Fleet Efficiency Drones and Drone Bunnies

[Anakin L 0]

Hello Fleetmates! FCs! VVVs! HHHs! MTACs and all the rest!

First post for me and before I get to the topic at hand I want to say thank you to my fleetmates and FCs for making this new experience welcoming, fun and profitable!

After having flown WTM for a bit over a month :

The best "sites per hour" I've seen us do consistently is 5

The worse sites per hour I've seen us do consistently is about 3.24

In both cases with the same traditional WTM laid-back "lifestyle/playstyle" (which is a good thing) and often roughly the same fleet make-up in terms of types and numbers, if not necessarily players.

Now obviously part of the equation is site spawns and competitors, neither of which we have control over, so I started thinking, what factors slow us down or speed us up?

One answer is properly concentrating fire on tags, but that's a topic for a different post later.

Here I want to look at drones and drone bunnies in a particular circumstance.

From observation, what slows us down more than anything else clearing sites is eliminating destroyers and frigs during either room endgame or site endgame. Which makes perfect sense, since if we aren't Battleships, we're Logi. Naturally we mostly suck at hitting small targets, even with target painters helping.

Now, while it makes sense to let the bunnies and overflow bunnies handle drones during the main engagements, concentration of fire and all that, it seems to me we might do better with a different tactic with available light drones when it comes to endgame mopping up.

Consider this: Sure 50 lights will insta-pop any frig they go after.

But wouldn't it be better to pop more frigs faster once we've finished the "heavy lifting" portions of the site or room?

Basically leaving 50 light drones with a light drone bunny is overkill. One frig is dying in the same time that 4 or more could be killed.

With my decent drone skills and experience outside WTM, 5 lights will always kill pretty much any frig within 4 volleys. 5 rarely.

That means EVERY 4 WTM fleetmates who can engage with 5 drones will probably insta-pop 1 frig where, in the same time span, if those drones were left with the bunny only one frig would be down.

Now, I'm not suggesting we complicate things by making frig killer wings. Too much like work!

What I am suggesting that once it's down to frigs, FCs command that pilots retrieve their light drones from the bunnies and fire at will at the remaining frigs. Now, while sometimes this approach will lead sometimes to overkill since actual targets aren't assigned and maybe more than the optimal number of Bros may engage a frig(or dessie), let's not overwork our FCs or ourselves. I believe on average things will still work out better and faster for us all.

The FCs instead of the usual "Recall drones, recall drones, drones in" command, could easily say something like

"Recall light drones, light drones free fire" once we get down to mopping up. 

This, will increase our clear rate without disturbing our laidback style or burdening our hardworking FCs

Thoughts, comments and discussions invited now!

 

Edited November 29, 2019 by Anakin L
left out the word "experience" as in new experience

[niki lasvegas 537]

Hey Anakin Welcome to the Forums!
Im glad you are enjoying your time in Warp To Me.

Incursion Sansha is not like any other mobs you see in highsec. Triglavians included. These pesky rats are indeed more tanky than any normal rats out there.
5 light drones are actually doing very little damage to an Eystur, Renyn or a Schmael. Just gonna throw some numbers at you: im going to be generous and will say you have 100 paper DPS with your 5 light drones, which is a really high number for that. We are talking about 9000 EHP on those frigs. So even if you are not counting regeneration, travel time and damage application (which is a huge mistake xD) 5 light drones will take one and a half minutes just to kill 1 single frigate.

To be frank light drones are actually pretty useless overall in HQs plus they also die easily if they get any kind of aggro. Very ineffective. If it was me i would suggest that all the battleship should fly heavy drones exclusively in headquarters, using all the bandwidth they have. Some snowflake ships with 50 or less drone bandwidth are exceptions of course.

Now then what to do to kill frigates faster, right?
The answer is similar to how to overall upgrade site times, how to be faster, how to have better ISK/h:

Upgrade. Upgrade hulls and upgrade modules.
Learning the sites also helps. Taking roles, watching what actually happening not just brainlessly auto-piloting 

For the DDD The upgrade part is simpler. When the person has the ISK for it get into an optimal vindicator fit with 2 webs and 2 tracking enhancers (the DDD instead of drone damage amp benefits more from enhancers, so thats different from the rest of the vindis). A vindicator has the potential to tear apart any frigate super-easily even without any lightdrones.

Now mastering the DDD piloting-wise can be an actual challenge. Takes a fair amount of experience, some hours actually doing the job.
But if anyone is interested here is some help from yours truly:

By the way about sites : yesterday we had 2 hours when we had almost 6 sites each hour ( 178 mil/h + LP ) and we had 30 minutes when we reached 226 mil/h + LP which in theory would have been a bit more than 7 sites an hour  Speaking for myself i had some real fun for sure in those hours.
As you said it is highly dependable on competition and sites, but it also depends on how newbro the WTM fleet is overall which is really fluctuating. Sometimes can be a really rookie fleet  sometimes not so much. As long as everybody is trying their best that is just fine.

Edited November 29, 2019 by niki lasvegas

[Anakin L 0]

Thanks for the response and the welcome and the excellent FCing Niki.  No offense meant to any other FCs, I've had a great time with all my FCs, it's just that Niki here is the one I've flown most often with.

Yes. I kind of figures that the best day would be on my "day off" due to the Thanksgiving holiday here in the States, lol. Excellent DPS post also.

I'd be thrilled and I think most of us would also be thrilled if we could consistently manage 5 an hour! I think it's helped when we had WTM vets who were assisting the FC by using scouting alts to help the FC choose the next move, since choosing and travel time are also a factor.

Now as for upgrades, my personal strategy is set a certain amount of incursion income aside for supplies, a certain amount for skill books and a certain amount for injectors, all to improve my current boat and upgrade to a better boat. Oh ,and also a certain amount for unexpected expenses, like if it becomes necessary to pay unexpected hauling needs, including up to hiring a bowhead pilot if I ever need a boat shipped for some reason.

I HIGHLY agree upgrading whatever you're flying. For instance, my current boat used to require constant cap calls, but after investing in a few upgrades that weren't even massively blingy she rarely if ever needs a cap call, unless I'm chasing an exceptionally faster VVV.

Maybe this should be another post, one of the things I want to suggest to other DPS boats. Learn the routes the VVV is flying, because the AI in EVE flies what in the real air combat world is called "lag pursuit". Meaning either in "keep at range" mode or even "approach" it's flying to where the VVV WAS instead of where the VVV IS. If you know where he's going, you can fly intercept or "lead pursuit" and save time and cap.

Edited November 29, 2019 by Anakin L
minor typo fixes

[Farah Black 14]

[Farah Black 14]

On 11/29/2019 at 7:24 AM, niki lasvegas said:

Upgrade. Upgrade hulls and upgrade modules.
Learning the sites also helps. Taking roles, watching what actually happening not just brainlessly auto-piloting 

This this and this.