Ganking with a Supercarrier post Kronos

I logged in last night and saw a friend that I haven't seen for a while and before we could share any pleasantries he put this kill mail under my nose:

https://zkillboard.com/kill/39849856/

A couple of months ago he stopped playing because he moved back to his home country and alas he was missed but it's good to see him back and up to his old tricks.

A beautiful, but deadly, example of Gallente Engineering

The kill isn't great but what I was more most interested in was the comment he made that the damage he did on the Rhea from his Nyx was ONE salvo from his deployed fighters.

Kronos Changes

As part of the recent Kronos release, there were major changes to drones and these, in part, affected Fighters and Fighter Bombers:

• Drone skills now affect F/FB attributes
• Drone modules now affect F/FB attributes
• Drone Interfacing now gives a 10% not 20% damage increase per level
• Base F/FB damage reduced
• Reduce deployed F/FBs per racial carrier level from 3 to 1
• F/FB volume doubled (5000m3 to 10,000m3)
• F/FB hit points doubled (they're more hardy now)
• Super carriers receive a 100% bonus to F/FB damage

This means that carriers/super carriers will not be able to store and deploy as many F/FB's compared to before Kronos, but the base damage and hardiness increases and you'll be able to increase the damage and other attributes via Drone Modules and/or Skills.

Adding drone specific modules to a fit should certainly benefit the ship, the increase in attributes such as mwd speed, optimal range etc.. but more importantly, the amount of damage done. Drone skills should also provide a smaller benefit, certainly racial specialisation skills will add between 2% and 10% more damage per F/FB but better still the Navigation and Durability skills will make F/FB faster and harder to kill.

The Kill

The Rhea pilot had previously cyno'd into the system twice before, being caught once but escaping the other time, he was getting caught because he lit a badly located cyno on one of the system stations. 

Pack up your troubles in one ship just don't lose it when you jump

This mistake (a very common one with cyno's) allowed the Deimos to bump him away from station and prevent him docking, once off station the Nyx was called in and the story bought to a swift end.

As I said previously, the comment from my friend that the majority of the damage from the Nyx came in just one "cycle" of the deployed fighter bombers , thus minimising the time he was "in the open". Ten highly buffed FB's must have put out a tremendous amount of damage, I've seen ganks before and that required several cycles from the FB's to kill even a jump freighter.

What was different now for this, was it the fit or the increase in skills?

The Fit

My friend linked his fit so I was able to see how he was fit to increase the damage he was doing, and it was quite a fit to do over the damage he said in one volley.

• Three Drone Control Units modules in his high slows, each of these allows 1 extra fighter/fighter bomber to be used.
• In the mid slots he had two drone navigation computer II's and two Federation Navy Omni-Directional Tracking modules without scripts to increase f/fb base statistics
• The low slots he had the a mix of tank modules with four Federation Navy Drone Damage Amplifiers.

The type of F/FBs used do make little difference to the damage that is done but regardless 13 of them is some serious firepower. 

Fitting Theory

I'm not an expert with the numbers or how the game actually works. What I present are details as I've found them (and/or researched) and reactions by myself and anyone else involved. If you find an error, please write a comment and correct me.

I've previously played with Nyx fittings and one I had with no drone modules was reported by Pyfa (with a maximum skilled pilot) would be able to put out 9000 dps with a full set of 20 FB's. 

Keying in the details above, into a Kronos released Pyfa, and modifying the skills the pilot had to match those I know the Nyx pilot had I saw that this increased by 62% to a little over 14,000 using 13 FB's. Changing the type of FB used and even using a mix of F/FB's did alter the dps but it ranged from 11,000 to 14,500 depending on the F/FB's used. 

Conclusion

Wow.

The changes in Kronos seem to indicate, with this type of fit, that a 62% increase in damage from F/FB's may be seen. That is quite astounding. Of course different skill levels, FB's used and the defenses of the ship you're attacking will change this but still, that is a huge amount of firepower for a single ship.

To me this shows that the Super carrier changes in Kronos haven't hurt the ship to the effect many were speculating and they still are a very potent and dangerous entity in New Eden.

People who have them now have a very potent and dangerous vessel, so they should they cost enough. But with the changes to industry coming on the 22nd July 2014 with the next release it could very well see the price of these ships rise by 10% of more.

Wheelin' and Dealin'

It's been a nice week, long skill queues are nicely coming to a end and I've been able to buy, at very good prices, lots of faction modules to fit out ships to add that extra dps or resistance that they deserve.

