The Discovery Scanner, Probing and K162s

This is the first post on The Excession that is going to cover current news; some potential changes to wormhole that are currently being discussed by CCP Fozzie here. Firstly, however, a brief history of recent probing changes is probably in order.

In The Beginning - The Past

Prior to Odyssey expansion, all ships were equipped with a system scanner. This displayed all cosmic anomalies in a system to all ships that entered it - within wormholes this meant that only combat sites were immediately visible when a ship entered a new system. In order to determine if any cosmic signatures were present, probes needed to be launched and a scan started. At this point all ore, gas, relic, data sites and wormholes were all cosmic signatures and needed to be scanned before their presence was known and pin pointed before they could be warped to.

Because signatures weren't known about without probes out, if groups were running any non-combat operations in their system, such as running sleeper sites or mining ore or gas, they would often station a scout with probes out. The scout's job was to scan, repeatedly, looking for a new signature that indicated a hostile force rolling their static wormhole and opening a connection into the system. It was a dull job, and took a pilot and attention away from shooting sleepers, or harvesting ore. So a significant percentage of people decided to be a little riskier and forgo a scout, trying to maximize their profits or avoid the menial task.

Although playing as a scout providing overwatch for your teammates was not the most thrilling gameplay, it was a choice that you could make. You could avoid doing it at all, or you could put a probe launcher on a site-running ship and scan occasionally, or you could have a pilot dedicated to it.

Even if you didn't have someone providing overwatch, if you were mining or gas harvesting you could use your directional scanner to keep tabs on the system; if you suddenly saw probes launched, you had some idea that people could be looking for you. Catching a miner in an ore site meant they had to miss your probes being launched and zeroing in on their position, but the relative safety of being in a site that needed to scan down meant that miners were relatively plentiful.

The Discovery Scanner - The Current

The system scanner was replaced with the discovery scanner in the Odyssey expansion and with it a significant change to probing. All anomalies and signatures now appear on the system scanner, although probes are required to lock down the precise position of cosmic signatures. Ore sites have become cosmic anomalies, so they are immediately visible on the discovery scanner and can be warped to with no further interaction.

The key effect for PvP in wormhole space was that new wormhole links opening into a wormhole system appeared immediately on the discovery scanner panel, with no probes needed. Once the signatures in a system have been scanned down, probes are no longer required to monitor for inbound connections spawning. Any PvP groups "rolling" their static link and having it open into a wormhole system with active players now has its presence instantly broadcast to everyone.

From my personal experience this has had a significant impact on how hunting in wormhole chains happens; it is now much more focused on exploring already-available links, even if the chain of wormhole systems gets very long. The days of repeatedly rolling your static wormhole link looking for a group that is running sites are over - the appearance of the new signature in a system causes anyone running sites or otherwise out and about in the system to scarper and cloak up.

The number of pilots mining in ore sites in wormhole systems has plummeted, however; although it's easier to see a new inbound, anyone already in the system or anyone entering via an existing link no longer needs to launch probes in order to scan down ore sites. Mining barges with their relatively high align time and low tank are easy prey - a great deal of mining now occurs in Ventures.

The Proposal - The Future?

CCP Fozzie's proposal that he is sourcing comment on is to change inbound wormholes so that they do not appear on the discovery scanner or scan probe results for some amount of time after spawning. And I think this is a Bad Idea™.

• Site running in wormholes will become massively unsafe, and with no reliable way to mitigate that lack of safety. The only way to identify a new signature appearing would be when ships transit through it, and hoping that you manage to catch them on a combat probe or directional scan when they not cloaked and in range. In large systems this would make it virtually impossible to run any sites without hostiles being able to enter the system entirely unknown to you. While this might be viable for larger wormhole groups occupying class 5-6 wormhole systems and making a huge amount of money from escalations, smaller groups occupying lower tiers of wormhole systems would struggle to break even, let alone make enough ISK to justify the massive risk they would be putting themselves into. This will result in a lot of the more casual groups leaving wormhole space and a lot of newer groups being knocked out with horrible losses within a short time of moving in.
• Although I cannot take credit for realizing this (that goes to Sith1s Spectre of Sky Fighters in his post here) putting capital ships into another corporations wormhole in class 5-6 wormhole space will become significantly easier. Three capital ships will crash a wormhole immediately due to mass limitations, and so there is a good chance that the inhabitants of a wormhole system won't know a link into their system ever spawned - it will simply vanish before it ever showed up on scan results, but they will now have hostile capital ships within their system.
• Groups cycling a wormhole link by putting mass through it (rolling the hole) can carry it out in almost complete safety. I have had significant success in disrupting groups that are trying to roll wormholes that have linked into our home system, and some good fights have come of it.

