Old logi pilot wondering what’s up with the Basi?

[T'vaar Dekdarion 12]

Hi all,

Just checking in after a long, long break and I see the optimal Basilisk has changed a bunch, and so I’m wondering what led to those changes, whether it’s a CCP change to incursions or a fleet philosophy change or what.

I used to fly an optimal Basilisk with a ReSebo, signal amplifier (12 locks and faster), and 35k EHP.  It looks like there’s now no cap chain and the new Basis are cap stable (almost) but at the cost of the ReSebo, SigAmp, and half the tank.  Curious why the doctrine change and how the new philosophy works.

I’m not actually back yet, but it’d be good to fly again.

Separately, it’s nice to see the Osprey got a little love.
https://forums.warptome.net/topic/1887-nikis-capsprey-guide-for-hq-sites/
https://forums.warptome.net/topic/203-entry-level-logi-logistics-skill-is-zero/

Hoping things are going well in Incursionland,
-T’vaar

[Hamxus 3]

Hello, welcome back.
Most likely a change to just make it easier to manage, the commanders that have been around for longer than me might have a better answer for this, but still, the basis that do end up getting aggro survive just fine in nrf and tpph with those fits, also being stable means that you have 2 combat caps per basi, instead of just 1 and having to use the other one to feed the chain. With the new marauder meta, even if logi reps more than they should, they still don't get the aggro if the fleet is going as it should. But i ido see your point about the amount of locks and the resebo, but it doesn't really means much because you're locking almost 100% of the time either booster or battleships with a giant sig radius, resulting in an almost instant lock.

[Tani Makia 169]

Recebos got moved over to the Command Ships. Making the basi cap stable means we need less of them and removing the cap chain removes a frequent fail point in fleet. And with marauders the basi just flat out isn't taking significant aggro.

[Skeltek 2]

Hello T'vaar

mostly what Hamxus said. Though I can just presume the sane choice back then would had been 3/3 Basis to double cap while only sacrificing 1/4 shield rep.
Having 10 locks on Basi is sufficient imho and lock speed on BS is really fast anyway like 2 seconds I think.

I essentially did nearly the same fitting WTM is using shortly after Logis were indroduced to game to make it autonomous and less susceptible to failure. It was nice to see to find same setup here when I joined.

And welcome back.

Edited August 8 by Skeltek

[T'vaar Dekdarion 12]

Thanks all for explaining.  I understand better now.

Yeah, there didn’t used to be marauders, really.  Bastion modules were prohibited.  And we used to have a cap chain, and we used to accept Basilisk pilots with Logistics skill 4 (who needed two incoming cap transfers for stability), so I can see those changes calling for doctrine shift.

Battleships do lock up pretty fast, agreed.  The SigAmp and ReSebo were more for crisis situations where we had to save a Scimitar or something.  The 12 locks and fast lock time were more of a luxury for crisis management than for normal, smooth fleet operation.  Having lots of pre-locks is nice.  Also tended to get jammed less often.

I remember when ReSebos switched to the command ships.  Basi pilots who had them could then just turn them on their cap buddies for those faster locks and jam prevention.  

On 3/3 Basis, I think command core might have flown those on rare occasions but not generally.  With the cap chain, each (Logi 5) Basi had one combat cap instead of the 2 you get now.  I imagine you now run fleets with a higher Scimi/Basi ratio than we used to have, so the net fleet change might be that in exchange for thinning the Basi tank in favor of cap stability, you can get adequate combat caps in fleet with fewer Basilisk hulls and can therefore field more Scimitars with tracking links and thereby run faster.

I don’t know if it ends up working that way in practice, but I can see that being the theory, and it’s consistent with Tani’s post (thanks!).  What does today’s fleet comp tend to look like?

 

[MDD Teller 30]

7 minutes ago, T'vaar Dekdarion said:

What does today’s fleet comp tend to look like?

