Difference between revisions of "Destroyer Fleet Types"

Revision as of 18:04, 2 January 2012

Original text by Rells
Copyright Agony Unleashed

Introduction

In the PvP Basic class we had everyone fit long rang guns with close range ammo. We wanted the students to concentrate more on the mid slots and other content than the ins and outs of various kinds of weapons. We taught you about the dangers of smartbombs to frigate fleets and how to defend against them. This was all good advice given the need to reduce the information to something manageable in a single seminar; however, at advanced levels there is more to PvP than we discussed in the initial course.

The reality is that very few combat ships fit smartbombs unless they either know for sure that they will be encountering a frigate/destroyer fleet or they set out to smartbomb on a gate. However, you are bound to encounter some of them if they know that a frigate fleet is coming for them. As AGONY often flies small ships in PvP, several people have tried to smartbomb us (incidentally almost everyone who has tried has lost their BS, and the only person who enjoyed some success against us is now an Agony member!) However, most of the time you will be taking your opponent by surprise, catching them in their frigates or cruisers, which can't fit large smartbombs, or in their normally fitted battleship. The thing to remember here is that frigates and destroyers only have to fear a battleship smartbomb setup, anything battlecruiser or smaller is no threat when it comes to smartbombs. Furthermore, any battleship set to smartbomb is pretty much useless for anything else.

The Close-Range Destroyer

Since most of the time we will not be encountering ships smartbombing, we can think a bit more about our setups and start considering using other weapons or ammo to increase our damage output. This means thinking about using weapons with a range of 6km or less. What is important here is that you don't set up your entire fleet for short range, but remember the Hydra principle and try to have at least half your fleet with 'long range' setups (i.e. >6km). That way if a smartbomber warps in you will still have enough firepower to blow him out of the sky, especially considering he will have practically no tank thanks to the capacitor consumption of smartbombs.

Blasters and autocannons are devastating close range weapons, dishing out much more damage than their longer range cousins. At the same time these guns have a limited range, getting a 6km range is near impossible without precision tech 2 ammo and excellent skills. However, their hitting power can not be ignored by the competent light ship fleet commander, and once you see the ungodly damage that a close orbiting destroyer puts out with ion blasters, you will want to have one in your fleet all the time. THe Thrasher and Cormorant are both adept in this role, however the undisputed king of close-ranged destroyers is the gallente Catalyst, able to put out almost 400dps if fit specifically to do so.

It is worth remembering that the larger your fleet, the more quickly targets will tend to be destroyed. Eventually there comes a tipping point where the increased time spent travelling between targets outweighs the higher dps from short range guns. In most Agony WOLFPACKS classes, you will probably find that you do more damage by fitting longer ranged guns than you do with short ranged variants, however in a smaller gang this is less likely to be the case.

Setup

When setting up any close-ranged ship we first want to know what the optimal range of our guns is. For blasters, ions generally strike a good balance between all the requirements; the electron blaster damage is just too weak and uses too much ammunition, while the fitting requirements and low tracking of the neutron blaster make it difficult to justify. Autocannons tend to have a bit more flexibility in this respect due to their generous falloff and low fitting requirements on all calibers. Load your weapons with various types of ammo and see what kind of optimal ranges you can get; note that this phase is just to get an idea of the orbit ranges you need to use that kind of weapon (not that with autocannons, there is little reason to use any ammo other than close range variants and t2 barrage, since range is mainly dictated by falloff). Now it's time to undock and hit an asteroid, literally. Cargo containers, sentry guns, or any space debris also work well for this. Orbit that asteroid as close as you can while holding a circular orbit with your afterburner on. The closer you can orbit, the more powerful ammo you can use (for blasters) and the more easily you can evade damage. Set up your ship for high agility at full propulsion speed and determine your closest circular orbit; start at 500m and work your way out, adding nanofibers/inertial stabilizers and queuing up skills to train if necessary. Keep in mind that you will want to maintain a circular orbit and high speed in that orbit. You will know when you have a circular orbit when you see little to no variation in your speed or your distance from the object which you are obiting.

Now you should have a good idea of how to load your guns. Set your default orbit distance to your closest circular orbit. Now load your guns with the appropriate ammo that puts your optimal range right on the radius of your orbit (blasters/pulse only - for autocannons, aim to be within optimal + 1/2 falloff, and adjust your agility accordingly). Keep in mind that you will need to have propulsion modifications to get to the target as quickly as you can. A catalyst with 3 nanofibers (or overdrives, but those don't help with agility), a 1MN Afterburner II, some EWAR module and 8 blasters can put out ungodly amounts of damage and still get to the target very quickly. Remember that you should select your EWAR appropriately as well, i.e. using a warp scrambler or a webifier to compliment your short range. When you get in close you can engage the webber and/or scram to slow down your target, and allow those fitting the more cap-intensive disruptors to take them off.

