[TMA] Fitting a POS

[Cue1*]

So I'm looking for fits to make attacking a POS seem annoying and pointless. Currently have a resiststar running, but have a few more POSs that need to go up, specifically a staging tower and a few small POSs. I'm looking to learn a bit more about how to fit dickstars and deathstars. The concepts are not estranged from me, I'm just unsure of the best way to go about it. Is there somewhere I can see the standard dickstar and deathstar fits?

[pr0lurker]

Depends where you are putting it and how big your corp is, can you defend it or do you want the POS to defend itself? (not a good idea). Our old C4 POS was a basic el cheapo large tower with hardners that made the POS 50% omni-tanked permanently online and 2 of each type of ECM permanently online, lots and lots of weaponry and neut batteries both on and offline and I worked the rest of the modules like assembly arrays, ship arrays, corp arrays around that - I didnt mind waiting for stuff to online/offline to use them as long as the POS was well defended. The longer it is going to take an aggressing force to pop your POS the less likely it will be attacked. Train Starbase Management to 4 on at least two of your characters for peace of mind and get others in your corp to do the same.

I'm not sure on "standard fits" but my old POS looked something like this (worked it out myself):
7 Hardners (I think it was 7 to get the resists to 50%, memory fails me)
4 of each racial ECM
4 Neut
16 Small Guns
16 Medium Guns
No Large Guns (you cannot get a capital into a C4 unless you build it there)

Don't be a retard and expose your modules to a bomber fleet by massing all the modules in one place. Spread them about... and do remember you will never be invulnerable wherever you anchor it!

Hope this rambling hungover post helps...

[Lorkin Desal]

if in lowsec/null 6 hards for 43% iirc hards large/medium/small guns and neuts/ in c1-c4 wh small/med guns and fewer neuts c5-c6 same as null. your pos will die if its unmanned - because POS AI is stupid.

[Artjay]

I have a reasonable amount of experience FC'ing POS takedowns in wormholes C1-4, but only two in a C5+C6. The setups will be quite different, since these days in a C5 + C6 the enemy will more than likely wait for a K162 (or two) to null or low and just bring in dreads, in which case doesn't really matter how you fit your POS. In a C4 or lower they wont be able to bring in dreads so it wil be just BS/Drakes+logi shooting your POS.

In my experience for WH's ignore the following: Damps, neuts, missiles, large guns

Put on: Lots of med guns, small guns, ECM, webs & points.

The hardest POS to tackle I have come across (that was in a C2) looked something like this: (awesome website btw) http://tinyurl.com/6vhj7bp

The 24 online ECM simultaneously griefed the Logi and DPS battleships alike. The webs + guns (approx 4000 dps according to that site) did a good job of hammering us when the logi were jammed. We went in under prepared and had to bail loosing a couple of ships. When we went back with more logi and EM/Therm resists it took hours and hours and hours to plough through all those ECM mods. If it wasn't a defensive position no way we could have sustained peoples determination that long.

ECM is really key, but don't overload it at the cost of too much DPS. Its worth considering just fitting jams to counter guardians + basilisks, since I have never seen a fleet invade a WH with oineroses and scimis) little tip if you want to make the attackers butt-hurt use ECM faction mods - they have 1/3rd of the HP of a small POS each - they will cry if you stick on a dozen)

There is some debate about which is better - Ammar or Minmatar - minmatar POS hit back harder, yet Ammar have more powergrid so can fit more stuff on. Either is fine. Id use Ammar for AFK defence (lasors don't run out of ammo, more online when your awar), Minmatar for pos gunning (mixed ammo types, nice alpha).

Personally, I wouldn't bother with hardeners. Fine - have them anchored and online them once your guns are kaput just to piss off the attackers, but all they do is slow the attack down, not halt it. If an attacking force is organised they will bring in a blob and lock down the WH so you cant get backup in. A disorganised attack is swiftly despatched by a death-star, and if they beat that, getting in touch with numerous WH mercenary corps that will fight for cheap if you can get them a good scrap.

