Strategikon: Standard cruiser armour fitting

My targets this time are not capsuleers, and I'll be going after the more elusive, but less able Mordu's Legion. However, that does not mean capsuleers will blithely let me pass by. I fully expect to be hunted down whilst I do my own hunting. As such the following is a solo Omen, which should manage the belts NCPs well enough, and be an effective counter for capsuuleers.

Billed as an attack ship, the Omen is designed to bring the fill fury of concentrated laser fire on its opponents. There are a number of different fits available, from brawling to kiting. Its major weakness is capacitor, so if you plan to use it, start training those energy management skills.

It's been a while since I've done a fitting, and the one I've chosen for my Omen is hardly revolutionary. In fact, it's so standard, it's applicable to the majority of armour tanked cruisers. Most Omens are actually fit for kiting, and that was my original intention for this fit. However, after a little bit of research (and the location I'd be hunting in) I decided an armour brawler was best.

The below fit is based on the most popular Battle-clinic entries, corroborated with an Eve Uni fitting, and may even have been on Jester's Trek at some point.

[Omen, Brawler]
Damage Control II
1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II

Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Small Capacitor Booster II, Cap Booster 25

Focused Medium Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency M
Focused Medium Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency M
Focused Medium Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency M
Focused Medium Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency M
Focused Medium Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency M

Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I

Valkyrie II x3
Warrior II x2

Like I said, this is fairly standard, and can be applied to most other armour brawlers, with slight differences based on slot layout.

The core defense is as follows:

• Damage Control Unit II
• Energised Adaptive membrane II
• (Energised Adaptive membrane II)
• 1600mm plate

And that's it. Fill up the rest of your lows with damage modules, and you have yourself an armour brawler. One of the membranes can be swapped out for a damage mod if you wish, but the core is fairly similar right across all the races.

This is standard for most capsuleer combat ships to save on capacitor. Unlike Ancillary shield boosters, ancillary armour repairers still require a big chunk of capacitor to run... which is why you won't see many cruisers with armour repair bonuses built into the hull. Modules of a size to be effective repairers consume more cap than is sensible for most cruisers. Simple plate and resistance allows you to keep guns and prop mods running.

Mid slot choices are limited by number of slots, but usual trinity rules can apply (warp disruption, web, and propulsion) with an extra wildcard for ships with 4 slots. For laser ships, the web can be swapped out for a cap booster. Even a small one will keep the guns shooting, so it's worth bringing along.

This homogeneity makes cruisers a lot easier to fit. This is not a bad thing (although my inner theoretician rankles at such a thought). I've heard it said that cruisers are actually the best place for a capsuleer to learn how to fight other capsuleers. After seeing the relative ease of fitting, and the more manageable speed of combat, I'm tempted to agree. Defenses take far longer to break through than in a frigate fight, so you have more time to appreciate your mistakes.

Tactics are fairly simple too, depending on your weapon choice. Blasters close in, lasers and rails sit at optimal, and projectiles and missiles move around in between. Drones... well,  sit back and manage capacitor, recalling any drone that gets hurt too much.

Overall, cruisers, whilst being heavier on the wallet, are shaping up to be much lighter on the brain than frigates.

Insurgency in Null

Okay, so people have been talking a lot about guerilla style warfare and irregular tactics as a counter to the growing stagnation in Null. I say talking, because no one has actually stepped up to do it.

We have a saying on Khanid: All talk, and no trousers.

Anyway, despite people talking in theoretical terms, I'd like to discuss what the hit-and-run tactics being suggested would actually involve. A lot of the comments I've read are full of 'great ideas', that 'could work only if people tried'. Which shows a remarkable lack of understanding of the problem.

So lets look at it, so that people can understand the challenges of insurgency in sovereign null.

***

Getting there

You'll need a ship that can either warp whilst cloaked, or pass through bubbles unhindered. Wormholes are distinctly unreliable as a transport system to a specific location, which makes them impractical for our purposes.

This limits you to Strategic cruisers, interceptors, the covert ops line, and Sisters of Eve ships.

The use of covert jump drives and jump bridges expands your options, but at that level you've already hit conventional warfare, and you may as well bring in the dreadnoughts.

Alternatively, you just fly a fleet in and hope for the best. Not a terrible idea, considering the gaps in most sov-null alliance defenses, but also not as secure. You'll need to run scouts. But this leaves you wide open to a counter-attack from a settled fleet, that can pick the hard counter to what you'v brought... being next to heir home bases and all.

