Cadet PRS Capitol Class
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They Have Capitals!
So you've got an excess of money and prestige and your commander has decided to buy you capital ships. Well I have good news and bad news: the good news is that capital ships are extremely powerful and give you lead indicators, so aiming is less stressful. The bad news? Well... capital ships in Allegiance are rather glass cannons. Prior to CC_08 it was child's play for three advanced figs to kill a corvette (pilot and two gunners) using dis3, and even now, it shouldn't take more than four or five guys to bumrush a capital ship and leave it as dust. You're here to learn how to use these behemoths to kill things and, more importantly, not die.
Rule #1
Rule #1 is as follows: Capital ships are not just big bombers! Bomb runs and capship runs are not roughly analogous and they are not the same. It's like saying that a Figbee run is identical to a regular bomb run. If you try to use, say, a Frigate the same way you'd use a bomber, you'd either find yourself flying in circles unable to get anything accomplished except get podded. The main reason behind this is cost: Bbrs cost $500, IC frigates (the cheapest frigate) coast $5400. Bbrs take a payday or a cashbox, while Frigates are a miner-load apiece. You can afford to take risks and make mistakes in bombers, but you can't afford to do that with frigates, and especially not the larger capships like Battleships.
Frigates and Cruisers
The first couple sets of capships I'll talk about are the Frigates and Cruisers, these two types are fairly similar to each other and provide the same function: blowing up enemy bases. Frigates are larger than Corvettes, have three turrets and a single forward mount. They may also mount XRM Cruise missiles or SRM Nuke missile, but for the most part you'll only be mounting Nukes. They cannot rip and (if you have researched it) may mount Heavy Cloak. There's not much scarier than an uneyed frigate decloaking in sector.
Cruisers on the other hand have slightly more power and thicker hull. They can also rip, but are slower and cannot mount heavy cloak at all. They have an extra turret mount. In both cases, flying them is tough because of their extremely low turn torque, and over-correcting is a problem. It's also a pretty simple proposition: you're not going to dodge crap in a frigate or cruiser, so just go from point A to point B (hopefully with escort) killing everything in your way. Then you get to fire your nukes which are like AB 2 on steroids: it takes about two or three to kill your enemy's techbase (depending on KB, of course) but they're also much larger and much slower. This, like Seekers, means you can shoot them down! This has a lot of implications, namely that you have to be careful and make sure your missiles aren't being shot down and that when it's you defending against the capships that it's not too difficult to shoot them down yourself.
Battlecruisers and Battleships
Battlecruisers, Battleships, and even Devestators have a secondary weapon that they can use to take out enemy stations: EW Skyrip. Skyrip is the definitive anti-capship weapon which makes disruptor look like a pea shooter... and in addition it can kill enemy bases as well. This will be your primary weapon against things like refs and ops, though you'll use your Nukes against those as well (unless you're piloting a Dev, which cannot mount nukes). Basically the use of Skyrip comes down to this: you know how you dump 3 ABs into the enemy base and it has a tiny sliver left? You can either a) shoot another nuke or b) fire your skyrip a bit.
Battleships have a few other little tricks associated with them. They have a special weapon called the Mass Driver, which is absurdly long range (like 8k) and deals large amounts of damage to everything. They are also the only ships that can mount Skyripper as turrets... but I must implore that even Skycap 2 is better than Skyrip turrets unless you are anticipating the enemy having capships. As a general rule, unless it's capship wars, mount Longtoms if they are available, and if not, mount the highest level of Skycap for your turrets. Always; however, keep skyrips on your front guns if you can: that extra versatility will come in handy when you were just one Nuke shy of killing their last techbase!
It is worth noting that Rixian destroyers can also mount Skyrip.
Battlecruisers have cloak, so keep that in mind, and Devestators are mostly an anti-cap weapon and not an anti-base weapon.
Attack Carriers
Attack Carriers are one of the most useful tools a Supyard (that's Supremacy and Shipyard for those of you not up on your shorthand) has at its disposal. Attack Carriers are just like carrier drones except a few key differences: they do not have util hull, they have gun mounts and turret mounts (2 and 2 respectively), and they can mount shields. Generally what this means is that you will use Attack Carriers much in the same way that a commander will use Carrier drones, specifically, the attack carrier will go towards the enemy's miners, then figs will rip in and kill the miners. This isn't just extremely deadly, it's also very frustrating to defend against once the carrier is in the sector. See, figs will use disruptor to kill capital ships but disruptor isn't very good against fighters. Gat is good against fighters, but only ok against caps, which gives us this strange conundrum: kill the capital or kill the fighters? Add to that the fact that your miner nans die very quickly to the skycap turrets and once you get in the sector with the attack carrier at least one of those precious miners is going to die.
Assault Ships
Assault Ships are the TP2 scouts of the Capship world, and can in fact hold TP2. They can also mount heavy cloak, two turrets, Hunter missiles, and a forward-facing skycap as well as having a scan range of 3600. They also have medium speed but no ripcord ability, which means it will take a while for them to get into position. Generally speaking, Assault Ships should be flown much like Stealth Bombers; you should cloak up when entering alephs, cloak to hide, and stay far away from anything and everything. Unlike SBs, Assault Ships won't even remotely die if they happen across a lone int camping an aleph or a scout who happened to get eye, but they cannot rip out which means that once they see you you can expect them to send hoards of pulse probes and scouts after you!
