Warfare & Tactics

Hey Lumberjack, long time no see bud. Did I miss anything? I was thinking about writing a lesson on the traditional gank techniques. I'm kind of waiting to see if anyone asks any questions.

Lesson 7 - War Decs

a) Intel - Before the war goes live, it's a good idea to set all of your enemy corps and personnel to orange standing so you can spot them.

Note: keep red status CLEAR. If you see red on your screen, you need to know it's a legal shot. The last thing you want to do is get concorded trying to shoot someone who's red because you're scouting them.

First, go to battleclinic (and yes, there are several other sites out there) and click the "rankings" tab under the corp info. This will list the target corp's people from best to worst, according to battleclinic. Add all of them with orange standing and "add to watch list." If you're running multiple wars at once, it's a good idea to group them so you can delete them later en mass.

Note: if they haven't fought in a while, sometimes battleclinic has the wrong corp. Watch the corp info while you're adding them.

Then, you can open your negative standings list and see who's online (from the watch list). Now, you need to figure out where they are so you can go see what they're up to. I'd recommend dropping a "Locator" agent on them

If you can't use locator agents, you can join the chat channel "locators r us" and there are lots of folks there who will help you out for 1mil per locate. If you don't know what you can use, you can find locator agents for your standing online with several services.

Now, once you see where someone is, you need to ask yourself why a person would be there. If the system is a major mining hub... probably mining. If the system is a major mission hub... probably missions. Other places, perhaps it's a mystery. However, if you can guess what the target is doing, it's much easier to find the target.

Now, I always recommend scouting with an alt. An ibis is fine. Any ship will do for pre-war scouting. You're just looking to spot enemies and get ship names (so you can find them on d-scan).

Now, if you can get enemy ship names (especially mission ships) before the war starts, please do. That's a great way to verify that the enemy is in space with d-scan (since d-scan shows ship names). If you're planning on doing missions though a war with your ship names "mynames Caldari Navy Raven," you're going to probably have company because it's so obvious which ship is yours of all the blips in the sky.

Ok, you've done enough for intel. There is more you can do, but after a few wars I could hardly be bothered to put the bad guys in my contacts list anymore.

2) Hunting - I am not going to teach you to probe... go watch that on youtube if you're not familiar. However, I will tell you that the easiest way to scan out a mission runner is always to try to get your target's scan tag. (That is, imagine your target is running missions. You get an alt outside his station and scan him with a probe right outside station. You can compare the range on your overhead to your "scan probe" range to verify which ship you're looking at. If you get his scan tag ex: XYZ-123, you don't need to worry about where he went. As soon as he warps into the mission, you just need to lock XYZ-123 again and you're ready to follow.

--------Cool Tactics Note--------
I haven't done this in a while, but if someone is using range tactics on you, you can get a neutral friend to help tackle.

We've all had that enemy who wants to sit 300k off station and look at you. If you get a buddy in a scan boat to lock him with probes, warp to near you, and then warp fleet on top of him (and cancel his own warp), you can have yourself (and your fleet) deposited right on top of your target.

If he's slow or doesn't realize you're doing a "remote tackle", he could be surprised and lose a ship to you.

---

D-Scan. There are 149,000,000 km in an AU. Who cares? If you're trying to translate between your d-scan and your solar system map, you do. Keep your calculator handy. Divide out the top end of D-scan and I think it's like 14.2 AU.

Now, I will tell you is that D-scan can be used a couple different ways. If you don't know it, the angle on the d-scanner tells you what's within X degrees of where your screen is facing. Because of that, d-scan is a great way to check individual astrological bodies (like asteroid belts) to see if your target is there. Just center them in your screen and scan at 5 degrees. If you're set at max range, it'll tell you if the target is there (as long as the body is within 14.2 au) . The directional thing is much harder to use (in my opinion) for deadspace and safespot targets.

If you feel confident that the target is not at an astrological body, then you really just want to pick range and, maybe, general direction.

Pick a few known ranges to check (quickly) to tell you how far he is before you use probes. For instance, you might scan 14 au, 10 au, 6 au, and 2 au... looking for the target to drop off your radar. That'll tell you within 4 au how far he is (assuming you knwo the ship name). Once you do that, then maybe you just check quadrants and up/down with the d-scan to figure out how far and where to start with the probes.

Practice cat and mouse with your friends like this. You'll learn to find each other pretty rapidly. This is a fun pvp training tool to do with new players, the technically minded amongst them will enjoy the challenge.

Hunting with a neutral alt is a good idea in high sec. Your enemy may spook when he sees red. If it's a neutral alt, you may be able to get near him without spooking him. If he's mining, go mine with him in the neutral alt. Then all your corpies can join fleet with you and warp to the neutral alt... landing on his mining ship. BOom.

Excellent and informative post with easy to understand explanations. Bravo to you sir!

PS, Hope you get to the hi-sec related stuff soon. I have been living in w-space so long I forget how it all works. :)

...probably just misinformed/uninformed....leetist?

