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Morsus Mihi
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Posted - 2008.11.01 22:09:00 -
[1]
 Originally by: Akita T
Phoenix - awesome against POS (pick the resists hole) and other dreads (no smartbombs), HORRIBLE against other caps (citadel torp low hitpoints + smartbombs = LOL no damage)
This is not entirely correct. I probably have some of the most extensive anti-capital experience in the game with a dread (even though it came in less than a week lol) as I've helped destroy about 50 enemy capitals with one. And the simple, cold truth is that in combat of this type, a phoenix is basically useless and the naglifar is half useless. In the naggy's case, it wasn't good even to start with so this makes it even worse.
Reason is simple. As noted people have said that citadels can be smartbombed. This means that in a capital engagement, it's a waste of time usually to fire them. Why? When an enemy fleet warps in, or cynos in, they are generally very close to each other. Carriers and dreads mixed together in a blob. If the carriers start smartbombing to attempt to kill enemy fighters, the chances are pretty good that any citadels launched at them won't hit the target because smartbombing carriers will take them out on the way there. Now as Ytterbium has noted:
Originally by: CCP Ytterbium
Just wanted to comment a bit on that. Citadel torpedoes hitpoints should be changed from 650 to 1920 as part of the Speed Balance and Weapon Grouping changes, so smartbombs should be less of an issue in this kind of situation.
That is all, you may resume your discussion. Nothing to see here, these are not the devs you were looking for  .
This brings me to issue No. 2, which is simple. Citadels are also useless because they have another factor that makes them usually a non-factor in this kind of combat:
They are extremely slow.
What this means is that if the engagement range is greater than about 40km, max, it's VERY difficult to do hit anything with a citadel. The reason is simple. When the engagement is started, a primary and secondary target is called (only 2 targets in siege remember) and everyone opens up on the primary. If the target is more than the distance I've said (actually if it's more than about 15-20km) he'll be down even before the first citadel arrives. As a counter to this the common tactic is to have citadel users engage the secondary, in hopes of causing damage. If they're past this range though, usually the primary and secondary are both down before a single weapon hits the target. We have at times started calling primary targets only for citadel torpedoes but due to TS spies this is problematic because it alerts them well ahead of time that they are going to be engaged, and they tend to drop siege, get remote repped, or warp off if they can - again meaning that these weapons are mostly useless.
To show you what I mean, in the battles this week, I think I fired about 90 citadel torpedoes (seems like there should be more, but lag jamming of weapons and overall lag made it far less). Checking my logs, I hit people with about 10-15 of them. 4 of those were on Shrike, who conveniently was 37km from me when I jumped in, and alone (no smartbombing carriers). All others failed to hit a target. My CEO flies a Phoenix. I asked him about his experience in the fight, he said that he felt useless as he was doing no damage. The only reason he stayed in the fight was that he has excellent gang skills and was in a leadership position and felt that he couldn't leave because of that.
When the speed of the torpedo is slower than a slow MWD BS, this is a problem. In order to restore the imbalance caused by this we badly need capital cruise launchers - less damage, smartbomb resistant, and most importantly, fast. 2 out of 3 fights this week were at 70km+, and citadels don't cut it. Pure and simple.
As for what dread to get, revelation is best, followed by moros as they don't have these problems. Just expect to be primary because of that.
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