I've also been spending too much time idling in Jita local, reading the messages from the people I haven't blocked for scamming. One thing I've noticed is a lot of people do not understand Margin Trading or many of the other scams that appear so I'm aiming to produce a few posts on these for educational purposes.

Buying and Making

I've spent nearly 4 billion ISK in the past week buying modules, salvage materials and T2 materials for a variety of purposes. Faction and deadspace modules will be used to replace lower meta/T2 modules on a few of my major ships where as the salvage materials will enable me to finally produce T2 variants of rigs I use without having to buy off the market.

The T2 materials I've purchased are for a small production run of the new T2 Venture variant, the Prospect, I managed to secure a 4 run -4/-2 BPC last week from a friend for the excellent price of nothing so I'm going to make them and keep two for myself and give two to friend who is helping to make them. It's a nice test to see if we can work together and more importantly develop some trust because there may be more we can do in the future, war withstanding...

Selling

It's been reasonably quiet, my Curse inventory is nicely selling for a mininum of 15% profit per item and I've been able to manufacture any new items myself without having to resort to trips to high sec.

My best news for the week was the Revelation dreadnought that I had spare in Mai finally sold after nearly two weeks on contract. I put up the T2 rigged Revelation that I had spare for 2.5billion ISKand received a counter offer rather quickly of 2.25b, I declined as I really wanted 2.35b mininum and so I left it and late last week a member of Nulli bought it from me.

I only hope they were successful extracting it from Mai :)

Freighter/Jump Freighter Changes

Kronos introduced the low slots to F and JF's and as such I've invested in a set of T2 Reinforced Bulkheads, Cargo Expanders and Nanofiber Internal Structure's to help my ships. 

The cargo expanders are fitted to the Jump Freighter and this gives me an extra 5000 m3 of space and trust me, this is used. When I jumpt o high sec I transfer the cargo to a freighter with either two bulkheads and a nanofiber or triple bulkheads (depending on the cargo carried). Of course I keep a full set of each nmodule in my cargohold so I can swap out as needed.

I have cut down on my trips personally but I have found myself doing a few more "urgent" trips for alliance people and so long as the fuel cost is covered I have no problem with this.

Freighter/Jump Freighter Changes in Kronos and beyond

I had a long post I've been working on about the upcoming changes to Freighters/Jump Freighters and then an update was posted that made what I was saying moot. So I scrapped it and now this is what I have.

What Was And Will Be

Initially rigs were going to be allowed to be fitted to F/JF and changes to ship statistics and cargohold capacities but a threadnaught developed and after considerable feedback this was reviewed and has been changed to F/JF having three low slots, and not rig slots.

As a result, when released, freighters and jump freighters will be able to fit the following:

• Expanded Cargohold (adds to cargo hold at the expense of structural hitpoints)
• Reinforced Bulkhead (adds structural hitpoints at the expense of non-warp velocity)
• Hyperspatial Accelerators (new module, adds to warp speed)
• Inertia Stabilizers (faster align time, but larger signature)
• Overdrive Injector Systems (faster non-warp velocity at the expense of cargohold capacity)
• Adaptive Nano Plating (grants armor resistance to all forms of damage)

Six fitting options, including a new warp speed affecting module, that will give players who use F/JF a lot more options in fitting and more importantly the flexibility that rigs would not provide.

Adding three Reinforced Bulkheads to a freighter is going to increase the EHP by nearly 80%, even just one and a couple of cargohold expanders will 5% increase in EHP. Maybe not enough to stop a concentrated gank effort but perhaps enough that any ganker will think twice before striking.

Base Stat Changes

One major change coming is the changes in base stats for F/JF, the major of these being the lowering of the base cargohold for each ship which by approximately 40% for Freighters and 50% for Jump Freighters.

This is quite a shock, fortunately the ability to add three cargohold expanders and you'll bring the cargo capacity back up to just over the old cargo capacity for JF's (no more than 1%/2% difference) or a significant increase for Freighters (finally you can have a cargohold of over the 1,000,000m3 size).

The table below is based on a fully skilled pilot with V's for all relevant skills for piloting.

