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Slowcats - are they worth it?

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Hannah Flex laissez-faire economics 230	Posted - 2013.02.28 18:02:00 - [31] - Quote The only "problem" with slowcats is they take another capital fleet to counter, but nobody wants to drop caps. Hey guess what a capital fleet needs a capital fleet to counter. Supers and Dreads make quick work of carriers. Quit being scared and drop caps. Escalate- thats the word for the day escalate, thatd be a good expansion title too EVE Online: Escalation
General Nusense Not Posting With My Main 44	Posted - 2013.02.28 18:17:00 - [32] - Quote Hannah Flex wrote: The only "problem" with slowcats is they take another capital fleet to counter, but nobody wants to drop caps. Hey guess what a capital fleet needs a capital fleet to counter. Supers and Dreads make quick work of carriers. Quit being scared and drop caps. Escalate- thats the word for the day escalate, thatd be a good expansion title too EVE Online: Escalation Slow cats are not OP. What is OP is assigning 500+ drones to a single ship that is remote sensor boosted. Limit the amount of drones that can be assigned to a single ship and Slowcats can be countered by a normal fleet.
Herzog Wolfhammer Sigma Special Tactics Group 2489	Posted - 2013.02.28 18:29:00 - [33] - Quote Falcon?
Forum Clone 77777 State War Academy Caldari State 69	Posted - 2013.02.28 18:34:00 - [34] - Quote Hannah Flex wrote: The only "problem" with slowcats is they take another capital fleet to counter, but nobody wants to drop caps. Hey guess what a capital fleet needs a capital fleet to counter. Supers and Dreads make quick work of carriers. Quit being scared and drop caps. Escalate- thats the word for the day escalate, thatd be a good expansion title too EVE Online: Escalation Didnt they call the "pre-patch" to inferno Escalation? Oops I ruined your idea.
fukier RISE of LEGION 850	Posted - 2013.02.28 18:36:00 - [35] - Quote the problem with slowcats is the only counter is either more slowcats or titans... and lots of them... we need a sub-cap counter... my propersal is a t3 version of a battleship... something the size of a freighter but does 1/3 damage of a dread and has the tank of a tier 1 bs. At the end of the game both the pawn and the Queen go in the same box.
Jack bubu GK inc. Pandemic Legion 414	Posted - 2013.02.28 18:48:00 - [36] - Quote Hey, ive heard there is this thing called void bombs and they are pretty good at ******* over spidertanks
Cebraio 4S Corporation RAZOR Alliance 254	Posted - 2013.02.28 18:54:00 - [37] - Quote Takseen wrote: Cebraio wrote: There are also counters to slowcats. ... - You can bring slowcats - ... - You can bring Titans and supers Slowcats actually require more work for the average F1 fleet member, so I don't see a problem with that aspect. I'm always suspicious of someone who claims a thing is balanced and then lists that very thing as a counter. For the record, I never said they were balanced. I just don't think they are incredibly OP. There are counters for it and not all possible counters have been tested yet. People usually just chicken out when there are slowcats on the field. Also, what General Nusense said. The problem is that one guy can direct the Alpha of a whole fleet. So maybe we need something like Drone Bandwidth for assisted drones ... and then we could get hi-slot modules that increase this bandwidth and also get command ship bonuses for it. Then we'd have to rely on multiple target callers and their coordination. ... On the other hand this would make target callers less vulnerable for EWAR.
Hannah Flex laissez-faire economics 232	Posted - 2013.02.28 18:58:00 - [38] - Quote Forum Clone 77777 wrote: Hannah Flex wrote: The only "problem" with slowcats is they take another capital fleet to counter, but nobody wants to drop caps. Hey guess what a capital fleet needs a capital fleet to counter. Supers and Dreads make quick work of carriers. Quit being scared and drop caps. Escalate- thats the word for the day escalate, thatd be a good expansion title too EVE Online: Escalation Didnt they call the "pre-patch" to inferno Escalation? Oops I ruined your idea. If thats the case, then they burned a cool name for something dumb- where or what was the escalation?
