So this one has been a long time coming. Ever since a guy on the praise bob discord said that you can’t pyfa everything I wanted to make this happen. And spoiler alert, you really can’t pyfa this. But per tick cap simulation (lots of them) can give us some ideas at least.
There are two commonly accepted ways to use a Bhaalgorn in a fleet fight with Logi. You either use it to put cap pressure on the enemy capitals, or you try to disrupt their Logi (You can also neut out DPS ships, but that tends to be dependant on your enemy composition, and too situational to tackle here). What defines the Bhaalgorn in those two roles is neuts before all else. And as such I will look at those first. Technically there aren’t too many options here, in fact, as more expensive neuts or noses only give you more range, there are only eight of them, from fitting 0 nosses to 7, with the other slots being filled with neuts. I from now on always only call out the amount of nosses and implicitly assume the rest is neuts.
Highslots
Anticap Bhaalgorn Highslots
This one is pretty simple. It should just take as much energy as possible from the enemy!
The Argument for Full NOS
If you ever have thought about what happens when you have two Bhaalgorns neuting each other, then you probably had a lot of Ideas with cap batteries and pyfaed different fits against each other. But fundamentally the thing is pretty simple:
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A Nos gives you 42 GJ/s leverage over your opponent
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A Neut gives you 28.2 GJ/s leverage over your opponent.
For every cap battery that your opponent fits, your leverage goes down. For nosferatus this is linear with the amount of cap warfare resistance he has, but for neuts, it isn’t as your cap consumption stays the same, only the effective neut on the enemy changes. One can easily plot these two curves against each other find out that no matter what the enemy’s cap warfare resistance is, you will always get more leverage with another NOS than another Neut.
In other words, a Full Nos Bhaalgorn always wins a cap 1v1.
The Argument against Full NOS
Full Nos Bhaalgorns on the other hand is the worst possible thing that you can have when you actually want to put cap pressure onto something. And even under cap pressure on your own, with that many nosses, it should be possible to run some neuts, no matter the cap pressure on you.
Indeed with 2 nosses running in sync, you can kick-start a neut from fully cap dry. So my first attempt here was to have two pairs of nosses running 5 ticks apart. This means that you can start a neut every 5 seconds. As they have a cycle time of 24 seconds themselves they only need every 5th time (after one tick of downtime) that your 4 nosses provide cap. In other words, you can run 5 neuts off of 4 nosses no matter how much you get neuted in between those ticks. And we end up with a 4 Nos Bhaalgorn.
Other cap consumption
Some other things on your ships will use cap too, and we have to account for that. Of your 420 GJ that we get from two nosses, we only need 375 GJ to run our neut. Any kind of tackle module that we might have only uses about 5 GJ every 5 seconds - just when he has cap, and we have enough just fine too.
A bigger problem however is trying to run a propulsion module. Excluding capacitor rigs, a microwarpdrive consumes at least 195 GJ (Analog Booster Version). There is no way we can run it with a neut at the same time, even with maximum roll abyssal’s there isn’t enough cap to do so. As the cycle times aren’t multiplicative of each other you also can’t stagger the MWD and the neuts, or you would get significant downtime in doing so.
An afterburner uses at least 62.5 GJ of cap. This one is also not possible to run with a neut on the same cap tick. With some abyssal’s on your nosses, it will become possible. Just keep in mind that you will need an extra about 5 GJ for each tackle mod that you run when trying such a setup.
Mechanics of same tick Cap Warfare
The 3rd problem is that you might get neuted on the exact same tick that you also want to run your neut on. You may end up losing some of your cap to the enemy and can’t run your neut because of that. After some testing in-game, I found out how exactly this mechanic works. All neuts or nosses that are activated within a single tick get applied in random order. This means that if any enemy neut or nos falls onto the same tick as our two nosses, there are 6 equally likely scenarios:
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Nos A, Nos B, Enemy Neut/Nos
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Nos B, Nos A Enemy Neut/Nos
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Nos A, Enemy Neut/Nos, Nos B
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Nos B, Enemy Neut/Nos, Nos A
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Enemy Neut/Nos, Nos A, Nos B
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Enemy Neut/Nos, Nos B, Nos A
Only in the two last scenarios, we are able to get our neut off. So If our Bhaalgorn gets neuted at that exact tick, it only has a one in three chance to actually get enough cap to stat the neut. Crucially even with double cap batteries on our side, this doesn’t change.
Considerations for same tick Cap Warfare
Taking the worst possible enemy in terms of the number of times that it neuts, a Full Nos Bhaalgorn (Technically a 5 Nos Ashimu is worse, but who flies that). We have an average chance of 0.7 that its nosses are active on any given tick (Side note: As both sides, nosses have the same cycle time this chance only gets determined once when the enemy turns on his nosses). So your chance of getting your neut on at any given tick is only 0.3 + 0.7 / 3 = 0.5333.