Ship	Old EHP	New EHP	EHP Change	Old Cargo (m3)	New Cargo (m3)	% Cargo Change
Providence	193,690	227,427	+17.42%	918,750	543,750	-40.82%
Charon	195,783	210,860	+7.70%	981,250	581,250	-40.76%
Fenrir	174,049	204,749	+17.64%	900,000	543,750	-39.58%
Obelisk	200,827	235,712	+17.37%	937,500	550,000	-41.33%
Ark	351,357	411,567	+17.14%	344,531.30	168,750	-51.02%
Rhea	326,264	400,487	+22.75%	367,968.80	180,000	-51.08%
Nomad	314,978	394,272	+25.17%	337,500	165,000	-51.11%
Anshar	363,687	441,612	+28.11%	351,562.50	171,875	-51.11%

Jump Freighter Nerf

The nerf to cargohold capacity is a major change for JF's that can be possibly be attributed to force/logistic projection and the ability of JF's to carry such a large amount 'relatively safely'. This combined with the 50% increase in fuel usage that we'll also be seeing means that any JF run is going to cost significantly more come Kronos and the next expansion.

Comment

As a Jump Freighter pilot, these changes are frustrating but do open up more flexibility for pilots through the introduction of three low slots rather than two/three rig slots. In fact it means you can carry several different modules and refit as required in local stations or via a mobile depot.

The Jump Freighter changes are going to hit the 'bottom line' much more than the freighter changes. Yes, fuel size is getting reduced by one third (from 0.15m3 to 0.10m3) so we'll be able to carry more but the fuel is going to be used faster and, more than likely, cost more. Already we're seeing prices near 1,000 ISK per unit and this will only increase as supply decreases and demand increases.

Certainly I'm giving serious thought to changing my racial JF to one who's fuel I can mine locally.

Blockade Running and Deep Space Transports get a much needed upgrade

I'll only be covering my reaction to the changes as I use both the Prorator and Impel of these classes, your mileage my vary if you use different ships.

Blockade Runners

I have used Blockade Runners, mainly the Prorator, many times when I'm either carrying high value cargo (rare these days) or moving through hostile space (usually distribution missions and/or moving low/medium value assets in null sec).

The changes mean the Prorator will now have the following stats:

Amarr Industrial Bonus per level:

+5% Cargo Capacity

+5% Velocity

Transport Ships Bonus per level:

+5% Warp Speed (was the useless tanking bonus)

-20% CPU requirements for Cloaking Devices

Note: Can fit covert ops cloaking devices and covert cynos. Cloak reactivation delay reduced to 5 seconds. 

Immune to cargo scanning.

Slot layout: 2(+1)H, 2M, 4L; 1 turret

Fittings: 150 PWG, 200(+5) CPU

Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 800(-255) / 2000(-109) / 2100(-150)

Base shield resistances (EM/Therm/Kin/Exp): 0 / 20 / 70(+15) / 87.5(+12.5)

Base armor resistances (EM/Therm/Kin/Exp): 50 / 35 / 62.5(+18.75) / 80(+20)

Capacitor (amount / recharge / cap per second) : 1375(+437.5) / 393(+112)s / 3.5

Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 170(+10) / 0.52(-0.03) / 10,750,000 / 7.75s

Drones (bandwidth / bay): 0 / 0

Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 35km / 240 / 2

Sensor strength: 14

Signature radius: 110(-5)

Cargo Hold: 2900(+400)m3

The covert ops cloak was the main reason I used one and combined with the mwd trick on gates meant I was 99% safe in moving what I had to. The only issue I had was the small cargo space meant I didn't use it as much as the Deep Space Transport (Impel) that I had when going only a couple of jumps.

However the upgrade sees a lot of changes and the totally useless bonus to tanking has been removed in favour of a bonus to warp speed. Combined with an extra base 400m3 of cargo space means with T1 rigs and cargo expanders in the lows should see my Prorator easily exceed 10,000m3 of cargo space.

In real game terms it means I'll get around 8,000m3 of space with two cargohold expanders and T1 rigs with nanofibres and/or inertia stabs in the other low slot. The upgrade to T2 resists is nice, not exactly useful as this thing has as much tank as a piece of paper but it evens up all T2 ships.

Full details on the changes can be found here.

Deep Space Transports

DST's are a class of vessel that, once T1 haulers were rebalanced, really lost their use. T2 rig fitted you'd be close to 40,000m3 of space but T1 haulers that had specialized bays made these look a little dated so it's nice to see them get a really big change with the introduction of the Fleet Hanger.