VaalOversoul School of Applied Knowledge Caldari State 0	Posted - 2013.02.28 19:13:00 - [39] - Quote Very simple solution - limit the number of drones you can control the same way fighter control is limited. It'd cut the effectivenes A LOT... Sure they might still need some tunning but having to actually lock each target by broadcast, the same normal fleet has to and then shoot would bring at least some balance...
trevormax Lone Star Exploration Lone Star Partners 7	Posted - 2013.02.28 19:13:00 - [40] - Quote As a possible counter would you be able to use a sniper fleet to take out the fast locking ship outside of the sentry drones range?
Wacktopia Noir. Black Legion. 472	Posted - 2013.02.28 22:29:00 - [41] - Quote Cebraio wrote: Wacktopia wrote: Cebraio wrote: Wacktopia wrote: ... The disproportional volume of fighters vs sentries is so great that a carrier can carry 4000 sentry drones. But they usually don't have that many. T2 sentries are expensive. Nobody carries 4000. Only a few hundred. Yes, of course. And T1 are the obvious choice given their expendability. Well, at least in CFC we don't use T1. They are expendable but they also perform much worse. I dunno I've seen a fair few Bouncer I clouds left in space with CFC tags. The bottom line is that now I have one of those annoying signatures.
Cebraio 4S Corporation RAZOR Alliance 255	Posted - 2013.02.28 22:43:00 - [42] - Quote Wacktopia wrote: I dunno I've seen a fair few Bouncer I clouds left in space with CFC tags. Everybody starts small, I guess. Training T2 takes some time and naturally people use T1 until then. Official doctrine requires T2 though.
FloppieTheBanjoClown The Skunkworks Petition Blizzard 2915	Posted - 2013.02.28 23:34:00 - [43] - Quote Wacktopia wrote: The ability to assign drones means that the FC only has to attack a target, there is no broadcasting, no reaction times, no human errors etc. In addition, when the drones attack their alpha is high and their dispersion can mean that tracking issues are often mitigated. This is the big problem to me. Slowcat fleets effectively remove pilot error from the equation, allowing a 100-member fleet to rely on the skills of a handful of "good" pilots while the rest can be thoroughly mediocre. Compare that to any other fleet doctrine and it's absurdly overpowered. Personally, I say CCP should just make it so that carriers can't assign drone control for anything other than fighters and fighter bombers. If you've been around long enough to skill to carriers, you should be competent enough to manage drones on your own. Founding member of the Belligerent Undesirables movement.
Spurty V0LTA Verge of Collapse 808	Posted - 2013.02.28 23:46:00 - [44] - Quote FloppieTheBanjoClown wrote: Personally, I say CCP should just make it so that carriers can't assign drone control for anything other than fighters and fighter bombers. If you've been around long enough to skill to carriers, you should be competent enough to manage drones on your own. You can only assign 5 fighters to one person. They can not be assigned a 6th from a 2nd carrier. Perhaps the answer is here? Can only have 5 drones 'assist' someone? Still, the problem remains that you have a large weapon system that can be activated by interceptors (almost instant locking) --- GÇ£If you think this Universe is bad, you should see some of the others.GÇ¥ GÇò Philip K. ****
Danny John-Peter New Eden Renegades 200	Posted - 2013.02.28 23:55:00 - [45] - Quote Its probably worth pointing out that a low sig fleet (read; Arty Lokifleet) would find it fairly easy to counter slowcats, and have multiple times, the issue then becomes the 250 Drakes that they brought with them. So yeah, solve the problem of blobs in EVE, owait.
