor, ECM or an anti-support ship (HAC or Recon, mainly).  The HACs and Recons have the advantage of being even more useful in small gangs.

Drones are pretty useless in larger ops, though great in small fights (though I am no expert in the latter).

For solo and small gang PvP you honestly cannot do better than running Sisi - the test server - and just jumping into a fight at the PvP beacons in FD- in Syndicate.  Everything is basically free (when you can buy a ship for 100 and self-destruct for full insurance), and I spend tons of time on there right now trying out various fits.

[ajax34i]

My impression is that the "burst into flames 10 seconds into the fight" scenario is a common occurrence regardless of ship, really.  It's not like a battleship can survive focus fire from the enemy fleet; it blows up too.  It's a matter of luck, or the choice between flying something that's fun to you vs. something that hopefully attracts as little attention as possible.

[5150]

Just to basically agree with what others have said already

Once you scale the size of the engagement up, people will bring bigger ships (at least from a survivability point of view) at which point the range of the engagement can increase leaving some ships (the slow and/or shorter ranges ones) with not much to do (except die) and the moment you do this the primary target of either fleet doesnt tend to live very long regardless of what ship it is.

On the other end of the scale in small engagements ship selection makes a huge difference and will most likely determine the winner. E-War ships like the Arbitrator are pretty specific at what they do but against the right opponent they can be deadly, just bear in mind that all E-War has downsides:

Tracking Disruptors are usless against missile & drone boats (and won't help if you're in Nos/Neut range)
Damps are 'usless' against ship with long targeting ranges, drone boats & FOF missiles (not 100% sure on the FOF bit)
ECM is 'useless' against drone boats, FOF missiles and much more likely to fail to jam bigger ships or those that fit ECCM (and you basically must fly a Caldari ship and forego your conventional tank)
Target Painters are 'useless' if the targets sig is not the reason you're have trouble hitting/damaging him

[Endie]

My impression is that the "burst into flames 10 seconds into the fight" scenario is a common occurrence regardless of ship, really.  It's not like a battleship can survive focus fire from the enemy fleet; it blows up too.  It's a matter of luck, or the choice between flying something that's fun to you vs. something that hopefully attracts as little attention as possible.

What I would say is that, while I have lost a Rokh (thanks to Appleboy and a stupid, stupid warpin point) I've yet to lose one in a fleet action: I align when i get in and I'm sitting at 220km, taking note of where other people are that I can use to create, say, warp at 20km warpins that will place me well away from enemy dictors.  Eventually I'll lose one but I've been lucky so far.  Lasting through an entire fleet fight can involve a really long time: you look at the clock and realise that what seemed like 2 minutes was actually 15 or 20.

The only time I've been primaried by an entire battle fleet was in a drake set up as a heavy tackler, but not particularly supertanked.  That was near the end of one of the tenerifis or omist fights, and Bob had chewed through our fleet, which had gambled on lag despite smaller numbers.  I was warping between wrecks on grid to break their locks until I eventually got bubbled as the very last member of the fleet on grid, and I lasted the best part of a minute.  In a sniper I would have died in less than five or six seconds.  I have no idea why i didn't just scarper.  I suppose I just didn't mind, and was having fun.

[Teleku]

How usefull are Heavy Assult Ships in solo ganking, small gang, and fleet battles?  I kind of like the idea of them, and was thinking of training into them (probably as caldari. Are they're heavy assult ships worth it?  Minmatar seemed to get good ranking for theirs...), but sitting through Cruiser V is daughnting.

[IainC]

How usefull are Heavy Assult Ships in solo ganking, small gang, and fleet battles?  I kind of like the idea of them, and was thinking of training into them (probably as caldari. Are they're heavy assult ships worth it?  Minmatar seemed to get good ranking for theirs...), but sitting through Cruiser V is daughnting.

They rock if you have the other skills to go with them. T2 ships with T1 guns make baby Jesus spit blood.

[Slayerik]

The vagabond is a solopwnmobile and is great in roaming gangs, due to its speed. Minmatar Cruiser 5 FTW.

[Simond]

*Stuff about support here*

I disagree with the generalities, but agree with some of the specifics.
Target painters are junk. The only possible use for them nowadays is on torp-ravens while ratting. Tracking disruptors are pretty much useless as they got nerfed in the script changes in Triinity (for some reason).

Remote sensor dampers used to be God-like (and hence everyone used them) but got kneecapped in Trinity.

