What is the most powerful force in wormholes? Knowledge, hide it well. Not saying where your static comes out, watching for people trailing you back to your home, scanning your system down every single day, and being generally aware of your surroundings at all times, are all keys to surviving for you, your corp, and your POS. Pilot situational awareness saves the lives of you and your corpmates.
There are really three kinds of invaders, one of which you CANNOT defend from. First, you have small corps or small alliances, which can muster a standard fleet of 10-20 BSes. These you can defeat with a single large POS, if you have it moduled out correctly.
The second is the LOLZ Fleet. They are there just to shoot stuff up and leave, hoping to get you out for some killmails. These are easy to deal with, if you follow the next points, these will not and cannot attack you.
Third are the giant Worldwide Russian Wrestling Federation fleets. You cannot defend from these. If they want your hole, they will take it. No one can stop them, they have the numbers to steamroll any and all defenses. All you can do is make it take a little longer. No amount of guns, ECM, or hardeners will stay them. This is when you do your intel, gather your most valuable stuff together, and get out of dodge with it in whatever can cloak.
So let's talk about POS Defenses! So I'm a corp looking for a wormhole to take from someone. What am I looking for in a system that makes it attractive to invasion?
Number one on the list is a POS that isn't large. With POS prices so far down from where they were when I started in the great black, there's really very little excuse to not have one. Wether you're a one man show, or an industrial only corp, a large is the first thing that will make people disregard you as a target.
And worse than that is faction smalls and mediums. These are nothing but hoeny drawing the bear in. Even my small corp will take these on. I'm not much on killmails, but this is hard isk you're looking to get destroyed here. They are nothing but isk pinatas.
About the only time you could use a small or medium POS is on some sort of excursion to clean out a stocked system, a place to hide and be safe. The POS has to be treated as a throwaway, because that's what will likely happen if someone finds it.
Number two is arming your POS. Nothing says "Come and get it!" like a POS armed with two smaller lasers, one warp scrambler, and a stasis webber. Half the game of deterrence in wormholes is psychology. Making the other person think you are far more powerful than you are. I have EIGHTY FIVE anchored and online guns on our POS. My defense force is going to be able to keep shooting, as the enemy takes out one gun, another is onlined.
Also don't leave your guns offline to "save fuel". An enemy force shows up and half your guns are offline, guess what? Those guns probably won't participate in the fight. MAX your power out with online guns. Offline ones only make you juicier as a target. Unless you have 40 more, and that scares the poo, to quote another blogger, out of them. Hit DSCAN in our wormhole with your active settings off and most likely your jaw will drop.
Everyone has their own theories about gun placement, and what kinds. The main thing that matters is to cover all fields of attack. Guns should be placed on all sides of your POS so that there is no "safe spot" in your defenses. Plan for your POS gunners to use guns on the opposite sides of the POS to shoot attackers in the gun's optimal. Space your guns out in groups so they can't all be smartbombed at once. Place ECM, warp disruptors, stasis webbers, and different size guns on all avenues of attack so that when the attackers concentrate on one side of the POS, they do not kill all of one type of your defenses. For example, killing all your warp disruptors so any ship can warp out if they get severely damaged.
Gun types is mostly a personal choice, exempting all missile launcher modules, since most people know to not use them since they shut off when the POS goes into reinforced. I use mostly lasers, with a number of small autocannons and artillery mixed in for tracking and range differences. Making sure the attackers cannot sit at a certain range and be safe from most of your weaponry is pretty key. As the recent siege of my C3 POS, once they get someone in your system, they can actually go to the test server and try out different attack options.
You're going to need a mix of mostly medium and small guns, since most of your attackers are going to fly BSes, or sub-BS size ships. I have read, and only read, mind you, that large guns are made for shooting capital ships, so very few of these, if any, is needed. I have a few due to my being able to man a large number of POS guns, and a webbed BS is probably a good target for a large.
Next up is ECM. The amount of ECM you should have onlined is definitely determined by how many people you have that can defend the POS. More ECM for less people. ECM can really ruin someone's day on it's own, but it will, at best, prolong the attackers time spent shooting at your modules before they move on to your shield. Dickstars are wonderful deterrents to the LOLZ squads out there, as it makes it no longer fun for them to siege your POS. The other two groups will care less, and will persevere through the loss of lock to down your station. ECM in a balanced setup can serve a POS gunner well in getting to pick the higher DPS targets, or those that are easy to jam, and make sure they are being jammed repeatadly. On to shield hardeners.
If your POS doesn't have shield hardeners anchored, you're a target. This is one of the key things people look for when gauging how hard a POS takedown is going to be. Having a set of hardeners that takes your shields to at least 50% in everything is vital to adding time to the takedown, giving your corp or your alliance more time to get there to save the day.
Going to cut it short here, got alot oging on atm, more on that in a later blog. o/
No comments:
Post a Comment