Countering dual ASBs

[Daneel Trevize]

Just a little thread to check I'm not missing anything w.r.t. killing these increasingly-common fits:

TL;DR. Bring alpha, or out-active tank them. You were already probably bringing as much dps as you could reasonably fit, neuts are now far less effective but still needed, and their dps is if anything lower, leading to a game of chicken before one chooses to try run/deaggro.

Alpha them. Typically they won't have invulns unless BS hulls, and even then it's questionable. So just DC2, rigs & links for resists with no LSE means low EHP. But this tactic also means fitting alpha(really just arties or maybe torps?) or being non-solo.
Related point being EM's probably no great damage choice advantage, as there's no EHP to waste CDFEs on so I'd expect 2 EM + 1 Them rigs, or pehaps a dps/fitting rig.

DPS them. Yeah no, with an amp iirc they're tougher than old school booster + injector. If the hull would have had an invuln/boost/resist bonus before, it still has at least that now(invulns often swapping for amps for more effect). Plus with dual ASBs+heat they can burst tank more than twice as hard in some cases: if you scare them before either's been used much and they can deaggro; or if you give them long enough to reload one while barely using the other. Either your dps was already enough, they panic/you catch them out of cycle, or they tank you.

Neut them. Might turn invulns off, that's about it as far as breaking their tank. AFAIK an amp is a better choice than an invuln with ASBs. DC2 is still as hard to neut off as ever, they might have nos to keep invuln & tackle going. No longer an effective tactic then, but at least likely to eventually turn their tackle & prop mods off compared to no-ASB fits due to lack of injector (but all cap buffer only being used by a few modules). Also neuting them will ensure they don't get a couple of better-than-pith-x-type boosts in before the reload kicks in. Really this is only going to work if you see an invuln effect, or want to GTFO, or think the chargeless boosts will be make-or-break on killing the rest of their buffer during the reload changeover.

Outlast them. AFAIK they get at least as many smaller charges/2 in their cargo as you would larger navy charges. So ASB active tank vs regular active tank for the same hull size you're not looking at an immediate advantage. IIRC armour is more efficient at repping per cap use, but that's not including Crystals or just the numbers of cap charges regardless of their cap injection value (coz ASBs dont care). Requires you to not be needing heat to tank them. Requires them to not be able to deaggro/break tackle in time, thus something like them having lowsec-highsec gate gcc or good bait-tanking from yourself. Or catch them after they've used a bunch of charges already? Perhaps after they've run a camp or be trapped in a pipe with no NPC/friendly stations/POS?
I'm not aware of any viable active-tanked PvP ships having unusual cargo bay sizes or sane cargo-expanded fitting options, except Marauders.
Does anyone think more ASBs is making neuts less common? Thus more chance to old-school active tank unmolested?
Another thought is that typically at least one low has been lost to a co-pro, so their dps should be reduced, increasing the likelyhood you can tank them.

One less-common variation would be obtaining extra cap boosters (& ammo) from a wreck/pvp buddy/anchored can/dropoff alt. Again I'm assuming not planned/common but probably a viable tactic if you're in a situation where you're both tanking each other and playing chicken with deaggroing/trying to burn for freedom first. They can probably deaggro rather than choose to play chicken if they pay attention to their charge usage rate.
The other out-lasting them choice would come from links, with ASBs only benefitting from the resists one, while regular tanking has the cap usage reduction one, which combined with the rest can give the same original tank value for ~ half the cap use. You would need to have twice the required tank though, to dial back your usage like this.

Similarly heat can be used with manually throttled rep cycling to get more rep per cap as it increases amount as well as cycle rate, but you could easily burn your tank before you run out of charges. They cannot use heat without increasing their cross-over gap in boosting, nor can they increase their 'cap-efficiency'. It would take accurate counting of boosts & only-just-tanking-you to time your overheating to break them between 1 booster starting to reload and the other finishing. And neuting away any chance of cap-less megaboosts.

I may or may not have just found myself against a solo (possibly crystal'd) dual-ASB sleipnir from which I eventually deaggro'd, and now wishing I'd 'blobbed' them by bringing a nearby market alt + dirt cheap t1 hauler with 800s over to myself just before I run out of charges. I could think of no other simple sure way my ship could beat theirs once my ammo+neuts+sentries wasn't doing it.
Not that every ship can kill every other, but even when they could not kill me by choice, we could only play chicken once both gave away they were baiting and could tank comfortably.
DPS or ECM drones are still far more reasonable over TD ones, right? Even if you could TD them to make your tank more efficient and not rage-deaggro from ECM, do the majority of ASBing targets even have guns that TD drones would bother? The increased CPU requirements of ASBs is likely to lead to at least as many TEs as before in an effort to avoid over-gimping the fit with fitting mods/rigs.

[Ophichius]

Heating an ASB actually improves your rep/cycle, so if you throttle your cycles you keep from having a too-long gap during the reload of the other ASB.

Other than that, you've pretty much summed it up. You have to outlast or alpha them.

-O

[Daneel Trevize]

Well dicks. Cheers for the info.