We however need at least 3 out of every 5 times that our Nosses run a successful kickstart of a Neut, meaning a chance of over 0.6 to run them effectively. So in reality we can only really run 2 neuts of our 4 nosses when under cap pressure! And as such we should switch one more neut to a nos, which also solves or AB or MWD cap problem.
(This is a handwavey argument. Technically we already lose some neuting power even at higher than 0.6. as the neuts have 5 seconds of downtime to the next tick. I did some chance-based spreadsheet on this, and it turns out that 2 Neuts 5 Nosses neuts more than 3 Neuts 4 Nosses under that kind of cap pressure.)
Meta Anticap Setup
So here we finally have our setups for our anti cap setup:
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5 Nos Bhaalgorn when we are expecting cap pressure
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3 Nos Bhaalgorn when we don’t
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1 Nos Bhaalgorn if you have one incomming CT (more efficient than Full Neut + 2 CT)
Anti Logi Bhaalgorn Highslots
So you think the anti cap Bhaalgorn was pretty complicated? This is even worse! Now we not only have to consider tick-wise analysis on the Bhaalgorn itself but also on the cap chained logi side. But don’t worry, I do the math and you just have to link this article and do like you are right when you start having this discussion with your corp mates.
The Logi Side
This Enemy usually runs a 4 rep, 2 CT Guardian. For simplicity, here we use 4 Large T2 Reps (as these use the most cap), and 2 compact CTs (as these give the least cap), meaning that any other 4-2 Guardian will be more cap stable than this. I will focus on two questions here.
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How can a Bhaalgorn inflict the most Cap disruption onto a single Guardian?
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How can a Bhaalgorn inflict the most Cap disruption onto two Guardians?
Simulation Assumptions and Methodology
Trying to pyfa this is terribly far from reality. So I decided to use a tick-wise cap analysis spreadsheet. I made the following assumptions
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4 T2 LRAR 2 Compact CT Guardian
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Standard Bhaalgorn neuts / nosses (No abyssals or Talisman Implant Set)
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Guardian pilot responds to modules decycling immediately
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Guardian pilot always tries to reactivate cap chain before RR
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Friendly cap transfers for the Guardian come in out of sync
With this in mind, I started building a simulation spreadsheet. I also take in into account the base cap recharge of the Guardian (dependant on the current cap level of course). But I decided to forgo the Afterburner and Sensor Booster, again for simplicity.
I decided on the following test scenario. The Guardian starts off at 90% capacitor (this is a very common cap to be at in a Guardian). We then give whatever neut and nos combo 2 minutes to dry the Guardian out and reach a pretty steady capacitor level. After that, I simulate a further 2 minutes and calculate the uptime of cap transfers and remote repair separately. In all scenarios, I swap around the spread of neuts and nosses by hand until I reach a result that I don’t think can be improved (I don’t test every single possibility, as there is more than 500’000, CT uptime gets priority over RR uptime). Then I did it a 2nd time with a more general “even” spread, something that actually players would use.
Single Guardian Steady State Capchain Breaking
For the first question, we get a result that looks something like this:
| Perfect Spread | 7 Neut | 6 Neut 1 NOS | 5 Neut 2 NOS | 4 Neut 3 NOS | 3 Neut 4 NOS | 2 Neut 5 NOS | 1 Neut 6 NOS | 7 NOS |
| CT Uptime | 70,83% | 75,00% | 83,33% | 83,33% | 87,50% | 91,67% | 95,83% | 100,00% |
| RR Uptime | 77,50% | 75,00% | 70,00% | 67,50% | 52,50% | 25,00% | 0,00% | 0,00% |
| Average Player Spread | 7 Neut | 6 Neut 1 NOS | 5 Neut 2 NOS | 4 Neut 3 NOS | 3 Neut 4 NOS | 2 Neut 5 NOS | 1 Neut 6 NOS | 7 NOS |
| CT Uptime | 75,00% | 75,00% | 95,83% | 83,33% | 87,50% | 91,67% | 95,83% | 100,00% |
| RR Uptime | 80,00% | 90,00% | 83,75% | 100,00% | 82,50% | 80,00% | 58,75% | 45,00% |
This was definitely very interesting for me. For one how big of a difference the timing of neuts and nosses makes. Sometimes the affected Guardian loses more than 50% of its reps just by timing! Another thing to note is that it is really hard to break the cap chain of a good Guardian pilot. In order to break the cap chain, you would need less than 50% uptime on all Guardians in the fleet. Something that you can’t even reach with a Bhaalgorn per Guardian according to these numbers!