Of course, there is also another pair of options for short range ships; the small nosferatu and the small energy neutralizer. Individually, these modules can barely scratch the surface of even a cruiser, but when combined with the huge number of high slots a destroyer has, you can fit to cause serious damage to the opponent's capacitor.

Tactics - Staying Alive

As a fleet commander, you can use some tactics to keep your close range pilots from getting ganked.

First of all, have your close range people stay outside smartbombing range until you are sure that the target doesn't posses smartbombs. If the target is a cruiser, tech 2 frigate, industrial or so on, you have little to fear and can scream in to blast them. However, it might pay to have one or two ship scanners in the fleet that can scan the battleship and make sure it is safe before the close range attackers go in. This only costs a few seconds when employed by a trained pilot. While they are waiting for the scan, the short range pilots can blast the nearest drone or fire their rocket launchers if they will hit from there.

Once you have determined that a target does not have smartbombs you may want your entire gang to orbit very close to the target. This will render all turret based ships completely inert without having to worry about EWAR. In a multiple target environment this tactic lets you throw all your EWAR on the second target while the first target is being killed. Keep in mind that depending on your angular velocity as you orbit the target, your own tracking may become an issue, especially for the longer ranged ships in your gang. The best way to manage this is to experiment with a friend in your corp in a heavy ship and see how to maximize your impact.

Close range tactics run a higher risk but can reap larger rewards for the intrepid pilot willing to take the chance of being podded by the smartbombing BS. However, even if a BS does warp in with smartbombs and kill a couple of ships, you will still trade some small ships for a much more expensive battleship and win in the Isk war.

The Mid-Range/Hybrid Destroyer

The mid-range destroyer is a very different beast. Typically this will involve fitting long ranged guns with short ranged ammo (as we did in BASIC) however the optimal range and tracking bonuses on the destroyer make such a setup far more versatile than it would be on a frigate. By carrying longer ranged ammunition we can further increase the versatility of this ship class, able to switch between engagement ranged of 10km to 30+km on the fly. The amarr Coercer is especially suited to a mid-range role due to its ability to instantly switch between ammo types. Note that these are not sniping ranges, and long ranged t1 ammo is likely to be more effective than long ranged t2 variants such a tremor, spike etc.

The mid-range setup provides two distinct advantages over the short-ranged variant:

Firstly, the longer range combined with the ability to switch between different ranges at will reduces travel time and allows the mid-range destroyer to begin applying its dps earlier, as well as allowing it to engage targets which might evade the guns of the closer-range setups.

Secondly, mid-range destroyers really take advantage of the destroyer's massive alpha strike. This is especially true of the minmatar Thrasher, which is able to put out up to 1600 damage in a single volley with artillery. As fleet size increases, alpha strike becomes increasingly valuable, with the fleet able to destroy lighter targets in a single volley.

These two advantages combine to make the mid-range destroyer incredibly effective in medium to large gangs, where these advantages begin to outweigh the higher dps of the short-range setups against all but the toughest targets. Due to the size of most Agony WOLFPACKS classes, Mid-range destroyers are generally the setup of choice for these classes.

Perhaps the biggest challenge of the mid-range setup is survivability. The wider orbit gives the mid-range destroyer lower angular velocity than a close-range setup, yet unlike a sniping setup you are still typically fighting inside warp disruptor range. This can however be overcome by using more advanced orbiting tactics such as those discussed in the Wolfpack Tactics article, or simply by choosing your ammunition type and thus orbit range based on your opponent. Obviously, speed and ewar form your defence on such a setup, and fitting an afterburner is essential.

Hybrid Setups

The hybrid destroyer is a variant on the mid-range setup that uses mid-range guns, but uses longer ranged electronic warfare. Due to it's 4 mid slots and longest base targeting range by some margin, the caldari Cormorant is perfect for this role.

The advantage of the hybrid setup is the ability to use electronic warfare such as tracking disruptors (with optimal script) and sensor dampeners (with targeting range script) to nullify targets at range, drawing them into the effective range of the fleet's mid-range weapons. Due to targeting range limitations however, a hybrid setup is typically not effective against targets at sniping ranges - doing so would require fitting multiple sensor boosters, thus using up the ewar slots which require the increased range in the first place!

Sniping Destoyers

The sniping destroyer is a very specialised ship, typically forgoing speed and agility for maximising range and volley damage. All destroyers can be setup to snipe effectively at ranges over 50km, with the Cormorant and Thrasher being the obvious champions for range and alpha strike respectively.

The practical employment of sniping destroyers is outside the scope of the WOLFPACKS class, and indeed this article. For more information, see the FLYBYS class (note that the Flybys class is currently not in regular operation, however your instructors will be happy to discuss the tactic with you during class breaks if you're interested).