Because I spent the last couple of weeks exploring in high and low sec, I got a little tired of scanning and decided to try another more PVP focused activity. During that time last month’s Rogue Swarm Alert event was in full swing.  I had heard before, that this event has some good opportunities to not only make ISK, but also get into fights against other players.

Suspect Mechanics

The idea to get into a fight in a rogue swarm sites is to acquire a suspect flag and provoke another player to attack you in his PVE fit.  Once he aggresses you, you can legally shoot back and kill him in your PVP fit. This tactics is also commonly known as suspect baiting and is also often applied on mission runners.

The suspect timer is part of the crimewatch mechanics which defines the rules of engagement in high and low security space. The crimewatch rules are rather complicated and I only want to explain the part that is used for suspect baiting.

The main mechanics used for baiting in high sec is to acquire this said Suspect Timer. Within this timer, any player can shoot you without Concord interfering the fight. As soon as a player engages another player with a suspect timer, the suspect player can fight back without a reaction from Concord.

Once a player attacks another suspect player a five minute Limited Engagement Timer is started. As long as this timer is active, both player can fight each other even if the suspect timer runs out. As long as the fight continues, the engagement timer automatically resets with each attack. Only if both sides disengage, the engagement timer will start to run down.

But how to become a suspect? The easiest way is to steal from a NPC wreck that is owned by another player. These usually show up as yellow wrecks on the overview, opposed to the grey wrecks that are owned by yourself. Stealing any item from a wreck will start a 15 minute suspect timer on the offending player.

Another way is to repair another ship with a logistics ship in high sec. Whenever a ship starts to repair any player (suspect or not) the ship’s pilot will become suspect for 15 minutes. This timer only will count down when the logi player stops repping.

This are the two main mechanics that I used to get into fights in drone event sites. Next I will explain the layout and rewards of the sites and how to get into a engagement with another player.

The Rogue Swarm Alert Site

The rogue drone event sites simply show up on your overview in all high sec system and you do not need to scan them down in order to warp to the site. These sites respawn every couple of minutes and there are usually plenty of them available.

The design of all sites is the same and very simple. It consists of one single room without any acceleration gates. The room contains one hackable container in the middle and will spawn several waves of rogue drone NPCs to protect it. The NPCs are rather weak and you should be able to deal with them in any PVE fitted destroyer or cruiser.

To get to the sites rewards, you need to hack the container with a Data Analyzer. The hacking mini-game is rather difficult for high sec standards and is more like a typical low sec data site. Once you hack it, a rogue drone battleship appears which will drop the event loot once killed. The battleship is a little tougher than the previous NPCs, but with a well fitted cruiser it shouldn’t be a problem. The battleship can drop cerebral accelerators, drone blueprint copies and agency boosters of various types and values.

This wreck is now the crucial part of the PVP aspect of the event. Since everybody can warp into the site, you can simply steal other players loot out of the battleship wreck once they kill the battleship. This will give you a suspect timer and enables other players in the site to shoot you.

Next, you will need to wait for the other player in the site to shoot you, before you can engage. Many players get quite angry when you steal their hard-earned loot and attack you shortly after, which usually is quickly followed by the loss of their PVE boat.

Alternatively, you can kill the battleship yourself and wait for another player to steal your loot and become suspect. This does not happen very often, but still sometimes players think they can just quickly rob you and get away. Of course in this case you point the poor guys ship with your Warp Scrambler II and start to shoot him. Sometimes in this scenario you will even get support by other players in the site, who of course can also attack your now suspect flagged opponent.

Both scenarios might of course not happen. That’s when you simple look for another site that is taken by a player and start again. In my experience it doesn’t take more than 3-4 sites before you get into a fight.

Finally, you will also get points for finishing certain objectives in the event sites from the agency. If you acquire enough points (1100 in total) you will get four different battleship skins and finally a crate which contains a fancy drone blueprint that is worth quite a penny.

Fighting the Carebears

So I simply grabbed one of my more or less PVP fitted Stratioses from my hangar, half heartedly fitted it with some additional modules, and off I went to find some sites. Finding them is really easy and there are plenty of other players that run them. I simply waited until the final battleship NPC got killed and stole the loot from the wreck, that btw always appears at the same spot and you can simply sit there and wait for the other player to destroy it. Getting these other guys to aggress me was not that easy. Apparently a Stratios is quite scary and none of the other guys wanted to attack me. So I got a little cheeky and finally stole the loot from a player in a Nightmare faction battleship. That didn’t end so well. The Nightmare simply volleyed through my amour reps and even with a Mid-Grade Crystal Implant set, small signature radius and a Standard Exile booster, my reps weren’t enough. So back to the drawing board to come up with a better fit.