There is this notion that more nosses break cap chains better than neuts. But if you believe this data then the exact opposite is true! Because this so far, of course, doesn’t convince anyone I would like to talk about a few effects that you can see in the spreadsheet, and in-game as well, that can explain this kind of behavior.
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A Guardians CT gives you 338 GJ of cap. A Bhaalgorns nos only takes 210 GJ. This means that there is 128 GJ left over. Each CT takes 63.4 GJ and as such you can still run both your CTs after a nos has been applied. This means for a smart Guardian pilot (like the guy in my spreadsheet), one that prioritizes CTs over RR, the CTs will never go out because of a single nos.
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Heavy nosses have a cycle time of 10 seconds and CTs have a cycle time of 5 seconds. So whenever someone runs 2 nosses in sync and actually manages to stop a CT from a Guardian, then as soon as the Guardian gets cap again and the guy reactivates his CT it will be out of sync of those two nosses forever. This means that the guardian will probably still go dry from time to time, but the CT won’t ever need cap on just that tick.
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The exact opposite applies to RR. As they have a cycle time of 6 seconds which doesn’t align with the 10 second cycle time of the nos after at maximum 60 seconds the rep tries to get cap on just that tick that the nosses get the Guardian dry, and it deactivates again.
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Neuts and reps also go in sync and tend to not hinder each other after an initial tangle
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Neuts and CTs have a maximum of 120s to reach collision (Why did I chose that time for simulation, one might wonder)
If you have abyssal nosses that are slightly green in transfer amount, then you can reduce the number of cap transfers he can run after getting neuted from 2 to 1. Crucially however such a setup will still stabilize after some cycles as your nosses will be in sync with their CTs, and running one outgoing CT out of every incoming CT is still enough to keep the cap chain going.
If you run a Talisman Implant Set (reduced neut/nos cycle time) however, you can effectively get “out of sync” to the enemy guardian. This means that he will constantly have to readjust his cap transfers. Crucially this alone will not change anything of the mechanics within a single tick. And as a result, the guy will still be able to cycle the cap transfers under your nosses.
So in order to be the most effective cap-chain breaking Bhaalgorn from steady-state, you need a Talisman Implant Set, and you need to run your nosses in pairs. The ones that don’t get run in a pair should be abyssaled so at most only one cap transfer can run under them.
I picked some scenarios that seemed worth running with abyssals and talisman implants, as well as a somewhat optimized cap spread, and got some interesting results. (I have a suspicion that cycles times close to whole seconds end up spreading their neut ticks over the 5 seconds CT interval more evenly than some that are further of from that, but I couldn’t prove it)
| Neut Cycle Time after Implants | Implant Price | 5 Nos 2 Neut CT Uptime | 5 Nos 2 Neut RR Uptime | 7 NOS CT Uptime | 7 NOS RR Uptime |
| 9 | 77m ISK | 77,50% | 64,58% | 73,33% | 55,00% |
| 8 | 142m ISK | 77,08% | 70,00% | 62,50% | 60,00% |
| 7 | 600m ISK | 69,17% | 61,04% | 61,67% | 45,21% |
For me the 8-second cycle time, Full Nos Bhaalgorn seems like the best bet, it doesn’t cost that much, but it does a lot. The intended way to use the Nosses for this looks like this
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You activate 2 nosses as a pair
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Wait 2 seconds and repeat
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After running out of nos pairs activate the last nos. This is the only one that you should abyssaled, best chance to get the activation you need is with a Gravid Mutaplasmid, + 5 GJ green is enough.
Double Guardian Steady State Capchain Breaking
The 2nd question now tries to put the often seen strategy to neut two Guardians at once with a single Bhaalgorn. We can assume that this one uses 3 to 4 neuts or nosses on each Guardian, and as such we only have 14 possible scenarios. Again the same principles as above have been used. I further assume that these two Guardians are not next to each other in the cap chain, and as such, there is no knock-on effect from one to the other. I only performed this one with a perfect cap spread. I wanted to do the other versions as well at first, but after realizing how bad it really is, there is no point really.
| 0 NOS | 1 NOS | 2 NOS | 3 NOS | 4 NOS | |
| 0 Neut | |||||
| CT Uptime | - | 100,00% | 100,00% | 100,00% | 100,00% |
| RR Uptime | - | 100,00% | 100,00% | 100,00% | 100,00% |
| 1 Neut | |||||
| CT Uptime | 100,00% | 100,00% | 100,00% | 97,08% | |
| RR Uptime | 100,00% | 100,00% | 99,58% | 97,08% | |
| 2 Neut | |||||
| CT Uptime | 97,08% | 95,83% | 91,67% | ||
| RR Uptime | 100,00% | 98,75% | 91,25% | ||
| 3 Neut | |||||
| CT Uptime | 91,67% | 91,67% | |||
| RR Uptime | 96,25% | 90,00% | |||
| 4 Neut | |||||
| CT Uptime | 87,50% | ||||
| RR Uptime | 88,75% |
Maybe a little bit better numbers are still possible…
As you can see the effects aren’t really any better than trying to go for a single Guardian (Keep in mind that you can’t just choose any combination of these). If you think about it, the first 2 neuts or 3 nosses are completely wasted on the Guardians cap stability, so you waste 4 to 6 of your seven slots in this kind of configuration.
