Alliance Tournament 10 wrap-up time continues with a series of at least four more posts. The first one was one that I was writing when I got a serendipitous comment from
lifeofzenith, who wrote:
I would really like your thoughts on the HUN setup. It has performed so solidly till the last match that it is nothing short of a miracle in my eyes.
A lot of people dismiss it because... - well because they lost at the last match but I really think their setup and dedication behind it would be worth a lenghtier blogpost, don't you agree?
I certainly do. ;-) So, what about that
Hun Reloaded comp. How did it work? Why did it work?
At the risk of annoying a certain someone out there, before the matches started, I got into a... cough... "discussion" with this person about whether frigates are viable platforms for anti-electronic warfare support of main tourney ships. I argued yes. This person argued no: the frigates would die too fast and not be useful, this person argued. Using frigates was a stupid thing to do, this person assured me. But virtually every tournament team, including ours and definitely including Hun Reloaded, went ahead and did it anyway.
(1) Frigates are absolutely viable AT support ships, in particular beefy frigs like Merlins and Punishers. Hun Reloaded used
Merlins:
[Merlin, Mistress Ice's Merlin]
Warded Gravimetric Backup Cluster I
Warded Gravimetric Backup Cluster I
Warded Gravimetric Backup Cluster I
Medium Shield Extender II
1MN Afterburner II
Phased Muon ECCM Caster I
Remote Sensor Booster II, Targeting Range Script
75mm Gatling Rail II, Javelin S
75mm Gatling Rail II, Javelin S
75mm Gatling Rail II, Javelin S
Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Small Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I
That's the dumbest fitting in the world in a TQ fleet battle, but in the AT, it's a lovely support ship. It can defend itself against drones (though I would have put an Anti-Explosive reinforcer on to protect more against Warrior IIs) while it plies its main trade: making sure the main DPS and the logi can operate. In this case, it's supporting friendly Vargurs with ECCM and both logi and Vargurs against damps with that Remote Sebo. Your chance of jamming that support ship is pretty small (its native sensor strength is 29.4), and all it has to do is stay 68km away (its lock range) from threats. Easy enough for a good pilot.
That projected ECCM, plus an overheated mid-slot ECCM on the Vargur itself, will push the Vargur up to 50+ sensor strength. That will make jamming it damned hard. More about the Vargurs in a second. Hun brought three of these Merlins with their comp, one for each Vargur. To that, they added three assault frigs (AFs were a damned good buy for the points this year) for behind-enemy-lines DPS. Hun chose
Hawks, which I really liked this year and I don't think were used enough. The Hawks were supported by a
Stiletto to provide initial tackle.
Say you've got an EAF behind enemy lines. These four ships dive in. The Stiletto provides the initial scram, then the Hawks roll in and finish it. The Hawks, interestingly, also had a ECM Burst module each. I'm kind of curious what the theory behind this module was but I can think of one use right off: diving into groups of enemy Sentry drones and bursting them. A drone subjected to this treatment will go idle and if the enemy pilot isn't paying attention, he might well not notice and not retask that DPS. The burst also probably protected the Hawks against Warriors and Hornet ECs. It's an interesting tactic!
Anyway, that's half the team: three Merlins, three Hawks, Stiletto. They're the support. Front-line DPS is provided by three Vargurs. Again, more on them in a second. The final two ships were a Scimitar and a Tengu.
The
Scimitar was a little piece of tin-foil wrapped around an X-Large Ancillary Shield Booster and four large shield reppers. With its Invulnerability Field and ASB overheated, that would allow the Scimi to tank about 1500 DPS. Each Vargur was carrying three Heavy Shield Maintenance Bots. Each of them adds 67 DPS to the Scimi's tank, for another 600 DPS if all nine were used. The Scimi was AB fit, which gave it an 87m signature... freakin' tiny! So, you can attack this team's Vargurs or you can attack their Scimi, but if you do the latter, you're probably going to do about 1/3 of your base DPS. Each pulse of the ASB restored about 20% shields to this Scimi. So you're going to be shooting at the Scimi for a long time while you're under the guns of those Vargurs. Not tempting!
So I think this is going to be the go-to Scimitar fit for AT11:
[Scimitar, Pr3t0r's Scimitar]
Beta Reactor Control: Reaction Control I
Reactor Control Unit II
Reactor Control Unit II
Reactor Control Unit II
Large Azeotropic Ward Salubrity I
10MN Afterburner II
Medium Electrochemical Capacitor Booster I, Navy Cap Booster 400
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
X-Large Ancillary Shield Booster, Navy Cap Booster 400
Large 'Atonement' Ward Projector
Large S95a Partial Shield Transporter
Large S95a Partial Shield Transporter
Large S95a Partial Shield Transporter
Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Shield Maintenance Bot II x4
Light Shield Maintenance Bot II x1
It requires a 5% grid implant and probably, pretty significant support from those Merlins if someone tries to jam or damp it. So it's not a fit you can fly unless you build part of your team around it.
