Destroyers

The Destroyer

Introduction

The destroyer (also called a "dessy") is probably the most overlooked ship in the game. If I had 1 isk for every time I see a thread titled 'CCP fix destroyers they are teh suxor!!1' I would have at least 10 isk. Many point to the thin armor and the low shields and immediately conclude that its a garbage ship. However, these people couldn't be more wrong if they tried. They simply haven't looked below the surface to see what the destroyer is capable of. This has been my main focus for a great deal of time in the game and I still love the destroyer.

Strengths and Weaknesses

The key to using the destroyer is the same as the key to using any other ship - To understand its weaknesses and its strengths, and fly it with them in mind. First of all lets consider the weaknesses and get them out of the way:

Low shield and armor hp. Since the destroyer does not have much for shields and armor, it is not the best ship to be tanking with. In fact, many fleet fitted destroyers have no tank at all.

Larger and slower than a frigate. Without assistance from modules, the destroyer is slower than a frigate and less agile, as well as being twice as big and much easier to hit.

On the other hand, destroyers have many strengths:

Lots of high slots and turrets. All of the destroyers pack the maximum 8 high slots, a feat not repeated until upper level battlecruisers and battleships. While overall dps is kept at reasonable levels by a rate of fire penalty, the huge number of guns gives destroyers a massive volley damage (aka alpha strike).

Phenomenal, unbelievable tracking. With Destroyer 4, which is fairly easy to get, you get a 30% bonus to tracking. That allows the destroyer to hit its target more often and with perfect strikes more often. This makes them very nasty against frigates, chewing them up before the frigate pilot knows what is happening.

Optimal range improvements and targeting distance. Destroyers can both target and fire further than a frigate, making them excellent snipers.

With these weaknesses and strengths in mind, we can consider how we can use the destroyer in combat. One of the clear things that emerges out of this; destroyers are not built to sit in a blow for blow slug fest with another ship, except vs frigates. A tech 1 frigate or covert ops ship would get chewed to metal by a destroyer. However, the tank heavy assault ships would kill the destroyer without too much effort. An interceptor is on the line and is highly skill dependent. You can kill an interceptor one on one with a destroyer (though you are likely to only force a stalemate as the interceptor can get away) but you will need quite good basic PvP skills (engineering .. gunnery .. etc) to do so.

What should also be clear here is that this isn't a solo ship but a fleet oriented ship. Although a destroyer CAN PvP solo, both frigates and cruisers are far better suited to the task.

Fitting and Flying

There are several different ways to fit a destroyer depending on what you want to do with it. However, there are some constants with fitting a destroyer and flying one. First of all make sure you bring large amounts of ammo. Destroyers have lots of turrets and chew ammo unbelievably fast. Also make sure that you pay attention to the effect of your ammo on your cap. Antimatter ammo, for example, will chew your cap fast if there are 7 to 8 gun firing it all at once. Often plutonium or uranium is a much better choice. If you need extremely close range, fit blasters.

Bubble / Gate Camping Fast Lock

With four mid slots, one low slot and high base scan resolution, the Cormorant is the IDEAL ship for gate camping. The only ships that will get through a Cormorant with two sensor booster IIs with scan resolution scripts, one signal amp and two disruptors will have 2 warp core stabilizers or be fast instant warping ships like shuttles, interceptors and frigates. Even many frigates will be caught by the under a second scan lock time. With a bubble this becomes brutal because the interceptor, frigate or shuttle pilot will have to first get out of the bubble to get away. The Thrasher can do this almost as well although they will only get one point but an extra low slot for another signal amp. The Thrasher generally is better at killing the small ships outright, while the Cormorant is more suited to locking stabbed up targets.

The key to fitting this type of destroyer is to first focus on your lock time and capacitor to maintain the sensor boosters when camping for hours on end. Its not as important that you can maintain both 20km disruptors so long because the idea here is that the rest of your fleet will take over the scrambling after they get the target locked and you wont have to. In the case of catching frigates or shuttles, 30 seconds is often enough to pod the pilot.

When using this destroyer without a bubble you will want to be right on the gate so that you have people appear anywhere within 15km of your destroyer. This means that you will be able to scramble anyone that comes in. If you are off the gate 5km or so, you risk that the opponent will appear 21km or further from you and you wont be able to scramble them. Set up your guns to hit at 16km or so with the 5km falloff and you should be good.

If you are using a bubble, you want to stay at your optimal range to the place where the bubble yanks incoming pilots. This means that you should set up for very short range weapons. In this situation you might want to consider swapping your disruptor(s) for a scambler (and a web if using the cormorant); if you do this then make sure you are within about 5000m of where the pilots dropped or closer. To find this actual point, warp to the gate from which you expect your prey to come and then you will be caught by the bubble where you stop is the focus point. You can even set up with 7 blasters/autocannons and a rocket launcher and just sit right there inside the bubble or just on its edge. We will talk more about bubbles in another post.

Anti-Frigate in a Fleet

Another way to fit a destroyer is as an anti-frigate/drone force in a fleet. In this case you will be primarily staying close to the heavy ships and killing the frigates that are coming in to tackle. An astonishingly common mistake that destroyer pilots make when flying in a mixed fleet is to warp to their optimal range to the enemy fleet and then start slugging from there. This will get you killed as all the frigates and heavies can pop you in seconds. On the other hand, if your battleships warp in at 60, you warp in at 60 as well and then ORBIT one of the battleships. The tacklers will come to you and you will be able to kill them while their transversal is low.