Here I want to underline something. The Guardian pilot of my spreadsheet is an absolute god at flying his Guardian. No human will ever come close to his decision-making and consistency, but mechanically it is possible in game. I just have never seen someone decycle his reps so that he can keep the CT running.
Comparsion to ECM
I want to put all of these numbers into perspective. A cheap fit griffin (11m ISK) that has its 4 jams on a Guardian with high-grade Grails, a Sentient Sensor Booster with ECCM script and heat will reduce its CT and RR uptime to about 68.1%, not factoring in the time it takes the Guardian to relock the target after it has been jammed. That is only slightly worse than the best steady-state cap disruption Bhaalgorn!
If that Griffin can jam 4 targets instead (so no double jams happen) the value would be 63.3%. If the Guardian runs an empty head, 49.5%. Four Guardians with empty heads, 35.6%. And the guy could also be flying a bigger ECM Boat with more jams, use T2 Jams, maybe use jam efficiency rigs, etc.
Steady State Mixed EWAR Setup
There is one more thing to take into consideration here. What about using jams to break the cap chain, and the neuts to keep it dry? Sadly this is pretty hard to quantify. If the chain ever goes dry because of all the jams, then keeping it dry will only take a single nos per Guardian, as it cycles faster than the Guardian regenerates the cap to start a CT. The problem is however that jams tend to not dry out the chain at all. Sure some ships will lose CTs and start to go dry after some time, but usually, the other ones are unable to RR or CT and stay at a healthy amount of cap (or even get overfilled). So targeting the ones that get Jammed doesn’t really make sense, only trying to race the ones that aren’t to empty cap.
I tried some different scenarios again, to see how fast one can get a Guardian dry after it loses some of its incoming CTs. All neuts or nosses are spread over time here, as in reality, you can’t really only neut when the guy gets jammed, you just neut all the time and hope for the best.
| 2 Neuts | 4 Neuts | 5 NOS | |
| 1 CT | 25 s | 12 s | 27 s |
| 0 CT | 12 s | 8 s | 18 s |
A single jam cycle will keep any CTs away from going for about 13 seconds (10 seconds jammed + 3 lock time) provided that the guy spams his relock at the end of the jam cycle. So even if a Guardian loses both CTs for a jam cycle, he will just about then get cap back when he is dry. For the case that only one of his cap buddies gets jammed you even need 2 consecutive jams to make him feel it at all. So we need a lot of jams to make this kind of thing work. How much exactly remains outside of the scope of my motivation. I kinda have the feeling tho that having more jams is just more effective.
As an example, if there is a 4 Guardian capchain, with a Griffin and a 5 Nos Bhaalgorn with 2 jams on two Guardians each, and 2 Neuts on one, 5 Nosses on the 4th, empty head guardians, then as result each Guardian with Jams on it will be jammed about 30% of the time (resulting in 1.4 effective Guardians from the Griffin instead of 2). A single jam into double jam, or double jam into single jam will happen about 2.7% of the time, and these are the most likely scenarios where the Bhaalgorn will actually inflict any kind of significant downtime to Guardian Reps and CTs, but that is still less downtime than another Griffin would induce.
”Nuking” Transient Cap Chain Breaking
Another thing to consider is trying to burst neut all the enemy Guardians. With a guardian having around 2500 cap when unimpeded, and a neut taking 1050 (1365 with max abyssal) GJs at once, one can burst empty a Guardian with 2 neuts and a nos, or 2 abyssal neuts alone. The Guardian will now sit around for 13 ticks until it reaches enough cap to start a cap transfer again. So If you want to keep him dry, then all you really need is a single nos (2 staggered neuts do it too). This leads to some other interesting Bhaalgorn setups. With 4 neuts and 2 nosses, you can permanently cap out a chain of 2 Guardians. The spare high slot you have when doing this should also be a nos, so that you can do this over and over in case it fails.