The key concern is that removing inbound links from the discovery scanner or probe results means there is no defensive mechanism that can be employed against hole rolling or links randomly opening into a system. And that simply isn't good gameplay.

Strategic Scouting in Wormhole Space

This post will be looking at gathering intelligence on possible targets in wormhole space, which is  complicated by cloaked ships and a lack of the 'local' channel. This post will not cover the ins and outs of probing mechanics and hunting target ships in wormhole space systems; that will be left for another, later post

Why is gathering intelligence important?

Gathering intelligence about potential hostile forces lets you know what you are likely committing to when you are starting an engagement. It can guide your force composition and how you go about engaging the enemy to draw more enemy forces in or avoid taking losses.

It's particularly important in wormhole space because who your opponents are is non-obvious. Because of the lack of pilots in the local channel there may be precious few clues as to who inhabits a system. A large percentage of the pilots that are in wormhole space will be cloaked, so direct observation of (at least parts of) hostile forces is impossible and you instead need to infer the likely presence of hostiles in the system.

Does everyone in wormhole space do this?

No. There are many groups, especially in higher-class wormholes, that will engage almost regardless of odds and often with minimal or no scouting. The massive jump in income between C1-4 and C5-6 wormholes is certainly a factor in this; although people living in lower-class wormhole systems are rarely too low on ISK they are no-where near as free to throw expensive ships away at a whim. Even in lower-class wormhole systems there are some groups that will be much more aggressive about engaging with little intelligence on their potential targets; there is nothing wrong with doing so - it is just not my style of play or the style of play that this blog is about.

How do you gather intel in wormhole space?

Gather what intelligence you can from d-scan

Data from the directional scanner is the first thing you are likely to get from a scout when they enter a target system, and although it seems elementary, there are many important pieces of information that you can get from it. Tactical information such as wrecks showing that potential targets that are running sites and the like will be covered in a later post on tactical scouting.

• The nomenclature and consistency of nomenclature of any ships. Many well known wormhole corporations use consistent sets of symbols in front of their ship names so they can readily identify themselves on directional-scanner, and hostile ships in the system stand out more. You can use this to your advantage if you keep track of which groups use which symbols. Multiple different sets of symbols in front of ship names means that there may be multiple different groups in the system.
• The number of active and inactive player owned stations. If a corporation has a large number of active stations in the system, they are likely well funded with a large number of active pilots, and have a reasonable internal security system to prevent corporation thefts. Some groups will put an active or inactive tower on every moon in a system, preventing any potential invading forces from anchoring their own tower for invasion without taking down one of the inhabitants' towers. This tends to suggest careful planning and a paranoid outlook.
• The names of capsules or ships. Often pilots leave their capsules (and sometimes ships) with default names - if anyone has been sufficiently careless, this can get you a pilot name and associated corporation

Look at Player Owned Customs Offices (POCOs)

You can right click on a POCO and select 'Show Info' regardless of range. This reasonably often will provide you with information about the inhabitants of a system. Be aware that some wormhole groups will use an unaffiliated holding corp to own the POCOs.

Use out of game tools

The tool at http://wh.pasta.gg/ that was formerly hosted at http://wormhol.es is the single most useful site for providing information on the likely inhabitants of a system by analyzing killboard information. It also provides information about recent NPC, pilot and pod kills in the system and data about whether capital ships have been deployed in combat there or not. Known inaccuracies include an issue where systems that are unpopulated or populated with relatively inactive pilots may show up as being occupied by another group if that second group has had a number of kills in the system over a couple of months.

http://staticmapper.com is a alternative source of information about the system itself, and http://zkillboard.com can be used to try and manually identify the system's inhabitants if you suspect that the data on http://wh.pasta.gg is incorrect

Identifying if you want a fight and how to get one

The main tool from here on out will be http://zkillboard.com to look at the kills and deaths of the group in question. Killboard data and some intuition can allow you to identify whether they are a force you are likely to be able to engage, what the best way of getting that engagement is likely to be and what good force compositions may be to win the fight.