In this case you have to remember that your destroyer will potentially be the target of sniper battleships so its important that you have an afterburner for speed and orbit another ship at all times. One tactic that can reduce this chance is to have your anti frigate fleet fly in only when the enemy frigates show up; however there are few fleet commanders that are that inventive.

You will want to set up for 10k to 15k with your guns and you will need at least one 20km warp disruptor. Make sure you have capacitor to run your AB and disruptor and all guns for at least a couple of minutes and then set up any remaining slots with high damage modules.

When flying as anti frigate destroyer, remember that the frigates will be concentrating on tackling the heavies and not on you or getting away. Forget the tank in favor of high damage fast hitting. Make sure at least two people in your fleet have a remote repairer and you will be ready to go.

Another important note about flying a destroyer in a mixed fleet is that you should not let yourself get talked into flying anti frigate for a long range sniper fleet. If your guys are sniping, the other guys will be as well and then there is a recipe for disaster. As Forsaken Empire found out many times against ATUK, the enemy will merely target all your light ships, ignoring the heavies and snipe them instead. If you are in a sniping fleet, your tackler defense is the hordes of drones you have between you, not a dessy.

Another important factor is to get with the right fleet commander. If the fleet commander views you as belly lint, not worth the effort of remote repairing then politely decline the gang invite. A commander that doesn't care for you is an idiot that will probably get you killed anyway so forget him. Good commanders know the value of their anti-frigate screen and seek to preserve it. This doesn't mean he will trade a 150 million isk ship to save your destroyer; what it means is that he wont needlessly and stupidly endanger his small ships. There are many commanders that do this and they are often the ones screaming for tacklers; if they would only sit down a moment and think about why they have to scream for them, then they would be much better off.

Fitting and Flying for Wolfpack combat

There are few things in eve funnier than a battleship that encounters a fleet of 15 destroyers and smack talks them, laughing in local at their small ships. The pilot doing this is making a critical mistake and failing to use the basic skill of mathematics. First of all if you have 15 ships against you, each bearing 7 to 8 weapons, then that is 105 to 120 weapons directed against you. Lets say each gun can manage 20hp at a volley and has a fire rate of 3 seconds (which is VERY conservative for a destroyer with good skills) then we have a damage per second ratio of 800. With 30hp hits and 2.5 sec rate of fire (a decent approximation for reasonable skills) we are looking at 1440 damage per second. 1440 dps all aimed at a solitary battleship, means that battleship isn't going to last long at all.

A destroyer is essentially three frigates in one platform. They have the guns of two frigates but their tracking bonuses give them almost another frigate worth of striking power. That fleet of 15 destroyers is, in essence, a fleet of 40 to 50 frigates. The only drawback being that a single ship loss takes out 2 to 3 frigates rather than just one.

The fact that destroyers can not be tanked effectively and the fact that a ship loss is more important to a dessy fleet than a frig fleet means that EWAR is much more critical to the wolfpacking destroyers than it is to the wolfpacking frigs. It also means that the destroyer needs help in the speed and agility department. Where a frigate fleet can warp out of cloak extremely fast, a destroyer accelerates much more slowly.

With all of this in mind, it becomes clear that the wolfpack destroyer needs as good of an afterburner as you can fit to it. Skip the microwarp drive as your already large signature radius (about 90m) x 500% would quite literally make you easier to hit than a battleship! It is far better to put on a good afterburner, the best you can afford and use. Afterburner IIs are the ideal choice (unless you're very very rich), however if this is too expensive you should be able to get a Cold-Gas Arcjet Thruster (the best named variant) for only a few thousand isk. It is also a good idea to fit your destroyer with a nanofiber or inertial stabiliser to make it much more agile when cold warping from cloak. Your evasive maneuvering and spaceship command skills will be equally important. Make sure you get those two to at least 4 as soon as you can.

With our remaining mids and lows, we need to think hydra principle here just as in PVP-BASIC with emphasis on the EWAR. Any combination of warp disruptors, scramblers, webs, tracks and damps is great (with a few ship scanners in gang too). Ideally we should also have some ECM, however this us usually provided by alumni or agony flying ecm-bonused ships. Students in destroyers may choose to fit a multispec ECM to supplement this - if so they should put them on manual and only fire them when needed. They may also wish to use use cap-saving ammo in their guns, since the capacitor consumption of ECM is significant (or fly a thrasher, since the guns are already cap-free!)

Try not to choose two modules that both consume huge amount of cap. Its best to have 2 ships each with a 20km disruptor than to try to get one ship to mount 2 of them. Its also best to have a mixed tackling setup where some players have warp scramblers rather than disruptors and can take over for the capacitor intensive warp disruptor module. Although you have a lot of capacitor in a destroyer, you also have a lot of guns and need to run them as well.

Conclusion

When fitting for a wolfpack, remember that your hydra has fewer heads and the heads are a bit slower. With that in mind you can apply science to fit the fleet and make it work. Also, remember that this is a destroyer, not a small cruiser. It doesnt fly or fight like a cruiser. It is a frigate with a hell of a lot of teeth.

See also: Destroyer Tactics