Sadly real life issues have mostly kept me out of the game the last few days, but from my brief logins, it was clear that the Gallente had figured out some clever way to lose track of the NPC Caldari Navy ships, allowing them (the Gallente scum) to dwawdle about in Caldari hisec, popping our militia guys without taking fire of any kind from the Navy. I was not at first too curious about the tactics involved, assuming they’d figured out some unanticipated exploit or loophole that CCP would quickly close. When that did not happen and signs began pointing to CCP condoning the tactics in use, I began paying close attention to the relevant forum posts. Here’s one from Le Skunk that comes at the core Navy vulnerability from several angles and seems ripe with suggestiveness with regard to further research; I’m reprinting it here so that fellow FW people who are not forum warriors can get up to speed on tactical experimentation, even before I get a chance to experiment myself:
*1* THE CHEESE – TESTED in a 0.7 Amarr System on Singularity
1) Jumped in a macherial – undocked from station and hit the mwd
2) If you get to far ahead – they despawn and respawn next to you
3) The fastest ship they had was doing 2.5km/s (the little frigate)
4)so i adjusted my speed to keep the frigate (who i could tank) at about 30km behind me – I steadily increased the distance from the 2 BS spawn to 350km (the cruiser was at about 200km)
Then I stopped my ship – and tanked the frig. The BS headed towards me at about 500m/s. The cruiser at 1200m/s.
ArrowThe point here is the main damage dealers slowboating 350 km towards me. I assume this process (if done in reverse) would enable you to camp the station for around 10 mins before the BS started shooting at you.
IT seems as long as one member of the spawn (the frigate in this case) is close to you – the ENTIRE spawn will not tactical warp.
*2* THE JAM – TESTED ON TRANQUILITY IN 0.7 AMARR SYSTEM
I simply jumped into the system, with an alt in a falcon 200km off the gate.
The alt was not in the militia – so did not warrant his own spawn.
The alt had all amarr racial jams on – and had a good 80% jam rate on the 4 enemy spawned. This meant my main could comfortably tank the enemy. If you keep the BS jammed thats the majority of the damage dealt with.
A couple of non militia noobs in blackbirds could easily keep one guy permasafe from the enemy.
If i knew damage types and all that carebear crap, I could probably have fit a specific tank. A HAC with racial resists should have very little problem.
If you combine this with some remote repping for jam failures, perhaps a damp or two on the actual camping ships, etc you should be able to replicate the ops complaint.
*3* THE DWONES – TESTED ON SINGULARITY IN 0.7 AMARR SYSTEM
I decided to engage the enemy, dropped drones, then mwd’d off as i was taking heavy fire. The enemy did some sort of drone gimp on me – because suddenly the drones dropped dead.
The amarr navy followed me for a bit -then when i got out of range (which would normally trigger a respwan) instead, they went back to where the drones were (they did not tactical warp – they flew) and started popping my drones. This took them a bit of time and gave me a good 2 mins sat still with nobody shooting me (time to camp the station) before they popped the drones then respawned.
*4* THE STATION DEATH – TESTED ON SINGULARITY IN 0.7 AMARR SYSTEM
Farting around trying to find the minimum distance the navy will tactical warp (seems to be about 90km?) I got blown up 190km outside a station.
So i docked, got into a new ship, undocked. And the same spawn where there at 190km. They locked me and started to approach, but did not tactical warp.
I couldnt replicate this however.
So there we go, perhaps some of the above was used in the jita camp. Perhaps many of these were used combined.
Thanks, Le Skunk!
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