The Small Gang and Solo Meta

Celebrity PvPer Suitonia has a blog over at https://suitonia.wordpress.com and has been posting occasionally over the past year on serious internet spaceships topics like how powerful Off Grid Boosters are (tldr: stupidly so) and why the Svipul and Confessor Tech II Tactical destroyers are overpowered compared to the Jackdaw and Hecate.

Today they posted a piece titled "The Top 5 Most Oppressive Things In The Solo/Small Gang Meta Right Now" which are, in order:

1. The Svipul
2. Rapid Light Missile Launchers
3. The Orthrus
4. Remote Sensor Boosters (aka "Insta-locking")
5. Links

I strongly suggest you read that post (and other posts on that blog) as the 5 things they listed are things I have noticed as problems in our area of space as well. Shadow Cartel and Sniggwaffe Svipul fleets are virtually unengagable by anything other than another T3 dessie fleet (too tough for regular destroyers, too fast for cruisers), and Rapid Light Missile Caracals are fracking annoying as hell with their range and damage. We don't see many Orthrus ships in my fleets, but insta-locking Svipul gate camps are stupid.

I asked on twitter if on-grid links was still as troubling and they responded:

I don't think On-Grid links are the final solution to Links, but they would certainly be an improvement, especially to lowsec
At least you would be able to separate ships from links by going to different celestials, and they would be actually risked.

I definitely feel off grid links are overpowered and need to be removed, but I'm unsure on grid links are still going to be a problem as there are a lot more options for dealing with ships on the grid than there are hidden off grid far from the fighting. Although, on second thought, the large grid sizes we have now could allow linking from afar to still be annoyingly powerful and relatively safe. We'll see once off-grid boosts are killed.

That Tactical Destroyer rebalancing can't come soon enough!

UPDATE: On twitter CCP Fozzie clarified my pondering on grid sizes and links:

@kirithkodachi @Suitonia "Defined range aoe links" is probably a better term than "On-grid links". They won't have unlimited range on grid.

This is a great response because it gives us some insight into how they plan to tackle the issue, as well as opens some speculation on other things they can do with links, such as versions with different ranges, scripting to increase link effect at expensive of range (or vice versa), possible E-war affecting links, falloff, etc.