There are two schools of thought for the Assault Ship, and both of them are equally valid. The first school of thought is that the assault ship should enter an enemy sector and immediately have a Cruiser or better rip in to kill the techbase. This usually involves a careful calculation of rip times. Generally speaking the way to pull this off is to move at full speed towards the aleph (while uneyed and uncloaked), and when you're about 3k away, tell the battleship (via pm) to begin ripping. He'll rip to you, but you'll have just then entered the enemy's sector so even if they eye you on entry: it's too late.
The second school of thought is actually quite similar to TP2 or SBs. Get into the enemy sector and hide, usually at around 8k. Start your "run" and when you get to about 7-6k tell the Battleship (again via PM, we don't want anyone else accidentally ripping in and taking away precious energy) to start ripping. You'll be eyed at around 3.5-4k depending on variables beyond your control (uncloaked the whole way to conserve energy), which is approximately when the battleship will rip in. There's almost nothing a team can do when they have to kill a Battleship and an Assault Ship that are only 4k away from their techbase.
It might help to compare these two different methods to the "aleph drop" and "Open air drop" methods.
Always remember to watch your energy: it takes a lot of energy to rip in capships and if you have newbies ripping in in scouts or figs they will not only give away your position, they will prevent your game-ending Battleship from entering!
Attacking with Capships
So you got a SY and you are going to take your Frigate/Cruiser/Battlecruiser/Devestator/Battleship straight to the enemy techbase and kill it. That's great! But here's a warning that I will mention later on because it's that important: camps spell death to capital ships. Horrible, flaming, money-costing and boot-causing death. Unfortunately, capital ships are about as stealthy as that big ball of fire that moves across the sky (you may have seen or heard of it, it's called the Sun) and about as quick as the snail crossing your sidewalk.
Never fret though, because if you jump out and get moving right now you might just catch them unawares. With signatures in the high 500%s, an EWS 1 can see them over 2500m away... so deprobing is going to be an exercise in annoying because everything will eye your capships. So you need to catch them and be attacking faster than they can get a camp to the aleph, because as I said before (and will say again) camps kill caps. Typically you'll want a corvette escort of one or two vettes, who will enter first. That way if there's a camp only the useless cheap capships which cost less than a full miner load will die. If there is a camp, then it's time to either give up and go home, get figs/ints to clear the camp, or have someone (who is not you) hit another base somewhere. If there is NOT a camp, then just roll in. Full speed.
If it is possible, try to come from multiple alephs. Even if one aleph is closer than the other, while a 20 person camp is tough to break through, a 10 person camp is much easier. Especially if you have, say, one cruiser with one or two gunners going from one direction (3 pilots), one cruiser with full gunners going from the other with two corvettes of escort (11 pilots), and two ints to blaze a path of glory through the prox scout. On one side, it's 3 v 10 and your half-empty cruiser dies. On the other side it's 17 v 10, much more in your favor.
Now if a frigate is like a really big bbr... then how I can best help it is by nanning, right? Well, to quote a friend of mine, WRONG! Nans deal 3/4 damage to heavy hull and 1/2 to super heavy. You're doing quite a bit less damage than just a mini2 int, and you're doing WAY less damage than a dis2 fig wielding df2 and minepacks. You'd be better off in another corvette, or if you can aim, an int to head in first to clear the camp. Nanning capships has its place (like after the fight) but really you'd be better off killing things. Now, if you can't aim and your com doesn't want any more capships, then by all means bring a nan. Being only tokenly effective is better than not being effective at all, and a lot of people will panic when they see the nans and go `au `an and a lot of people will listen... and then instead of shooting the capship with Dis2 of Doom, they're shooting at nans (which they can't hit) with Dis2 of "OMG useless." Nans just don't deal enough damage to make it really worthwhile against capships, but if you're not comfortable in boosting ahead of the caps and breaking up a camp, then you're probably better off nanning.
If you are nanning caps, stay in front by as much as you can afford. Try to get prox way far in front of the capship to force the figs to fly around, because the more time Fighters spend getting into position to hit the capship, the more likely your capship is going to live. If you're really lucky, they'll start shooting at you rather than shooting at the capship. Staying in front will help make you an appetizing target as some fool thinks "mmm yummy KB!" and then finds how worthless disruptor is against non-capships.
The Special Ships and other faction info
Belters do not have Drydock which cuts out Battlecruisers, Battleships, and Devestators. This means they have 0 ships that can mount skyrip meaning they lose capship wars pretty badly pretty much of the time.
Rixian ships use Station Drone instead of missiles: a blessing and a curse. IMO, this is better for killing bases and camping alephs, but worse for super-close-range capship duels. To each their own! Rix Destroyers are an exception: as I said before they can mount Skyrip but also Lancer, which offsets their inability to mount Hunter Killer missile. Destroyers are considered whore tech and aren't particularly common.
