The middle ground would be to use two cruiser armor logi instead.
Certain characters in my fleet tend to draw aggro at a higher percentage than the rest. With nestors I can use one nestor to put one rep each on those characters so I have time to respond. A lot of the time I pre-set reps and then focus exclusively on the dps side of things. That's why in some of my videos a domi will get somewhat low in armor. That's when aggro shifted unexpectedly while I'm concentrating on dps related stuff. The nestors allow me to be far more aggressive on the dps side of things. Which means lower site times
Assigning the nestor's heavy drones to one of the vindi pilot has also helped to increase overall dps. I'm now spiking at over 3k dps in OTAs. Last night I had an OTA tick of under 6 minutes 30 seconds. Since I am still experimenting with controlling the setup my site times have been swinging all over. The vindis are fully capable of taking out frigates individually in NCOs. I just need to get the splitting of dps done better. It's harder then I expected to keep from accidentally killing one of the vindi targets with the primary fleet DPS.
Vonbaron Ordo
Kinete Jenius
Wanna earn your customer's respect? Go to bat for them. Defend them and what they do. Don't roll over on command, and don't punish them for being human beings. And no, this ain't aimed at CCP.
Keep pretending you care about EVE ISBoxers and not just their money, Lax.
Come hang out with us in the channel "Isboxers Lounge" and discuss fittings, doctrines, or just shoot the breeze. Unlike the forums, we won't ban you for what you say. IGN: "AayJay Crendraven" and "Nolak Ataru".
Got some good testing in today and I've decided to fail the two vindis.
Pros
More dps spread in NCOs allows for quicker completion (each vindi can handle a frigate well).
I can assign heavy drones from the nestors to the vindi allowing for effectively a second drone bunny.
More overall dps on Deltole in OTA.
When I got it working right overall dps was higher but only slightly faster times.
Cons
Awful range means I was wasting a lot of ammo at times
Aggro has been absolutely stupid. Every single OTA I did with the vindicators the NIarjas would instantly switch to the loki regardless of the entry order or if they were already being shot. For the first time ever I was perma jammed at the start for the first wave in four OTAs in a row. That's with a loki that has 32 sig strength with two of those starts only being 2 niarjas. I had similiar issues last night with jams and niarjas changing targets. Soon as I switched back to domis the niarjas acted like normal and were no problem.
Micromanagement requirements means that I end up doing less dps at some points.
DPS is nerfed because of a warp speed rig requirement to keep up with my fleet. Without the t2 warp speed rig my fleet is noticeably slower arriving on sites.
Overall it's too much effort for too little return.
Vonbaron Ordo
Kinete Jenius
thats exactly what i mean, when you have more stuff to worry about your dps will be lower than what it looked like on paper due to not being able to manage everything
my fleet costs in total about 3.5B, the fleet ToS uses would cost ~6B (just an estimate) for the hulls only.
EDIT: but obviously, armor is better than shields in this situation
Last edited by iThirdAge Solette : 06-24-2015 at 08:05 AM
There was a noticeable improvement in dps in NCOs. If the niarjas weren't behaving so differently there would be a noticeable overall increase in OTA dps. The few times I was able to get past the first wave without being jammed to hell my OTA ticks were under 6 min 30 seconds. Probably because my fleet dps was spiking higher on deltoles. NMCs didn't see any real improvement as I'm killing almost all the stuff outside the range of the blasters.
Null ammo might of helped the situation but I found the frustrations of the radically different behavior of the niarja AI in OTAs to cause the whole thing to be not worth it.
Median prices
Astarte booster 470m
venture ore 6.9m Prospect is 29.5m
Loki DDD 772m
domi 291m x7
nestor 2.150b x2 I use heavy hull/armor II bots and gardes x10
Total cost today without looking for deals for less then 7.6b
Now over the years of me doing this I've only lost one nestor and that's despite gank attempts and server disconnects. The one nestor I lost was last year and it was because I was training newbros and I was super tired. I was about to call the fleet but I decided "oh just one more site" and I warped the nestor to the wrong site.
Last edited by Tool of Society : 06-24-2015 at 04:27 PM
Vonbaron Ordo
Kinete Jenius
So you are simply overkilling and not worrying about the 4 second hard floor on sentries? Im considering using a slightly different fit for a good chunk of gecko and acolyte domis to even up the mix. I figured that if I had one vindy with heavies and acos assigned I would realize better consistency. I also figured that I would default to null for that very reason. What I wonder is, would having the 11th person on grid in hisec be that bad or would it allow for more dps and faster sites (assuming: 1xloki with 5x sentry domi, 2x nestor (assigned to vindicator) 1x vindicator, 2x gecko/aco domis?
Yeah I'm back to overkilling right now.
I'm thinking of training one vindi into t2 guns. It'll be 16 days to do so. I was running praetors on the nestors and assigning them to the vindi. The vindi itself was using 5 garde IIs that I assigned to the loki because manually controlling the drones was tedious.
With null I could see a setup where I assign heavies from the nestors and some geckos/acos from one or two domis to a vindi. I liked the two vindis for NCOs because each of them were easily able to handle an eystur solo so I burned through the last wave quickly. The web range limit and the limited gun range were not a factor there and I noticed quicker NCO times as a result.
Since I use an ore runner I have 11 characters on grid for NMC turn ins. It's a slight increase in overall pay. I've been thinking of an ore dropper that can also contribute dps while having a good enough tank. That theory crafting was put off as I figured out other aspects of the fleet.
Vonbaron Ordo
Kinete Jenius
i was actually considering switching a domi for a vindi, not sure how its going to perform since i dont use off grid booster. any opinions?
im just not sure since the vindi would be used, in part, for its webs. since i wont have the web boosting i would only have aout 14km, so im just not sure...
even in the OTA's, on wich the vindi would purely focus on the deltolte, im not sure if it would work
I found that even with the warfare link and with fed stasis webs that I had range issues on the vindi webs. My booster pilot is perfect with all leadership at V (even fleet command and command ships are V). She has the federation navy implant for armored and skirmish links and the astarte has bonuses for both. So my interdiction maneuvers link is giving the max bonus possible.
My initial value of 6b isk was when I originally bought everything for the fleet. My second figure I posted in here is for what the absolute max you would pay if you didn't bother waiting or looking for deals at other trade hubs.
Vonbaron Ordo
Kinete Jenius
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