Tackling

[Llyse]

That answers a crap load of questions Leon thanks muchly for all your advice from your experiences.

Really clears up what I want and some paths to get PVP.

Zero sec really does seem like blob and counter blob.

How do empire piracy war decs work?

How often do corps just hide in stations like F13?  :-D

but yeah thanks a lot Leon!

I'll stick to ratting in 0.0 to feed my inty habit, so many damn skills though >.<

[Leon]

The way it works is basically, we look for a place to settle or clean out. In the case of Khanid, we 'owned' the area - meaning corps paid us protection money. Those that didnt got a wardec. Be it miners that believe they are exempt from this, or anti-pirate PvP corps that want us removed, we fight wars and offer peace terms through X million isk per week or other favorable deals (like battleships at cost from Xentech). Some corps dont fight back and just dock and smack from the stations, but when they do try and mount a resistance, those corps tend to get crushed badly and lose a lot more morale, typically losing members or the corp falling apart. Think an example would be our war against Appaloin Vanguard. APPAL had interfered with one of our previous wars against IEEX by interfering and costing us 2 cruisers vs 6 battleships and a carrier, so we decided to war dec them. After some fighting and much smacking from them (and refusal to pay compensation for cruisers lost) i think we did about 1.6 billion in damages and they lost about 13 or so members.

Its not 'nice', sure, but its one of those things that happens everywhere, and probably one of the more efficient ways to make money by PvPing. No sec loss by engaging war targets, and a surrender payment of 500mil beats the measily few mil you might get by ganking an NPCing cruiser. Sometimes these wars can be REALLY boring if people just stay endless docked and smack from inside the station, then come and try to gank your lone interceptor with x4 battleships, but meh, it happens. The fun wars are when people fight back and show spirit in wanting to learn. I think thats why I found the F13/BGO war enjoyable - its become even though sometimes we (BL-IN) got horribly outnumbered during our graveyard shift, people fought back and made for some fun battles. Hehe, that 4 hour long 1 vs 10 is still one of my most memorable fights, and one I enjoyed a lot as well as learnt a lot from.

When people undock to fight, even if they are new to the game in effort to learn the ropes of PvP, its always a good step in the right direction instead of being told by their director to stay docked and never engage the ebil pirates and hope they get bored and leave (which is one of the worse advices to give at all, because if you stay perpetually docked, you arent going to learn how to defend yourself). Or even worse, is when I see people fight back, but the moment the odds arent in their favor (ie I call for BS fire-support) their more experienced members warp off and leave the poor young pilots to fight to the death while they run away to save their expensive T2 ships - its kinda depressing to see that, only thing it does is make the younger members bitter.

[Comstar]

Well I was in a failry big fleet op last night, in which I fired a total of 6 missles that got hits, and had my armour down to zero as I warped out at one stage.

The problem was this: The enemy had a cloaked ship 200km out. They would warp 5-10 battleships out there, fire a few torpedos, and once anyone got within 50km, warp out.  Repeat about 10 times.  I can't really blame there because the one time they did come in close, they lost a few battleships.

The time I lose all armour is when I *did* manage to get witin 100km, I became the primary target and ouch that hurt. Glad I was in a cruiser. Quote of the battle: Fleet Commander "Frigates, get to the enemy, get there now". 10 minutes later..."Frigates get to the enemy...wait, where are all our frigates?" (They'd been blown up 10 minutes eialer!).


How to tackle that? Get an Inty I supose? (And thanks for the good advice too!).

[Viin]

I think you would want to try to get a bm at their spot, if possible. I've played around a lot in a light frigate to see if I can get bookmarks near ships I know are far away from a gate or planet or whatever. It takes time, but in 10 minutes you might have a good spot for your BSs and Cruisers and tacklers to warp to.

[Merusk]

Read it again.  They had a covert-ops ship who was setting their warp-in points.   Soon as they started warping-in he was - in all likelihood- moving towards the next warp-in area.  I was part of the same camp for about an hour and a half (before I realized that a Cyc is useless vs a sniper group like this if it's not running leadership mods) and they never came in the same position twice. 