My Dream POS would look something like this: http://tinyurl.com/7ef38hk

[Jalif]

How About lowsec posses? Just full rack of mediums or also a combination of smalls and medium?

Don't have much cpu because of industry.

[Cue1*]

How About lowsec posses? Just full rack of mediums or also a combination of smalls and medium?

Don't have much cpu because of industry.

Lowsec gets hit less than Wspace or 0.0. Unless there's something really worth having in your POS chances are they won't hit it. I ran reactions on an undefended POS for almost a year. Never got sieged. When I finally took them down I realized I had forgotten to stront one. If you're really worried about getting hit, consider spreading your industry out two or more towers and putting up heavy defenses. Smalls and Mediums with webs and points, some ECM. Gangs in lowsec are not likely to have enough punch to take you down, so you're more worried about someone getting a bigger group together. They'll bring BS and logi to down the POS most likely.

That said, last time(only time) I moved into a lowsec area with a sizable corp we introduced ourselves by taking down every single tower in the constellation. If this happens you're just going to lose the POS, not much you can do to stop it unless you can defend it after the timer. When I did it we brought dreads and carriers with sizable support. Just wasn't worth it for anyone to even try to defend it.

[Wrack]

Having looked at the tracking math, I concluded to never use anything but pulses and autocannons. The long-range guns do much less dps per powergrid, and the tracking is absolutely abysmal, even to the point that a webbed battleship can effectively speed tank a medium pulse/arty. You don't even get higher alpha per powergrid from arties, only higher alpha per gunner.

Also, why disruptors over scrams? You get twice as many scrams for the PG. 75 km is still a lot of tackle range, nobody snipes at POSes anymore.

[CastleBravo]

Go full retard on c1-c4 towers and fit 75+ ecm batteries. ECM is the only thing the tower can do effectively on its own when you get surprised by a siege fleet, and it will take all fucking day for a subcap fleet to kill a tower with that much ECM on it. Have a bunch of stealth bombers ready for combat since the only effective way to kill an ECM tower is sentry drones.

Another fun idea would be a shit-ton of damp batteries in a c4 red-giant so you can force them to bunch up and then smartbomb them into oblivion .

[Wrack]

Go full retard on c1-c4 towers and fit 75+ ecm batteries. ECM is the only thing the tower can do effectively on its own when you get surprised by a siege fleet, and it will take all fucking day for a subcap fleet to kill a tower with that much ECM on it. Have a bunch of stealth bombers ready for combat since the only effective way to kill an ECM tower is sentry drones.

Another fun idea would be a shit-ton of damp batteries in a c4 red-giant so you can force them to bunch up and then smartbomb them into oblivion .

Just fit 2-3 scrams, 2-3 webs, 4-6 med+8-12 small guns, then fill the rest with ECM. You get 95% of the dickness of the dickstar, plus it can actually kill some of those jammed things.

[Tellenta]

if there is nothing inside worth taking or the moon isn't worth having just the POS and maybe resistance should do from my experience. I haven't armed a POS (excepting war decs) for 3 years now and I haven't lost one, not even a small.

except to a corp mate that ninja scooped a tower I was taking down the griefing bastard (he gave it back).

[Hilmor]

I read your blog and did not understand what do you want to say in this blog.
Describe and elaborate the blog with detail and full facts which is easily understand.
Thanks.

[kyrieee]

Having looked at the tracking math, I concluded to never use anything but pulses and autocannons. The long-range guns do much less dps per powergrid, and the tracking is absolutely abysmal, even to the point that a webbed battleship can effectively speed tank a medium pulse/arty. You don't even get higher alpha per powergrid from arties, only higher alpha per gunner.

Also, why disruptors over scrams? You get twice as many scrams for the PG. 75 km is still a lot of tackle range, nobody snipes at POSes anymore.