Harbinger of Darkness (HoD) is a special GT ship which can fire a special Aleph Resonator which destroys both sectors the aleph is connected to. That's all techbases and ships and other bases, and yes this includes the HoD. The best use of a HoD is probably to enter your enemy's home sector (by Ass Ship if necessary) and fire the missile at the aleph leading to the enemy's techbase sector (if they are connected). Boom, there goes their home and techbase! Failing that just blow up their home first and *then* their techbase.
Technoflux doesn't have any of the above ships except Vettes and Attack Carriers. Instead they get Flagship 1-4. Generally speaking, these are supposed to be the equivalent of frigates, cruisers, battlecruisers, and battleships but really aren't. Flag 1s are just run of the mill frigates, except with two front-facing guns and the ability to mount Heavy AB Cannon instead of missiles. Flag 2s are to Cruisers what Flag 1s are to Frigates, except that Flag 2 can mount two front-facing skyrip. Flag 3s are like the above. All three of these are small-rip capable just like TF Miners. Flag 4s are roughly analogous to battleships (very roughly) with 4 front facing guns (2 can mount mass driver, all can mount skyrip) and 4 turrets instead of 1 front gun, 4 turrets and missiles. Unfortunately, TF flag4 cannot mount skyrip as turrets which makes it a bit worse at cap-to-cap warfare (since while it can survive a head-on assault by another capship easily, it can't deal with capships to the sides or behind it) and can get problematic when all 8 guns you carry drain energy (remember all TF guns are PE). Flag4's major benefit that sets it apart is that you can rip to it as you would an assault ship, but once again watch your energy!
General Capship Information
Capships, like any other ship in Allegiance, cannot survive an effective camp. A combination of prox and disruptor fire should easily kill any capship who dares enter your domain, and likewise should easily make you suck vacuum if you dare challenge it. This is especially deadly on the aleph camps, because the best part of Skycap (and especially LongTom) is the range (2000 minimum for skycap with a maximum of 4k for rix longtoms with ew and pw range upgrades). When you first pop through an aleph, you're maybe 300m from the enemy... plenty close for them to hit you and you to hit them, but that's a recipe for a capship dying. Successful capship pilots are the ones who kill all the enemy before the enemy gets in range.
Nukes are typically anti-base weapons, but also double as anti-capship weapons. In a battle between two frigates, the one who lands their nukes (assuming relatively similar KBs across the turrets, etc.) will be the winner. It's helpful for me, in this regard, to think of Capships as "stationary targets," like miners at a rock. They'll dodge, but not by enough to make a difference. In CC_08, there is a slight exception to this: Corvettes can dodge even Killers and Dumbfires if the pilot is skilled enough. This should not; however, deter you from firing your nukes at that enemy corvette: it's very important, especially with those price tags, that your capship doesn't die and that the enemy's capship does bite the dust.
Camping in capships to, say, keep the enemy out of a sector that you are, say, mining in is an interesting proposition. The first thing you do is sit about 2k from the aleph (maybe more, like 2.5k), and the second thing you do is make sure your intelligence is good. Who's coming through the aleph? Is it ten figs or five? Is it a coordinated rush or a bunch of newbies wandering through? Many pilots make the mistake of ripping out because "ZOMG FOUR FIGS!" when they could've stayed and killed them all, while other pilots make the mistake of going "Lulz it's only some figs" and floating home in a pod. Well, the gunners will float home... some of the time the pilot will be seeing lobby for losing his ship. As I've said before, capships are expensive and losing them will often incur the wrath of the commander. A general rule of thumb is as follows: as soon as the first fig enters, hit the ripcord button. When you are 100% certain you are safe from dying, go ahead and cancel the rip, but if there is any part of your brain that nags at you saying "hmmm... this might be close" then you gtfo of there asap.
Also, this will be the only time I mention freighters, in small text so you don't get any ideas of asking me for them: Freighters can lie on their side and block an aleph so that incoming ships ram them and, depending on their speed and what the freighter is carrying (hint, bring mass drivers), be completely podded. It will also force most ships back into the sector they came from, making it impossible for the enemy to enter the sector. That being said, freighters are fairly useless and only used when you're toying around. And frankly? What are you doing toying around when you could be winning the goddamn game?
Hungering for more capship versus capship information? Keep in mind that Skyripper is king, and that Corvettes cannot mount skyripper. What they can mount; however, is Longtom and they're faster than all other capships. Skyripper range is 1600, longtom is 2500, so you can kill a skyripper BS with a corvette pretty easily: just keep out of its skyripper range and pelt it with Longtom ammo, much like a fighter fights an interceptor. Similarly, Battlecruisers, Devastators, and Rixian Destroyers have their skyripper guns on the front mounts and not on the turrets. If you're camping to stop these behemoths in your personal capship of choice (I like devastators myself), set up about 1000M BEHIND the aleph the enemy is coming in on. That way you can chase them and don't have to turn around if they overtake you, and they can't hit you with their forward mounted Skyrip. It's best to pull this trick against Battleships as well, since BS also have front-mounted skyrip/mass driver, and lowering the amount of firepower the enemy can bring to bear on you is always a good thingtm.
Other than that, be mindful of the over steering and have fun!