• Look for kills that the corporation(s) have taken part in; do they typically field a composition that you are capable of countering, or at least matching? If they prey on lone Drakes and field a triplet of Falcons as backup when they do so, trying to provoke an engagement when you only have two pilots available may not be a good plan.
• When working out whether you have enough forces available to take a fight against a group, pay attention to the times that their kills and losses occur. Try and draw correlations between the time and the number of pilots that are on kill mails - can you identify their peak playing times, and if so, use that information when assessing how many pilots they are likely to field.
• If they tend to use non-cloaked ships when fighting, and you cannot see any idling at their POS, there is a reasonable chance that they don't have too many ships available as backup.
• On the other hand, if they regularly field cloaked ships, bank on there being more hostile ships present than you can see on your directional scanner.
• If they field a relatively small number of pilots it may be viable to add them to your contacts watch list to identify how many of them are online. Of course, more pilots can always log on later.

Once you've worked out whether you think you can take an engagement with a particular group (and assuming that you can), you need to work out how to trigger the engagement. Killboard information as well as general corp information can provide you with some pointers in this respect.

• If the corporation's kills are low or made up of primarily engagements against ships that are running sites in their home system, running sites with a bait ship may well draw them out.
• If the corporation looks a little more circumspect about engaging bait ships but aren't a full blown PvP corporation, you may need to try more subtle baiting behaviours. A later post on The Excession will cover baiting and taking bait in detail.
• If the corporation is a PvP focused group then much less overtly bait-orientated movements will likely draw their attention - they are looking for a fight.

The last part is the simplest; look at what they generally use on their killboard and ensure that you have counters to the ships they usually field. If they use Curses, make sure you have some missile based ships with passive tanks to avoid the effects of tracking disruptors and energy neutralization. If they like their Falcons then slap ECCM on a couple of your longer ranged ships.

It is generally not a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket and go all out on hard counters to the ships that a group normally brings, simply because if they don't bring those ships, you have a reasonable chance of looking like an idiot and then dying in a fire.

Know Your Wormhole Enemy: Harbinger

In the Know Your Wormhole Enemy series (name shamelessly stolen from the Eve Altruist series of posts and then mutilated) I'm going to look at a variety of different ships, how they are often fit and flown in wormhole space, and what they mean to you. This may include, but will not necessarily be limited to; example fits, engagement scenarios, how you should react to their presence on directional scan, at a POS or on grid, what good counters to them are, and how you can potentially use them.

This post will cover the Harbinger.

Overview

The Harbinger is an Amarr battlecruiser that is based around using medium energy turrets to apply damage; it has bonuses to the amount of damage that medium energy turrets produce and the capacitor taken to power them. The Harbinger can field a flight of medium drones to complement its turrets and energy weapons allowing it to project damage reasonably well out to long point range (24km or thereabouts). Shield tanked Harbingers are sometimes used in k-space where they can take advantage of higher speed and mitigate the penalty of lower effective hitpoints but the close range engagements in w-space mean that they are almost always fit with an armour tank.

The Eve Altruist post covering the Harbinger and the other battlecruisers can be found here.

What is it used for in wormhole space?

The Harbinger is seen relatively rarely in wormhole space; it is most typically used in PvP armour fleets. The ability of energy turrets to instantly project damage to significantly longer ranges than blaster weapons can be extremely useful to gangs, allowing targets to be hit at around 30km - ideal for picking off Stealth Bombers that might otherwise be hard to quickly force off the field. Although a Legion or Zealot may outperform the Harbinger in this role, the Harbinger is significantly cheaper and has significantly lower skill requirements.

Harbingers can be used for running combat sites in Class 1-3 wormholes, though they need a fleet with them in Class 3 systems as they don't have the tank for sustained engagements. In general armour tanks perform more poorly than shield tanks for running combat sites in wormhole systems; the larger a shield tank is made, the more significant the passive recharge becomes. This means that increasing the buffer on a shield tank makes it not only take longer to work through due to the raw hit-point advantage, but a significant portion of the incoming fire is mitigated (or negated completely) by the passive recharge. As passive armour tanks do not have this recharge component an active armour tank is needed, which in turn requires valuable slots to be assigned to improving capacitor performance in order to run the active tank and creates a vulnerability on capacitor power that shield tanks do not have.

Harbingers are sometimes dual-purposed for clearing and then running gas sites in Class 1-3 wormholes; unlike a Drake they have turrets available in the high slots that allow them to mount Gas Cloud Harvesters.

How is it typically fit?