With 3 Guardians you can still nuke a cap chain with the use of six abyssal neuts, but it is now really hard to keep the cap chain dead with only one more slot. Technically it is still possible with Talisman Implants and a small neut or medium nOS, but it would be pretty hard to actually micromanage. And range would be another big issue there, plus you need to be cap-fed for sure.
Anti Logi Bhaalgorn Highslots Conclusion
I honestly don’t know precisely what the best setup is against Logi. Personally, I would rather have more jams in my fleets, be that Kitsune, Griffins, Scorpions, or even Widows, than try a steady-state or knock-on effect Bhaalgorn. All of these ships seem to be more ISK Efficient at disrupting Logi. If you have a ratio of fewer than 3 Guardians per Bhaalgorn, then you could also try a Nuking strategy. Or you just try to Nuke part of the chain just at the time that you start shooting a new primary.
Lowslots
Tank
From here on out we are pretty much smooth at pyfaing… the tank is something that can just be optimized by fitting modules in pyfa, seeing what kind of numbers you get out of it, and repeating it over and over. As such, there is a lot of different meta ways to do it, at different price points. In the end, I just chose one version, there is nothing special about it really. And depending on your enemy or your taste of bling this might be wildly off for you. Here is some points that you should consider in any case tho:
Specific Resist Mods
A lot of the time when you have so many slots to use for tank, people are trying to fit one module for each resist type, as they think they can get better value out of it than fitting four omni mods (These specific resist mods tend to be significantly cheaper than the same Meta Omni Versions). The idea is to not have as many stacking penalized modules, and as such, you can use more of each module’s stats. The problem with this is that omni modules are just really stat efficient in general, so even with the stacking penalty, they end up being better.
As an example, an A-Type [Resist] Energized Membrane will give you a 37% (46.3% with skills) resist on that damage type. A T2 Multispectrum Membrane on the other hand will give you 16% (20% with skills) resistance on every damage type. If you now fit four of the A-Types you will obviously get 46.3% resist across the board. If you fit the Multispecs, then you will get 20% from the first, 17.38% from the 2nd, 11.42% from the third and 5.56% from the fourth mod, for a total of 44.71% resist across the board. It takes you one Imperial Navy Multispectrum to increase this to 46.4% - equally good as the A-Types. The Price for the A-Types is 117m ISK, while the price for the ENAMs is only 29m ISK. For fitting further resist mods however having the A-Types will result in much less loss of efficiency than for the Multispecs.
This leads me to always try to fit two Multispecs, and specific resist mods from there. I look at the exact numbers in pyfa of course, but this leads me on a pretty straight path to max efficiency usually.
Reactive Armor Hardener
Another somewhat controversial module (in Wormholes at least) is the reactive armor hardener. For one it is an active hardener which is always somewhat frowned upon, and its mechanic just isn’t as easy to theory craft as others. If we look at the extreme case that we only get shot at from one damage type and compare to an A-Type [Resist] Energized Membrane, and we are assuming that both modules aren’t stacking penalized (the end up being the highest of said resist, so that is a good assumption) we get the following results, normalized to 100 DPS:
| Tick | 0 | 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 | 25 | 30 | 35 | 40 | 45 | 50 | 55 | 60 | 65 | 70 |
| Resist A-Type | 46,3% | 46,3% | 46,3% | 46,3% | 46,3% | 46,3% | 46,3% | 46,3% | 46,3% | 46,3% | 46,3% | 46,3% | 46,3% | 46,3% | 46,3% |
| Resist RAH | 15% | 21% | 27% | 33% | 39% | 45% | 51% | 57% | 60% | 60% | 60% | 60% | 60% | 60% | 60% |
| Damage Delta | -156,5 | -126,5 | -96,5 | -66,5 | -36,5 | -6,5 | 23,5 | 53,5 | 68,5 | 68,5 | 68,5 | 68,5 | 68,5 | 68,5 | 68,5 |
| Summed Delta | -156,5 | -283 | -379,5 | -446 | -482,5 | -489 | -465,5 | -412 | -343,5 | -275 | -206,5 | -138 | -69,5 | -1 | 67,5 |
As you can see in that extreme scenario the RAH only gets better in total damage tanked after about 65 seconds. Most of the time the damage won’t be only exactly one damage type, so the time will be slightly shorter. So now based of your previous engagements, you should be able to tell if the RAH is worth it or not. As the RAH syncs with your own nosses (without talismans) so you will have a pretty good chance at keeping it running cap-wise, and because of stacking penalites it is actually a really good resist mod in comparsion to a EANM even at 0 spool. This brings me to put a RAH on all Bhaalgorns where I can reliably say that they have enough cap to run it. On fits where this isn’t possible I run dual plate instead.