James Amril-Kesh 4S Corporation RAZOR Alliance 4086	Posted - 2013.03.01 00:56:00 - [46] - Quote Cebraio wrote: Also, what General Nusense said. The problem is that one guy can direct the Alpha of a whole fleet. This, incidentally, is how Gila fleets became FOTM. Yes, assigning drones is overpowered because you can take an unlimited number of sentry drones and automatically slave them to a single attack command for the entire fleet for as much alpha as you want, perfectly coordinated and guaranteed. Malcanis for CSM 8 Phrases like "you can't nerf / buff X EVE is a Sandbox" have the same amount of meaning as "If this is a sack of potatoes then you can not carrot." - Alara IonStorm
Dimitryy Ever Flow Northern Coalition. 79	Posted - 2013.03.01 01:06:00 - [47] - Quote I'm not sure that slowcats are as OP as people seem to think. I have put a bit of thought into ways to counter them, or at least neutralize them for a while. These are some of the things i've come up with in like a half hour. 1) Bombing Runs: Staggering a wing of bombers might be a good way to eliminate a certain amount of the damage from the carriers. On paper, every carrier should be able to scoop drones before bombs land, and then redeploy and assist them right back again. However, in reality, if you stagger your bombing runs, that is a lot of recalling and redeploying. I bet a significant number of drones would die, and even the ones that didn't die would not all get reassigned and agressed right away. I believe it will significantly reduce dps output, even if just by making it harder for the carriers. 2) Specific Tanking: Specific tanking? In my PvP? Maybe so. Sentries deal monochrome damage. If you're at bouncer range, and they all drop bouncers, you know exactly what damage type your going to be getting. This could work well for long range fleets, where either they drop the damage type that can hit you, but hit for ** damage, or they switch damage and don't hit you at all. The problem with this could be other ships on the field, specific tanking one damage type may leave you vulnerable to the support fleet, but its something to keep in mind for certain situations 3) Smartbombs: Running a squad of smartbombing battleships could really with tightly grouped sentries. Not only would they be forced to recall sentries, but they'd basically have to stay recalled until the smartbombing bs were all dead. Running these with ecm bursts might be a good way to further disrupt the slowcat setup. Dropping a suicide triage carrier as well might even be worth a shot, as it could force support to primary it, or force carriers to drop fighters to deal with it. It wouldn't win the fight, but remember while the slowcats and maybe even the support fleet are dealing with this, you're dropping their support fleet without worrying about them. 4) Damps/Jams/sig radius: If the slowcats are all assigning drones to only a few agressor ships, damps can be used to drop their targeting range to the point where they are unable to agress the main fleet. Jams can also be used, but in this case i think damps actually might be the more efficient way to go about it. Also, fleets with a small sig radius might take significantly less damage from the sentries if they're moving with good tracking, but i havn't tested sig vs sentry, so not really sure on that 5) Split the fleet: Slowcats do live up to their name. They're slow as balls, and it takes a good few seconds for dps to be applied, as all the carriers come out of warp, drop drones, and get them all assigned. If you are trying to defend X sov structure, you might not be able to force them off the field, as they don't have to kill your fleet to win. However if you are in a situation where you are say, shooting SBUs, or enemy FC is being overly agressive, it is possible to get bad slowcat fleets split, and potentially grab carriers more or less on their own. If you have a large fleet, a carrier caught alone could well die before its fleet can warp back to save it. 6) Cynojammers: This is more of a strategic counter than a tactical counter, but it still works. If you suspect a slowcat heavy alliance is eyeing your space, make sure you are prepared to turn on cynojammers in all the relevant systems, make sure you are ready to time and stront your towers properly, get your triage carriers ready, and brawl them on the jammer oldschool style. 