PvE fits for Harbingers come in a host of small variations on a theme, normally along the following lines:

[Harbinger, WH PvE]
Medium Armor Repairer II
Damage Control II
Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II
Experimental 10MN Afterburner I
Stasis Webifier II

Heavy Pulse Laser II, Multifrequency M
Heavy Pulse Laser II, Multifrequency M
Heavy Pulse Laser II, Multifrequency M
Heavy Pulse Laser II, Multifrequency M
Heavy Pulse Laser II, Multifrequency M
Heavy Pulse Laser II, Multifrequency M
Core Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I

Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I
Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Medium Nanobot Accelerator I

Vespa EC-600 x5
Warrior II x5

The tank is below 200dps, but nothing higher is required for combat sites in Class 1 and 2 wormholes. Some fits will switch down one gun size from Heavy Pulse Laser IIs to Focused Medium Pulse Laser IIs if the pilot has sub-optimal fitting skills or problems with tracking . Personal preference can see people switch one of the Heat Sink II's to a Tracking Enhancer to improve range and tracking somewhat. One of the only advantages of the Harbinger over the Drake for combat site running in lower-class wormhole systems is the ability to field a flight of medium drones; EC-600s provide a reasonable chance of managing to jam any potential ambusher allowing you to flee the scene.

PvP fits are a little different;

[Harbinger, WH PvP]
1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Damage Control II
Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

Small Capacitor Booster II, Cap Booster 200
Faint Warp Disruptor I
Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I
X5 Prototype Engine Enervator

Heavy Pulse Laser II, Multifrequency M
Heavy Pulse Laser II, Multifrequency M
Heavy Pulse Laser II, Multifrequency M
Heavy Pulse Laser II, Multifrequency M
Heavy Pulse Laser II, Multifrequency M
Heavy Pulse Laser II, Multifrequency M
[empty high slot]

Medium Trimark Armor Pump I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I
Hornet EC-300 x5
Valkyrie II x5

The above fit needs a +1% powergrid implant to fit (the Inherent Implants 'Squire' Engineering EG-601); not using one or using lower fitting skills will mean potentially dropping one of the Heavy Pulse Laser II's to a Focused Medium Pulse Laser II or switching the 1600mm plate to an 800mm one and fitting a nosferatu, neut or smartbomb into the spare high slot. This 1600mm fit has 71k EHP and Scorch lets it put ~440 dps to a 23km optimal with a 5km falloff - close range Imperial Navy Multifrequency allows it to kick out 550dps before drones.

A note about the drones on this fit - they add an extra ~130dps and I would definitely go for medium damage drones with light ECM drones - the reverse of the site running set up above. This is because you're going out looking for trouble in this ship - not looking to run - and light combat drones aren't as useful in wormhole systems as they are in known space as there are significantly fewer frigates.

Occasionally you will run into beam-fit Harbingers used for both PvE combat site running and PvP. These are significantly rarer than the pulse-fit variants and less dangerous - although a beam-fit Harbinger can ruin the day of any stealth bombers in a fight.

How much of a threat is it?

Running a site: Harbingers are generally a substandard way to run sites in a Class 1 or 2 wormhole system, and aren't really viable in Class 3 or above. They will generally have a borderline tank in C2 systems, and are vulnerable to capacitor pressure from energy neutralizers; they will generally be able to be killed by most battlecruisers or strategic cruisers that are fit for PvP one on one. They are not a very good bait ship as both the raw hitpoint total and the active component of the armour tank are so low. Expect those medium ECM drones to be deployed!

As backup in a POS:

The Harbinger is pretty capable second responder; it's clearly not going to have the same capabilities as a strategic cruiser, but it has a reasonable tank and can project damage well.

On the field in a fight:
The Harbinger is a good call for a primary target if there aren't any recons on the field; although the tank is reasonable it is no-where near as robust as strategic cruisers and the lack of a resistance bonus on the ship means that a more significant fraction of the EHP is made up of raw armour hitpoints, and less resistances. This means that logistics reps will not be as effective when applied to it compared to other ships that have better resist profiles such as Tech 2/3 ships or ships with resistance bonuses such as the Prophecy. It will also be able to apply its damage across the field relatively easily; the longer range on pulse lasers don't force it to be within a handful of kilometers of its targets, unlike hybrid turrets. Given it has a fixed damage type, it may be worth considering how that EM/Thermal damage will stack up against the ships that you have on field - if you are heavy on Minmatar Tech 2/3 ships then it is probably lower down the threat list, whereas if you have a number of Drakes in the fight, it is a more significant threat.

Harbingers are generally unlikely to bring any electronic warfare to bear, although if they do it will almost certainly be fit in place of a capacitor booster, making the Harbinger vulnerable to capacitor pressure. While they have good damage projection, Harbingers don't have quite the range required to threaten logistics ships without pushing out of the main fight.

How do I counter it?

