The Superior Deimos

Since the end of last year I’ve been taking out a Deimos roaming doctrine that I’ve become rather fond of. It contains all the things that make me grin from ear to ear when looking at a potential fleet comp. It’s been through a few iterations, perhaps making it a touch more blingy than necessary over time but CPUgeddon didn’t help there.

D E I M O S B O I S

Let’s be honest, it’s not a complicated fit. Guns in the highs, tank and a prop mod in the mids and rigs, damage, speed, projection and a DCU in the lows. There are a few minor things to note off the bat though. Firstly, we’re using a twin set of light drones rather than utilising the full 50mb bandwidth that the Gallente hull offers us. Why? Your turrets pack one hell of a punch. The vast majority of the time, you’re fighting ~the blob~ and you don’t really want to take turret cycles off of key ships to take out the endless stream of incoming tackle once you’ve shaken the hornet’s nest of a staging system. The swarm of warriors are fast enough to haze any tackle that get too close and you have a spare flight for when your FC (oops) doesn’t leave enough time to pull them in before you need to warp away. Secondly, the choice of MWD. We have just under four minutes of cap life, which is plenty, and through the faction shield extenders and HAC role bonus we have already decreased our signature by a significant factor, so it’s great to compound that effect before the skirmish links apply.

Okay, fit done, let’s look at some figures.

• Speed: This thing does 2.1k without links, 2.6k with before heat. For a skirmishing doctrine in the age of the Cerberus that is FAST.
• Tank: Always a highlight of Gallente hulls, we are packing a significant punch. 67k EHP is plenty enough to get the job done for 15-30 man gangs. Combined with the range control and mitigation of the raw speed it is surprisingly easy to tank more DPS than you’d expect it to be able to.
• Damage: Each flight of Warriors puts out 80 DPS, so with 10+ Deimos in your fleet you’re shredding tackle before you consider any extra support.

Quick breakdown of turret damage:

• Javelin – 569DPS @ 9.7+26km
• CN Antimatter – 561DPS @ 19+26km
• CN Thorium – 421DPS @ 34+26km
• CN Iridium – 327DPS @ 47+26km
• Spike – 325DPS @ 70+26km

If you’re fighting ~the blob~ and they’re turtling up, you can start with longest range ammo and slowly move in, increasing your damage bit by bit, rather than having to be within 50 or so as with some missile doctrines or ships with lower natural lock range. Really, the key to this fleet comp is maneuverability. Not only can you control range against most blobs that start chasing after you, I’ve actually taken to burning a wide circle around them to get at the logistics and support that usually hide themselves between their DPS core and you. I’m not partial to recording my own fleets as it’s another thing I have to worry about (my streaming setups has hotkeys that are also hotkeys for my FCing), but that tactic was used in the two fights I want to talk about.

Fight 1: Voltron Alliance Please Ignore

No, I don’t know why zkill is doubling up on PL pilots either. Either way, we were outnumbered 3 or 4 to 1. It started as us roaming around and poking at TEST staging, whereupon we learnt about a Cerb fleet that was only slightly bigger than us, and thinking about kinetic heavy missiles vs fast, low-sig T2 gallente rewists was just sexy. We ended up dancing around together in the systems around 1L-OEK. Neither side was able to force a full engagement how we wanted, but then a wild Svipul fleet appeared and started to work in tandem with the Cerbs to try to pin us down. The Svipuls kept trying to warp onto us, but thanks to me not shitting the bed with fleet warps the dance continued. Eventually, I think whoever was in charge of the Svipuls got bored, dropped into speed mode and just straight-up burned at us from 50-60k away.

Now, for those not up to date on their EVE Oncology; Svipuls are very, very fast. If they managed to get on top of us they had more Svipuls than my fleet had pilots, so they could scram all of us down and have spare even if we killed a few on their way in. However, as I mentioned previously, Deimos are pretty fast too. I told everyone to overheat their props, at which point we start flying through space at 3.7km/s. This meant they were gaining on us at maybe 1k/s, but that’s at zero transversal so we were blasting them out of the sky like so much flak.

Sadly, the servers decided to take a dump so as we turned on the Cerbs there was a server desync and we had to leave for fear of CCP killing us, but it was one of the most fun fleets I’ve FCed in quite a while.

Fight 2: Poking the Russian Bear

Fairly recently PL were deployed in Akora, so while we were there, poking the Russians in BWF made for a very fun pastime. We sat outside their station bubbling and catching stragglers until they undocked the Rupture fleet they had been relying on. Slowly, bit by bit they added more ships to the chase and their ~150 ships by the end were spread over a curve around their station as we zipped around. Not going to lie here, we were having so much fun I thought I was still fighting 50 dudes when it passed the 150 mark, so the extraction when the blob became too big was… messy with all the tackle they had amalgamated.

As mentioned before, the ability to not just fly away but curve around the opposing fleet so you don’t have to rewarp to reposition was fantastic. Grabbing that Blackbird and some of the support ships behind the DPS ball was invaluable for our efforts to stay effective on grid as long as we did.

Support Ships

MWD Scimitars

They are slower than your Deimos, so your pilots and their anchor (if you are a lower tier pilot and require such noobish things… like me) need to be REALLY on top of their game. In fight one I specifically told the logis to get past their falloff from us because I knew that otherwise we’d be running past them before we were out of range. Thankfully, I have had the amazing Neddy Fox come on almost every fleet running logi for me and he’s really gotten the rhythm of the fleet down. I won’t provide a fit for you, almost every alliance has their own, so just use that.

No-Cloak Rapier

This fleet comp really requires both offensive and defensive tackle. The Rapier fills both roles, so I usually bring two if I can get away with it.

Why a Rapier over a Huginn? You lose 1k EHP which is fairly inconsequential, but you gain missile launchers over autocannons. Having one or two ships with RLMLs beefs up your anti-tackle capability beautifully, and is well worth the tradeoff. Also note the use of 55% webs over 60% webs, range worth more than amount in this situation.

Lachesis

The Lach is your offensive tackle, having a dedicated ship to make sure the primary or some key ship doesn’t warp away is a lot more important than some people think, even in nullsec with the existence of bubbles.

Lach over Arazu this time because an extra mid is more useful than the missiles, max range point, tackle and the addition of probes to the fleet comp is always useful. (Note: make sure you Lach pilot has used probes at some point in the past 3 years before you undock).

Broadsword

HICs are ridiculously good. This ship is not going to be scramming your primaries unless you go seriously balls deep, but it’s ability to screen multiple tackle coming for you at 37.5k is amazing, as is being prepared to grab any capitals you may run into.

Cyno, because of course you have a cyno on a HIC and a whore gun so your HIC pilot can still get on all the dank kills you’ll be getting in this awesome little fleet comp. Note with all these support ships, you have to sacrifice your lows heavily to keep up with the Deimos, the only ships that can’t afford to do this is the Scimitar because ~cap~.

Sprinkle in your favourite dictors, intys and command destroyers then you’re ready to go! Go forth and haze unsuspecting nerds my friends.