Difference between revisions of "A Comprehensive Guide to Cynosural Fields and Jump Drives"

Revision as of 21:08, 6 June 2008

Original text by [Rells] and [Fort]

Introduction

Unlike most ships in the game, capital ships (with the exception of Jump Freighters) may not use stargates to move around. Although there is a lot of backstory around just why that is, the reality is that its that way because CCP says so. Therefore, it requires a bit of teamwork to move these ships. The movement is accomplished by a pilot dropping a cynosaural field for the capital pilot and the capital pilot engaging his jump drive to jump to that field. Once the capital pilot jumps, the behavior is similar to that of a stargate jump except for the fact that the capital pilot ends up somewhere randomly within 5km of the cynosaural field that was dropped. These are the basics of the system but the actual specifics get much more involved.

The Basics of Jump Drives and Jump Portals

A standard jump drive is a part build into the hull of a capital ship. It comes in carriers, dreadnoughts, jump freighters, capital industrial ships, titans and motherships. The black ops ships have a covert jump drive which is a little different than the ones in the capital ships. In addition titans can open jump portals and black ops ships can open covert jump portals. Finally, a POS with a jump bridge can be linked to another POS to create a semi-permanent jump portal between the two POSes.

A jump drive will instantly transport a ship from one system to another system whereas a jump portal will allow other ships to use the portal to accomplish the same effect as a jump drive. When you arrive in the other system, you will be within about 5km of the cynosaural field that was laid own by another pilot as opposed to being on the gate itself. This allows you to jump right to stations, POS structures and so on. The ship that drops the cynosural field fits a module to the ship and activates that module which creates the field. The field is represented by a big lightning storm in space centered on where it was dropped. Its important to remember two things about dropping a cynosural field; first of all the ship dropping the field will be frozen in place, unable to cloak, move, jump, or warp for the duration of the field. Note that this includes logging off emergency warping -- you will not auto warp out. In addition, a normal cynosural field will be a beacon in the system that anyone can warp directly to if they choose to do so; however a covert cynosural field will not be broadcast as such a beacon. Finally, if the ship laying the cynosural field gets destroyed, the field will fail. You can not kill the field itself.

In order to accomplish this, the ship making the jump or creating the portal is required to have certain amounts of ice based fuel in its cargo hold at the time of the jump. Without sufficient fuel, the jump cant happen. Each race has a specific fuel that it needs to execute the jump or create the portal. In addition, the ship that is deploying the cynosaural field must have enough Liquid Ozone, another ice product, to drop the field. The amount of fuel needed to jump varies by distance and skill of the character. The amount of liquid ozone needed to deploy the cynosural field to varies by ship type and skill of the player. Although any ship can drop a regular cynosural field, some ships are more appropriate than others. We will discuss the differences in the next section.

Keep in mind that at the current time, only black ops battleships can use a covert cynosural field for jumping or creating a portal and they can not use a regular cynosural field. This is a strong limitation on the usefulness of those ships but it is, at the current time, the state of affairs.

Cynosural Field Placement and Dynamics

Since dropping of a cynosural field broadcasts its location and freezes the ship dropping it, its proper placement is of paramount importance. Improper placement can easily lead to the loss of a capital ship. Furthermore, selecting the right ship for dropping the field is essential.

Since the ship jumping into the cynosural field can appear anywhere on the sphere 5km in radius from the center of the field, it is essential to make sure that no part of that field crosses any ship model, station, structure or other models. If the capital ship appears on top of a station or structure, it will be forcibly ejected out of the structure and "bounce" off the station a long way. This will mean the ship will have to crawl back into range to dock. This is an extremely hazardous situation. In addition, if the capital ship appears where it is not in docking range then the ship can get webbed and bumped and blocked from docking. Your goal is to get the cynosural field placed precisely at the point where any point on that 5km sphere reads as 0m from the station and no point on that sphere crosses the model of the station or other structure.

The easiest way to accomplish the proper placement is to use a salvager module on your cyno ship. The salvager is placed online and the pilot opens his tactical display. Now by hovering over the salvager, the pilot will see a sphere that indicates the range of the salvager in space. Since all salvagers have a 5km range, this is a great tool for cyno placement. The pilot moves toward the station and then positions the ship in such a way that all areas covered by the bubble of the salvager are free of obstacles. Then the pilot makes sure that all points on the sphere will be within 0m of the station. If the pilot isnt sure, they should recruit the help of some friends to verify the spot while holding position at the proposed cyno spot. The other pilots fly to pints on the sphere at the direction of the cyno pilot and verify range to the station. Once the spot is established, it should be bookmarked for future reference. A marking syntax such as [V-M2-SOE] CYNO for the Sisters of Eve station works just fine. To get back to that spot the best thing to do is to warp out and warp right back into the cyno spot. Approaching a bookmark always has some margin of error whereas warping is more reliable assuming you are only warping yourself.

When you do finally deploy the field, also make sure that there are no ships in the range of the cynosural field to prevent any mishaps.

Selecting a Cyno Ship

As we said before, any ship with a high slot can be used to place a cynosural field so long as it can hold sufficient liquid ozone. However, certain types of ships are preferred for the operation for various reasons. The tech 1 frigate or destroyer is often used as a disposable ship but has the drawback of requiring a lot of fuel, being pinned by the cynosural field for 10 minutes and being extremely fragile. By contrast, the larger ships such as a drake are more able to survive the onslaught of people who see a cyno ship as a free kill but still has the fuel and time requirements of a tech 1 frigate. Remote repair devices can be adequately employed against battlecruisers and battleships ship to keep them alive. Finally, the Recon ships are the cream of the crop for dropping cynosural fields. Despite their heritage of being EWAR ships, they can be set up to be very tough and they can also benefit from the fact that they consume much less fuel and are only pinned in

Packing for Carrier and Rorqual Logistics

Deploying a Cynosural Field and Executing a Jump

Warping a Capital Ship

Combat Tactics with Capital Ships