As for outlasting them, I'm still thinking the majority of ASB ships are with capless weapons (excluding Caldari resist+hybrids bonused ships, and niche lol-ASB-Gal fits. No one's got a working lasers+ASBs ship, right?), so even bringing more neuts and hoping to turn off their guns isn't going to work.

Can't break them, can't neut them but have to try because dat charge-less boost vs crossover window, can tank them better, can see them coming from the paper shield buffer.
Can't target specific modules or steal cargo, lol unbonused TDs/ewar, only be more likely to neut off tackle or just not be neuted by previously-commonly-active shield ships.

This is going to take someone with experience or time to number-crunch if there's a notable difference between tank-life for mirror hull sizes/cargo bays, for ASBs vs active shield vs active armour.

[ry ry]

Hanging around until a ships' cargo is empty is a fairly terrible counter to any mechanic, as is volleying their entire tank - I really like the module, but hopefully these will get nerfed down to 1 per ship.

[Ophichius]

Well dicks. Cheers for the info.

As for outlasting them, I'm still thinking the majority of ASB ships are with capless weapons (excluding Caldari resist+hybrids bonused ships, and niche lol-ASB-Gal fits. No one's got a working lasers+ASBs ship, right?), so even bringing more neuts and hoping to turn off their guns isn't going to work.

Can't break them, can't neut them but have to try because dat charge-less boost vs crossover window, can tank them better, can see them coming from the paper shield buffer.
Can't target specific modules or steal cargo, lol unbonused TDs/ewar, only be more likely to neut off tackle or just not be neuted by previously-commonly-active shield ships.

This is going to take someone with experience or time to number-crunch if there's a notable difference between tank-life for mirror hull sizes/cargo bays, for ASBs vs active shield vs active armour.

Well assuming Navy charges all around, looking at LASB vs LSB II vs LAR II.
LASB is 390 shield boost for 4.5m3
LSB II is 240 shield boost for 4.3m3
LAR II is 800 armor for 12m3.

Final numbers:

LASB at 86.6 shield/m3
LSB II at 55.8 shield/m3
LAR II at 66.6 armor/m3

LASB is the clear winner.

Hanging around until a ships' cargo is empty is a fairly terrible counter to any mechanic, as is volleying their entire tank - I really like the module, but hopefully these will get nerfed down to 1 per ship.

Limiting them to one per ship would be stupid. Due to the way they're engineered, they need to basically dominate the ship's tank to be useful. They just need tweaks to cycle time and boost amount to bring them down from their current levels.

-O

[Daneel Trevize]

Hanging around until a ships' cargo is empty is a fairly terrible counter to any mechanic, as is volleying their entire tank - I really like the module, but hopefully these will get nerfed down to 1 per ship.

Indeed, and testing on Sisi many months ago with LSE + ASB was far more sane while retaining the chance to reload in time. But also there's many options to adjust the things. There's no theoretical need that they rep better than the best deadspace/officer modules when drawing from your cap, or at all once out of charges. Equally their fitting & current rep power is of course arbitrary, not to mention that 60s reload duration.

As for the current dual setup & beating them, the only extra thought I'd had is try to count the charges, wait until the 2nd reload's due (so that the first ASB is still reloading rather than already ready) and overheat when they're about to reload, so as to ensure the buffer's lowest before the longest cycle gap, as well as the previously mentioned heating during switchover. But that's all theoretical about closely matching tank vs dps. Any time they've even slightly more than enough tank vs you and they'll be drawing out the cycle time of the in-use ASB while the other is always just a 60s reload. If the 1 couldn't last them 60s anyway there's no perma-tanking issue, as long as it's not right at the start when both are loaded, and you're not unable to maintain that dps for ~50s.

Ophichius, you also need to consider with/without links, and crystals/specific 'noble'+numon implants. Beyond that, the core (less rep for less cap use) vs other 2 equal kinds of i-type reppers, and gist vs pith.
Mostly the links thing, it could be that with the 3 v 1 effectiveness, that say MARs are able to go longer on the same cap than dual LASB, or LARS than XLASB. Or that resist or active armour rep bonused hulls can reliably out-last. Though I understand if no-one wants to go into such detail, it is a poor mechanic to depend upon.
It's also probably screwed by armour BSs not needing dual injectors going constantly but at least to be fitted to sustain dual LARs, while if an XLASB BS has a heavy injector (for tackle & prop mod & maybe invuln running under neuting) with more navy 400s in it, those 13 more charges able to be unloaded back to cargo could always swing it. Then there's the triple XLASB things like scorp navy issue.

[Rania Serlia]

The third way to break a double ASB tank is of course to force the other pilot to run both at once with sheer damage, or some combination of damage and shutting down hardeners(which effectively multiplies taken damage ofc). Tearing through the limited EHP of a double ASB fit on reload shouldn't be a huge issue depending on how big a window you can create. If the double ASB pilot is combining a well-bonused hull, crystals, and links with blue pill, this option tends to be less doable ofc.

It is for sure a power module and I'd support a limit 1 per ship on them as per the new RAH. And as demonstrated by the AT rules. A single ASB is still incredibly powerful, but that "and then the ship explodes" window adds a really neat caveat to it.

