Vladimir Norkoff
Income Redistribution Service
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Posted - 2009.03.11 19:47:00 -
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Originally by: Wan Ton Is sensor dampening a viable PvP strategy for small-medium gangs?
As others have said, no, not really. I'll give a bit more info though.
tl;dr - Damps suck.
First a history lesson. Damps used to be ignored long ago, in fact they were laughed at. Why use damps when you can use ECM? Then ECM got nerfed into uselessness (even on ECM boats). Time passed and people rediscovered damps. Best named damps at that time simultaneously crushed both targeting and locktime by about 50%. And that was on an unbonused ship, Arazu/Celestis were about 70%. And if your were stacking three at the same time? Well ouch. As Von Kroll mentioned, Burn Eden made fabulous use of this on their Ravens at gatecamps. I liked to use them on my mission-hunting Nos Domi. CCP claimed that everybody and their dog was using them (though I never encountered another user except Burn Eden). Meanwhile, ECM had just gotten it's boost back for bonused ships. Was handy, but still not as Falcon-heavy as it is today (because people could use damps). Then of course, damps got nerfed. Base strength was cut by two-thirds down to around 20% and scripts were introduced so you could only use one effect at a time at full strength. And that full strength was only 66% of what it used to be.
Now why aren't they viable? Well first because only a bonused ship can use them with any real effect. But even on a bonused ship focusing three damps on a target can't reduce targeting range below the optimal range of short-range weapons (ie. BS gets knocked down to about 20km). Note that you have to use at least three on one target to have a decent effect, whereas ECM has a chance with each individual jammer (which is why ECM is more popular - can potentially shut down multiple opponents). In addition to this, damps don't reduce locktime when using the range scripts. So once the target gets to the range where they would be firing anyways, then they lock in about 5 seconds and it's business as normal. No huge effect.
Conceivably, you could use damps in combination with long-range weapons. But then how do you hold down the target? Unlike the PvP Alliance Tournament, normal gameplay does not include GMs who will blow up opponents if they warp away (which the ONLY reason why damps were useful there). You would still need tacklers, and those tacklers would still be within engagement range of a damped target. That leads to dead tacklers and opponents warping off. Plus sniper setups suck in small-medium gangs since the alpha isn't all that high, and you need to split your gang to have tacklers.
So no, damps are not terribly viable.
Taxman VI: Voided Ledger
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