7) Capitals: Obviously, if your alliance/coalition can field large numbers of capitals, its always an option. A non-triage carrier at best can rep half the damage of a sieged dread, so if you can field half the dreads of the slowcat fleet, you can potentially brawl them with a significantly smaller dread fleet. The more carriers they lose, the faster you will break their reps, and the less dps they be doing, etcetra etcetra. Not all these will work for all people at all times, if that was the case, nobody would use slowcats at all. I think the real benefit of slowcats is that they're very good against badly organized hostile groups. If you have a fairly organized defense, you could easily do the first 4 or 5 items on the list at the same time with only a very small handful of dedicated ships. A slowcat fleet trying to kill smartbombers, taking staggered bombs to the face, having their agressors damped to , and knowing if they warp off people will be trying to snag their **, is going to be waaaay less effective. TLDR: Slowcats are definitly really good, but i think people should try the obvious counters before they say it is OP and needs to be nerfed. Dimi
James Amril-Kesh 4S Corporation RAZOR Alliance 4086	Posted - 2013.03.01 01:13:00 - [48] - Quote I still think, counters aside, there's still one really broken mechanic that needs to be addressed, which is of course the fact that we can completely bypass a carrier's limitations on scan resolution and also bypass issues with dozens of pilots trying to focus fire simultaneously simply by assigning all of the fleet's sentries to a single person. Malcanis for CSM 8 Phrases like "you can't nerf / buff X EVE is a Sandbox" have the same amount of meaning as "If this is a sack of potatoes then you can not carrot." - Alara IonStorm
Dimitryy Ever Flow Northern Coalition. 79	Posted - 2013.03.01 01:32:00 - [49] - Quote James Amril-Kesh wrote: I still think, counters aside, there's still one really broken mechanic that needs to be addressed, which is of course the fact that we can completely bypass a carrier's limitations on scan resolution and also bypass issues with dozens of pilots trying to focus fire simultaneously simply by assigning all of the fleet's sentries to a single person. The scan resolution bypassing is a good point, at least for carriers. If they patched it to say that carriers had to target a ship to assist non-fighter drones to it, that might work. It would make it harder for carriers to immediately reapply dps if they have to recall their drones, force them to wait a few moments before applying dps at the start of a fight, make it worthwhile to jam the carriers, and basically make the carrier's life a little bit harder. However I think for support ships, being able to assist drones immediately is a good thing. It makes fights more dynamic, and helps balance the fact that people essentially kill your guns in a fight.
James Amril-Kesh 4S Corporation RAZOR Alliance 4086	Posted - 2013.03.01 01:37:00 - [50] - Quote I don't have a problem with fleets assigning drones to support ships and such. I have a problem with a single subcap being able to control hundreds of drones at the same time. Malcanis for CSM 8 Phrases like "you can't nerf / buff X EVE is a Sandbox" have the same amount of meaning as "If this is a sack of potatoes then you can not carrot." - Alara IonStorm
Alavaria Fera GoonWaffe Goonswarm Federation 3426	Posted - 2013.03.01 01:48:00 - [51] - Quote Anthar Thebess wrote: Now , after those few months (from 08/08/2012) the typical slowcat fleet grew to 100-150 carriers , and more pilots are on the way. So lets talk about 150 slowcats ... shield ones ( after skill changes - they will be quite easy to get): Damnit, I guess it's time to start stacking up. I can't wait until the day I see slowcatfleet 2 form up broadcasts going out. We don't call them slowcats though, it would be some reference to stomping on things, probably.. Those who cannot adapt become victims of Evolugalbugaslugakjlwsdhvbzxd Click for old school EVE Portraits: http://jadeconstantine.web44.net/Maison.htm
Dimitryy Ever Flow Northern Coalition. 79	Posted - 2013.03.01 01:53:00 - [52] - Quote James Amril-Kesh wrote: I don't have a problem with fleets assigning drones to support ships and such. I have a problem with a single subcap being able to control hundreds of drones at the same time. Yeah, but the problem is not that one ship can control hundreds of drones, that is just another way to set up a fleet. Gila fleets are good, but not OP, rr sentry domi fleets are not OP, in fact they tend to be rather ****. A pile of drones in one place is just asking to get mauled by bombs/smartbombs, and assigning drones all to 1 target means 1 target needs to get ewared instead of 50+. I can see a little bit of a problem with slowcats bypassing carrier sensor strength, but i'd hate to see yet another broad nerf to an interesting fleet setup because of one tiny problem.