Midslots
Again as in my Bifrost article, I will go through all the modules and talk about why I would use them, or wouldn’t. Then finally we assemble our 5 winners for each scenario.
| Module | Usage |
|---|---|
| 500mn | Your basic repositioning tool, wouldn’t want to be without it |
| 100mn | For going against caps an AB will allow you to mitigate some damage, and as a result, I would always fit one. For going against Logi it allows you to run them down, so I would take one as well |
| MJD | I don’t think most Guardians or Caps are fast enough so that you need to MJDunk them, but for getting out of a bad situation, this might still be a useful mod to have |
| Ship Scanner | This module only really serves a direct purpose on an anti-cap Bhaalgorn, to find out if you are breaking them or not, need more Bhaalgorns, or something else. Guardians tend to move in cap around a lot, usually, be the time that your Ship Scanner cycles they have already gotten another CT and your measurement is of by 10% before even displayed so really this isn’t that useful. |
There is however a lot of indirect purposes that it can be used for. As Sweet Lane pointed out you can also look at the enemy Bhaalgorns and see if they are worth counterneuting (e.g. have more than 2 neuts) or look for targets of opportunity with active hardeners, are general shitfit, find burstjammers and MJDs, see how well the enemies are equipped with sensor boosters and guide your other ewar to the right target.
For finding out how many cap batteries an enemy has you don’t really need it tho. If your nosses take 210 GJ then they have none, about 150 and they have one, 110 and they have two, below 50 they are dry. | | Webs | With the Bhaalgorns web bonus, these things are very nice to have. Personally, I like the Idea of bringing enemy Guardians into the range of your neuts or nosses. As you tend to be about half as fast as a Guardian when scrammed you really need two of them to catch anything | | Points | You are a really slow force multiplier and not a solo boat. I wouldn’t ever fit a point, because I think that most other modules on here will benefit you more in a fight, than getting one more kill, although I do see the appeal of Webbing and pointing someone and never letting him go again | | Sensor Boosters | Each Sebo with ECCM script will half your chance to get jammed, IMO that’s a pretty big bonus | | Scrams | You should have Webs and slow down enemies anyway. You don’t really have the lock time to get at booshers, so I would always fit something else on this list first. Maybe you could actually use this module in synergy with the MJD to get out of someones scram range, but that only really works with a single guy scraming you. | | Cap Batteries | There is a funny thing going on here. The more Neuts and fewer Nosses you run, the more you benefit from a Cap Battery when being neuted, but the more you expect to get neuted the more you want to switch towards 2 Neut 5 NOS, and there the cap batteries don’t do any good. If you switch to that you lose about 20% neuting power in total, which is about the same as losing one of your Neuts due to not having cap. With a single cap battery, a single unbonused heavy Neut is still enough to do that. And with two batteries it takes one Bhaalgorn neut to do that. | | Cap Boosters | These might be a consideration for Nuking setups in general or times where you are cap-fed and don’t want to have a problem when your cap chain ever goes down. (One has to acknowledge that not every Guardian flies as well as my spreadsheet, I personally don’t even come close to spreadsheet efficiency) | | Signature Suppressor | This might be another module that will help you against capitals, working as some kind of adhoc ADC. For FAX and T2 Cruiser Logi the difference in lock time is less than one second. But for non-perfect applying missiles, you will only take about one-third of the damage during the time that it runs. For turrets, the effect isn’t as easy to quantify, as it heavily depends on the direction that you burn. | | Racial Jams | Finally, if your fleet has all the utility mids that are needed and you really don’t know what to put in it, then this is a good option, you will almost always find a use for it. |
Anticap Mids
In the end, I went with a tripple prop setup here. 500mn to get into the place that you need to be, 100mn to sig tank caps at that position, and then finally MJD to get out if necessary. I also think that the Cargo Scanner is a must-have in these kinds of situations.
For the last mid, I am kinda undecisive. With the WCS changes, a faction scram would allow you to hold a capital indefinitely and increase your chance of getting to MJD out, which in my mind is a really safe way to not suddenly lose the capital that you tackled because the DPS anchor burned out of range. You could go Web because of the bonus, or also with a Sensor Booster if you really want it.
Anti Logi Mids
Here it is very clear what you need. We want to run down the enemy Logi so that we can get into neut range.
One thing that always makes this possible is AB + 2 webs, but if you are good enough to neut out the enemy scrams you might not actually need the AB and can replace it with a ship scanner (Edzix Egdald pointed this out, ty very much).
For the rest of the slot, we definitely want a sensor booster, as jams are ever-present in that kind of environment, and finally, an MWD to move quickly in case needed. Cap Batterie is out for the steady-state setups (they end up being Full Nos or 5 Nos), only for “Nuking” setups those might be another option.