Extremely restricting. And this is the easy part.

Targets

Admittedly if all you wanted to do was take out miners and mission runners, all you need is a gun and a warp jammer. This is already being done, and hasn't helped the stagnation. If you want to destabilize a system, you'll need to do something more impacting.

Sadly that means structure.

Here is where you can find out about the Sovereignty structures you'll need to shoot. I consider myself an educated man, and even I have difficulty deciphering this. As far as I can tell, unless you start putting up Sov-blocking units, everything worth shooting is invulnerable. And once you've put those onto the field, you're reverting to conventional warfare. (Note: To be honest I don't even know if this site is still relevant. Seems like a peculiar way to manage sovereignty.)

About the weakest thing you can shoot at there is a POCO (and I'm not even sure they are vulnerable).

Foo goes into detail about how this can be done.

I've run my own numbers, and yes, it's largely correct. To get a POCO to reinforce under an hour you need the equivalent of 4 battleships, pumping out 1000dps. Once the reinforcement timer is finished (and provided they've let you shoot this long without repping the POCO), to finish it off takes little more than half an hour.

And yes, that's do-able. But even if you manage to take it down, you've cost the alliance 50 million ISK. To put that in perspective, using tier 3 battle-cruisers for the DPS you need, you've invested just under 100 million.

For one ship.

Theft

Extremely easy to do. Get ship, go to null, start blowing up non-capsuleer pirates, and carting off the loot. Alternatively use a Prospect to steal ore. Alternatively, use siphon units to steal moon resources from POS.

Now... how do you plan to get that stuff out again?

You can't sell it locally. A Prospect fills up it's hold in maybe one belt run, and battleship modules dropped from the NCPs take up a massive amount of space. You'll need a logistics network to get this stuff to a place you can sell it.

It's a lot of effort. And in the end, you're better off working in low-sec. And based on the results of my low-sec belt ratting run, you're probably better off in hi-sec running missions.

Attrition

I was informed that Dirt Nap Squad is doing these things regularly, and stealing resources from null entities to fund themselves. If that's the case, then good! They've managed to work through the logistical problems presented above, and are surely destabilizing the sov-empires as we speak!

But they're not. And the biggest problem is why they're not:

Your supply lines are far more vulnerable than theirs.

Guerrilla tactics work best against an opponent who is far from home, who needs that plane full of bullets and pancakes to land to be re-supplied. Blow up the airfield, and he'll starve and run out of ammo. Stealing his resources costs him not only the resources, but the travel time it takes for new resources to get to him. This costs them more to resupply than it costs you to attack.

They also work great because your fighters an just go home, bury their weapons and become a civilian again within minutes.

Hit and run against null requires you to go there, and escape again. It's going to cost you more to hurt them than it will for them to resupply, which means you haven't actually hurt them. You can't hide in null, and you can't go home easily. Cloak up in a system and log off, and you'll still have a mission to get back out.

It's a headache, and one most capsuleers have sensibly avoided.

The only way for a capsuleer to hurt null-sec in this way is to be so invested in their destruction, that even the tiniest scratch on a POS shield is worth a Titan. You have to be willing to set fire to yourself to watch them burn.

But these are New Eden capsuleers. Immortality mutes these passions.

Final word

That said, if all you're looking for is to kick mud in sov-null eyes, and come away with a bunch of kill mails, Gevlon Goblin has some data that shows them to be rather soft targets. This is where 'insurgency' works.

Theoretically, if enough capsuleers maintained a round the clock siege of a null empire, then the members might lose heart, quit and join the sleepers in slumber. Realistically, the profits of null-sec are good enough that I doubt this will ever happen. It's a place where you can replace your lost battleship in half an hour, and that raid that happened mostly just livened up your day.

It's probably been said before, but null-sec is mostly likely choking on the glut of ISK available to it. So called apex forces will be much harder to field if you cut the income needed to fly them.

That's as far as I want to think about null-sec issues. Frankly, everything about null seems so taxing, I don't know why people bother with it in the first place.

Holders of Hek

I ended up in Hek fitting out my Omen for some low-sec belt ratting. Whilst there, I decided to have a look around the system.

It's fair to say that Hek is my favourite trade hub. I couldn't say why. Prices aren't as good as Amarr, and certainly lacks the sophistication of Dodixie. I haven't been to Jita for years, and refuse to go back there. But Hek certainly does hold some charm for me, and I even had a few factory planets in that system making POS fuel parts.