The simplest way to deal with a Harbinger is damage; they have a relatively flat resistance profile and any damage type will do just fine against them. Most fleet compositions in wormhole space will have equal or less range than a pulse fit Harbinger so holding them in place and keeping range is unlikely to work in your favour - dependent on the ship types you are fielding. If a Harbingers is engaging at the outer edge of it's range, sensor dampeners may prove effective, and tracking disruptors will be useful. Energy neutralizers will probably lessen the amount of firepower that the Harbinger is kicking out but not mitigate it completely - most PvP fits will be cap boosted and will always be able to fire right after injecting cap.

Final note: If you encounter any inaccuracies on this page, please contact me ingame with an EVEMail or on twitter @OV_Fellblade and I'll try and get them sorted.

The effects of W-space system characteristics on PvP Meta

In the previous post I spent some time addressing how the PvP Meta is affected by the difference between known space (K-space) gates and wormhole space (W-space) wormhole links. In this post I'll be looking at how fleet compositions and ship selections are also guided by the differences between K and W-space systems.

Local Chat

The Local chat channel allows pilots in the same system to talk to one another without having any prior knowledge of each other. In known space, any pilot who enters a system instantly joins the local chat channel and has their name and portrait displayed, making the local chat channel one of the most effective intelligence gathering mechanisms available.

In wormhole space, however, pilots do not have their name and portrait displayed when they enter the local chat channel - the information only becomes visible if they send any text via the local channel. The knock on effect of this is that in wormhole space there is no way of knowing for certain how many pilots, if any, are in the system with you, or if any pilots have just entered the system.

The removal of intelligence that is freely available in k-space has are a number of knock on effects that changes combat in w-space significantly; and those knock on effects have knock on effects themselves.

The first effect is that cloaking is significantly more effective. In k-space a cloaking device hides the type of the ship that you are flying and your precise location within a system. In w-space, as there is no local, the cloaking device completely hides your presence in addition to hiding your ship type and precise location. This means that a cloaked fleet wields a massive information advantage over an uncloaked fleet - not only is the exact disposition and composition of the enemy force unknown but so is even more general intelligence about how many of them there are or which pilots are in the force. As cloaking is such a powerful strategic ability in wormhole space, cloaks are fit to ships with much greater frequency. Significant numbers of ordinary ships have non-covert cloaks fit, despite their drawbacks of not allowing you to warp while cloaked or move at any significant speed. Because of this there is an additional driver for pilots to fit ships that are prepared for close range combat; if you are not, there is a very good chance that someone who is will decloak within a handful of kilometers of your ship and ruin your day.

The second effect is the acceptance of risk - pilots living in wormhole space simply never know if a person, or ten people, or thirty people are all sat in the system they have just entered, or even the system they call their home. That is part and parcel of living in w-space, and if pilots fail to adjust to it, they inevitably end up leaving for the perceived relative safety of k-space.

The third effect is tied in closely to the second - paranoia. Paranoia is a mark of the EVE pilot in general; every deal is a scam, every target is bait, every conversation is someone trying to wheedle them out of their hard earned ISK. Acceptance of increased risk in wormhole space does not mean that pilots don't do anything about it. If a pilot is playing 'to win', risk can be mitigated by gathering intelligence about what to expect in a given system. Although a great deal of information is not as easily accessible in wormhole space, that does not mean that it isn't possible to find out quite a lot about the inhabitants of a system if some time is spent on it. It can be non-trivial to identify what corporation calls a given wormhole home, but if time is taken to look through all the information sources available, a picture of what you are likely to run into can be formed. A later post on The Excession will be dedicated to scouting and intelligence gathering in wormhole systems.

No Dockable Stations

The lack of any NPC stations in w-space is similar to the situation when in hostile sovereign null-security space. The only "safety" that is available in w-space is when inside your own POS force-field - this is an additional driver to fly ships with cloaking devices fitted - as you can safely go AFK should you need to. The lack of NPC stations also means that restocking ammunition and repairing ships when away from your home base is not as viable.

Scanning Requirements

Every place of note in wormhole space needs to be found via the discovery scanner or launching probes. Probes are needed to find Gas, Relic and Data sites, and other wormhole links, and so any ship that is solo in a wormhole will need to have a probe launcher fit in it's high slots.

Know Your Wormhole Enemy: Drake

In the Know Your Wormhole Enemy series (name shamelessly stolen from the Eve Altruist series of posts and then mutilated) I'm going to look at a variety of different ships, how they are often fit and flown in wormhole space, and what they mean to you. This may include, but will not necessarily be limited to; example fits, engagement scenarios, how you should react to their presence on directional scan, at a POS or on grid, what good counters to them are, and how you can potentially use them.

The first ship covered will be the Drake.