Final Fits
You should know what you can do with Bhaalgorns pretty much now. I actually have 7 Setups for Bhaalgorns that all serve a different purpose at this pooint, but I want to keep this somewhat simple, and only talk about the 3 main concepts that are out there.
Steady State Anti Logi Bhaalgorn
Actually, my go-to fit is an ECM Boat, but if you really want to try this, then here is what should work best.
[Bhaalgorn, Steady State Anti Logi (Not Counterable) 600mn 1600mm]
Reactive Armor Hardener
Corpum A-Type Explosive Energized Membrane
Corpum A-Type Kinetic Energized Membrane
Coreli A-Type Multispectrum Coating
Coreli A-Type Multispectrum Coating
Damage Control II
Imperial Navy 1600mm Steel Plates
500MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive
Gist B-Type 100MN Afterburner
True Sansha Stasis Webifier
True Sansha Stasis Webifier
Shadow Serpentis Sensor Booster, ECCM Script
Corpus X-Type Heavy Energy Nosferatu
Corpus X-Type Heavy Energy Nosferatu
Corpus X-Type Heavy Energy Nosferatu
Corpus X-Type Heavy Energy Nosferatu
Corpus X-Type Heavy Energy Nosferatu
Corpus X-Type Heavy Energy Nosferatu
Corpus X-Type Heavy Energy Nosferatu [1]
Large Trimark Armor Pump II
Large Thermal Armor Reinforcer II
Large Trimark Armor Pump II
Hornet EC-300 x10
Valkyrie II x5
Vespa EC-600 x5
Mid-grade Talisman Alpha
Mid-grade Talisman Beta
Mid-grade Talisman Gamma
Low-grade Talisman Delta
Low-grade Talisman Epsilon
Nanite Repair Paste x400
Sisters Core Scanner Probe x16
ECCM Script x1
Scan Resolution Script x1
Targeting Range Script x1
Border-5 'Pochven' Filament x1
Proximity-5 'Extraction' Filament x1
Mobile Depot x1
Damage Control II x1
Core Probe Launcher I x1
[1] Corpus X-Type Heavy Energy Nosferatu
Unstable Heavy Energy Nosferatu Mutaplasmid
cpu 50.0, maxRange 32000.0, power 2800.0, powerTransferAmount 125.0
Here I went with X-Type Nosses, max range faction webs, and consequently T2 rigs. Guardians have about 48km range plus 12km falloff, so if they are really skirting around the edge of that it might be hard to get a good grasp onto them. A-Types are currently more expensive than X-Types, B-Types could be an option again. Implant set is made so that you have a pretty much exact 8 second cycle time, which is all you need according to the tick analysis. Replace AB for Ship Scanner for good pilots.
The way I think this is used most effectively is that you Neut one Guardian and then Jam the Guardians two to the left and right. That way you get 2 Guardians with reduced CT / RR by jams, one Guardian with CT / RR by the Bhaalgorn. The two Guardians in between those shoudn’t get enough CT anymore to stay cap stable, so their own CT / RR uptime will be reduced as well.
”Nuke” Anti Logi Bhaalgorn
[Bhaalgorn, 2Nuke Anti Logi (Counterable) 600mn 21600mm]
Damage Control II
Corpum A-Type Explosive Energized Membrane
Corpum A-Type Kinetic Energized Membrane
Corelum C-Type Multispectrum Energized Membrane
Corelum C-Type Multispectrum Energized Membrane
Imperial Navy 1600mm Steel Plates
Imperial Navy 1600mm Steel Plates
500MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive
Gist B-Type 100MN Afterburner
Federation Navy Stasis Webifier
Federation Navy Stasis Webifier
Shadow Serpentis Sensor Booster, ECCM Script
Corpus X-Type Heavy Energy Nosferatu
Corpus X-Type Heavy Energy Nosferatu
Corpus X-Type Heavy Energy Nosferatu
Heavy Energy Neutralizer II
Heavy Energy Neutralizer II
Heavy Energy Neutralizer II
Heavy Energy Neutralizer II
Large Thermal Armor Reinforcer I
Large Trimark Armor Pump I
Large Trimark Armor Pump I
Hornet EC-300 x10
Valkyrie II x5
Vespa EC-600 x5
Nanite Repair Paste x400
Sisters Core Scanner Probe x16
ECCM Script x1
Scan Resolution Script x1
Targeting Range Script x1
Border-5 'Pochven' Filament x1
Proximity-5 'Extraction' Filament x1
Mobile Depot x1
Core Probe Launcher I x1
Here is the a lot cheaper Nuke Bhaal option. While it is cheaper, it actually needs a better pilot that can time his neuts and nosses correctly. There is no RAH because of the uncertainty to have cap. Again the AB can be exchanged for a Ship Scanner if you are good at flying it.
