The Anti Meta -- SUSU's new home defense fleet!

The Anti Meta.Destine for failure?

TLDR: SUSU has a new home defense fleet doctrine. Armageddons!

My corp fights everyone who rolls into us. Because.. why not? We don’t often do a good job of it, but we give it more level of effort than most. We either see a new hole open to us or someone opening to us puts out bait and we eventually figure it out.

Most large groups know at this point my guys MUST bite bait. No matter what. They use that to have some fun with us, and we them. It’s cool, it’s all in fun right?

Our previous engagements vs larger corps/alliances have had ‘mixed’ results, but most follow this progression.

Bait is set by visiting people, they back up that bait with whatever they feel is needed to win. So, we do our best to hide our numbers and ship types to put the advantage toward us.

We then bite bait with whatever is needed to chase the bait away and not truly commit completely. We want to know what they are bringing before fully committing to the attack ourselves. MANY groups feel the need to avoid this dance. They simply put out bait and back it with 20+T3’s and 4+ guardians. SUSU might have 5 actual humans playing the game at any given time. Most of us are multi boxing in pvp just go get our numbers up. I’m not trying to make excuses but if our guys flew 6 to 10 T3/Guardians into that, we would just get fucked and lose 6 billion isk. So we fly cheap stuff and have laughs just the same.

So what we do when faced with an obvious T3/Guardian escalation is fly things that T3s have trouble with. Kiting, snipping and range. This has worked up to a point. One of my favorite fleets is Fail Cats. Vexors fit with 3 wardens and can target/control drones past 100k. 5 of these little bad boys and we can chase most t3 gangs back into their holes. Rarely do T3/guardian gangs want to burn 100k after some T1 Vexors. We lose some, here and there, but we try to bring a fight to a group of ships that clearly out match us in every way. When we win, we don’t really get Kill mails we get a moral victory.  

We are doing our part to disrupt the “T3/guardian Meta or go home circle jerk” which is what most large wormhole groups main stay.

Short story: Cethion, Cloudhunter and I were the only guys  online one night when we came across a C5 corp connected to our static hole. We tried baiting them and found they had more stuff/people than us, so we had to run. Good times were had. Shots were fired, bait was nommed on.. GG.

Well they searched us out after our initial engagement and brought a smallish T3 fleet to our door step. Still with only a handful of pilots we wanted to bring the fight to them.

Dan Hour showed us in the past that a well fit Armageddon could be critical in some fights. So I asked cethion… “Want to do something stupid?” He said “Do you really need to ask that Spear?” I said. “Get in your Armageddon and warp to the static”.

Between Cethion(Armageddon), myself(Armageddon) and a guy in an exequrer we chased a t3 fleet with guardian support from our home hole. The neuting power on those ships combined with drone damage was enough to totally route them back to their home. We chased them of course, in our battleships because, yolo?. They eventually escalated to a carrier backing up their T3’s in their home. We then had to run back home. But it was a clear moral victory!

Moral of the story. Neuts are fucking amazing vs T3s.

Now fast forward to SUSU’s defense fleet doctrine.

Armageddons!

I put forward an email to my guys that I was requiring each and every one living in MAX to have at least one character who could fly and own an Armageddon in the hole.

A fleet of 7 or 8 Geddons.. could skull fuck nearly every T3 fleet that has ever come calling to our home, and back that up with a single Archon?! We could actually win vs the proven meta.

So let’s break this up to pro’s, cons and weaknesses, so we can make a fleet doctrine and tactical strategy that can be strong in most situations.

Pro’s – Neuts. Drones. Tank. Huge drone bay, cheaper than T3’s, easier to train for (good for the newbs)

Con’s – Slow tracking, Slow movement, Mass, Cap hungry, Easily jammed, Easily blapped by a dread. Can fit MJD.

Weakness-

1.       If our attackers come at us with a heavy Jam-Gu gang,  the defense fleet will not be able to neut out the dps coming in or the guardians repping our DPS.

2.       The attackers seeing that we have more nuets that Bob, will run, refit and return.

Good fits and tactics can overcome the weaknesses and murder our enemies.

[Armageddon, Max Defense!]  -- 153k EHP – Minor DPS -- 250 something

1600mm Reinforced Steel Plates II

1600mm Reinforced Steel Plates II

Damage Control II

Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

Reactive Armor Hardener

Beta Reactor Control: Reaction Control I

ECCM - Radar II

Heavy Electrochemical Capacitor Booster I, Navy Cap Booster 800

Heavy Electrochemical Capacitor Booster I, Navy Cap Booster 800

Heavy Electrochemical Capacitor Booster I, Navy Cap Booster 800

Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Medium Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Medium Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Large Trimark Armor Pump I

Large Trimark Armor Pump I

Large Trimark Armor Pump I

Bouncer II x5

Hammerhead II x5

So ECCM will be standard on this fit, because of the weakness of the battleship to ECM. The idea isn’t to out dps our attackers, its to shut them down. Totally neuter their ability to wage war.

You back up 8 of these ships with a single Archon, and you have yourself a shut down moral victory master!

I discussed this fleet to Lotor, our resident pvp expert,and he said “I like where you are going with it but it could be better”

Lotor suggested we could drop the Med Nuets in place of Drone Link Augmentors. Thus increasing the drone control range to 90+, dropping a cap booster for an MJD. We wouldn’t need the Reactor control, so we could drop that for a drone damage amp increasing the dps.

Looking something like this.

[Armageddon, Max Defense!]  129k EHP 581 dps.

1600mm Reinforced Steel Plates II

1600mm Reinforced Steel Plates II

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

Damage Control II

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Reactive Armor Hardener

ECCM - Radar II

Heavy Electrochemical Capacitor Booster I, Navy Cap Booster 800

Heavy Electrochemical Capacitor Booster I, Navy Cap Booster 800

Large Micro Jump Drive

Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Drone Link Augmentor II

Drone Link Augmentor II

Large Trimark Armor Pump I

Large Trimark Armor Pump I

Large Trimark Armor Pump I

Bouncer II x5

Hammerhead II x5

We have two different tactics. Lotors tactic would be a warp in of 100k from the target hole. Drop drones. Open fire. The enemy fleet would need to burn off the hole to engage us. Once they get about 40k from us, we MJD to their wormhole, jump through and put mass on it. Thus shutting off their ability to run away or bring in more pilots. We then jump back, reconnect to our sentries.. and split their fleet between killing our sentries.. or dealing with nuets.

If they didn’t burn off the hole to charge face first into a geddon gang, we would still do this, but put mass on their hole just the same. Abandoning the drones on the Max side, fighting point blank with Hammer head II’s. When shit got real and we had to return, we could simply jump back into Max. And MJD to freedom OR reconnect to our sentries and continue the fight in MAX.

This removes the vulnerability of sentries being destroyed (they are 100k off the hole) but still providing fire support from a distance.

I had a different way of doing things.

We could drop a MJD deployable and MJD the fleet and Archon from the 100K mark to the wormhole, put huge mass on it. Then bring in a bubbler to seal the doomed T3/Guardian gangs fate. I also just want to MJD an Archon !

Well all theory crafting aside, my guys have brought in the necessary ships. We can work on the fleet details later… Fight first think about it after..  The SUSU way!