There's nothing particularly impressive about the
Tengu fit Hun used. It's just supplemental DPS running a tech2 Shield Harmonizing link. In terms of tanking, it was the weak link in the bunch, with a 234m signature and an 1800 DPS tank under Scimi reps. All nine Shield bots on the Tengu would have added another 675 DPS. So it was probably the easiest ship in the group to break, but the one that would have had the easiest time maintaining range, too. Those HMLs can shoot at about 115km. So good luck trying for it.
That leaves the
Vargur fit.
[Vargur, T0mcs1 Hung4ry's Vargur]
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Damage Control II
Tracking Enhancer II
Reactor Control Unit II
Prototype 100MN MicroWarpdrive I
Heavy Electrochemical Capacitor Booster I, Navy Cap Booster 800
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Conjunctive Ladar ECCM Scanning Array I
X-Large Ancillary Shield Booster, Navy Cap Booster 400
Dual 650mm Repeating Artillery II, Republic Fleet EMP L
Dual 650mm Repeating Artillery II, Republic Fleet EMP L
Dual 650mm Repeating Artillery II, Republic Fleet EMP L
Dual 650mm Repeating Artillery II, Republic Fleet EMP L
Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I
Medium Unstable Power Fluctuator I
Large Rudimentary Concussion Bomb I
Large Ancillary Current Router I
Large Projectile Collision Accelerator I
Heavy Shield Maintenance Bot I x3
In terms of the actual fit, it's actually the most standard and least imaginative of the bunch. Still, the Vargurs are fearsome enough. Fight them up close and you have to deal with three large smart-bombs, three each of medium and heavy neuts, and 825 DPS before overheating each. Fight them far away and they can still do 650 DPS or so out to about 65km with great tracking. Still, 2500 DPS from the Vargurs plus about another 600 from the Tengu plus some supplemental Hawk DPS... there are comps out there that did a lot more DPS than that.
The impressive thing about these Vargurs were the tanks. Oi.
What you have going for you there are the Vargur's native bonus, the ASB, two hardeners you can overheat, three shield bots each, plus the Scimi reps and the Scimi's rep bots. Each pulse of the ASB restored about 15% of the Vargur's shields. That gave
each of these three Vargurs a tank of 4400 DPS.
4400.
Put another way: the Hun Reloaded native tank was bigger than the Hun Reloaded native DPS.
Minimum resist on those Vargurs was 75%, so one way of trying to break the tank was to deal with those hardeners. But each Vargur was carrying a Heavy Cap Booster to protect against just that. The damn thing probably allowed the Vargurs two cycles of the ASB once out of charges instead of one, too. The Vargurs have a surprising amount of native capacitor for a Minmatar ship.
(2)
So, all in all, a pretty impressive comp: Vargur x3, Tengu, Scimi, Hawk x3, Stiletto, Merlin x3. 12 ships costing 100 points.
Why didn't
Pandemic Legion beat it? In my opinion, two reasons. First, they spent a lot of time going for the enemy Scimitar when the Scimi wasn't the linch-pin: the Tengu was. But of course they couldn't hit the Tengu. So they tried firing torpedoes at a ship with an 87m signature. That's an exercise in pain. Jamming the Scimi was unlikely. The Hun Merlins were probably well outside optimal jam range (and the jam attempts on them were probably coming from Griffins), so I doubt they were jammed. So with two ECCM casters on it, the Scimi had a 76 sensor strength. As I've already mentioned, the Vargurs with one ECCM caster as needed had a 50 sensor strength.
Second reason? Just bad luck on PL's part. Once you sit in an ECM comp, you're rolling the dice. I think PL just got some bad dice rolls. Run the match again and it very well might have come out differently.
Why was Verge of Collapse successful against it? Also two reasons: lots and lots and lots of DPS was one. The other, ironically, was the same reason they were able to beat us: double Sentinels, plus enemy battleships attacking friendly battle cruisers. The Hun team was not able to apply its full DPS. The VoC Sleipnirs and Cyclone were able to stay within a few hundred meters of the Hun battleships, wear them down, get them into their reload cycle, and then finish them off. It takes VoC a full 2:20 to kill each Vargur. That's how long each Vargur can overheat that tank.
Patience is a virtue. Once again, the VoC Sentinels were the MVPs as far as I'm concerned.
EDIT (24/Jul/2012): One more thing. It's easy to argue that "Hun
did change up their comp! After all, they brought two Vargurs, they brought a Loki, they changed mid slots, they changed things up every time!" and sure, that's true. But the hard iron core of the comp was the 4400 DPS tank on the Vargurs, plus the reps and Tengu. Really, everything else was an attachment to that.
So, that's it. Sorry for the length, but hopefully this information is useful!
(1) Note: if I think you're only 20% wrong, I'll argue with you. If I think you're 100% wrong, I'll ignore you.
(2) Still, it would have been entertaining to see what this comp could do with a Large Energy Transfer on each Vargur instead of the medium neuts. Two LETs from the non-primaries to the Vargur under attack would have allowed it to run that ASB without charges a lot longer, and it fits easily.