The bonus to Fleet Hanger capacity means people will finally have a reason to train Transport Ships beyond Level 2, even up to Level 5 (if you have the patience). I'm certainly going to be doing that on my characters that maintain my towers, it means I no longer have to risk the Freighter, using instead a Impel, to haul all my materials to/from towers as they'll fit nicely in a DST.

These changes for the Impel are as follows:

Amarr Industrial Bonus per level:

+7.5% Armor Repairer Effectiveness

+5% Velocity

Transport Ships Bonus per level:

+5% Fleet Hangar capacity

+4% Armor Resistances

Role Bonuses:

+2 Warp Core Strength

+100% bonus to the benefits of overheating Afterburners, Microwarpdrives, Local Repair Modules, and 

Resistance Modules

Note: Can fit Medium Micro Jump Drives

Slot layout: 2(+1)H, 2(+1)M, 7L; 2(+2) launchers

Fittings: 330(+80) PWG, 240(+65) CPU

Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 2000(-109) / 4300(+81) / 4500

Capacitor (amount / recharge / cap per second) : 3500(+2250) / 875(+563)s / 4

Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 90(+10) / 1 / 19,500,000(+500,000) / 27.03s

Drones (bandwidth / bay): 0 / 0

Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 45km / 205 / 3(+1)

Sensor strength: 16

Signature radius: 160

Cargo Hold: 1000(-3000)m3

Fleet Hangar: 50000m3

Conclusion

I believe these changes are balanced and add new life to two classes that have been very much underused. I'm certainly going to invest in another couple of each ship as they now, with increased cargo holds/fleet hangers, can fill a gap in my logistics chain that I previously fixed with a freighter. The only other thing that would make DST's more interesting would be interdiction nullification (like Interceptors) that's been suggested before.

One thing that did make me laugh with the changes to DST's was a Impel fit that I saw that, utilising the Role bonus to overheating, used Deadspace/Officer modules and overheating to get all four resists above 99% and maintain them for at least two minutes with a cap booster!

There are those that are still complaining that Blockade Runners should have their cargo scanning immunity removed but it's a nice feature to have and means gankers don't have it all their own way finding targets. It's possible they won't get a thing from BR's.

Open Fire! All Weapons!

If you've ever had experience with POS guns you'll know how powerful and effective they can be under player control. We have a skill available, Starbase Defense Management, that allows players to control one gun per level trained.

It's a great skill and one I made sure I had at least two characters who live in POS'es have trained to Level 3. However it is a skill intensive skill, in order to control the maximum of five guns requires at least 52 days of training and 17 days of this is to get Anchoring to Level V, which is the pre-requisite for the skill.

With the coming of Kronos we've received the wonderful news that the pre-requisite skill is changing from Anchoring Level 5 to Anchoring Level 4! 

Defending via AI controlled POS weapons no more

We'll still need Anchoring 5 for Mobile Large Warp Distruptor II's (WH/Null Only) and Outpost Construction (Null Only) but Anchoring 4 will be the new requirement to get Starbase Defense Management. 

POS Defenders certainly have reason to be joyful now, this is a great change and a small one that goes a long way.

I was almost right

I was very happy to hear during FanFest that CCP will be allowing Freighters and Jump Freighters to fit Capital sized rigs, not modules as I thought the description showed.

I was almost right, first time for everything as a few friends are no doubt thinking.

It will be interesting to see if I can put cargohold increasing rigs on my Freighters, I was always under the belief that the cargo size would not exceed 1,000,000 m3 because CCP didn't want capital ships to be moved in high sec. If I'm able to add one, two or even three cargohold rigs then I'm pretty sure this will allow this limit to be exceeded.

Isotope prices are increasing, slowly

I would like to add cargohold rigs to my JF's, the ability to carry a extra cargo would be a boon to my shipping contracts and the extra space means I can claw back some of the monies I'll be spending on increased fuel needs.

It's the small things

Kronos is coming and with it lots of changes, major and minor and overnight there has been a very welcome notice of a change to the pre-requisite requirements for the Starbase Defense Management skill.

This skill allows a pilot to control up-to five POS defense modules whilst within the POS shield. Previously in order to unlock this skill you needed to train Anchoring V but with the release of Kronos Anchoring IV will be the new requirement.

I already have two characters with this skill and this change means I no longer have to wait two weeks to finish Anchoring V in order to get a couple of extra guns under my control. Now I'll have all my characters trained to IV and at least SDM III.

This is a very welcome change and one that I see a lot more people will be training as covered by Foo.