You should never warp out in a battleship because you are being jammed. Ever

Transcription

1 Battleship Fleet Guide: (1) The Basics (2) Battleships (3) Skills (4) Implants (5) The Speed Boost Module (6) The Stacking Penalty (7) Electronic Warfare (8) High Slots (9) Mid & Low Slots (10) Missile Boast Specific (11) Tips and Tricks (12) Example Fleet Setups (1) The Basics: As a battleship pilot, your job is a relatively simple one. You fly with the main fleet and for the majority of the time you stick together in a group with all the other battleship pilots. You will warp in with the fleet, shoot the targets you are told to, and warp out if you get shot at or mass-targeted (depending on the size of the enemy fleet). You should never warp out in a battleship because you are being jammed. Ever. Before a fleet engagement, the fleet commander should have assigned at least three or more target callers, to take over if he is forced out of the fight. The target caller whose turn it is will call a primary, secondary, and possibly tertiary target over teamspeak. It sounds very stupid, but your most important role as a battleship pilot, is simply to fire at the assigned primary, secondary etc. targets as they are called. It is much easier to do this if you sort your overview alphabetically, by clicking on the name tab, and by having a pre-setting on your overview that only shows hostile battleships, and nothing else. Just before or as you warp in you will be told a direction in which to align when you come out of warp. This is very important in case you are called the primary target and need to get out fast, or if your fleet is withdrawing from the battle. Remember to always align to something if you re-enter the battle midway. One of the biggest reasons fleets lose battles is because their battleship pilots decide to shoot their own targets, sometimes ridiculously stupid ones such as high-transversal interceptors at long range or even pods! Shooting at a pod in a fleet battle while in a

2 battleship, while there are still hostile ships within range, is one of the worst things you can possibly do as a fleet-battleship pilot. The only exception to a battleship pilot not shooting at the primary target, is if a cruiser sized vessel or smaller is jamming your ship, or is about to and you re sure he or she is. Tech 1 Cruisers and Tech 1 frigates that often jam cannot take much fire from a fleet battleship, and it is usually quite easy and quick to get one out of the fight. It s important not to warp out just because you see one, two, or even three targets lock you up during a fleet battle. It might just be that all three battleships are trying to jam you, or trying to scare you into warping off. In a small fleet battle of battleships on each side, as long as you don t experience too bad a lag, you will have ample time to warp out once you start taking fire. If you start being shot at by more than one battleship, you ve been called primary, and need to get out. In such a size battle, it s best to hold for a moment and let your ship take some damage, that way you re saving the next poor soul in your fleet from being shot at for a few more seconds. In a fleet battle involving 30+ battleships on each side, as soon as you see your overview light up with more than 3-4 hostile battleships locking you, you need to get out, straight away. A good way to do this is to have your address book loaded in the corner of your screen, with a safespot that you are aligned towards visible, so you can quickly warp out. The reason for this is against such a large fleet, particularly if they are tempest-heavy, it s likely that you will be insta-popped in a single salvo. If the battle starts to go sour and you hear your fleet commander give the order to not to warp back into the fight, it s very important you don t, or you will die. (2) Ships: The Typhoon, and the Dominix. Cool ships? Maybe, but in fleet battles of 25+ battleships, your flying a gimped ship. The primary weapon of the dominix is drones. (1) Drones are useless at 100 km range. (2) The power grid and slot layout of the dominix is not good enough to make it an effective gunboat, when compared to the megathron. (3) The megathron is a far, far better fleet battleship. The typhoon, not quite as bad as the dominix, but again; (1) You ve got two bonuses to guns, but you ve only got 4 turret hardpoints, gimped. (2) The power grid and slot layout on the typhoon is not good enough to make it an effective gunboat, when compared to the tempest. (3) The tempest is not only a far, far better fleet battleship, it s the best