Overview

The Drake is a Caldari battlecruiser that has the distinction of being one of the most boring ships in the whole of EVE Online. It generally has a large passive shield tank, it is slow, it rarely has electronic warfare to apply to other ships, and uses missile systems that you do not need to manoeuvre to get the most firepower out of. Nevertheless, it is an important ship in wormhole space because of it's ubiquity.

The Drake has bonuses to the resistance of it's shield tank and a high number of available mid slots, making it one of the most heavily tanked battlecruisers available - although a recent reduction in the strength of it's tanking bonus has impacted this a little. It also has an offensive bonus to the damage of Heavy Missiles and Heavy Assault Missiles, but only for the kinetic damage type. For this reason, it's very rare to see Drakes firing non-kinectic missiles.

For reference, the slightly outdated Eve Altruist Know Your Enemy section on the Drake can be found here; it is still correct in generalities, but some specific numbers are slightly off.

What is it used for in wormhole space?

The Drake is used for everything in wormhole space; many players in high security space use their Drake for running level 3 and sometimes level 4 agent missions, and will have skills that complement the Drake trained to a relatively high level. If someone moves into a wormhole either as part of a new corporation or when joining an existing corp, the Drake will often be recommended as both a good site-running ship for Class 1-3 wormholes and as a reasonable PvP ship for a shield fleet.

As a result the variety of Drake fits is spectacular - and a fair number of them are spectacularly bad. That's often because although the new pilot has been recommended to use a Drake, they necessarily have been provided with an example fit that is tailored to their skills and the task to hand. As a result of the ubiquity of the Drake in lower-class systems, they are often used as disposable bait by wormhole corporations looking to tempt people into attacking a ship on a site. Baiting, assessing whether a ship is bait or not, and how to (relatively) safely "take the bait" will be covered in a later post on The Excession. There's something of a saying that "The Drake is always bait", and in wormhole space quite a lot of the time it will be, but never quite frequently enough to make it a hard and fast rule, or to put people off engaging them.

How is it typically fit?

As described above, how it is typically fit is probably not the best question to ask, but how should it be typically fit is a reasonable one. There are two basic fits that you will find being used in wormhole space, with a variety of different flavours according to the individual pilot's taste or fitting skills.

[Drake, PvE WH]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Beta Reactor Control: Shield Power Relay I

Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Large Shield Extender II
Shield Recharger II
Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
Experimental 10MN Afterburner I

Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Core Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I

Medium Core Defense Field Purger I
Medium Core Defense Field Purger I
Medium Core Defense Field Purger I

The Heavy Missile Launcher Drake is the ship that the vast majority of wormhole-based pilots will have had their first experiences in. It has good damage projection, hitting out to around 45km with Scourge Fury Heavy Missiles. The tank is a rather significant 304dps passive recharge at peak, and people tend to play around with different combinations of Adaptive Invuln fields, EM Ward Fields, and Shield rechargers. For a PvE fit Drake that can be rapidly re-purposed for PvP, the Core Defense Field Purgers are often swapped for Core Defense Field Extenders - the increased total shield HP does provide a boost to shield recharge, but not to the same extent. You will often see the Shield Power Relay switched for a Damage Control to aid cap regeneration, or one or more BCS swapped for more Shield Power Relays if the pilot has low support skills for shield tanking. Drones are either Warrior IIs for helping to run sites faster, or EC-300s for  escaping lone tacklers.

[Drake, PvP HAM]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Damage Control II

Large Shield Extender II
Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Experimental 10MN Afterburner I
Fleeting Warp Disruptor I
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Small Nosferatu II

Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I

This fit can project damage out to 30km with Scourge Javelin missiles while doing 400dps, or drop down to Scourge Rage missiles for 700dps on larger targets that are within ~17km, and that's not including drones. It has 92k EHP and a minor EM hole - given so much of the damage that it will be facing in wormholes will be kinetic and thermal, I wouldn't worry too much about that. This fit has an afterburner to afford some degree of mobility, but if you are light on tackle or need a bit more zip you can drop the afterburner and put a micro warp drive on - all that needs to be done is to drop the Tech II shield extender to Meta 4 and then either drop the nosferatu for something else or use a +2% CPU and +1% grid implant and a meta nos.

Heavy Assault Missile Drakes are much better for PvP at the short ranges likely to be encountered in wormhole fights, although that damage can be mitigated somewhat due to the large explosion radius on Heavy Assault Missiles compared to the small signature radius on Strategic Cruisers. A brief guide on the mathematics of missile damage explaining exactly how these values factor in can be found here

There are also more specialized fits out there, such as budget "Jamgu" fits created by fitting an armour tank to a Drake and filling the mid slots with electronic warfare modules (jammers, damps). These are, however, pretty rare.