They didn't even do something predictable like High, Low, Right, Left, High.. It was high Low low right, high left, left, behind, low right, high and behind.   Honestly, the most frustrating part was they all had Jammers and lots of WCS.  The few times we /did/ get intys & cruisers into taclking range, the BSs and even the cruisers were able to warp despite having 2-4 scrams on them.

[Megrim]

Question:

Do scanners still pick up cloaked ships?

[Viin]

Read it again.  They had a covert-ops ship who was setting their warp-in points.   Soon as they started warping-in he was - in all likelihood- moving towards the next warp-in area.  I was part of the same camp for about an hour and a half (before I realized that a Cyc is useless vs a sniper group like this if it's not running leadership mods) and they never came in the same position twice. 
..

Ah ok I thought they had a cov ops to get them into place, but I didn't realize he had hung around the whole time. Hard to combat something like that without your own fleet of snipers.

[Yoru]

Question:

Do scanners still pick up cloaked ships?

No. I've used this fact to wait out bored pirates in a safespot before while in my indy. Slap on a cheap 10m cloaking device I, warp to a moderately decent safespot, cloak and go read F13.

Call it patience or lameness, it's saved me a dozen mil or more so far.

[MahrinSkel]

If you want that ultimate tackler, train for Interdictors.  If you get through, you can pin down not just a ship or two, but an entire fleet blob.  Your odds of survival or very poor, and in a real fleet op you'll need a cloak just to live long enough to get a run at your banzai charge, but there have been many battles where an interdictor pinned down fleets long enough for dozens of kills (something that normally just doesn't happen).  And every time more than 1 capital ship has been taken down in the same engagement, it's been because of an interdictor.

--Dave (2 days, 17 hours, 43 minutes, 21 seconds to Destroyers 5)

[edlavallee]

Please 'splain what Interdictors do. By reading the ship description they simply say they "breach warp tunnels"... does this mean pull ships out of warp? What does that mean and how do they do that?

[hal]

Ever hear about a bubble gate camp? If not you will when you begin hanging in 0.0.

[MahrinSkel]

There are things referred to as "Warp Bubbles", they are "Mobile Warp Disruptors" that come in 3 sizes.  Anyone warping towards one of these with a destination within 100km of the bubble and a course that intersects it will get stopped at the edge of the bubble, and you can't warp while inside one (you can use MWD's).  Small bubbles (5km radius) are generally anchored directly on a major warp path like between stargates or a stargate and a station (near one end or the other).  Mediums (15km radius) are used similarly, or in groups of 4 or more to completely "bubble up" the vicinity of a gate or the undocking lane of a station.  Large bubbles (45 km radius) can completely enclose a typical 0.0 station or a stargate (but are too big to carry in the cargo hold of a combat ship without expanders and require Anchoring 4 to activate, so are rarely used).  Small bubbles cost 5-8M, medium and large roughly 15M, and you frequently wind up abandoning them.  They can only be deployed in 0.3 or lower systems.

Interdictors can fit a "Interdiction Sphere Launcher" in their high slots that launches a "Warp Disruption Probe", which creates a 20km warp bubble.  This has a couple of unique properties: No anchoring time (the regular bubbles have anchoring times ranging from 1 to 4 minutes), and the bubble not only prevents warping, but you cannot get a target lock while you're inside one (but someone outside can lock you).  Having one of these appear around your fleet (or gating into one) is pretty much a recipe for total pwnage.

As a result, in fleet actions Interdictors tend to be *the* highest priority target when they are present.

--Dave

[edlavallee]

Thanks, that explains a great deal.

[Leon]

They actually changed that ; interdictor bubbles now only work in 0.0, which is why you hardly ever ever see one in empire space. I fought one with a interceptor wingman in empire (without the bubble) and they make nasty frig killers. In 0.0 they are definately the ultimate tackler, but in empire/low-sec, you'll still need to rely on interceptors and fast T1 frigs.