First off a warning, now their super-weapon is active do not try this in a sub-cap when they hit TQ. Unless CCP nerf them in the next week you will die.
So over the weekend I tried to kill a Drifter battleship. With the next releases feature page up the Drifters as a faction have been revealed. They are Jove like but nobody really knows who or what they are. Options include an ancient offshoot of the Jove race or a type of Sleeper who aren't very sleepy (thanks to Migui X'hyrrn on Twitter for that description)!
Anyway after my Vindicator and Kronos were both alpha'd by their superweapon I thought I'd try a capital. So I made up a ratting Archon without really knowing how you fit a ratting Archon. I was only going after one battleship on the test server so decided anything would do.
I found the Drifter battleship at the Unidentified Wormhole on the overview as normal. These spawn in systems with Unidentified Structures and can be warped to immediately as they are a Celestial Beacon.
So over the weekend I tried to kill a Drifter battleship. With the next releases feature page up the Drifters as a faction have been revealed. They are Jove like but nobody really knows who or what they are. Options include an ancient offshoot of the Jove race or a type of Sleeper who aren't very sleepy (thanks to Migui X'hyrrn on Twitter for that description)!
I found the Drifter battleship at the Unidentified Wormhole on the overview as normal. These spawn in systems with Unidentified Structures and can be warped to immediately as they are a Celestial Beacon.
He was sat there so I launched a flight of fighters and attacked. The Drifter Battleship is fast. Even when webbed it was doing 800m/sec and soon got to its optimal of 19km. Out of range of my web it sped up to 2000 m/sec and started orbiting me.
Its speed is a problem. Fighters and heavy drones struggle to keep up. I deployed sentries and they did the trick.
They hit hard. 1000 to 5000 was the normal damage I was seeing. It may have two weapon systems as I was seeing two damage strikes together often. As I said on Monday it has a blue shield which you need to take down first. Once the blue shield is down it fires a target breaker and you need to relock. Once the regular shields are under 50%, it gets mad bro. It hit my Archon which had 80% resists for over 132,000 damage in one shot! Thats why my battleships were popping every time I fought one of these!
Once the shields are down it soon dies in a glorious green fireball. No loot? NO LOOT AFTER ALL THAT?
So in summary, and remember this is still on the test server, Sentry Archon works well. Drones and fighters have trouble keeping up with 2k second. Battleships will get popped by the superweapon!
Next I tried something different. I soon found blap dreadnoughts are not very effective. I hit with my first shot and the Drifter immediately fired its super weapon and hit me for 250,055 damage. Ouch. However for a capital thats nothing and soon repped it up. Problem was my blasters couldn't track them. They are too fast in orbiting for capital turrets to track even with two tracking computers with speed scripts. Seriously I didn't land another shot. They don't point so I went back and swapped back to the Archon.
our cruisers can't repel firepower of that magnitude!
ReplyDeleteStill wondering how to handle this in high-sec, if similar to Incursions it is lore wise necessary to clearing these things. Theory crafting, my only idea would be to use disposable ships instead of battleship class.
19km... off-grid booster plus faction webs, would that match the range?
Currently the superweapon only fires once as far as I can tell. If there are two of you and one is willing to sacrifice his BS then it can be done.
DeleteTrue Sansha Web with Legion Boosts doesn't work. I would guess Loki or Matari Command ship would push it's range just enough to work.
Bring ECM. They are not immune to ECM and if you manage to jam them, they don't shoot back (neither normal weapons nor the superweapon). Optimal Range Disruption or Targeting Range Disruption might do the trick, too (not tested, yet). Of course, ECM should only be applied once the DPS ship is already applying damage (they don't or barely switch targets). If you ever wanted a reason to bring ECM ships to PvE - now is your time!
DeleteSuper tank a Proteus, or possibly a Legion.(until the T3's are ruined courtesy of someone who has no clue of what their value should be) A squad of them backed by an off-grid command ship should handle that blast. Now, as for the logistics necessary to rep the ships back up.....that requires some thinking.
DeleteAt this point I just don't understand the purpose of such an NPC in high sec. And unless this thing has a bounty upwards of 50 million, I don't see groups or multi-boxers committing to fighting these.
But knows what lurks in the hearts of CCP dev's? Maybe they plan on hammering incursions, and replacing them with these.Maybe these ships will end up dropping loot for advanced Jove technology.
All I know is that I have a small group looking for something new to do, and this might be a good sideline.
The superweapon is a single shot targeted hit. It only affects one ship. Whatever it is attacking will die unless its a capital. Logi won't help against it. Therefore whoever has agro when it hits 50% normal shield is going to die in high-sec.
DeleteDoes the one shot blast take into account resists? I read someone posting somewhere else that the weapon ignores resists.
DeleteReally nice discover, thanks! I think so too that crowd-hunting will do the trick. I suppose this is the highend-content for PvE-ers we all waited for, but the reward side needs to be tweaked urgently..
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a ship designed to require a crowd of ships to take it down. It will take out a few of the attackers, but if you have enough space-friends, you can slow it down and kill it.
ReplyDeleteThere are many videos up of how to fight them. From anecdotal evidence, it appears to scale it's damage up according to the gank/tank of the target.
ReplyDeleteAlso, jams ftw.
Has anyone figured out what it's tracking numbers are? Could a squad of fast moving assault frigates slowly take one out?
ReplyDelete250 k, I can make a rattlesnake hit that in EHP but if that included resists OUCH, I know a couple brick tanks on BS's that can go over 300k (and infact I could probably push my rattlesnake fit, minus the fed navy Omni's, and targeting computer over that, higher if I pulled the BCU's out of the lows for power diagnostic units, but gdmn. Do we know what resist it hits (if any?) if its a single could stack hard to go beyond half a million ehp to that specific one.
ReplyDelete