I fitted another Stratios, this time with less blingy gear and additionally bought two Exequror armor logistic ships for my other two accounts to repair me if I got into serious trouble.  The idea is to warp the logistic ships on me when there was too much firepower on the field for my little Stratios to handle it. This time it went much smoother. After a couple of sites, I got my first Stabber kill, shortly followed by a naughty Phantasm. A bit later the next Phantasm followed, after it aggressed my in the site, warped off to a Citadel and couldn’t dock there because of his aggression timer.

For the following couple of days, I decided to switch from my Stratios to a Gnosis, which seems to be a lot less scary than a Stratios to most players and is a lot less costly if things go the wrong way. Baiting went quite well for the rest of the week, with the highlights being a Cerberus that landed right on top of me in a site with a suspect flag,  a quite tanky Phantasm, and a shield buffer fit Gila that took forever to kill.

But of course there were also a Gnosis loss, when I tried to bait another Nightmare, and a second Gnosis when simply too many other players entered the site that also engaged in a fight.

The Final Bill

So what are the numbers after all this? I spent about 14 hours running sites and baiting.  In this time I managed to get on 12 killmails worth around 1,4 billion ISK. During the same time I lost 5 ships ( 2 Exequors + 2 Gnosis + 1 Stratios) worth 670 million ISK. If I hadn’t foolishly tried to bait battleships in my blingy Stratios, the bill would have been much smaller with only 220 million in losses, but I will know better next time.

From the 12 kills, I looted around 190 million ISK in modules. This excludes any event loot that I got out of their ships.

Next to the event loot.  I didn’t keep track how much loot I got from the wrecks compared to the loot I managed to steal or loot from sites. However, the loot containing blueprints, boosters, cerebral accelerators and skins came to around 1 billion ISK, which more than covered my losses.

This is actually a very good pay out from the sites considering that this was more a PVP than PVE activity.

Event site PVP is quite engaging and a lot more fun than simply run this very repetitive event sites.  With an income of 85 million ISK / h running them, this was also a quite lucrative activity if you don’t consider my losses.

Structure Weapon Systems

All Citadels can be fitted in a very similar way to regular ships through the fitting window. However, the weapon systems available for Citadels are quite different to regular spaceship weapon systems. The available categories for Citadel weapons are:

• Missiles
• Fighters
• Electronic Warfare Systems
• Energy Neutralizers
• Guided Bomb Launchers
• Point Defence System (L and XL structures)
• Doomsday Weapon (Keepstars only)

Not all available weapon categories can be used on all Citadel types. Point Defence Systems can only be used on large and extra-large structures and a Doomsday Weapon can only be fitted to  Keepstar Citadels. These two categories can also only be used in low and null security space. The same is true for Guided Bombs, which are only allowed outside of high-sec but can be fitted to all sizes.

Missiles

Missiles launchers are the main weapon system for citadels and come in two different sizes. One size against subcapital ships (Standup Multirole Missile Launcher), which deal around 130/400/800 dps per launcher depending on the ammunition and can be loaded with three different missile sizes (light, heavy, cruise).

The second size is used against capital ships (Standup Anticapital Missile Launcher), which deal  3000-5000 dps per launcher, but have a poor application to smaller targets. The range of both versions is about 1000 km, which is easily within range of any attacking ship.

Fighters

All Citadels have build in fighter tubes to launch standup fighter squadrons. Medium Citadels can launch three light squadrons, large ones four light squadrons and extra-large five squadrons of heavy fighters. These fighters are very similar to regular carrier fighters but deal more damge. Three full fighter squadrons of attack fighters in an Astrahus ( e.g. Standup Dragonflys) can deal about 1500 dps depending on the type of fighter.

Electronic Warfare Systems

There is a standup version for most electronic warfare systems available. All of these have a very long range and hence are much more effective than their subcap counterparts. A citadel warp disruptor has 210 km range and a warp scramble strength of 100, a stasis-webifier a range of 200 km. The Standup Focused Warp Disruptor can also be loaded with a script to convert it into a warp scrambler with 63 km range.

By these ewar modules, a citadel can basically pin down any ship with point and web that is within subcap weapon range.

Energy Neutralizers

Energy Neutralizers can be fitted in two sizes: heavy and extra large. Both have quite a long range of 100 km / 180 km and drain a large amount of capacitor: 1.5 k GJ for the heavy and 10 k GJ for the extra large version . By this, even a battleship can be completely capped out with one hit of the extra large energy neutralizer.