War Dec them then if they are so lame and farm some shinys.






Listen guy's. if you're NOT leet then this thread's well worth reading. Leave it alone.


Thanks Mobadder, it's given me a lot to think about

And at that stage in their eve career would probably find this thread useful.




I would label 'leetist' someone who sneers at noobs for the fact that they are less experienced than him.



You kinda re-enforced my point there.


Go and start a "Wardecs are for High Sec Carebears" thread if you feel so strongly about it.

Dude, listen. My point about your negative attitude in an interesting and informative Hisec wardec thread was....

actually, nevermind.


Bye thread, good luck.

Mobadder - you are doing good mate - good thread, very informative and mostly dead on.

Many make the mistake of believing that RvB members (on the whole) are high sec carebears who could not find an ECM slot with both hands and a map. They fail to realize that many came here out of boredome of low and null sec pirating, which typically boils down to masive bolbs on gates killing single ships (take a look at KB stats if you want a good picture of this - I wont say who - but I think you get my drift). Put them in a 1v1 situation and their tactics fall apart.

RvB provides a vast array of everthing from face to face solo combat to full on blob fest, low and null sec roams and the fact that many of us either have other characters (typically gathering dust) in null sec systems, or actively switch between them (makes for great fun when the "Real" PVP'ers war deck us.

Sooooooo, your basic information is sound and provides a good basis for general PVP.

All you "noobs" (and I count myself in those ranks proudly) find your way to RvB, we can help you learn without the continual ganks of Tornado, Raven, etc... sitting on gate and waiting for your lone ship to jump in so that the 70 man fleet can kill it.

Get the basics down, go out to low and null and enjoy Eve for what it is - a big playground.

Keep up the good work Mobadder!



Keep at it - if you know small gang FC'ing, it will transfer as you get more comfortable with larger fleets. The biggest advantage to larger fleets is diversity - dedicated task based boats who can lock and disalble key members of the other fleet for up front removal before appling full damage to the harder to kill stuff. Typically, those who are humbe and say they are not good at FC'ing are better than they think....

I agree completely, I taught myself PvP and I am pretty good at it most of the time. People that have their hand held and can't figure things out for themselves will typically never be even competent at it. Eve PvP is much like any other complex skill, either you get it or you don't. Yeah and RvB is scripted PvP with rules...not the greatest environment to learn PvP IMO, however it is a good way to learn some basic game mechanics and get your feet wet.

Ok, when he flips your can he starts a timer against your entire corp. That means that your entire corp can shoot him but he can't shoot them (15 minute timer).

Lets say that you wait 3 minutes to shoot him. That means that as soon as you fire, your corp can still shoot for 12 min... but your aggro timer is refreshed for 15 ( for you to shoot him and for him to shoot you). When you shoot (and every time you shoot), your timer resets (and so does his). The timer for your corp does not. If you stop shooting and he keeps shooting you, every time he shoots, you both get your timers refreshed. If you stop firing and he keeps firing, you'll never lose aggro because he's resetting it by shooting (resetting it to 15 minutes).

Because you shot him, he can now shoot you. You are the only one he can shoot.

Now, suppose his mates come in and start repping him. The instant they rep him, they get a 15 minute aggro timer started against everyone who can legally shoot him.

From your perspective, they'll turn red. That means you can shoot them, but in this case they cannot shoot you because you've done nothing to earn their aggro.

If you so choose, you can keep shooting him. If he cannot break your tank and you can't kill him through your reps, this will create a stalemate.

Here are the options each side has to deal with this stalemate.


In the scenario where he scrams you, you shoot him, and then he gets reps.

His options are as follows:
1) He can get someone to bring another ship and that new guy can bail out and swap ships. That is someone else bails out of a ship right next to him, he gets in it, and then locks and rescrambles you.
2) He can keep trying to hold you with that little ship for as long as he can keep himself interested. His hope will be that you'll make a mistake, pay a ransom, or shoot at his reps so they can help him kill you.


Lets imagine that then he's got you pointed and you've got friends a few systems away.

Your options are as follows:
1) Call for corpies to kill him. Once his reps get there... you'll want to have your corpies kill them if you can. They're softer and more valuable.
Realize that his timer keeps renewing against you with every shot / cycle of the scram...but the timer only starts against your corp when he steals. That means from the moment he steals, your corp timer starts counting down. When it hits 0, your corp can't engage him. However, if you can get the remote reps to help him before the corp timer hits 0, you can get a fresh 15 minutes of legal agression for your corp on his reps (even after they can no longer agress him). In that case, you would have a good chance of killing the reps with your corp mates.

2) Get someone to bring you another ship you can kill him with. Do a bail swap. (If you're thinking of doing this, I recommend practicing first)

3) Wait him out, watch for him to do a bail swap with another ship. If he does that, you have to be aligned and quick to get out.

4) Get reps of your own, engage lots of stuff, try to elevate the whole incident into a great big fleet fit. Ensure you have enough reps to stage a huge funny gank. Then talk some cheeky smack in local.

Make sense?
Mo