Item Database:Ships:Dreadnoughts
Dreadnoughts are among the largest ships in the EVE universe. So large in fact that they cannot fit through the normal stargates used by smaller ships. Instead they rely on their own on-board jump engine to rip open the fabric of space and instantly traverse the huge distances between star systems. Doing so require two things: First the dreadnought needs racial specific fuel, derived from ice mining, precent in it's fuel bay. Second, the dreadnought pilot require a fleet member to activate a cynosoural field in the target system to give his jump engine something to lock onto.
Siege
A dreadnought is fitted with the same regular modules as all other ships. Weapons, shield boosters or armor repairers. Albeit of the extra large variety. Dreadnoughts can also only fit between 3-4 weapons making them actually slighty less powerful then a battleship. This is under normal circumstances. What makes the dreadnought unique is it's ability to fit and use a siege module. When activated this module will render the dreadnought completely immovable for 10 minutes, it can also not be remote helped in any way. At the same time the dreadnought recieves a massive bonus to it's firepower and the effectivness of it's tanking modules making it a stationary engine of complete destruction.
Uses
Dreadnoughts, especially "in siege" is not very effective against smaller targets due to severe tracking limitations. The primary role of the dreadnought, therefore, is to put extreme amounts of damage onto static targets with millions of hitpoints such as outposts and POSs. Often a fleet of dreadnoughts can reinforce or kill a POS in a single siege cykle (10 minutes) that it would take hours for a fleet of battleships to kill.
Hot drops and capital fleet fights
One way of defending your POSs and outposts in deep 0.0 is the "hot drop" strategy. The defending party will set up a fleet of dreadnoughts a few jumps from the assaulted system. When the enemy dreadnoughts go "into siege" a small fast ship will warp in close to them and open the cynosoural field at witch point the defenders will jump their own dreadnoughts into the fray. The attackers who are immobile for 10 minutes have no choice but to fight. As there is no way to remote repair or otherwise aid a dreadnought in siege theese "hot drops" can sometimes turn into a total slaughter. In a few moments tens of billions worth of dreadnoughts can be annihilated. The "hot drop" or capital fleetfight is undoubtedly the end game of pvp in EVE.