 

1 Claymore (primary command booster)
0-1 Claymore or Vulture (secondary command booster)
1-4 Basilisks (ideally 2)
0-5 Scimitars (ideally 2)
0-3 Lokis (ideally 2 with Savior implants)
some Vindicators (ideally 2-3, but sometimes we have zero and sometimes we have ten)
a bunch of Marauders (Kronos, Paladin, and Vargur)
a few starter and intermediate battleships, depending on how many newbro pilots we have
0-2 Golems (if we have die hard missile pilots)
If we have any armor doctrine ships:
1 Damnation/Eos/Astarte (with armor command boosts)
1-2 Nestors

[T'vaar Dekdarion 12]

Wow.  Thanks.  Yep, that's a pretty radical change from before.  Looks like marauders have pretty much entirely replaced Vindicators for preferred DPS, and total logi count is less.

Used to be like 9 logi (3 combat caps plus scimitars), 10 snipers, and Vindicators for the rest.

https://forums.warptome.net/topic/344-ideal-fleet-composition/?tab=comments#comment-2338

 

[Skeltek 2]

13 hours ago, T'vaar Dekdarion said:

Looks like marauders have pretty much entirely replaced Vindicators for preferred DPS, and total logi count is less.

If CCP didn't temporarily lower bastion duration to 30 seconds, people would still be reluctant and protest of using them in Incursion.
Only the duration reduction probably made it ollerable to actually try, but now they still keep them, despite the duration having been increased back to 60 seconds.

But it's like that... if the gap of change is too big, people will outright refuse to change their conduct, no matter what you do.
Kind of funny they did not revert to Vindicators when CCP turned the duration back to 60 seconds ^^

But luckily there are ways to compensate, should CCP ever decide to increase the timer to 2 minutes

[T'vaar Dekdarion 12]

6 hours ago, Skeltek said:

If CCP didn't temporarily lower bastion duration to 30 seconds, people would still be reluctant and protest of using them in Incursion.

Ahhhhh - thank you for explaining that!  I remembered the bastion duration being the barrier before, but when I went to look at the change I was surprised to see it's the same now as it was then. 

[Skeltek 2]

31 minutes ago, T'vaar Dekdarion said:

Ahhhhh - thank you for explaining that!  I remembered the bastion duration being the barrier before, but when I went to look at the change I was surprised to see it's the same now as it was then. 

You're welcome. Though I may be wrong though. Someone on Command Core just told me Marauders did not have double fire rate before the timer got lowered to 30 seconds, but they always had only 4 guns.
So according to him, the reason for not using Marauders was they used to deal significantly less damage than a regular battleship. That is not how I personally remember it, but I don't want to lean too far out the window, since I only restarted playing EVE like 2 years ago after a break of nearly a decade.

[T'vaar Dekdarion 12]

1 hour ago, Skeltek said:

Marauders did not have double fire rate before the timer got lowered to 30 seconds, but they always had only 4 guns.

Good catch.  I consulted an old version of Pyfa and bastions did not have the doubled rate of fire originally.  I think the 4x launchers at 2x damage each put marauders roughly on par with regular battleships otherwise.

[niki lasvegas 537]

The reason why the marauder became incursion meta is the oldest reason out there (same why the Vindi and Leshak were meta too) : In HS it does the most dps. The change happened somewhere early 2021 i believe. They just simply gave marauder's bastion module double rate of fire without stacking with anything, so practically doubling the DPS. Some other changes happened too and since then a few times, but those are not the reason of marauders being the incursion meta.

[T'vaar Dekdarion 12]

7 hours ago, niki lasvegas said:

The reason why the marauder became incursion meta is the oldest reason out there (same why the Vindi and Leshak were meta too) : In HS it does the most dps. The change happened somewhere early 2021 i believe. They just simply gave marauder's bastion module double rate of fire without stacking with anything, so practically doubling the DPS. Some other changes happened too and since then a few times, but those are not the reason of marauders being the incursion meta.

Yep, I can believe it.  The extra damage would do it, and the period when the bastion mod duration was 30 seconds would make it extra enticing.  And with all the bastioned marauders self-repping, I can see why fewer logi would be needed, too.