3 fleet battleship. This is due to its combination of five mid slots and excellent use with 1400 mm howitzers, which are the king of alpha strike weapons. So get in those belts and start NPCing/mining till you can afford yourself a decent fleet battleship!! (3) Skills: To make your character more effective in a fleet battleship, there are a variety of skills that you might want to consider training, (and modules to train for): Electronics V and Engineering V are essential. Advanced weapon upgrades level 3+ (gained by training weapon upgrades to level V is also very, very useful). Racial Battleship to level 4+, All gunnery skills to level 4+ (gunboats), All missile skills to level 4+ (missile boats), Tech 2 Guns are very very useful, (required small, medium and large turret to level V). Spaceship Command level 4+. Signature Analysis, Targeting (don t bother train it past level IV), Long Range Targeting, Signature Analysis, Target Painting, ECM-related skills; (Electronic Warfare, Electronics Upgrades, Frequency Modulation, Long Distance Jamming, Signal Dispersion) Remote Armour Repairing Skills; (Mechanic III, Repair Systems II, Remote Armour Repair Systems 1-3) (4) Implants: You can buy a Hardwiring Zainou Gnome KZA1000 implant that reduces the CPU requirements of all turrets by 3% for a very low price in empire. It s very useful for fitting a fleet battleship. It s a slot 10 implant, which means it won t interfere with any attribute enhancing implants, and only requires; Science level 3, and Cybernetics level 3. You can also buy a similar implant that does the same thing but 5%, however it s far more expensive and requires Cybernetics level 5. (5) The Speed Boost Module: There are two main types of fleet setups. One is for defence at home; i.e. in Feythabolis and Impass, and one for when outside of ASCN territory. The only difference between the two, is a speed boost module. (An afterburner or microwarpdrive). The speed boost

4 module is very important for several reasons, including; essential for an operation that takes place in a region where not everyone has instas, or in case a gang member crashes out and needs to catch up with the rest of the fleet, or in case a gang member needs to log off and will not return till the next day (i.e. he will have to make his own way back to safety). Even if you have a complete set of bookmarks in a hostile region, there are times when having a speed boost means the difference between life and death, for you or a gang-mate. (e.g. if hostiles appear at a gate you just jumped through, and you need to quickly get back into the last system, or if the system you jump into has a hostile force and you need to get out quick. (6) The Stacking Penalty: Since RMR, a new stacking penalty has been introduced which makes it pretty pointless to fit a 4 th module on your ship that has the same effect as three others. Fitting three modules such as three heat sinks, or three tracking enhancers/computers is the most sensible way to go in all but the most extreme cases; as in fleet it is far more useful to fit something else than gaining an extra.03 damage on your guns. When it comes to damage mods, three is the ideal number. The same goes for tracking enhancers/computers, although it s not as important. ( A better range on your guns means you can use higher damaging ammo and therefore hit harder at the same range, just remember tracking enhancers and computers affect the same attributes so don t fit more than three combined.) There is little point in fitting more than two sensor booster II s, for these reasons: (1) Fitting more than two sensor booster II s means you have less room to fit other, more useful modules such as E-WAR. (2) During a fleet battle (which will almost always have some lag) the increased locking time you get from having more than two sensor booster II s is negligible because lag will still cause some period of delay, either before or after the locking timer. (3) Fitting more than two sensor booster II s is usually a sign of selfishness on the part of the pilot; desperate to get on the most killmails as possible. (7) Electronic Warfare, Giving and Receiving : Obviously if you re flying a Scorpion then e-war is going to be your primary weapon, however all battleships need to have a think about using or protecting against e-war. You can either choose between the two or do both, and it s often down to personal preference. If you find it difficult to concentrate on shooting the primary targets, watching out for when your called primary AND jamming, pick a defensive e-war setup. If you reckon you can handle it all, or you re a woman and can multi-task *grin*, do both; but for god s sake fit the following:

5 2x Sensor Booster II 2x Tracking Computer II or 2x Tracking Enhancer II, or one of each. Backup Array(s)/Mid-Slot ECCM(s) Reason? Due to the current (perhaps bugged?) nature of e-war, two sensor booster II s will make you virtually immune to remote sensor dampeners, regardless of how many dampeners the enemy puts on you. The same goes for 2x Tracking Computers/Enhancers, which will make you virtually immune to tracking disruptors, again regardless of how many the enemy puts on you. ECM is therefore often the most effective e-war module, and as such it s important to fit modules on your ship to counter it, which, thanks to the nerf to maxing out low slots on damage mods means is easily possible. If you ve got a choice between how to arrange low slot backup arrays/tracking enhancers, and mid slot ECCM/tracking computers; go for the ECCM in the mid slots, as the named ECCM modules (which are very cheap) have almost twice the +sensor strength as the low slot backup arrays. Remember not to fit more than three! 2 or more ECCM modules or Backup arrays can change the probability of a scorpion, or another battleship successfully jamming you from approx % to approx. 5-15%. When you do use your ECM, make sure you spread it across multiple targets, and don t stack multiple jammers on a single ship, with the exception of if you re packing caldari racial jammers and trying to jam hostile scorpions (who will likely jam you back if you fail). (8) High Slots: The simple bit. You re either a gunship, a missile boat, or a Scorpion. There s no reason you should be using anything other than the following as your main weapons: Amarr : Mega Beams or Tachyon Beam Lasers. Gallente : 425mm Railguns. Minmatar : 1400mm Howitzer Artillery. Caldari : Cruise Missile Launchers, 425mm Railguns. Nearly all fleet battleships will find they have spare high slots after fitting their main array of weapons. You should make sure these are the last slots you fill as they have the least priority when fitting a fleet battleship. There s not a whole lot you can fit in these spare slots however. The most useful high slot module by far to put in these spare slots

6 is a remote armour repairer. You can go for a smart bomb, a nosferatu, or anti-frig weapon instead, but you will find remote armour repairers are always in demand; where as not only will a single large smart bomb take awhile to kill an enemy frigate tackling you inside of 5.5 km, it also won t touch a frigate orbiting outside that range. (9) Mid Slots & Low Slots: Two sensor booster II s on all setups. Three damage mods on all setups. Two tracking enhancer II/tracking computer II on all setups. Some form of ECCM/Backup Array. The rest depends on the ship your flying and your skills. A megathron pilot with good skills will not need to fit any kind of RCU or PDU to fit his rack of 7 425mm railguns. An apocalypse or Armageddon pilot however will almost definitely need at least one RCU on his or her setup. If the fleet is an offensive one away from ASCN territory, a speed boost module is an essential module to fit. The idea is to make sure you get in your two tracking enhancers/computers and a few backup arrays/eccm before you start fitting fancy anything else. Other useful modules to fill your slots include target painters, 1600 mm plates (mostly for ASCN territory defence fleets), large/medium armour repairers, and energised adaptive nano s/armour hardeners. (10) Missile Boat Specific: When flying a specific missile boat such as the raven, there are important things to consider in a long range engagement. Depending on your skills, cruise missiles will travel between 6,300 m/s to 8,400 m/s. This means that at a range of 100 km, you re cruise missiles will take between seconds to hit. In a large scale fleet battle if a primary target is surviving 15 seconds, then something is going very very wrong. Therefore, a handy tactic is for missile boats to fire their cruise missiles, at the secondary target as it is called, therefore ideally as the fleet commander calls the secondary target as the primary target, the raven pilots cruise missiles will begin to hit just as the gunboats start hitting the target too. If even then your missiles are not hitting the secondary target before its called primary and downed, you can start shooting the tertiary target as they are called (rare). (11) Tips and Tricks:

7 Your overview is one of your most important tools during a fleet battle, therefore it s important to not keep it free of clutter. As a battleship pilot, during the fight all you need to see is hostile ships, therefore you should make an overview setting that does only that. This is done by right clicking the arrow next to Overview and selecting, Overview Settings. Then go to the Filters tab, then States, then de-select pilots in your alliance, corporation, gang or with any kind of positive standing. It s also not a bad idea to do the same for non-battleship/cruiser/hac targets, so that in a very large engagement, your overview is not cluttered by hostile frigates, and it s therefore easier to find the targets being called, do this the same way as above, but click on the Filters, Types, then Ships and de-select all the elite-frigates, capsules, shuttles, frigates, and destroyers. During most fleet battles, the fleet commander and his backup callers will have quite clear transmissions and voices over teamspeak, however if by chance you miss the name of the primary target being called, do not begin to lock random targets and shoot them on your own. Wait for the second of third repetition of the primary target and if after two or three times you still haven t understood who the primary is, go for the secondary instead. Do not sit there idle, and do not start trying to pop frigates or capsules. (12) Example Fleet Setups: Armageddon Setups Apocalypse Setups Megathron Setups Tempest Setups Raven Setups Scorpion Setups

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