Dreadnoughts were literally a punchline of nullsec jokes until the five-minute siege timer, and now unless in blap mode they scuttle for cover like oversized space-cockroaches, cap boosters firing wildly, when confronted with bright lights.
-The Mittani, Traffic Control: Apex Force
The Mittani is continuing his pot stirring over at TMC with his Traffic Control series of columns. This time around he is on about the current chestnut of favor, power projection, and how it has ruined null sec. I was particularly amused by the dismissal of dreadnoughts, quoted in part above, as a good percentage of Baltec fleets I’ve stood up for over the last year… from midway through Fountain forward… have been called to cover dreadnought fleets.
Baltecs babysitting dreads
Of those call ups, a good half of the time we end up just sitting on a titan, a fleet in being, as much there to dissuade any hostile move as to actually shoot something. We only get to go out and shoot if the target system is beyond the range of a titan bridge. And even then, as with recent run down to Delve, we have to move out, cover the system, wait for the dreads to arrive, let them shoot stuff up, then hang out while they head home before we can start for home ourselves.
I actually have all the skills required for a Naglfar dreadnought at this point. It might be time to buy one so Baltec fleet can sit on a titan or scurry across space to protect me.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
Well that was kinda his point, that dreads need that subcap support. Dreads that *don’t* have subcap support are horribly vulnerable, including being vulnerable to an enemy subcap fleet in the exact was that carrier / supercarrier blobs are not.
The thrust of his argument is that the only thing that defeats the “apex force” is either a bigger group of same, or what he didn’t mention: a solid wall of cynojammed systems. N3&PL were often quick to point out that the wrecking ball was a defense-only strategy, but overly strong defense is a huge problem if you want nullsec to be more dynamic. Dominion sov is already really strong for defenders.
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@klyith – Exactly. I was not taking issue with that point, but supporting it in that power projection itself wasn’t the big deal. Subcaps have to drive all the way down to Delve so that the dreads can make their quick trip down, shoot things up, and fly off.
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I read his article, I don’t agree with most of it. Teleport, all by itself, regardless of what the output is, is broken.
I thought it was broken back during The Great War when BoB was using titans to bridge freighters full of supplies around with no risk. I thought it was broken the first time I got to use a fully fledged jump bridge network and noticed all traffic in systems not on the network stopped being there. I would say I thought it was broken the first time I actually got to jump myself, but in 7ish+ years of play I’ve never trained in to capitals, and never plan to.
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Oh, I also don’t like Jump Clones, though I have a lot of them. Clone mechanics btw are due for an update, simply because I want them to solve a problem I have with the game.. dropping med clone costs. I want to assign a limited skillpoint pool to a jump clone so a lol fight in a frigate isn’t prohibitively expensive. Loss of flexibility balanced against cost of us.
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@halycon – Nothing about interceptors?
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Nothing about interceptors. Also, all that made me sound like a stark raving lunatic now that I look at it after I’ve slept. I get that hoping around the map has it’s uses. But at this point it’s just far too ubiquitous. Given the chance I’d probably swing the nerf bat too far in the other direction, but the largest reason we need the ability is because of the distances involved from one front to another.
Then there are use cases like space truckers. No one wants to nerf jump freighters. I remember being in convoys shipping large amounts of goods, and everyone who ever did it agrees it was a soul sucking enterprise. When done right it had little to no risk, but took hours.
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@Halcyon
For that matter, these days, if you’re not a large entity and want to escort freighters, you time your cycle around the wandering wormholes. Some of this is because of JFs, of course: moving full freighters of stuff is not routine. But, if you do want to move it, 2J through scouted wormhole space is vastly safer than umpteen jumps through mapped nullsec with obvious choke points and likely roaming gangs.
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