How much of a threat is it?

Running a site: the Drake itself is probably not a significant threat to most ships, but it may well be bait for a larger force as noted above. If the Drake is not bait, then the most significant issue that you may run into is that the Drake may be a full passive-recharge fit. If the Drake pilot ignores a propulsion module and is well-skilled, a Drake can break a 700dps recharge rate without having to use any shield boosters! To crack a passably well fit site-running Drake in a reasonable time will generally require at least a couple of battlecruisers or strategic cruisers; any less will give any reinforcements a huge amount of time to finish dinner, log on, get a cup of tea, then warp over to the Drake and assist it.

As backup in a POS:

Almost any other ship would be better as a second responder than a Drake. Typically your heavier, tankier ships should be in the first wave to soak damage from your targets while your second responders should aim to do more damage. If Drakes are used as second responders they should ideally be HAM fit for maximum damage, but frankly are likely to be whatever the pilot had lying around at the time.

On the field in a fight:
In the vast majority of situations, virtually any other ship will be a better primary target than a Drake on the field. Their room-temperature damage alongside spectacular tank means that if called as a primary target a large amount of firepower will be expended on removing an under-par amount of damage from the field. The only exceptions to this situation are:

• If you want to prolong the fight to try and draw more hostiles into it, deliberately targetting the Drake as it will die more slowly may assist you
• If you have vulnerable ships on the field and the Drake has sufficient range to damage them (generally a Heavy Missile fit, possibly HAMs using Javelin ammo), where other ships on the field do not. Examples of such ships would be Tech 1 or dual boxed logistics, or recons such as Falcons.
• If the opposition are fielding an armour fleet with armour logistics but have a Drake on the field (or any other shield ship for that matter), then it should be the primary target as it will not be aided by the logistics support as effectively

How do I counter it?

Drakes have a high native resist to Kinetic damage, so the go-to ship for cloaky damage in wormholes - the Proteus - is actually not ideal to take them on due to a high percentage of it's blaster damage being kinetic. Neutralization can help turn off some of the tank in the form of the Drake's active hardeners, but it won't take it down completely, and nor will it turn off the weapons systems. The best counter to a Drake is damage - preferably EM / Thermal, and Hurricanes at point blank range with Phased Plasma or EMP ammo do a pretty good job of tearing them up.


Final note: If you encounter any inaccuracies on this page, please contact me ingame with an EVEMail or on twitter @OV_Fellblade and I'll try and get them sorted.

Edit: Fixed a fitting mistake on the first Drake fit.

The Effect of Wormhole links on PvP Meta

The previous post covered the differences between known space (or 'k-space') and wormhole space (or 'w-space'), and spent a little time looking at the differences between gates and wormhole links from a navigation perspective. This post is going to look at how the differences between k-space gates and w-space wormhole links affect combat.

Size and distance

K-space gates are of various different sizes, but all are significantly larger than wormholes. This may sound like an insignificant difference, but it has important ramifications. When ships jump through a gate or a wormhole link they appear at a semi-random range from it, typically a distance 10km or so on gates and 0-5km on wormhole links. The size of the gate also has an effect on this, as the distance from the gate is actually the distance from the outer boundary of the gate, not from it's centre. Taking an example radius of a gate as 2.5km, this means that if two ships appear on opposite sites of a gate that they both jump through, they could be as much as 25km apart.

In known space the large potential volume that a ship can appear in after jumping through a gate means that there is a high chance that a ship jumping through will not be within the magic 11km radius - the range at which a standard overheated warp scrambler or stasis webifier operates. Warp scramblers and stasis webifiers reduce the mobility of target ships; scrams shut off any active microwarp drive propulsion modules on a hostile ship, and stasis webifiers provide a blanket reduction in speed. For more information on microwarp drives, scramblers, speed and stasis webifiers, check out the Eve University Tackling 101 Guide

If two ships jump through a wormhole link together they will almost invariably be at very close range, less than ten kilometers or so, and any ship jumping through to a waiting opponent will be appearing within a known, very small volume of space. This means that it is relatively easy to pin down ships that are jumping through wormhole links and prevent them from moving to a longer range. Faster ships are webbed down and scrambled, never get a chance to escape from ships that are attempting to intercept them, and are forced into a close range brawl with any opponents.

