Time Dilation Tactical Changes

Branch is on fire at present, as Goonswarm Federation invade their ancient grudge, Raiden. This campaign is the first with time dilation active, and strategies and tactics are already being adjusted:

What’s interesting is that TiDi also changes how battles like these work. Previously, people wanted their (super)caps in system so they had a better chance to load safely, instead of having to cyno in. Now it seems that the Goon supers that were already in 92D didn’t manage to get into the battle because when they logged in, TiDi had already kicked in, making the time for coming out of [emergency]-warp to the spot they logged off at (a safe tower) and aligning to the battle so slow that the Raiden. titan died before they were ready to warp in, so cynoing in seems to become a more efficient option for deploying caps.

Another side effect of TiDi is also that with everything slowed down, in absolute time, it takes much, much longer to recharge cap to a level where you can jump out again. This may also have lead to the Goon titan loss, because it wasn’t able to cyno out due to low cap. Two other Goon titans also bumped out of the pos were reported to only make it out while in structure (which makes me wonder wtf the Raiden. + friends bubblers were doing).

On a smaller scale, I can predict some obvious effects:

• Capacitor stability on battleships becomes more of an issue, because Microwarp Drives won’t cycle for free under heavy server load
• Long-range missiles become slightly worse, since warping out under dilation is now slightly more practical
• Rapid-firing weapons become more useful, since they will get their full rate of fire now, instead of all guns cycling once per minute.
• Bombs, when fired under heavy load, might actually blow up after ten seconds instead of sailing off into nowhere.

Of course, the biggest change to large fleet fights is that they won’t be excruciatingly random, painful experiences…