ECM used to be God-like, got nerfed, then got boosted twice over in Trinity - firstly with the bonus improvements to the Caldari ewar ships, and secondly (and indirectly) with the RSD nerfs. If I were ever a FC (perish the thought) I'd take people in plated Blackbirds over pretty much any other cruiser and 90% of battlecruisers...and that's only the cheap T1 version. A two or three month old 'newbie' with a handful of ewar skills and a Blackbird will have more effect on a battle than anything else short of repeated suicide-tackling.

The ability to smash targetting locks like so much fine china hit with a sledgehammer will cripple an unprepared enemy...and if an enemy is prepared for it, every slot fitted with ECCM, signal boosters et al is a slot not fitted with a tank, a web, a tracking computer, a weapon upgrade, etc, etc.

[bhodi]

The ability to smash targetting locks like so much fine china hit with a sledgehammer will cripple an unprepared enemy...and if an enemy is prepared for it, every slot fitted with ECCM, signal boosters et al is a slot not fitted with a tank, a web, a tracking computer, a weapon upgrade, etc, etc.

I will say I was pretty surprised at my blackbird's effectiveness; If it was like this now, I can only imagine what it used to be like. I mean, I had like 1m SP and I was able to completely disable 2 cruisers. The only downside is it doesn't seem that great for roving; you can't scramble or web so prey generally just gets away.

[TheDreamr]

I will say I was pretty surprised at my blackbird's effectiveness; If it was like this now, I can only imagine what it used to be like. I mean, I had like 1m SP and I was able to completely disable 2 cruisers. The only downside is it doesn't seem that great for roving; you can't scramble or web so prey generally just gets away.

Pre-EW nerf the world and their dog used to fit multi-spec jammers to anything that had enough cap - even without using ewar ships the success rate of jamming was good enough to make it a necessity in piracy & small-gang combat, at worst you might remove them from the fight for a single cycle, at best you might perma-jam them.

[Slayerik]

The ability to smash targetting locks like so much fine china hit with a sledgehammer will cripple an unprepared enemy...and if an enemy is prepared for it, every slot fitted with ECCM, signal boosters et al is a slot not fitted with a tank, a web, a tracking computer, a weapon upgrade, etc, etc.

I will say I was pretty surprised at my blackbird's effectiveness; If it was like this now, I can only imagine what it used to be like. I mean, I had like 1m SP and I was able to completely disable 2 cruisers. The only downside is it doesn't seem that great for roving; you can't scramble or web so prey generally just gets away.

If you are roving, you shouldnt be alone in a Blackbird :)

[Simond]

Yeah, a lone Blackbird is more accurately classified as 'a target'.

A single Blackbird in a small roving gang will also get killed the first time you hit a smart opponent, but will devastate inexperienced or just plain stupid pilots up until that point.

A bunch of Blackbirds (a flock?) in a fleet will cause enemies to have kittens, then start primarying the ECM ships. If your opponents are on top of their game, you'll die quickly. If they're not, or if you're good at warping in and out, or if it's very laggy, or if your escorts are good at their job (read: popping enemy anti-support), you'll last longer. You might even survive a couple of fights.

Notice the trend yet? If you fly ECM ships, you will die in glorious combat. The trick is helping your side take down as many enemies as possible as you can before the inevitable happens.

[bhodi]

Oh I meant in a roving gang. Soloing is silly. When we tried roving, I did my job, but they always got away. when a blackbird and several others all pop in it's a dead giveaway what's going on and they just book.

Maybe passive targeting would work better? I never considered it but it might be useful.

[Slayerik]

Oh I meant in a roving gang. Soloing is silly. When we tried roving, I did my job, but they always got away. when a blackbird and several others all pop in it's a dead giveaway what's going on and they just book.

Maybe passive targeting would work better? I never considered it but it might be useful.

Well, we didnt have an interceptor or vaga or anything for real tackling. Plus people need MWDs to get within the 20km to keep a point on them. Fighting against nano or fast ships, they will get away more often than not. I fly a cruiser than does about 3500 without gang bonuses.

[Endie]

Well, we didnt have an interceptor or vaga or anything for real tackling. Plus people need MWDs to get within the 20km to keep a point on them. Fighting against nano or fast ships, they will get away more often than not. I fly a cruiser than does about 3500 without gang bonuses.

I spotted the tackling thing, so The Groundskeeper is now only a day and a half away from gallente interceptors, albeit on a fairly restricted skillpoint count.  Holding down mission-fit ravens (doubtless using cruises and a hold full of medium drones, and without webs or neuts) should be a fairly easy proposition in that.