I am a person that flies ships with heavy armor tanks with plates ect. That is what I specialized in.
When i go on a roam i can never kill the speed tanked Cynabals, Dramiels, Hurricanes, Vagabonds, ect. What would be the best way for me to counter these ships alone in a heavy BC or BS sized ship or is there no way to counter it and speed tanking is just OP?
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phloater
For turret based kite ships that try to stay at range you could try using tracking disruptors. With reasonable skills a TDII with the optimal range script can take nearly 45% off the optimal+falloff of a turret boat. That will force a lot of ships to come close to overheated scram range (sometimes even inside it) or disengage.
If you have a reasonable amount of speed yourself (i.e. a MWD fitted) you can sometimes catch these ships with manual flying and changes of speed/direction. The idea is that they're going so fast that it takes them a while to slow down and change direction to avoid you and that's when you get into range. You could try coming to a stop, looking at their orbit and working out where they'll be in a few seconds' time. Then you overheat MWD and burn towards that point. To maintain range they'll need to change course sharply which means slowing down, turning then speeding up again. Depending on how far away they were to start with this might get them into overheated scram range and then you can catch them. I've had varying degrees of success with this in shield+gank thorax/brutix fits and I've had people catch me by doing it too. I don't know how well it will work if you have a lot of heavy plates on there though and I imagine well flown faction ships will still manage to dodge you.
Silas Sanyasi
[ Moderator ]
Speed tanking is not overpowered.
Having said that, one of the strengths of speed tankers is their ability to dictate range. If you can take away that advantage by fitting a weapon system that can deal damage at multiple ranges that may swing the fight in your favor. Try piloting your ship in such a way that transversal velocity is minimized, and as a result DPS maximized. Fast drones (Warriors or Valkyries) will also usually be able to deal good damage to these ships. At the very least it may force them to disengage, allowing you to reposition for a second try or run away.
To kill the fast ships however, you need some way of locking them in place while you lay the hurt on. That is where it gets tricky. Webs and scrams are an option, but unless they make a piloting error you will struggle to get in range. The same goes for neuts. Try overloading and manual piloting to catch them off guard. With some luck you might get a neut, web or scram on them and that will certainly give you the upper hand.
Ultimately though, as long as they have the speed advantage and you're unable to get tackle on, they can choose to disengage and run away if they find they are loosing the fight. A fast ship set up for kiting is just the paper to your rock I'm afraid.
It was overpowered when my vaga went 9km/s with just t1 rigs and t2 parts….wich is why i flew it. tee hee
Werner Lucifer
[ Editor ]
Down below I interpret "counter" as "kill" and not "get that irritating mosquito to leave me alone".
The problems:
Enemy dictates range
Enemy is hard to hit because of your relatively slow tracking speed and large signature resolution.
Enemy runs away if it gets threatened. It can do this because it dictates range until it doesn't and that's when it runs away.
Here are some pointers:
A BS fits a neut with long range. A neutraliser always hits within range. You get rid of cap and the target ship turns of MWD/AB and slows down.
Warp disrupt so the enemy can't flee, web it so it slows down even more.
Smart piloting minimizing angular velocity will increase chance to hit and damage done when target is hit.
Theory on how to kill a Dramiel:
A BS neut at around max range of 25-30km. A Dramiel got a max target range of 29km(?). If you have fitted some overdrives and a MWD (and a warp disruptor) on your BS you'll win the speed-competition at 1100-1400m/s to the Dramiels often around 700m/s(?). Get close, web it and warp disrupt, use drones. If you don't like drones you can always warp disrupt (29km hot) and with a MWD travel smartly to reduce angl vel to near zero producing a situation where you can fire with your guns. Or fit a Caldari Scorpion (8 mids) with some target painters (30km opt) and tracking computers to increase hit chances of hit at 20km to around 50-90% flying smartly.
As you probably figured out by now you'll have to sacrifice some slots to kill a fast ship like the Dramiel (and not just let it run away). I haven't thought much or tested the minimum recruitments and tactic needed to off one though. If you just want it to leave you alone a neut, good flying and maybe something to increase speed/ease of hitting is a good place to start.
Neuts do work very well against smaller ships but a BS neut has a cycle time of over 20 seconds IIRC which would give the dram time to recharge a bit, activate AB/MWD and GTFO in between cycles.
What Phloater said. To a certain extent you will usually be relying on pilot error from the Dramiel pilot. Long range neuts really is the most dangerous thing for them.
Ah thanks. I somehow missed that. A hot heavy/BS neut have a cycle on 20,4s. A Dramiel would be up and running in around 8 sec and gone within another few sec. Although Dramiels rarely seem to fitted with guns for ranges 20-30 km anyway. Anyway I will have to get back to the drawing board.