Flying a Falcon: the 3 F's

Everything you need to know about flying a Falcon can be summarized by remembering the 3 F’s: Fit, Forethought, and Finesse.

Fit

Hi slots: Cov Ops Cloak. Everything else is optional. Probe launcher? Sure, but no ship bonuses, so your scans will take time. Heavy launchers? Ok, but if you are actually putting DPS on someone, you are either in very small gang flight against 1 guy or things have gone horribly bad. Remote armor reppers will earn you some ‘after the battle’ love, but are of no use during the engagement. Salvager, meh. Whatever. The cloak is the reason for the ship. Training Recons to 4 helps a great deal, but I didn’t even consider a probe launcher until I got to Recon 5.

Mid slots: 1X MicroWarpDrive, 1X Sensor Booster II, 4x Racial Jammers. 1X ECCM _or_ 5th racial jammer. The idea is to carry as many jammers as possible. MWD is a given. Sensor booster for quick lock on any other jammers on the field. ECCM if OPFOR is known to fly their own Falcons. Racial jammers in every remaining slot. Double up on known OPFOR favorite ship type.

Low slots: 2x Signal Distortion Amplifiers, 1X Tank (DCU II or 1600 plate) _or_ 3rd SDA.

Rigs: 1X Particle Disruption Projector (jam range) plus either 1x Particle Dispersion Augmentor (jam strength) if you fit tank in lows or 1X additional Particle Disruption Projector (jam range).

The goal is to obtain an engagement envelope in excess of 150-175km and then to maximize your jam strength at that range. Jamming is purely chance based and calculated by looking at the ratio of jam strength to target ship sensor strength. For example, my max jam strength for Gallente in my preferred fit is 14.52. Kaye’s Vexor has sensor strength of 14. 14.52 / 14 > 1, so I would perma jam Kaye’s Vexor. Kaye’s base Onerios has sensor strength of 20. 14.52/20 = 72% probability of a jam. Add an ECCM module to that Onerios and things get ugly (sensor strength goes to 36, probability falls to 40%). Add 3 and sensor strength goes to 89, with probability of 16%.

Megathron’s base sensor strength of 21 gives me about a 70% chance of a jam.

Key concept is that this probability is independent (ie the results of one ‘roll’ have no impact on the next) and is determined separately for each jammer. Quick and dirty method to approximate your total chance of jamming a given target with N number of jammers is to multiply all of the chances of a ‘miss’ and subtract from 1.

So, using our plain Mega or Onerios and 3 Gallente jammers we get:
Jammer 1 - 30% independent - 30% Cum Miss
Jammer 2 - 30% independent - 09% Cum Miss
Jammer 3 - 30% independent - 03% Cum Miss

If you think about it, this also hints toward why I never fly multispecs.

Forethought

If you have an established base, then you should have tons of bookmarks at your preferred jamming range. For stations, that’s usually measured from the undock point. You want book marks in all directions from that spot and, you want them to all be warpable from each spot. Six is a good minimum number to work toward. High, low, left, right, back, front. Have an offgrid spot or two and you are set.

Secondly, spend time on the OPFOR’s killboard if you can. Figure out what ships their main pilots fly and if there is an overall favorite race. If so, that tells you how to weight your jammers.

Finesse

Get in the mindset of the young Muhammad Ali. Long range jabs of power. Nimble. Moving about the battlespace, out of range of the other guy, frustrating his ability to hurt you (or your fleet mates). Don’t uncloak too soon. Always be moving. Co-ordinate jams with other Falcon pilots. Be alert for ‘ceptors! When they start heading your way, prepare to warp to the other side of the battlespace (using one of those handy bookmarks!) or to bounce off your offgrid & come back.

Prioritize your jamming. Put your racial matches where they will do the most good first, then follow up by putting anything left back on the target that you wish to have jammed the most.

Don’t initially jam targets that are sitting on the undock point or a gate. You want them to aggress so that they have a timer.

Don’t spam all the jammers you have allocated to a target at once. Hit one, wait 5 or 10 secs and then hit the next one. You want to minimize the amount of time between ‘rolls’.

Hope you find something useful here!