Point Defense

Hi All,

I’ve been thinking (again) about ships and their usage, predominantly with PvE. With the introduction of the upcoming BC/Fast Battleship class we do seem to be moving a little towards a classical view of ships and perhaps typing. What else is missing?

Point defense, picket ships, anti-aircraft platforms spring to mind. Now it could be argued that interceptors and frigates fit the aggressor role in this instance and destroyers were meant to be the pickets. (stealthbombers, co-ops and recons are a good analog for submarine warfare btw).

What we don’t have are specific ship based counters to things like drones, missiles, inties and frigates (yeah OK, there are defender missiles… but honestly who uses them?) when you’re using battleship weaponry.

Using smartbombs in high sec is a recipe for disaster by concord, and they’re not that effective in any case as a singular hard point. Frigate guns will kill drones to be sure, but speaking as a carebear running L4s, they are not going to cut it for lots of missions (Ishkur’s are something of an exception), and no one in their right mind is going to sacrifice a high slot for a smaller gun…..

If we consider drones and missiles to be munitions of one sort or another, why shouldn’t there be good counter to them, either by upgrading the current defense systems a little, or by an alternative system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS)? As far as PvE goes, if you’re using battleship sized weaponry, the only real counter to scrammers, webbers, frigates and inties are your own drones.

This means either you have to be extremely good at popping them at range (and possibly compromise your fit in an effort to compensate) or fly a ship with a drone bay. There are strategies to cope with them, but by far the most effective has been droneage. The counter argument is of course the dumbing down of EvE, something I’m firmly against.

I’m going to have to consider this some more I think…

Oh, and before I forget… I’d LOVE to see how the new BC hulls fare in the alliance tournament format. They may be as game changing as the stealth bomber and either work really really well, or go boom. It’ll be EPIC either way 🙂

 

FS

 

H