Alongside the prevalence of cloaked ships in wormhole systems (the reasons for which will be investigated in a later post) the short range of engagement when fighting over a wormhole link result in fleet compositions that favour close range, heavily tanked, slow moving ships. Ships that rely on speed are generally unable to get away from hostiles that jump through with them or are waiting for them, and so "kiting" techniques are extremely rare in wormhole engagements.

Timers

Whenever a pilot engages in combat in K-space a sixty second aggression timer is started; while the timer is active they are unable to jump through a gate. This means that if a target aggresses against you, that target will be stuck in that system for, at minimum, the next sixty seconds. Wormhole links have no such limitation in place with regard to aggression timers, though they do have the same session change timer limitation; you cannot jump more than once every ten seconds, to give the EVE servers time to catch up with the changes.

While wormhole links don't care about the aggression state of pilots transiting them, they have their own timer - the polarization timer. This means that a given pilot cannot pass through the same wormhole link more twice in five minutes. Any attempt to do so will result in a failed jump and a status message how long it will be until the pilot can jump.

Link Timers:

Link Type	Session Timer	Aggression Timer	Polarization Timer
Gate	10 seconds	60 seconds	N/A
Wormhole Link	10 seconds	N/A	5 minutes

The lack of an aggression timer means that there is no penalty to travel for engaging any ship that you happen across, and that the known-space technique of splitting targets using their aggression timers does not exist.

The polarization timer in W-space is another disincentive to using kiting techniques and ranged ships in wormhole space. In K-space pilots can re-approach and repeatedly jump through a link in order to try and get into a situation where they have more favorable positioning. Due to the polarization timer of wormhole links this is not an option, and you have to live with whatever positioning you have when you jump into a system.

The polarization timer also means that if two forces are facing off, one on each side of a wormhole link, the side that jumps in first (which I will term the 'attacker') will be at a significant disadvantage. Their opponents who are waiting for them can now disengage or split the attacking force relatively easily. If the defenders jump past the attackers and the attackers follow them, the attackers will now not be able to make any further jumps for several minutes, allowing the defenders the ability to jump back into their initial system and escape. The only consistent way that the attacking force can force an engagement is by splitting their group across both sides of a wormhole link, severely compromising the amount of firepower they can bring to bear.

There are a host of techniques for dealing with polarization timers, forcing fights around them, and splitting opponents using them. These will be dealt with in a future post; for the moment it is sufficient to know that there is a greater-than-usual advantage to the defending side when attackers jump into them through a wormhole link.

Mass Limitations

One of the more widely known aspects of wormhole combat is that it is affected by mass limitations on wormholes. That said, there are some subtleties that may escape the casual observer, and even the more well known aspects are probably worth revisiting.

K-space gates do not have any limitations on them other than capital ships not being able to use them. They can be used an infinite number of times, and they can jump ships of any mass from system to system.

Wormhole links are vastly different. Each type of wormhole link has two mass-related limits, one is a limit on the amount of mass that any given ship that attempts to jump through can have, the other is a limit on the total amount of mass that can jump through the wormhole before it collapses.

Limits on the maximum mass that can pass through in any given jump effectively limit the types of ships that can enter any wormhole system.

Wormhole Class	Per Jump Mass Limit	Hulls Allowed
Class 1	20Mkg	Cruisers & Battlecruisers
Class 2-4	300Mkg	Cruisers, Battlecruiser, Battleships, Orcas
Class 5-6	1000Mkg	All ship types other than Supercapitals

Limits on the total mass that can go through a wormhole link limit the size of fleets that can transit wormhole space. Total mass limits on wormhole links vary from a handful Mkg to several Gkg, and the mass limit of any given wormhole link can vary by up to 10% above or below the stated mass limit for the wormhole link type. Details about different wormhole link types can be found on this eve wiki page.

Because even the very largest wormhole links can only cope with 15 battleship jumps through and back, cruiser and battlecruiser hulls are much more frequently used for wormhole combat. Even when using fleets of smaller ships, protracted engagements with multiple jumps through wormhole links can result in collapsed wormholes, and that risk has to be taken into account when engaging targets through a wormhole link.

As a result of mass limitations, the goal of any wormhole space fleet is most often to have the most firepower, defense and electronic warfare that it can have by mass instead of the normal concern of by ISK value. In fact, due to the (relatively) high value of loot inside wormhole space system anomalies, ISK value of ships is of a secondary concern, and many pilots outfit their ships extremely expensively to get the most out of them that they possibly can. Combined with the close range brawling that characterizes engagements in wormhole space, most wormhole fleets are made out of well-fitted Tech 3 Strategic Cruisers (Proteus, Legion, Loki, Tengu) with logistics support.