Like unmanned guns matter at all

[Wrack]

Having looked at the tracking math, I concluded to never use anything but pulses and autocannons. The long-range guns do much less dps per powergrid, and the tracking is absolutely abysmal, even to the point that a webbed battleship can effectively speed tank a medium pulse/arty. You don't even get higher alpha per powergrid from arties, only higher alpha per gunner.

Also, why disruptors over scrams? You get twice as many scrams for the PG. 75 km is still a lot of tackle range, nobody snipes at POSes anymore.

Like unmanned guns matter at all

That doesn't change the fact that arty sucks on POSes. The next size up of autocannon has very similar tracking (even after taking signature resolution into account), about 4x the DPS per powergrid, and actually higher alpha (both in per-powergrid and per-gunner terms).

[Loire]

Going to be setting up a C3 POS here with our corp soon and I'm a complete noob when it comes to these things. How exactly do you balance between defense, and production? Do you leave the weapons/jammers/webbers offline until you're expecting an attack? If that's the case, what's the consensus on Amarr Large vs Minmatar Large?

[Cue1*]

Going to be setting up a C3 POS here with our corp soon and I'm a complete noob when it comes to these things. How exactly do you balance between defense, and production? Do you leave the weapons/jammers/webbers offline until you're expecting an attack? If that's the case, what's the consensus on Amarr Large vs Minmatar Large?

Amarr gives you more space to work with for defense. As for production vs defense, consider using more than one POS. If you can't keep enough defense on the tower, get another. What exactly are you producing in a C3 anyway? There's really not much of a reason to need to make anything but ammo and POS blocks. Export everything else.

[Loire]

Going to be setting up a C3 POS here with our corp soon and I'm a complete noob when it comes to these things. How exactly do you balance between defense, and production? Do you leave the weapons/jammers/webbers offline until you're expecting an attack? If that's the case, what's the consensus on Amarr Large vs Minmatar Large?

Amarr gives you more space to work with for defense. As for production vs defense, consider using more than one POS. If you can't keep enough defense on the tower, get another. What exactly are you producing in a C3 anyway? There's really not much of a reason to need to make anything but ammo and POS blocks. Export everything else.

Smallish corp wants to try the "living-completely-independant-from-K-Space-except-for-selling-sleeper-goo" thing.

[Wrack]

Smallish corp wants to try the "living-completely-independant-from-K-Space-except-for-selling-sleeper-goo" thing.

Enjoy your tech-1 meta-0 life without POS fuel.

[Loire]

Smallish corp wants to try the "living-completely-independant-from-K-Space-except-for-selling-sleeper-goo" thing.

Enjoy your tech-1 meta-0 life without POS fuel.

You're a helpful one. Did I forget to mention we'd be importing ice?

[Wrack]

Ok, so you're importing ice. And you're importing or abstaining from meta modules. And you're importing either T2 modules and ships, or T2 BPCs and components, or T1 BPOs, datacores, and moongoo. You're importing faction ammo and faction/deadspace modules. You're mining high-end ores, exporting reinforced scraps and re-importing them as tritanium.

You're doing all this so that you can build a few things in a wormhole. You're still exporting and importing all kinds of stuff weekly, at a minimum. You're not very different from any other wormholer, except that you're spending less time looking for fights and more time doing logistics/industry.

If you actually want to produce anything significant in a WH, you're going to need several POSes, or just shittons of arrays that you constantly online and offline to switch tasks. And you're going to have poorly defended POSes that scream "shinies inside."

[Cue1*]

Wrack is being a bit harsh about it(lol), but he's definitely right. The only stuff you really should produce in a wormhole is T1 ammo, POS fuel, and capitals. Maybe battleships and such if you're in a C1. Anything beyond that is absolute shit logistics.

On a similar note, yet only loosely related to POSs, if you refine compressed <insert mineral>(IE: the stuff from a rorq) at a POS, do you get the full value or still at a reduced rate?