Guided Bombs

Guided Bombs work very similar to stealth bomber bombs, with the difference that guided bombs don’t only fly in a straight line but can change their course towards the target. Guided Bombs come in a anti-subcap and anti-capital version. The subcap version flies faster but deals less damage (3400 damage) , while the capital version deals more damage (12000 damage) but is slower and can be easier avoided by subcapital ships. The area of effect for both bomb types is a 30 km radius.

Point Defence Systems

A Point Defence System is a high-slot area of effect weapon that damages all ships within 2.5 km of the citadel. Keep in mind that the docking radius of the citadel counts as 0 km away from the structure, so the actual size of the effect on grid is much bigger than the number suggests. These systems are great to kill drones and small ships around the structure. A point defence system can only be fitted by large and extra-large citadels and only be activated outside of high-sec.

Doomsday Weapon

Only Keepstars can fit the high-slot Doomsday Weapon, which is similar to a Titan doomsday. It applies insane 4 million point of damage to up o 4 targets., which can even kill a capital ship in one shot. It has a 10 minute cooldown timer before it can be used again on a different target.

Example Fitting

Most weapon systems can be even more effective with appropriate rigs fitteds to the Citadel.  As an example, I fitted a Astrahus with missile launchers, a bomb launcher, ewar modules and three squadrons of fighters:

Even the medium sized Citadel can deal almost 3000 dps without bomb damage fitted with subcapital sized missiles and ewar modules ranging out to 100-200 km.

As you can see by the numbers, a Citadel can easily defend itself against any single subcapital and even against a small gang of subcapital ships. In order to attack a medium sized Citadel, the attackers will need 3-4 logistic ships to repair the incoming damage, even more when attacking the bigger citadel sizes.  Another point to consider when attacking, are the citadel’s Energy Neutralizers, which can cap out logistic ships and shut down the active tank modules of any subcapital ship. That’s why it is a good idea to fit cap boosters for logistic ships and to fit passive tank modules on your fleets dps ships, that do not need any capacitor.  The attacking ships should also be at least cruiser sized, since even with logistic support, frigates and destroyers can be easily destroyed by citadels by a single missile volley or bomb.

If a citadel is fitted against capital ships, it can deal quite an impressive amount of damage to dreads and carriers. I combat fitted L-sized Tatara has around 15000 dps and can kill a sieged buffer tanked dread in under one siege cycle. So even with capital ships on field, a strong logistic wing is always a good idea to have.

Bashing with Horde

In the last couple of weeks I joined quite a few structure bashing fleets with my fellow Pamdemic Horde bros. Usually there is at least one structure bash fleet going out once a day, sometimes much more often.

Horde has two different fleet setup for these bashes. If the target is located in high sec, the fleet will bring Exequror logistic ships, fitted with Medium Capacitor Boosters against the targets energy neutralizers. As damage dealing ships, Horde usually brings passively armor Tempests. These have an impressive tank and use large projectile weapons, which also don’t need capacitor to operate. Horde usually brings from 60 to 100 pilots to these bashes,  and I haven’t seen any serious resistance on a high sec bash that could defend a citadel against these numbers. So these bashes are usually a very one-sided story, that take less than an hour to form the fleet, bash the citadel and travel back to Horde’s high sec staging system in Perimeter. However, these are good opportunities to pad your killboard with big kills like these: Azbel, Azbel, Azbel.

For bashes in null and low security space, Horde usually forms one of their standard fleet doctrines, which are Hurricane battlecruisers with Osprey logistics support for fights that are not to be expected to get too big. These are mostly against enemy Astrahus and Raitarus which are commonly used as save docking spots that enemy fleets use to stage from.  These fights might actually escalate to medium sized fleet fights, when the enemy alliance decides to defend their structure. Sometimes these are successful, but can also result in a crushing defeat.

The last type of bashes are the ones when the big stuff like Keepstars and Sotiyos are in danger of destruction. Horde usually forms either Machariel or Tempest battleships with Guardian logistic support as the subcapital fleet for these fights. However, to destroy extra large structures, Horde also usually forms a capital ship fleet, that mostly consists of Apostle Force Auxiliaries and Dreadnoughts (Revelations prefered). Furthermore, Hordes allies like NC. or Pandemic Legion commonly send support subcapital and capital and sometimes even supercapital fleets for these battles.  This is when epic fights might happen, that the gaming media is so keen to write about, which involve thousands of players and sometimes trillions of isk in losses. One recent example was the major fight in UALX-3, that involved all major null sec alliances committing their supercapital fleet and resulted in this destroyed TEST alliance Keepstar. This one was a major battle with plenty of Titans on grid and a butcher’s bill of over 2 trillion isk.

I want to end this post with a a great video covering this Keepstar fight, that pretty much shows how massive these structure bashes can become.