This fit is counterable, meaning that it doesn’t fair well wen counterneuted. Even with cap batteries you still lose more utility than the enemy that uses 1-2 neuts on you (because you can no longer get a propper nuke going) so I don’t see the use of them.
A cap booster on the other hand might can be tactically used to keep the nukes going. As the fit takes 870 GJs of Cap to start a Nuke from dry, 800s should theoretically not work, but might still do so anyway in practise. If you want to be safe, then reduce the Nuke cap cost by either using Abyssals or Egress Port Maximizer Rigs.
The way you use this one is that you nuke Guardians that are directly next to each other in the cap chain. You hope to maximize the time it takes for CTs to get down this chain again. If you have jams, then focus them on the edges of the chain that you nuke.
Anti Capital Bhaalgorn
[Bhaalgorn, Anti Cap (Not Counterable) 600mnjd 1600mm]
Reactive Armor Hardener
Corpum A-Type Explosive Energized Membrane
Corpum A-Type Kinetic Energized Membrane
Coreli A-Type Multispectrum Coating
Coreli A-Type Multispectrum Coating
Imperial Navy 1600mm Steel Plates
Damage Control II
500MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive
Gist B-Type 100MN Afterburner
Large Micro Jump Drive
Ship Scanner II
Sensor Booster II, ECCM Script
Corpus B-Type Heavy Energy Nosferatu
Corpus B-Type Heavy Energy Nosferatu
Corpus B-Type Heavy Energy Nosferatu
Corpus B-Type Heavy Energy Nosferatu
Corpus B-Type Heavy Energy Nosferatu
Heavy Energy Neutralizer II
Heavy Energy Neutralizer II
Large Trimark Armor Pump I
Large Trimark Armor Pump I
Large Trimark Armor Pump I
Hornet EC-300 x10
Valkyrie II x5
Vespa EC-600 x5
Nanite Repair Paste x400
Sisters Core Scanner Probe x16
ECCM Script x1
Scan Resolution Script x1
Targeting Range Script x1
Border-5 'Pochven' Filament x1
Proximity-5 'Extraction' Filament x1
Mobile Depot x1
Core Probe Launcher I x1
For the Nosses, you usually have range control and as such you don’t really need anything expensive for range, so B-Types because they are ISK effective atm. Maybe even full T2 would be a decent option honestly. Again going RAH because we are surely capstable. This is with the current scarcity of FAXes and reliance on subcap logi in mind. If you have a FAX, then dual plate is probably better.
When comparing this to full neut Bhaals, you will realize that this loses you about 114 GJ/s of neut power. On the other hand to run a full neut Bhaal you need 2 CTs, which effectively reduces your won cap stability by 99 GJ/s. I think that the 15 GJ/s difference is worth the reduced complexity in capchain and not having to worry about your own cap, thus allowing RAH use and open mids. The best thing you could run from a pure GJ/s perspective is a 1 NOS Bhaalgorn with that one Nos being an abyssal with green drain amount. It neuts 23 GJ/s less than a full neut Bhaal, but it also only takes one CT to run. So in the end you are up 49.5 GJ/s while the enemy is up 23 GJ/s.
The other thing you might want to think about is how long your fight should last. With a full neut Bhaal both sides will be down 100 Gj/s so it might be over quicker than with the one above. That might be advantageous or disadvantageous depending on what you want to achieve. Is there a high chance for reinforcements? And on which side?
Conclusion
Doing this kind of big theory-crafting exercise always has its problems that it would run out of bounds, or get stuck somewhere, as a result, one can end up terribly far from reality. So it is always cool to see what other people do in the game.
A few years ago (so I have been told) everyone was running around in 3 Nos Bhaalgornss, and upon people starting to get counterneuted they slowly switched to more nosses. Some guys swear for their full nos Bhaalgorns, and mentioned on the side that they run Talismans, but didn’t specifically stress the importance of them. My old corp had a 5 Nos 2 Neut setup, but when asked why couldn’t give a good answer.
All of these cases seem to be people running the same thing that I figured out to be the most effective thing to do, but rather than by number-crunching they acquired that notion by getting into fights, seeing which side does better and then copying that, or trying different things and getting a feel for them. In some sense pretty much evolution, the surviving of the fittest fit.
And just recently, I have seen some really interesting Egress Port Maximizer based Nuke Bhaalgorns that can basically start their Nuke from 0 Cap (But only nuke 1 Guardian every 10 seconds), which I think is another really interesting concept.
One thing that divides me from the real world is my distaste for cap batteries, I hope in the future I will have a more congruent picture there, maybe there is a thing that I did miss. After all, I have never undocked a Bhaalgorn xD.