[Ophichius]

Personally I'd rather see a more organic fix, rather than "hardlimit of one". Switching ASBs from using cap charges/sucking huge amounts of cap to simply directly dealing damage to themselves would be a more elegant solution IMO. Nanite repair times on a heavily damage module can range upwards of 120 seconds, and you'd also run the risk of completely burning out the ASB (Or of spillover heat from other modules burning it out when you heat other parts if your mid rack.). To say nothing of how much damage you'd inflict overheating an ASB. Switching them to self-damaging modules would also allow them to play nicer with active tanks, and act more like what I believe they were originally supposed to be, an emergency 'oh shit' booster.

-O

[W0lf Crendraven]

Personally I'd rather see a more organic fix, rather than "hardlimit of one". Switching ASBs from using cap charges/sucking huge amounts of cap to simply directly dealing damage to themselves would be a more elegant solution IMO. Nanite repair times on a heavily damage module can range upwards of 120 seconds, and you'd also run the risk of completely burning out the ASB (Or of spillover heat from other modules burning it out when you heat other parts if your mid rack.). To say nothing of how much damage you'd inflict overheating an ASB. Switching them to self-damaging modules would also allow them to play nicer with active tanks, and act more like what I believe they were originally supposed to be, an emergency 'oh shit' booster.

-O

Then take a look at the navy scorp, with 3 of these things and at the cargospace needed for nanite paste, as long as you can tank them with one booster for those 120seconds (duo to overtank with implants/links more than possible) they will enver die as nanite is really small than you cant even outlast them!

[Ophichius]

Then take a look at the navy scorp, with 3 of these things and at the cargospace needed for nanite paste, as long as you can tank them with one booster for those 120seconds (duo to overtank with implants/links more than possible) they will enver die as nanite is really small than you cant even outlast them!

Except that nanite paste use is adjustable. For instance a heavily-damaged T1 module takes less paste to fix than a heavily-damaged T2. And application time is directly linked to the total amount of paste used. Also, I didn't preclude tweaking the ASB boost stats themselves. I just think that the current cap booster mechanic is clunky, and defaulting to the lazy fix of 'hardlimit of one' is worse.

-O

[W0lf Crendraven]

Yes but ims aying that any ship coudl cary enough paste to rep and thus tank anything for like 24 hours as long as you can stretch the tanking of 1 booster to last long enough to repair the other!

[Ophichius]

Yes but ims aying that any ship coudl cary enough paste to rep and thus tank anything for like 24 hours as long as you can stretch the tanking of 1 booster to last long enough to repair the other!

Sure if you don't mind paying a few tens of times the hullcost and you perfectly manage your reps, never overheat anything, and nobody calls for backup to break you. Frankly, the use of cap charges is incredibly silly, particularly the emphasis on smaller charges. If they wanted to lock them to fixed size per class (i.e. XLASBs -must- use 800s, LASBs -must- use 400s, etc.) that would make somewhat more sense, but it's still a clunky mechanic.

Picking out 'but they could carry infinite supplies of nano paste' ignores the sheer -cost- of doing so, and also ignores the other half of my statement, which is that you can also tweak the ASB stats themselves. ASBs in any incarnation almost certainly need a downward change in the total amount of shield repped per second once you factor in reloads. If this comes from stretching reload times, dropping rep rates, or both, is largely immaterial. Changing ASBs to module-damage based mechanics drastically changes how they interact with the rest of your midslot array, and forces some hard decisions in tight spots, which cap booster use doesn't do.

-O

[Daneel Trevize]

FYI, if they need heat to tank you, they can't also use paste at the same time to rep the 3rd booster. Thankfully.

Amps do increase heat damage though. Is that just for the shield booster and thus limited to impacting midslots?
Perhaps there's value in something like trying to hang on the edge of their scram/web range to make them risk heating that and burning tackle or tank out?

[Suleiman Shouaa]

It's still laughably easy to kill a Cyclone in a nano Drake if you just carry 2 spare modules in your cargobay for you to swap out to. Hint: if you remove their damage projection, they're dead.

[Daneel Trevize]

Well that's great for the one case, but as I mentioned, for everyone else TD drones are probably a very poor choice, and we don't have the spare slots or chance to go refit to put TDs in mids.
Glad to know the drake's still as balanced as ASBs mind

[Shiodome]

fighting againt these dual asb setups is so tedious and lacking in any excitement that my new strategy towards them is just 'have the ability to disengage'. after 60 seconds when it's clear they're running 2 boosters just leave them to their fun. most fits i can think of can only manage a scram for tackle.

[W0lf Crendraven]

And then you meet a hawk!

[Suleiman Shouaa]

Well that's great for the one case, but as I mentioned, for everyone else TD drones are probably a very poor choice, and we don't have the spare slots or chance to go refit to put TDs in mids.
Glad to know the drake's still as balanced as ASBs mind

Well, most BCs and above have enough mids to refit. In a gang, you should be packing at least a single TD to counter the current meta.

[Shiodome]

shut up sulei, there are enough TD's around already without encouraging it. it's getting so you have to fly a fucking drake or tengu >_< (not for long)

[Lady Spank]

Suddenly, rockets