Originally Posted by Malorn
Also as numbers increase it is alpha-strike, not dps, that matters.
Case in point, in EVE Goonswarm changed their standard fleet ship to the Malestrom and rigged it for maximum alpha strike damage and passive tanking. In a large enough number, those Maelstroms could one-shot a ship and greatly increase the efficiency of a fleet battle.
And for context, the Maelstrom's design is effectively that of the Vanguard - high damage, low rate of fire and overall low dps. But when you have a lot of them all firing at the same target, rate of fire becomes irrelevant because it only takes one volley to destroy a ship. They'd call targets, and each person fired one volley, then moved to the next target. They knew by sheer numbers that one volley per person in the fleet was enough to destroy almost any ship.
Same is true with large tank battles in PS. If a group of vanguards can drop a prowler in one-2 volleys then rate of fire really becomes irrelevant and Alpha Strike vs Effective Hitpoints becomes the factor, both of which are strenghts of the Vanguard in PS1 and PS2.
As the numbers increase dps becomes less relevant as alpha strike becomes king, but accuracy is his queen.
So again, as things scale upwards, it is the Vanguard that gets the most benefit, especially if the prowler has weaker armor. That just means it requires fewer vanguards to achieve the critical mass for 1-shot or 2-shotting tanks.
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The EVE comparison doesn't really hold. Alpha fleets were a response to two problems; lag and logistics, neither of which are factors in Planetside. Alpha is necessary not because better DPS is undesirable, but because if you can't kill something with one shot, you're probably not going to out-DPS their logistics. Against a fleet that has no logistics, you're much better off with a high DPS fleet since you can remove enemy ships from the field more rapidly.
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