Not that I've ever owned a POS, but POS fuel was an easy pay cheque back then. I probably should have written something about it.

So I was interested to see who had laid claim to what I consider as my home system (despite growing up in Khanid).

Turns out, there's a good story here!

Quite clearly the Obsidian Front owns Hek. They have the majority of planets held, spread across a few different corporations. They appear to be a very well run alliance, with a large chunk of text to describe who they are as well.


Are they a Hi-sec superpower? A branch of a null-sec sov group? Simply a group of friends out to leave a mark on the cluster? I couldn't say. But they are, at least for now, the Holders of Hek.



Well done! But you missed a spot...

Here are some rebels of Hek, and actually their rebellion spreads across Metropolis.

VenKee Enterprise is a relatively small corp, that nonetheless has a foothold in a major trade hub. Whilst I doubt they have the manpower to hold onto it for very long, for now, this tiny corp is keeping an alliance from having a clean sweep of the Hek system planets.

As a tiny minnow is the galactic ocean of New Eden, it makes me happy to see a tiny faction stannding up to a much bigger alliance. Well done pilots! Well done indeed!

And finally something that I noticed getting the above shot of the Obsidian Front against the Hek star; some advertising companies will stick billboards anywhere. Kudos on going the extra light-year Eve Radio!

Back to Low-sec

Honestly don't remember where I got this picture, but I know it's not mine.

Well, it's clear that the Astero is not going to be up to the task of running a sleeper site.

I'm going to need something of at least battlecruiser caliber, particularly if I'm planning on doing this on my own. Whilst I have perfect piloting skills for battlecruisers of all races, my medium weapons skills (both trained and practical experience) are quite limited.

I'll probably be taking a Harbinger into the hole. No real reason, other than I quite like the hull, and I've been feeling a hankering for lasers of late. It's also because medium pulses are one of the few mid-sized weapon sets I have any competence in. I'm near the same level of competence in projectiles, but I don't have that much confidence in the weapon system, at least as far as long-term wormhole patrols go.

Fortunately, I have other things on my list to get on with whilst I skill up. I'l be hunting down some Mordu's Legion ships.

This runs in tandem with a little niggle I've been having at the back of my mind lately: Is it possible to get a decent income hunting low-sec Non-capsuleer pirates (NCPs) these days?

In the Great Wildlands, I managed to get a decent amount of ISK from bombing the NCP battleships there. I'm a little curious as to whether or not you could get similar results in low-sec (which would be a thousand times easier to get loot to market).

I'll be attempting this in a PvP fit ship, so that other mercenaries and pirates in low-sec can have see an alternative income source accessible whilst they roam. It also gives me another option instead of running from people interfering in my project.

So, the following ship choice criteria need to be met:

• Must be fit with medium lasers
• Must be PvP capable
• Solo capable
• Preferably cheap...

Not a lot of choice there, coming down to either Maller or Omen, and arguably any Amarr ship is meant to be used in a fleet. Most laser boats are too vulnerable to, well, any unconventional weaponry. Neutralizers, dampeners, and turret disruptors are all very effective on tough but inflexible Amarr ships, and most fleets make up for these shortcomings with heavy logistic support.

The Omen is slightly more flexible in dealing with frigates than the Maller, partly due to it's expanded drone bay, and I've heard that it's firepower can take one of the field in short order. Sounds good if any capsuleer pirates decide to take an interest in the experiment!

Lost pioneers

Despite being fairly useless for my purposes, a group of capsuleers once made this place their home.

All of the planets in system had POCOs up, and there was even a Gallente station in orbit around one of the outlying moons.

Wormholes usually require a lot of operational security (i.e. hiding), but bearing in mind what I found, I think I can reveal the residents of this system without ruffling too many feathers.

The Hordes of Belial own this system.

I didn't see much evidence of their existence other than the space structures. The POS itself was still running near as I could tell, but I must admit utter ignorance when it comes to station upkeep. They could still be active, or the hole could have been abandoned.

The POS name didn't leave me hopeful that they still lived here: Hearse.

Even so, from these probable remains of a once running corp, we can learn a few tricks.

The POS itself was in orbit around a moon far from the center of the system. If I hadn't flown out to it's planet to get a picture, I probably would have missed it all together. That's a neat trick, and I recommend anyone living in a hole, or out of the way system to try the same.

Well, since no one responded to hails, I took the low-sec wormhole back to civilization. I have some other low-sec things to do on my list, and might as well take the opportunity to get some planning done.