F*ck Ishtars Vol. IV

In his quest to kill Ishtars Online and bring a little creativity to New Eden, Apothne continues his popular series. This time, those of you who have a little more ISK to spend and perhaps a sense for something adventurous might find this doctrine highly interesting. – Niden

In the Land of Shield Triage and Eight-Mid Golems

The Archon fits beautifully into the role of triage. It has a veritable ocean of cap, an amazing tank (4 percent resists on hull bonus) and enough fitting slots to throw whatever modules you want in it. On the armour-to-shield sliding scale of Amarr —> Gallente —> Minmatar —> Caldari, the Chimera would be our go-to for a shield equivalent. However, with both fitting and cap issues, it can tank really well for about half the triage cycle before it dies, unless you go to near-supercap levels of pimp. It’s not unusable, but it’s not anywhere near as strong as the Archon.

However, let us imagine a world where we have a shield triage carrier just as powerful as the Archon is for armour. In this magical land, there exists a fleet comp I’ve wanted the ISK/trust/testicles to try for over two years:

The Motherf*cking Scorpion Navy Issue.

Click to enlarge

If that combined tank/alpha/DPS doesn’t make you tingly in your special place then I don’t think you’ve read the numbers. 300k EHP before you overheat, over 700 DPS potential output with 4.5k alpha of selectable damage, projected out to near 150 km. Low and rigs are entirely unremarkable, so let’s gloss over those and go straight to the part where you get to make interesting decisions per fleet. (And per minute, as you can refit off the carriers.) The top six mids I would consider almost mandatory, but the afterburner (AB) as well as the third LSE (if necessary) can and should be replaced with something else if you don’t need quite that much tank or speed. Suggested options include: utility EWAR, target spectrum breakers, and cap boosters.

Encircling your triage with these bad boys is generally stating that you know you’re not maneuverable, and everything on grid belongs to you. Orbiting at approximately 20 km should do the trick. Within that, the utility high has a smartbomb to stop you— and everything inside your caravan— from being bombed into oblivion.

There is, however, a slight problem. Cruise missiles don’t hit for jack against cruiser hulls or lower on their own, and let’s be honest— cruisers are the order of the day in large fleet combat at the moment. Be they Tengu or Ishtar flavoured, you need a little help to apply the blap. Enter the Golem:

The problem with this doctrine as it stands right now; Golem EHP is kind of meh. It’s a Caldari Battleship with seven mids. *sighs* Regardless, it still has 220k EHP before overheat so possibly with the triage Chimmys pre-locking them (you’ll only have a couple), you can hopefully keep them alive. Three Golem target painters mean you go from hitting an AB cruiser at half-damage to nearly full.

The final touch is some anti-frig, maybe some AB Tengus with sig amps in the lows or Onyx HICs doubling as some heavy bubble support. As mentioned, there are two things prohibiting this fleet idea from being super strong: the disappointing tank on a Golem and the weakness of shield triage. Maybe over the next couple of patches CCPs Rise and Fozzie might grant my wishes.

From the Jungles of Miocene

As soon as the electronic attack frigate changes were announced back in Rubicon, I immediately knew that small- to mid-gang PvP of all forms had gained a fantastic new tool on its belt, and demanded everyone in Waffles buy themselves one for my fleets; as it’s a T2 frigate, it’s available to the vast majority of the player-base. The Hyena is a ship I demand to have in all my nano gangs; I cannot emphasize how useful it is. Not only will it web out to 30 km with standard webs, it also has an amazing target painter.

The control such a ship can exert on the battlefield is immense; especially when kiting, where the biggest threat to your fleet is getting tackled. All the DPS in the world won’t matter if they can’t hit you. Therefore, a Hyena to slow down and then massively increase your damage application to interceptors and other small tackle that might try to get under your tracking is wonderful. Conversely, if you’re in the slower fleet with heavier ships, you are likely to have more reps. You can then combine the Hyena with a Keres to pin down one enemy ship at a time and slowly chew through them. When catching people on gates, the Hyena’s frigate scan res means you can apply webs so much sooner than say, a Rapier, and the range means you don’t have to burn on top of your target first as you would in a traditional tackle frigate. Crashing gates is nearly impossible when there’s a double-web Hyena waiting for you.

There are many ways to “correctly” fit a Hyena; it can depend on how many of them you have, what kind of logi you have, what space you’re in and what you’ll likely to be fighting. I’ll suggest a few different options, and let you decide.

Armour Tank – Slower than shield, but a better tank and smaller signature.

Shield tank – Super fast, drop the MSE for a painter if you fancy going into the #dangerzone.

You can also do a 10mn AB version for a tiny sig, but it’s actually quite slow and turns like a truck.

As always, if you have any ship or fleet ideas you think would be great for this series, feel free to send them to me on Twitter @CallMeApoth.