Eli Green The Arrow Project 529	Posted - 2013.03.01 02:03:00 - [53] - Quote Herzog Wolfhammer wrote: Falcon? Bhaalghorns wumbo
Siigari Kitawa Push Industries Push Interstellar Network 271	Posted - 2013.03.01 05:09:00 - [54] - Quote What's a slowcat? Need stuff moved? Push Industries will handle it. Serving highsec, lowsec and nullsec - and we do it faster and more reliably than anyone else. Ingame channel: PUSHX
Anthar Thebess REPUBLIKA ORLA C0VEN 58	Posted - 2013.03.01 08:09:00 - [55] - Quote All of you have some point. But bombing / smartbombing is not effective way - why? Like someone stated - carriers can have thousands drones on board. So when enemy starts to drop smart bomb battleships - kill them till you have drones, deploy t1 till all BS are dead, and then redeploy new group of T2. Void bombs? We are talking about Carriers and usually 2xCCC T2 and 1xCCC T1 Destroyers taking out drones? They hit up to 140km - you are not talking moving near them? Like i sad i don't want eve to be "BRING BIGGER SHIPS" - yes you can bring 150 titans and DD slowcat fleet.
Bob Nesta Marley Republic University Minmatar Republic 28	Posted - 2013.03.01 08:28:00 - [56] - Quote War Kitten wrote: Cebraio wrote: There are also counters to slowcats. - You can try to damp/jam/kill the target caller - You can use smartbombs and bombs to destroy sentries (Destroying enough T2 sentries will at least make these fleets costly and will reduce DPS while pilots redeploy and reassign.) - You can bring slowcats - ... - You can bring Titans and supers Slowcats actually require more work for the average F1 fleet member, so I don't see a problem with that aspect. Screw that adapting crap, CCP is supposed to fix it. Right OP? roll Did ting here, seen?
Thur Barbek Republic University Minmatar Republic 71	Posted - 2013.03.01 08:38:00 - [57] - Quote Anthar Thebess wrote: But bombing / smartbombing is not effective way - why? Bombing is effective. Send in 2-3 bombers at a time forcing dps drop as drones either get scooped or die. If you have 10 bombers, you can easily stagger them so 2 are hitting every 30-45s. Lets say it takes a carrier 10s to scoop and relaunch/assign drones. This means you have killed over 33% of their dps if you do a run every 30s. Also like other people have stated, drones do cost isk. Killing hundreds of them will add up pretty quickly. Throw in random void and lockbreaker bomb waves to cause confusion - carriers will still most likely pull drones out of habit.
Cebraio 4S Corporation RAZOR Alliance 256	Posted - 2013.03.01 09:36:00 - [58] - Quote Siigari Kitawa wrote: What's a slowcat? Care to read the OP and the link therein? In a nutshell.
Cavalira The Greater Goon Clockwork Pineapple 56	Posted - 2013.03.01 10:50:00 - [59] - Quote This is a horrible thread. Dropping 150 carriers worth a total of ~200b isk. It is only fair that a scrub fleet of 300 ships worth a total of 150b isk cannot beat the 200b isk fleet. The Slowcat fleet may be tough to take down, but the impact of losing a 100man carrier fleet is devastating. Slowcats are slow enough to be welped all in one big go, if not used with care.
handige harrie Hedion University Amarr Empire 43	Posted - 2013.03.01 11:18:00 - [60] - Quote Cavalira wrote: This is a horrible thread. Dropping 150 carriers worth a total of ~200b isk. It is only fair that a scrub fleet of 300 ships worth a total of 150b isk cannot beat the 200b isk fleet. The Slowcat fleet may be tough to take down, but the impact of losing a 100man carrier fleet is devastating. Slowcats are slow enough to be welped all in one big go, if not used with care. because using ISK as a manner to balance ships is the proper thing to do, imiright? Baddest poster ever

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